Hypertrail. Herlander Elias
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solid platforms are what cements both the “hegemony and the cyber-system“(Baudrillard, 2010, 121). Whoever or whatever controls data, becomes the hegemon, the leader in charge amidst this cyber-system. The core of the cyber-system remains untouched however: every connection must rely on dialogic principles. Even in the 60s, McLuhan used to say that already “the action and the reaction occur almost at the same time” (1994, 4). Now, in the age of hypertrails and hyper-sociality, the fact is that “we as a culture are consuming ourselves as information” (Postman, 1994, 66). Whenever we go online, we are consolidating the networking abilities of such system. Social media and uploading selfies matches this view.
Theoretically speaking, a milieu is both a social and a technical space. McLuhan knew this when he said, “Once a new technology comes into a social milieu it cannot cease to permeate that milieu until every institution is saturated” (1994, 177) and saturation seems to be a keyword of the moment. We become a saturated Self after all because media is saturated, too. The very concept of hyper-reality was based on excess and if excess is exponential, there we reach a tipping point that makes search engines indispensable. Currently, all digital interfaces have a magnifying lens icon. The search interface is the core mode now because we deal with so much data that we need to search. This is why Kelly mentioned “discoverability”. We only find what someone digitized or rendered available directly online. “We are now living through the sixth generation, that of the Searchers" (Lunenfeld, 2011, xv-xvi). Searching became one of our behaviors. Digital tools, like it or not, turns us into detectives on the digital media space and another key aspect is that we are all publishers now ― bloggers, YouTubers and Influencers. In a media-based society, we have to become the media ourselves. “To implement a successful strategy, think like a publisher” (Scott, 2011, 32). In addition, we know since 2008 that the public is attentive to the new media (Laermer & Simmons, 2008). One of the mottos of the new media and the cyber-system is that we would in the future deal with information through futuristic interfaces. Science fiction showed us haptic screens, virtual realities, cloud and smart objects. Now, more than ever, "Sci-fi interfaces help create a reality that is coherent, and makes sense for audiences. In this way, audiences are a class of users" (Shedroff, Noessel, 2013, 310), and since brands dominate the mediascape, the new audiences are a class of user-consumers showing that we already live in the future ― It is called “present”. Today the post-industrial youth (Allison in Lunning [Ed.], 2006, 19) is the major audience: we all connect and we upload voluntarily all our data, we live online and our Instagram tells stories. Once Karen Hoepker spoke of "narrative snapshots" (2011, 45) and all the photos we take and carry in our smartphones tell a lot about our lifestyle and who we are. “We are tempted to present ourselves as we would like to be” (Turkle, 2015, 4). The media have become a space for us to display our identity as users, consumers and publishers, because “life on the social media encourages us to show ourselves” (Idem, Ibidem, 24). Bauman that noticed how the new generations resorted to social media as their new default address believes that “The consumerist vocation ultimately rests on individual performances" (2011, 55).Yet, we are not happy only by connecting, consuming and posting things online; “The age of the tag” (in Kerckhove, 2010, LOC 73-397) means that the more we enmesh with everyone, the stronger our network and our “tribe” will be. Now, we are a tribe of one. An army of one. A one-man’s band.
