I think that perhaps we can make information by traveling through communication. But, for me, the whole area has no symbolism, no symbolic intensity: it is such a technical abstraction. Communication is technical – it’s not change. Change is perhaps something else psychologically, symbolically and so on. The concept of communication is sustained, generated by technology, so really with the Internet we attain the highest limits of communication. But what I would ask is, ‘Who is it that communicates?’ Who is it? There is one terminal and then another. There are two terminals, two specific areas of abstraction which change the information. But also, all the personality changes, in fact all the charm, all these things disappear inside it. Communication is something which is factual and also artificial. In my opinion it lifts you slightly out of simulation. You are really in the field of dissimulation. But my opinion after the last time I used the Internet is that it is not really a place which opens up communication, an area of discovery. But I’ve not really had the experience, I’m not on the Internet and I don’t make any use of it. However, I think it is a very powerful means of disappearance. The network is a place for disappearance and communication, data processing, cybernetics. It is the art of disappearance. What I mean is that you can immerse yourself in the machine; digitalised, virtual reality. You can immerse yourself in it and disappear completely. There are the problems of freedom, subjectivity and many others. This is something which goes round and round and round, but that’s a point of view which is a little bit negative. That’s true but I have the feeling that there is at least the fantasy of communicating. It is impossible to think that it might be possible to communicate all over the world with everyone at whatever moment in ‘real time’ in virtual reality . . . all that is too much. That’s another utopia, a utopia which has been realised. But the danger is that utopia should not be realised because when that happens it’s finished. So everyone is going to vanish into thin air on the network, but what goes on inside it? Who talks to whom? I don’t feel it is a place where real events happen. It’s not an original place. I’d really like the Internet to be a revolution, but it’s a revolution that makes us go further into The Perfect Crime. For me it’s one of the elements of The Perfect Crime.
| Jean Baudrillard, From Hyperreality to Disappearance
I think that perhaps we can make information by traveling through communication. But, for me, the whole area has no symbolism, no symbolic intensity: it is such a technical abstraction. Communication is technical – it’s not change. Change is perhaps something else psychologically, symbolically and so on. The concept of communication is sustained, generated by technology, so really with the Internet we attain the highest limits of communication. But what I would ask is, ‘Who is it that communicates?’ Who is it? There is one terminal and then another. There are two terminals, two specific areas of abstraction which change the information. But also, all the personality changes, in fact all the charm, all these things disappear inside it. Communication is something which is factual and also artificial. In my opinion it lifts you slightly out of simulation. You are really in the field of dissimulation. But my opinion after the last time I used the Internet is that it is not really a place which opens up communication, an area of discovery. But I’ve not really had the experience, I’m not on the Internet and I don’t make any use of it. However, I think it is a very powerful means of disappearance. The network is a place for disappearance and communication, data processing, cybernetics. It is the art of disappearance. What I mean is that you can immerse yourself in the machine; digitalised, virtual reality. You can immerse yourself in it and disappear completely. There are the problems of freedom, subjectivity and many others. This is something which goes round and round and round, but that’s a point of view which is a little bit negative. That’s true but I have the feeling that there is at least the fantasy of communicating. It is impossible to think that it might be possible to communicate all over the world with everyone at whatever moment in ‘real time’ in virtual reality . . . all that is too much. That’s another utopia, a utopia which has been realised. But the danger is that utopia should not be realised because when that happens it’s finished. So everyone is going to vanish into thin air on the network, but what goes on inside it? Who talks to whom? I don’t feel it is a place where real events happen. It’s not an original place. I’d really like the Internet to be a revolution, but it’s a revolution that makes us go further into The Perfect Crime. For me it’s one of the elements of The Perfect Crime. | Jean Baudrillard, From Hyperreality to Disappearance
Ernst Cassirer remarked: Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anythi
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To consider the information poverty problem more generally, when you use distance communications you are missing out on at least three distinct sources of knowledge: social presence, information richness, and the full synchronicity of back-and-forth.
Tyler Cowen • Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World
Interactive media technologies are, at least in one sense, anticontextual. They open the field to new widths, constantly expanding relevance and reference, and they equip their user with a powerful grazing tool.
Sven Birkerts • The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
The transfer of the self’s setting from bodies to communication systems
Nicholas Carr • Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
Like so many technologies that came before, it seems to be here to stay; the question is not how to escape it but how to understand ourselves in its inescapable wake.
In his new book, “The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is,” Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of philosophy at the Université Paris Cité, argues that “the present situation is intolerab... See more
In his new book, “The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is,” Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of philosophy at the Université Paris Cité, argues that “the present situation is intolerab... See more
Kyle Chayka • How the Internet Turned Us Into Content Machines
