The recent rise of digital media and human-machine interfaces has redefined survival for the conscious human subject. The most advanced technological apparatuses run on the principle of ambiguity and fluidity, countering the long-standing nostalgia towards an illusory state of totality seen in the history of Western ontology. Drawing on psychoanalytic, postmodern and cognitive theories, I reinterpret the fragmented, transgressive and incomprehensible aspects of digital communication and interaction as the fundamental modes, not objects, of individual and collective existence. I situate my discourse in a transcultural framework through Korean, Japanese and American literature and visual media, including works by Neal Stephenson (U.S.), Murakami Haruki (Japan) and Kim Young-ha (Korea).