The Average And Technology: Neither Saints Nor Perverse

The average and technology: neither saints nor perverse

Introduction

There are objects of knowledge that have been submitted to analysis repeatedly, generating a diversity of concepts with which it is possible to make counterpoints and coincidences. Such is the case of the media, technology and public, for whom we create increasingly creative strategies in an attempt to capture their attention.

By locating epistemologically in the field of communication it is necessary to understand that the most widespread history is related to the history of the media from various disciplines, mainly psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Therefore, you can start from the idea that communication studies have tended to respond to specific contexts such as the emergence and development of technologies.

Thus, two of the great myths arise in the field of communication that still persist to the fluctuations of history in the analysis of social networks and new communication platforms. These are: a. The spectator’s myth as a taxpayer and B. The myth of the direct effects of the media on their audiences. This essay tries to analyze both positions in the light of current transformations, to argue that the average and technology are neither saints to redeem societies or perverse to manipulate them, because they go beyond moral valuations and simple causal relationships.

Taking into account the historical relationship between our bodies and the technique is important to avoid deterministic conclusions.

In times of global hyperconnection, in which we had never experienced so many changes in such a short time, we can no longer locate ourselves as apocalyptic or integrated to technology and the middle .

Spectators in times of technological hyperconnection?

Placing the subject in the discussion of the show would correspond to a conflict between the question of reality and appearance. According to Rancière (2010: 34), if any artistic exhibition is spectacular and belongs to the visibility device, the distinction between show and reality would lose its validity. His argumentative line coincides at this point with the notion of “Integral Show” of Guy Debord (2007) that has served to analyze political contests governed by marketing.

The subject of the spectator subject was present in the first place in the history of art, while all forms of show put bodies in action before a gathered audience (Rancière, 2010: 12). This discussion had an exponential boom with the emergence and development of the media between the nineteenth and twentieth century. Many of his approaches were approached with intensity while technical innovations were constantly overcome.

It is common to find both in art and media discussions the idea of an audience as a group of undifferentiated individuals and spectators passive to the content presented, either in a theater, film or computer room. An example of this is that, we could well find these conceptions in classical authors at the beginning of the 20th century, as in electoral and audience studies in the 21st century, where the organization of the message and its individual cognitive effects are primarily considered.

This conceptualization has led to public from a pejorative vision, assuming that they are unable to think or act by themselves. Ortega y Gasset (1929) states that the masses are impregnated with barbarism before culture, where they are granted the right to not be right, and that their rebellion consists precisely in acting for themselves and trying to direct society without having capacity without having capacity without havingfor it. This representation of the masses as lacking is identifiable in recent cinematographic productions such as "Batman: The Knight of the Night ascends", where the city enters generalized chaos when citizens take control of it. Likewise, the image of the masses as homogeneous and part of an automated social body can be identified from a semiotic view in classic productions such as "the triumph of will".

On the other hand, authors such as Fusi (1997: 8) affirm that the concept should not be negative, while the masses saw greater advances towards freedoms, well -being, mobility and social justice than in any previous era, and thereforeThey are the result of the progress of democracy. Analysis that coincides with classic authors of the Mass Communication Research.

Media and Society seem to be the face and cross of the same currency for the researchers who have advocated them and criticized in their different stages. Let’s make a brief historical outline. At the beginning of the 20th century the studies were characterized by the analysis of the effects of the media on the audiences, also called "hypodermic model". At this stage, it is possible to identify the belief of generalized powers and manipulation of the masses on those who had direct and immediate effects, which would later be limited as limited effects (UCM, S.F).

From the thirties, with the increase in empirical research, the bases of the hypodermic model begin to be questioned. Behavioral models put all their emphasis on the biological characteristics of individuals, in order to reveal behaviors and also began to recognize the influence of the environment in the face of the emergence of individual differences (UCM, S.F).

In the contemporary context of complex networks these notions can be considered obsolete. First, the concept of "power" used is questioned. Byung-Chul Han (2016) suggests that the average would not have power, but, to some extent influence. Power would be the continuity of itself in others, emphasizing that power in its own sense is not possible against something or someone passive. Second, authors such as Busquet (2008) consider that these ideas focus on the study of interpersonal communication and mass communication, and are not extrapolated to the situation marked by new information technologies, which demand a more participationActive of the public, where they can go from emitters to content creators. Finally, there is now a kind of consensus that modern devices build reality from the knowledge that surrounds us and those who are participants. In the case of the media, in their ideological function and with the involvement of the audiences they are no longer imposed but events are built, when we recognize the information and we find ourselves in the speeches (Alsina, 1989).

The current problem would lie in positioning us between action and passivity as exclusive to each other. We could not divide between passive spectators and political actors, since they are two sensitivity regimes that complement each other and have diffuse limits. Rancière (2010: 28) exemplifies it for the field of art: "The effect of the language cannot be anticipated, it requires spectators who perform the role of active interpreters, who elaborate their own translation to appropriate the" history "and make itHis own history.

The economy of care in the digital environment and everyday experiences

Various lines of analysis of hypermodernity have highlighted changes in aesthetic and emotional sensitivity due to new technologies and semiotic turn towards emotional capital both in products and services to obtain user attention.

These changes would have affected both our perception of the environment, of ourselves and our relationship with others. It is no longer a person who can be analyzed plainly under the terms of passivity and activity, but rather, is in “a present where the speed, interaction, consumption and vision in a flow time of flow prevailsInformation and emotional capital ”(CRARY, 2013: 40).

From the twentieth century, a transformation also operated in the gaze that would make the figures between subject and object indistinguishable. With the new media and the development of the technique in an accelerated digital environment we experience the loss of a fixed horizon and a linear perspective due to an unfortunate look and the multiplication of approaches (CRARY, 2013).We are individuals who are constantly occupied, interconnected, communicating, interacting, responding or processing something in some telematic medium (Crary, 2013: 42). In this sense, one could say that we do not always have enough time for the extraction of meaning and pleasure of experience. The idea of progress associated with a linear temporality that promised us a better quality of life, supported by the hope of a redemptive technique, promoted by technophiles, as well as the fears of human perversion that predicted the technophogees of the twentieth century, have been overcome by contemporary phenomena of complicity between technique, users, companies and governments, rather than a relationship of victims and perpetrators.

conclusion

The digital environment gives us the feeling of belonging to a private community, where my mediated actions allow me a refuge in the anonymous. In turn, paradoxically, it is a place of maximum exposure of our intimacy. The story "Hated in the Nation" of the Black Mirror series exemplifies this. The episode reflects the hybridization of the actions carried out on a platform and the consequences on the bodies of the affected people. History also reflects the concept of self-perception for the understanding of others. However, it would be a myth to ensure that we have become insensitive subjects, rather, what has happened would be a "transformation of sensitivity" (Berardi, 2017: 12). For Illouz (2004), the system instead became emotional, dissolving the traditional division between the non -emotional public and the emotional private.

For future analysis, other recurring shelters, in addition to the virtual and media environment, would be the search for identity in religions and populist figures to whom, as well as our devices, we would like to trust the most important public and personal decisions.