The constitution of the hybrid world. How ICT’s are transforming our received notions of humanness

The development and widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) are having a profound impact in many aspects of our daily lives, transforming the conditions and procedures of work, changing the modes of communication and social interaction, and altering the fundamental nature of human action, insofar as they play an important role in shaping what we do and how we experienced the world. In fact, the re-conceptualisation of the very foundational assumptions of modern societies, the new configurations of natural and social life, and the blurring of ontological categories upon which our political, social and legal orders are based, point to fundamental aspects of the human condition that have been reshaped by the hybridisation processes characterising modern human entanglements with emerging technologies. Despite the constitutional nature of these transformations, the basic rules that bind a state to its citizens have undergone small adjustments and accommodations. This not only shows how constitutional rights continue to be regarded as the most stable elements of national life, but also calls attention to the need of looking for the ways in which unwritten and emergent rules of constitutional dimension are being crafted. Where can we observe the new constitutional order that is emerging at the present moment? What fundamental aspects of human life are being transformed by the mediated role played by new ICT? What are the far-reaching ethical, legal and social implications of these transformations? In what way the most fundamental human rights and the most fundamental relations between states and citizens are being reframed in view of cross-cutting transformations in law and new ICT? In this paper we propose to address these questions by focusing our analysis on complex forms of mediation and translation that emerge from the use of the Internet and other ICT-based network arrangements.