Homo Cypiens. Herlander Elias
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amount of information that arrives by email, SMS, phone calls, letters, memos or social media feeds is gigantic and we start feeling impotent to deal with it. Instead of social networkings being the sites of unification they became the sites of great disunity, the zone of discord, of fantasy, false news, inglorious games and information of dubious quality that metastasizes the consciousness of the public who consult them. What's left is a user who looks more like a “god of the gaps” with the power of omnividence and able to see all the gaps. Everything around us is disconnected, interspaced, dispersed like unconnected islands. The great business of socialization, actually, shows itself as the great business of loneliness and hate speech. We lack the context to combat the gaps, we lack more and new theorists. In short, we lack who explains what is happening and what can happen later. In this world of massive dynamics we feel increasingly isolated and lost, underutilized by social and technical systems. There is a complete absence of context, and if everything is decontextualized then chaos will reign. In this point, we will be completely at the mercy of the economy of the immediate and we forget that the pleasure of participating is to adhere and cultivate the events that allow us a long learning for life. In this sense we can say that we are like “transitional creatures”. The men to come will have to deal with these dilemmas without hiding themselves, without social stealth, without marketing, without schemes. It is urgent that literate and participative men can illuminate the paths of ignorant populations and, of the most dangerous, those who think they know everything and know very little. It's time we get out of our cockpit.
11. Cockpit Pilots
We are a society that is very communicative online, but little offline. We are players and pilots, authors and producers, we are bold and cunning. We have small houses, but a lot of digital equipment. We do not know our neighbors, but we have international friends. We are workers, but only in what interests us. We have problems of attention because there are too many things happening around us in the real world and in the media. And the to-do list does not end because it's impossible to deal with the amount of information around us, we all need assistants, there's a lot to do and we end up living like airplane pilots in the cockpit. We are alone with our reality. It's almost solipsistic. It seems that the only reality that exists is the one inside our head. Thanks to the new digital reality within the framework of the massive dynamics, piles of things we rarely use pile up in our homes and the same happens with email messages, they pile up in our computers, laptops and smartphones. All duties and tasks are done in a rush. We do not have time to deal with the “everything” that imposes itself. In this way, we need computers that work for us, except that we end up with computers for which we work. We're out of space. We want to disconnect from the real world, travel, play games, socialize, do sport and take photos with smartphones, photos that will never be revealed. In case these images exist they only can be found in the cloud.
For the post-computer generation, everything is a “non-place”, we are in movement, between one site and another. It is the tense of the gerund; instead of “we are”, it’s “we are being” and instead of “we do”, “we are doing”, meaning we are doing too many things at random. The reality has become chaotic for the homo cypiensand there is no way to deal with the avalanche of data and tasks. Our space is always being invaded everywhere. So, to escape, we end up putting on headphones and surfing the internet in order to listen to our music. We do this on the street and in the workplace. We prefer our “sound landscapes”. Post-computer generation suffers from the effects of computers and social networks. There are too many people around us and too many things to do. And time seems to shrink. The past grows and the digital files in cockpit mode become miniaturized. It seems that there is always something that fits more where before nothing or little would fit. We have become more dense in connections and tasks.
Judging by the trends, we can infer that in the future we will have everything at our fingertips. The reality will come to us on state-of-the-art network screens. We will have “power” bigger than the current one over the real world. However, it is the real world, the human dimension that will be neglected, poorer and colder. Faced with the impossibility of dealing with the totality of the real, we decided to deal only with our real portion, that is, we prefer to see only a slice of reality. The real is a three-dimensional omnisensorial cake. We are so retained in a web of information and proposals of consumerism, travel, services and subscriptions that there is no space or time available for ourselves and for those who are most dear to us. We have an incredible amount of resources at our mercy, but at the same time, we are limited. We no longer know what “tomorrow” holds us in, and instead of running away we stand still. Everything comes to us. There is too much interesting reality. We no longer know what we really care about and what we can have because today there are just too many options. If anything does not work we enter cockpit mode, like a crab that hides under the rock at the bottom of the sea. Therefore, the way to counteract this tendency is to wait and contemplate in flaneurmode the fast reality that unfolds before us. It is absolutely impossible to tame this monster, this industry that creates proposals and offers all the time. Everything is designed to be bought by us. Nothing happens by chance anymore. The random reality ceased to exist. This is called Nature. We have left it behind to be entangled in the civilization of image and sound, the network and seductive bodies.
And what is currently done to combat the cockpit mode? Everybody publishes everything online because there is always enough free space. The cloud and the network screens form a mesh, an entanglement, everything is available for a “later recall”. But the contradiction lies precisely on this fact ― then we will not check what we have recorded due to our chronicle lack of time. There is already too much online. There is no space or time in our lives, but at the same time it seems that on the network the screens allow us to access everything. As mentioned before, we have a problem with the “everything”: travels, software, fitness, clothing, alcohol, vehicles and food. We are bombarded with ads to buy things and stick to services we do not need, but which provide us to be accepted socially.
Each person has his cockpit, his shareable reality fringe. And this modern notion that our reality must be shared is something new and atrocious at the same time. Digital space is a semi-public space. And in this space, what is ours also belongs to the system where we are inserted, be it a social network, a group, a project or an association. In this context, we can say that we are almost obliged to join this new space that is a “non-place”, an area that is neither public nor private, but a gray area such as Facebook or Instagram. Here everything is exposed and it is said, we are addicted to the Russian roulette of the finger that triggers flows of images and announcements. Our contacts are also held hostage in this disguised advertising system. Nothing happens by chance in this “here” that was designed to be just a “passing” way, while we play a role.
12. Elite Performers
In this society of information and capital most people are obsessed with their diets, their fitness programs, their habits management programs on their smartphones. In this way, we are all actors in a system. Our performance is very important, and it is monitored by ourselves. We are interested in looking good on Instagram and Facebook. We are worried about the image we are transmitting. We are vain managers of our own lives and so we like to have good images. We are actors in networks of services and images. We're always online and we never hang up. We are celebrities and sportsmen, network professionals and digital users, always in line with the world.
We belong to a new generation ― one that has grown, lives and will age with digital devices because we are really in the age of the network. We even went so far that we do not to buy things in stores but we subscribe them. We are all “hirers”, leasers and renters. The reality we deal with is like a long-stay hotel. Nothing or nobody belongs to anyone. Everything is only ours while we pay a monthly fee. And the world is looking at us. We are elite performers. What we do and what we are, what we eat and buy, all our habits are shared on the net. We want at all costs to know the result of appreciation of what we do. We look like children asking for our parents’ attention in a fast-moving, online-friendly world. In this type of life only seems to matter to the majority of the public having fans, to be productive, to manage well the time, to advise others, to be known and being an elite performer in every field.
We are also hostages of a digital ecosystem, of brands and sexy products,