Homo Cypiens. Herlander Elias
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to be worth more on our screens and portable screens. Yet, they are worth what they are worth. We are worried about looking good on small screens and social media. Credit images do us good and the credit of images depends on the reputation we have built, and in this iconic era massive dynamics leads us to believe that a whole universal language is drawn. Information and money are the new reality register. Those who do not communicate and do not sell are nothing. Reigns the regime of the image of Instagram. Those who exist and are well publish, therefore, they feel happy through their “sharing” giving priority to the ego. There is even a certain schizophrenia in the real world. No one sees the big picture, everyone only sees his or her perspective, then it is natural that tragic or negative things happen in our daily life such as snobbery, ferocious hedonism, lack of political and professional ethics, and even in the intimate sphere, egocentrism and frustration happen, meaning this that we are facing a disconnection between physical and material reality and virtual communication. We are in the age of social networks, but nobody really knows how to socialize when he or she meets a stranger. We only agree to socialize with “authorized citizens”. After all, being an active citizen implies voting in the elections and being a frequent consumer. And in iconic times like now, massive dynamics is such that we have to think about doing something different and also adapting to anything. There is the prevailing feeling that one can not be left out, that the system can not be our enemy. We have to be resourceful, to have means; we have to be archivists and hyper-social, and for that to happen we need money, influential friends, and material resources. As if that were not enough, we must transform the iconic disillusions into steps for the future. To live today implies owning anticipatory thinking. In the era of an inevitably seductive imagery, critical and creative thinking is required. We are so in the media environment that we have lost the necessary distance to think things critically. One of the main problems about massive dynamics is that everyone publishes everything ― from the most interesting and relevant to the superfluous and mediocre. We have broadcast and webcast, that is, the radio and / or television transmission, and the Internet, but it lacks smartcast and intelligent mediation. However, we do not need to always document everything or that reality is always pop or cinematic. We need something more. More subjectivities have created an incalculable noise.
In the iconic era we are part of a “hyper-audience” that wants compelling narratives of participation. The contents are being divulged incompletely, we complete them as if it was a game. And in this new game, we feel we can not be “canceled” or “obliterated”. We are impossibly “erasable” from the net. It is, after all, our subjective reality that feeds the machine. We are the ultimate product. The information we offer to social media transforms us into the ultimate convenience. We are the new “scene” to be sold, it may be a video-clip, a text, a photo or our preferences. At the heart of this whole iconic, in which the images are also sold, there is a file of re-fullfilled realities. First, things happen, but then they turn into iconic things. They communicate only by their form just because they are in a certain environment. And nothing seems to come out of the massive dynamics of the Internet.
7. Smartcast Yourself
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the fifteen minutes of fame advocated by Andy Warhol would be equivalent to vitality, creativity and used by all of us in the future. This future is our present, and at this moment we can already be stars just famous for appearing in front of a virtual audience, and not for the fact that we do something relevant. Formerly, important people became people known for their deeds and feats, for instance the astronauts or the Nobel prizes. Now, since there is YouTube everyone has a media channel. There are many people who in fact publish reviews on computer articles, provide make-up advices, promote DIY tools or various applications for the most varied hobbies and professions. In this context, we are probably no longer in the era of broadcast yourself, or “self-disclosure” that was so popular in the 1980s, but maybe we are in the smartcast era. And in this smartcast stage what's interesting is that Orwell's fear came true. We are allowing to third parties accessing our data, and that we ourselves film ourselves with our smartphone cameras. We forget that they are not anymore mere telephones, but rather smartphones. This means that we have within reach the perfect weapon, the ultimate instrument of the massive dynamics that allows us to set up smartcast. Whenever we make a video and we host it online in a web site or in a social network we are doing smartcast. We are the first to do self-monitoring.
On the other hand, smartcast is interesting because it enables us to communicate with the world, to be a node in the network. This is our disclosure, an intelligent distribution of content. The Chinese believe that quality comes after quantity. In this sequel, the more users teach other users, the more people will learn by placing smart content. It is also a fact that we are in an era where everything is smart: smart TVs, smartwatches, smartphones, smart cars and smart digital assistants. Anyway, everything around us is getting smart, but some pop computing that has appeared as being in fact post-computer is actually less computer than it seems at first glance. And here we refer to, for example, tablets. However, users who learn from each other rather than from experts are not the ideal solution. Moreover, what happens is that we are really alone to learn from each other which allows two readings: on the one hand it is good because the culture of the user and the amateur is enhanced, on the other hand, this learning becomes a mere and fragile culture of amateurs.
In another point of view it is equally true that little by little amateurs become experts. However, we can not fail to point out that the smartcast era can be easily misunderstood and comparared to amateurish-cast. One point that seems equally relevant is a certain “empathy projection” with which, for example, YouTubers and social media users in general accuse. Anyone who wants to be smart is projected onto the network to have more than the usual 15 minutes of Warholian fame, but anyone who browses the network looking for content, like us “users-searchers”, also manifests itself as an “empathic projector”. According to science fiction author, Philip K. Dick, more specifically in the famous novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? of 1968, one speaks at a given moment that, once at home, the person would interact with his empathy box. Such “empathy box” would be useful for the person to meditate, disconnect from the real or synchronize with the media and its dialectic of images and news. By this we mean that at the moment we are all in tune with our empathy boxes, whether these are TiVos, Nintendo game consoles, Microsoft or Sony or Apple TV. We are tuning in to empathy boxes. The same thing happens when we get on computers, tablets or smartphones and connect to the social digital world of contents presented by stars. And the most fantastic is that if before all people could have their blog, now we all have our vlogue, our YouTube channel. We are all media and all stars. Orwell's nightmare and Warhol's omen are consummated. We are all in the media, talking about media and in need of therapy.
8. Surveillance Capitalism
We have never heard of surveillance as much as now. We are being radiographed by large-scale digital media. The keyboards of our smartphones and our computers are no longer ours. What we type and write is systematized on big data platforms. Intelligent algorithms evaluate our performances in an age when we are all actors in a gibsonian network of massive dynamics. This is called “surveillance capitalism”. What we see, download, consult and share, with whom we socialize and with whom we work is all digitized. Once again, there is no more “out of the system”. Our imagery is anticipated by machines of the new industrial revolution, and so many revolutions have been lost for good. All information about the present and the past, as well about future plans, everything is recorded in digital. But even if it is as the old proverb “Out of debt, out of danger”, the question is more about what our information allows to constitute in the name of our protection. And for now, what we do with our information is that better products and services are produced or terrorists are caught in the interstitial meshes of the system. This surveillance capitalism anticipates us. Somewhere in the cloud the machines try to gauge who the “hateful” and who the fans are. It's almost a binary system. It happens in popular culture and in the cosplay that there are people who form communities due to common tastes and references, but the network is also full of others that are united by hatred of ethnicities, social classes, politics and even countries. We are in a binary age in which one can be a fan and a star, or an anti-hero and a terrorist. There seems to be no middle ground in the media except to be consumer, spectator, or user. This age is one