Cloud Punk. Herlander Elias
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United States Senate as consequence of the inappropriate utilization of millions of users data on his social network. It is alleged that these data were processed by a data mining company and they were used to influence ballot intention in the 2016 election of the United States. This is a meaning event in many aspects for the assimilation of the post-digital reality and the cloud inflict to us. It is proved the power of the data, tags and information sharing that the users do for leisure. These data are valuable only thanks to their giant number and to the ordination capacity that the digital allows. Laws do not contemplate this new form of crime yet, or at least, there is no clear limitation about ethics in the use of available data.
Our spare time is a corporative necessity. The access to this data will be available through trivial entertainment content pages and access consent was offered spontaneously by users themselves. It is through our cloud activity that companies will comprehend our personalities and preferences in order to act in the physical world and, in this case, to influence ballot results.
In this present that aims to unknown courses about how humanity will coexist with the post-digital advent, there is a clear concern with the cyberwar. This term cannot coexist with the dystopic fictional imaginary anymore. Cyberwar is real and the companies that has necessary valency to obtain and to store data of millions of users in global scale are moving already in order to armor their commercial interests. This step was taken by the Cybersecurity Tech Accord signed in April 2018. This agreement was signed by 34 companies with large participation and presence in the cloud and it makes clear the non-collaborative intention with government in cases of war or cyberspace crimes. The agreement says about civil empowerment and it assures rights and security for cloud users. We live a time where corporations come together in order to resist to the States. These are times where not only economic power, but also data power take precedence over Nations power. This is one of the fifth digital wave consequences which the author proposes to unravel throughout this work.
This work is divided in six parts organized in a way to explain first of all the related ideas between the post-digital era and the ones behind the concept of cloud punk. After this, the author will develop many arguments based on this problem to conclude then his arguments about the cloud punk and our digital contemporaneity.
1.0 Part will introduce the main and basic concepts of cloud, about paradigmatic changes in the post-digital era, the consummation and entertainment formatting and about the incoherence of trying to be anti-establishment in the contemporaneity, as the cyberpunks were. These digital space agents get out of the scene in order to open space to a kind of version 2.0: the cloud punks. They are, altogether, individuals with corporation power who believe in the propagation of information in order to potentialize people and machines. The author will introduce the discussion about the importance of data and how they are essential to the development of artificial intelligence, and consequently to the interconnection inside the cloud. In fact, 21st Century is the century of gathering everything in data (“datification”). This will turn it possible a fundamental inversion of rules between content and its users, once now information will find its users. Those who access the cloud turn themselves in artificial intelligence research aims in order to provide content. Inside this huge labyrinth of information, the cloud punks have access to the best information. This model of reflection will help with a better comprehension of what post-web and post-computer phase will be.
2.0 Part has its theoretical focus on different aspects of cloud phenomenon. There was a behavior change, not only in the contents distribution way, but also in the way users prefer to obtain them. Music and movies streaming services have become themselves more and more popular. Access rights takes place instead of music and movies illegal download without definitive possession of the consumption material. The neo-liberalization of the information is one of the key subjects of this part. The cloud is also the place of contents insertion (it is never a place of contents exclusion) as well as the articulation of these same contents by cloudware. The author will state that one of this scenario articulation agents will be the cloud punk who assumes simultaneously consumer, producer and activist rule inside a reality where we are less the owner of things we buy and more the owner of the operations we perform in the cloud. He will approach also the questions as continual scanning and the perception reality is becoming boring for post-digital users; this, occasionally, would clarify partially the users confessional behavior who decide what they want to share. This behavior is essential to keep the cloud and artificial intelligence system of big corporations powered and in continuous evolution. This constant interaction between corporations and users turns into products which will never be completed once they receive permanent feedback.
Next chapter, 3.0 Part, begins by the humanity relation with the search for information in the antiquity until nowadays where corporations search for information in order to create a giant library for users to access them. The question here is that the access to the cloud contents becomes paid and the cloud punks fight against this corporative tendency because they believe in the advantages of the free traffic information. Afterwards, he will deal with the collaborative creation theme and design and creativity contribution in order to resist to the automatism in data manipulation and to keep human subjectivism in the cloud. That is the way main characters of cloud post-digital reality are created: the CEOs, the creators and the anonymous mass. Then he will talk about digital nomadism and cloud punks role at the always continuous cloud digital space due to the novelty dictatorship, among other factors. The dominance of the cloud represents the dominance of the world, as the author. This results in a kind of cyberwar by searching the most valuable thing in the post-digital era: the data. Cloud war is powerful enough to modify reality, or at least part of it. And this war is opened not only to the corporations, but also to the State and obviously to the cloud punks. In the end, the author talks about the new narrative cloud presents to our society. A narrative made up from our registers and data.
4.0 Part deals with mobility primarily and the importance of the mobile communication technologies have in the post-digital era. With these new technologies, new ways of gathering our everyday data reign. Computer has become obsolete with the advent of mobiles, tablets and wearables. Content formats available to the cloud are adapted to these devices. The author states that capitalist society has melted into the information society and the current cloud is an hybrid of high-tech with fast-capital. The cloud is an ecosystem populated not only by data, but also by real individuals through their avatars. In this situation, where corporations are impressive , once they have their own cloud control, the cloud punks are characters who have some marginal power once they can gather data and generate connection in this ecosystem. What is produced inside and for the cloud has an elevated value because of the convenience and integration with digital universe. The author mentions the e-books sold by Amazon’s case and, as per his own definition, the cloud become a history medium of archive consumption by subscription. This macro-narrative formed in the cloud is decodified by the cloud punks through data interconnection. In this chapter, the author will talk about online research approach of digital masses, pre-computer realities, post-computer, pre-web and post-cloud and also about the habit of young in the cloud.
5.0 Part begins with a reflection about the term cloudites and cloudgenics, agents who meet themselves at opposite sides concerning their relation with the cloud. Researches and posts made in the cloud will stay there and their users will lose subjectivity by gathering of data. Our identity will be made up by our searches, buy habits and sharing. Alternatively, dark data offers privacy and escape to corporative control. Machines count on data in order to study us. It is a fundamental part to study us in order to offer more services and we are more and more dependents of the cloud and its services. We live in a cloud society and we become homocypiens. Instead, there are the data dandy and its disinformation phobia, virtual absence, non-gathering data. As such the cloud punks, data dandies have eminent digital literacy, however their objectives and ways to be in the cloud are very different. The connection with the cloud is more and more wide and information agglomerate are more and more giants. If the access was possible by a desk computer before, there are now multiple ways to access data. The author creates parallels between this spatially free shape of access fluidity and the concepts of “liquid modernity”, of Bauman, and the “desirous space”, of Deleuze. The voluntary isolation of the cloud punks will be discussed and also how is the present scenario of the not linear world addicted in the big data and its financials unfolding.
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