Back at his time, McLuhan spoke of “narcissus trance” (1994). In his view, the then-mass media were surrounding us and building a system of loops with repetition-based discourses. The trance of Narcissus would mean that people were getting addicted to their images, which were broadcasted by the media. People wanted to appear on TV. In the current time, we have something similar ― YouTube. Hence, the same phenomenon happens only with different interfaces. The main difference is that now we may own a YouTube channel, now we are the face of the media, the cyber-system, we are all into it. “The computer is not a model. You are computer version model of you” (Turkle, 2015, 90). This is about trance. We need to be a part of the media system as we use social media to post our emotional Polaroids, now we are undoubtedly a “society of producers” (Bauman, 2011, 14) that need to manage many photos which are retouched via an app, because these are also “post-photographic images” (Arlindo Machado, 2001, 45). Now, every image is altered as in Photoshop. Why? Only, because we can and because we “We begin to think ourselves as a tribe of one, loyal to our own party” (Turkle, 2015, 4). The images related to our universe must match our role-play; they should mirror the performance of identity, of user-consumer/brand-sponsored person we have turned into. Our ecology of friends is part of our ecosystem and social media are a conversation we can manage. The architecture that we feel attracted to is “The technium — the modern system of culture and technology ― and it] is accelerating the creation of new impossibilities by continuing to invent new social organizations” (Kelly, 2016, LOC 3994-5810). One of the things that has spread out and pushed us to become publishers is the increasing range of “citizen media” (Gillmor, 2006, xv). However, since the Apple iPhone reimagined smartphones we are all using citizen media. Every smartphone holder is a camera operator now. Social networks have become imperative and they have become a platform on their own. “Whereas Apple consumers rely on the brand icon and technological ephemera to signal group affiliation, Facebook members create their own personal tribes directly on the platform” (Margaux Genin & Jeremy Dipaolo in Millman, 2012, 143). Besides these realities, what can we see on Facebook? We can observe a majority of people we may designate as “surface-people”, meaning people who exist without a conscious insight of themselves and of the “other”, without a deep conscious of life and the phenomena linked to it. We can call them “shallow creatures”.
On the other hand, platforms like Facebook are treated in technopolitical terms since they reach more than one billion people. So what are people doing there? The answer is “The person has become the portal” (Barry Wellman [2001] apud Jeroen Timmermans in Frissen et al, 2015, 281) and becoming a portal means that one single person is a world, a system on his/her own, plus brands are watching this phenomenon as they want to be a part of this conversation and engagement. To Thomas Hylland Eriksen [2001] this is we simply being caught by the “tyranny of the moment” (apud Kenneth J. Gergen in Frissen et al, 2015, 158). Each person seems to be mesmerized by the photos they take on their smartphones and they use them to promote engagement. These clusters of people are not “networking” in the old sense (Turkle, 2011, 14), though they live hyperconnected to their social media, to networks. Once Bauman noticed a news headline on the newspaper The Guardian that mentioned how "'social networking' is not the next thing but the thing itself" (2011, 1). In this way, this “thing” in itself, what is it about? Because as far as we know to be online also means we are the "prisoners of the nexus" (Baudrillard, 2010, 37). Connectivity brings us closer. But closer to what? As long as we live online connected to these platforms, what increases is our attachment to social media sponsors ― the brands ― that rule everything we do. Although we live in hypersocial times the kind of relationship between people is rather different from the old time as Bauman’s stresses out “society” that has been replaced by “sociality” (2005, 225). Superficial communication rules, and whenever we swipe on our smartphones’ screens and we scroll on the photos and the feeds the truth is that “Today people consume people" (Adolpho, 2012, 126). We are considered as a source of valuable information and not as individuals; afterall, networking is not happening in the real sense because what has changed over the course of the last two decades is that things happen and where they show up. Concerning the way how conversation began to emerge online in the 90s, William Mitchel says that: “Life in the pre-cyborg spaces was a completely different experience. You had to be there” (1996, section 3.8, para.3). Nowadays, every media is social, every content is shareable and every platform is a cyborg place. We thus are witnessing what Castells sees as the “privatization of socializing" (apud Silva, 2009, 125). Once we are on social media we stand in a private space and this causes us to become fascinated, to have followers, audiences and viewers, subscribers and readers. We have become addicted to the construction of our virtual reputation. "Reputation is becoming a currency that will be more powerful than our credit history in the 21st century" (Botsman, 2012). One may ask where all the reputations end up. Effectively, they end on a handful of mighty corporate brands. Our lifestream in a world stream (Gelernter, 2013, 3) is intertwined and this is more than just a technological event, a media event and