Patrice Riemens on Mon, 7 Apr 2014 13:28:19 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part One, section #10 |
(section 10) Substitutes for presence and emotional solace Many question marks remain on the issue of language, which is, as we wrote earlier, the second boundary of human, and hence, social, experience. Social network algorithms are in any case much less sophisticated than the human language, the semantic web is still in its infancy, and hence, for the time being, it is up to the users to make themselves better understood by machines, which they do by compulsively updating their online profile, by holding back on their emotive expression in order to fit into the 140 signs limit (the prescribed Twitter format), or by endlessly clicking the 'Like' button. The first (human) boundary, the body, gets an even more brutal treatment. One must physically adjust to the social media, by being instantly reactive, and by training for a new digital mobility - literally so: the motricity of one's fingertips, so as to handle ever smaller keyboards and touch screens. It is the eye, however, which moves into the driver's seat as, and despite the (yet unfulfilled) promises of 'virtual reality', the screen presents the sole access point to these media. Touch, taste, and smell are entirely absent (save for some video games where there is some touch simulation - but still only through the screen). These senses are under-used in real life also, anyway. Hearing has to cope with low-quality sounds: those from an mp3 device, or the ringtones of a mobile phone, which are rubbish compared to to analog stereo. And yet, what is expected from social media is always the contact with others, hence a physical contact, even if it has to be mediated. Seen in this light, all social media are a way to substitute for presence and make it possible to create simulacra which conceal absence and physical distance. They restore somewhat the otherwise fading remembrance of the other. Without social media, our daily life might well-nigh become insufferable, now that we have become accustomed to be reachable at all times, while at the same time being able to organize the procrastination of our physical presence since we do not possess the gift of ubiquity. Yet still, as Facebook has promised us, we feel that we take part in the creation of new, shared world while comfortably ensconced in front of our computer - without running the risk of confrontation with the dangers of the physical world. And that is not the whole story. Everything comes and happens faster online, everything appears much more real than in reality, and everything looks so much more - intense. So how to be with one hundred, or one thousand, 'friends', and interact which each and every one of them? How to keep up with all the information about people, groups, firms, newspapers, all interesting, all influential? Well: mission impossible! On the contrary, with Facebook, Twitter, and other social media this form of simultaneous presence is substituted by sharing the platform prescribed by the social medium, and becomes the experience that shapes the pattern of everyday life. Yet, paradoxically, if you want to be socially more active, and to train and let grow your digital self, you need to be more passive in the physical sense. You need to spend a lot of time on your profile in order to make it attractive and popular. You need to exercise for many hours everyday, you must commit yourself to hands-on interaction with smartphone and laptop. During all these hours spend online the body becomes one big eye, with which one exercises to surf, without (being able to?) totally immersing; the hearing is hardly ever used, yet one is always at the ready to satisfy solicitations coming from the reality 'outside'. Real experience then becomes rarer, but also more boring and repetitive compared to online sociality, where everything is both more plentiful and more fluid. It may even become tricky, since there are no 'friends' like on Facebook in reality, nor subscribers like on Twitter. Erzatses for presence keep reality at a distance and even tend to substitute for reality itself, and this in an ever more convincing and less constraining manner. Tools increasingly monopolize the very demands they pretend to satisfy and fast become the only response possible, irreplaceable and inevitable [43]. If everyone moves by car it becomes quite dangerous to go on foot, even if traffic is slow. If everybody communicates by way of a mobile, it will become difficult to find someone to chat to: the passer-by you see in the street do talk to somebody, but that somebody stands at the other end of an electro-magnetic spectrum. To sum it up, the real has become much less attractive as one prefers to remain seated and use only the glance, plus a remote and a keyboard, instead of getting up and going out to explore reality with one's whole body and all its senses. There is an anthropological transformation going on, which is governed by the media as these are able to make us forget that they are mere instruments of mediation: instead they have managed to come between our bodies and our perception of reality. "the media would like uys to believe that they are tools for accessing the life experience whereas they have in fact become portals which merely propose /frames/ (pre-scripted experiences as story-boards), all the time translating (transmitting?) what can be lived and what can be accessed on the network [...] A cloning the life experience takes place, not in the meaning that the media could stand in for the experience, but because they impose themselves as the necessary condition of that experience: they force themselves on us through the enticement of that old madam called Technology, whose number one asset always has been her ability to whisper "may I help you" in our ear." [44] So, what is the purpose of social media? We are happy to switch on our computer and to see all our Skype contacts, to check out new mail messages in our in-box, and to find the stuff we have posted being commented. Social media reassure us about the existence of a thriving world outside - and that we are truly part of it. Every SMS, every tweet, every ringing of our mobile, do not have a merely communicative function, but they also, foremost, reassert our confidence that we really have a presence within a social network. The frenzy rounds of /attention-distraction/ which is the outcome of social media usage is partially due to the fact that these technologies are, after all, relatively young. We are still in the learning phase of the encounter with real life. And if we are in need of reassurance, it is because we all, to some extent, are living in constant fear of being left behind, and left alone. In a paradoxical way, social media are a source of both (re)comfort and frustration. We need to check out all the time that we do indeed exist, especially on the social plane, since we always run the risk that 'the others' are getting together sans us, or that they are enjoying themselves somewhere else. To find that out in real time is a real bummer to our self-esteem. Social psychologists talk about a positive 'desertion syndrome' and have labelled it FOMO (/Fear Our Missing Out/) [45]. We are indeed less and less exposed to being alone, to silence, to slowness, to depth (of thought), maybe because, ever since we have thrown out everything about ourselves online, to stay alone would mean to have to face an insufferable inner void and move around with a body whose connectivity 'limbs and senses' have been severed, or with other words: to (have) become a cripple. The development of digital social media is a phenomenon that might be understood within a long-term process of dis-embodiment together with an increasing focus on the sight at the expense of other body-senses, and this through ever new media-centered technologies. We do have a long history of distancing ourselves from reality and attempting to master it from the outside, through an all-powerful vision (eyesight), while at the same time trying to be part of it without getting hurt in the process. In a certain sense we have here, in a nutshell, the whole history of the technical system of the western world. We will return to that aspect at length latter on. But for now, let's take a step back, as far as the physical body is concerned, and take a step forward, with regard to online sociality. Now, we are going to look at the political condition, stricto sensu, of digital social networks. End of section 10 END OF PART I (to be continued) Part II: The Libertarian World Domination Project: Hacking, Social Network(s), Activism and Institutional Politics ..................................... [43] Ivan Illich remains an essential source on technological tools and the technical approach that underlies them, even if his analyses are somewhat dated by now. The contraposition he discerns between industrial tools and tools of conviviality remains very timely, however: "I choose the term "conviviality" to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members." Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (2007 - ?): http://www.mom.arq.ufmg.br/mom/arq_interface/3a_aula/illich_tools_for_conviviality.pdf (the original text note quotes from a translated book, which of course I couldn't find on-line. This fragment, however, matches that quote quite exactly -transl.) [44] Franco La Cecla, Sorrogati di presenza. Media e vita quotidiana, Mondadori, Milano 2006, p26. [45] John M Grohol, FOMO Addiction: The Fear of Missing Out: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomo-addiction-the-fear-of-missing-out/ ----------------------------- Translated by Patrice Riemens This translation project is supported and facilitated by: The Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/) The Antenna Foundation, Nijmegen (http://www.antenna.nl - Dutch site) (http://www.antenna.nl/indexeng.html - english site under construction) Casa Nostra, Vogogna-Ossola, Italy # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org