Digital consciousness

Abstract

This chapter examines the emergence of digital consciousness through the interactions between consumers and intelligent technologies, drawing on Hoffman and Novak’s (2018) view that conscious experience arises from integrated interactions within a system. We explore how the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and emerging brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) reshape consumer experience by forming dynamic human–technology assemblages. Using assemblage theory (DeLanda, 2006; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), we conceptualize consumer–object relationships as systems with emergent properties, where both human and non-human agents influence each other’s capacities and awareness. Three levels of experience—basic, aware, and conscious—are applied to both consumers and technologies, highlighting the potential (and limits) of artificial systems to develop forms of experiential processing. While deep integration technologies such as BCIs enhance agency, fusion, and symbiosis, they also raise concerns about automation, reduced conscious engagement, and ethical risks to identity, autonomy, and privacy. The chapter concludes by positioning digital consciousness as both an opportunity for personalized, embodied consumer well-being and a challenge demanding critical reflection on agency, transparency, and the ontological status of machine experience.