Attention To Intimacy, Unpaid Work
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We are immersed in a world where much of social relationships develop in virtual spaces. These are ordered by a series of rules that guide our interactions with others and that we accept without even being able to see their true structure. We are, says Van Dijk (2016) in a true culture of connectivity, our socialization is molded by the platforms in which we have registered and we use day by day. In turn, they propose languages, different types of exchange between users, representations of the world, the possibility of creating a “letter” world choosing who to follow and who can follow me, who I want to see the posts and receive notifications andplus. We would like to believe that it is a deposit of our interests and a free service, that we really only see what our friends do and that we have control over our entire account. We could say that some of this is true, but there is a part of which we are not aware and we are working for these platforms. In this essay, we will try to realize what we are selling and why we direct our attention to intimacy. We will begin by placing ourselves in the media context in which we live and then analyze our place of network consumers.
The emergence of the mass media in the first half of the twentieth century raised the most diverse reactions, including two very well defined: apocalyptic or integrated (Eco, 1984). The mass media, for some, represented the destruction of high culture while for others it meant social progress.
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Access to information was facilitated and streamlined, in other words, it was democratized. By 1900, the media based on the Internet woke up, as expected, some apocalyptic vision that proclaimed that the mass media were going to be displaced by the digital ones. Today we see that both media systems: mass and networks, converge, that is, supports, products, issuance and consumption logic of info-communal industries were homogenized (Becerra, 2015). These changes led us to rethink the place of the mass media as unique information suppliers, the logic of the validation of the statute of the enunciators and the circulation of the meaning that was deployed between both media, mass and digital systems. Digital networks enhanced communication instances that already existed, expanded their spaces and accelerated the time of communication exchanges. The mobility of communication: moving from face to face and living with radio and television to the street with the entire world inside a pocket, meant the birth of new social practices, new instances of production and consumption that were unimaginable andThey painted a future full of uncertainty.
It is important to bring to term that media and communication are social phenomena that are molded by the culture and historical time in which they develop. Eliseo Verón (1997), defined a means of communication as a message production device associated with certain production conditions and reception modalities. That is, a technology is nothing but the use made of it. Therefore, understanding the human behavior that is created around a technology is crucial to understand why people use it. The media based on the Internet, were inserted into our life and gave it a place on our daily "tasks" list. Through the use we gave it a meaning and this responded to the expectations that capitalist companies owned by these platforms had about the behavior of their consumers. In the digital era, consumers became producers whose creations were, in the words of Sibilla (2008) “(…) captured [s] systematically by the tentacles of the market, which stretch as never ever those vital forces, but, at the same time, at the same time, at the same time,They do not cease to transform them into merchandise.". Today, with this already established market logic we provide to the platform the creation of sales situations when we find out of our interests, who are we, how long and where and where. It is an eye in the sky that responds to the dynamics of the panoptic, we know that they are looking at us, but we do not know where or who they are. In his text, Van Dijk (2016), defines connectivity as a valuable resource. Thanks to it, the flow of information remains constant leaving on the network the traces of our behaviors, social relations and preferences. From these traces that we leave – clicks and connection time – manipulate our behavior and also, as good “disciplined” individuals we contribute to that control.
In the first instance, the networks propose an initial form of interaction and then mutate in response to how people received that communication dynamics. What the corporations of digital media knew was the sense that as consumers we gave to those platforms. In other words, this sense became merchandise of a commercial exchange in which we are participants without obtaining anything in return. We could dare to define it as a type of work because we are investing our life time to be connected and we do not receive any type of remuneration. As users we have the need to be in the networks because if not, we do not exist and we do not find out about "what we have to know". Monetize our mobile to use networks. They monetize our time, our attention in something that mobilizes all human beings: the pleasure of witnessing the intimacy of others.
Now why intimacy? In the instance of its production and exposure, the market potential that it had, those most captivating intimacies have high social power, have many followers who want to know and be like them. On the side of its reception, the pleasure of being able to see even something of the intimacy of the other is reflected. Of course it is a controlled or fragmented intimacy, our personality is divided between the virtual and material world and never a network can be a faithful copy of reality but only a representation, but in short, there is some of an intimacy exposed. And we consume it because we embody the famous voyeur, the one who looks without the other knowing that he is being looked at;And also because there is a quota of identification or representation of our desires in intimacy that "we spy". Intimacy means showing what happens behind the doors and windows, what we have no access to. The attention of the human being is enhanced in that which cannot or is not usually exposed to everyone’s eyes. The companies of the networks then monetize intimacy in their instance of production and also at reception, with the attention that users give to the same. We could say then, that our attention leaves the traces that will become a sales situation.
To conclude, we can say that we are living in an economic system of digital culture that capitalizes with our connection time. We have tried to relate the attention we invest in the networks with a product that constantly seduces the user: intimacy. And this consumption is a work contract based on a unidirectional relationship with the employer, we "blindly" our time for accessing the intimate life of people without any remuneration. While we could not deny the possibilities that opened the networks, from democratizing the participation and debate in the public sphere to communicating in seconds on the other side of the world, it is true that the structure that underlies the operation of the platforms is for us agreat question. How is our information administered, perhaps we never know it, meanwhile, we are paying attention to the photos of the day that a work partner uploaded.
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