“You Can’t Opt Out”: The Inescapability of Virtuality in Joshua Ferris’s To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

The paper looks at how Joshua Ferris’s To Rise Again at a Decent Hour reflects the increasing importance of virtuality in shaping human identity. It argues that in the age of ubiquitous computing, facilitated by wearable technology, the virtual has become an intrinsic part of human phenotype. Consequently, the self can be construed as a construct relying both on the real and the virtual for creating identity, which is a dynamic entity undergoing unceasing modifications. Additionally, due to the transparency and omnipresence of wearable technology the process appears to be unconscious to an individual and, therefore, inevitable and irreversible.