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The myth of a creator, who produces a piece of art with his own hands – alone, without any help – is changing.
You will notice the paradox within seconds if you go to the movies.
In the opening credits it will say:
a film by David Vinscher, a film by Lars von Trier,
a film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a film by Godard ...
... but afterward, there are nearly 30 minutes of closing credits ...
... naming all the people who contributed to that movie. [Pause]
The film is created by a collective led by an authority, similar to a conductor directing a piece of music.
And even in music you cannot say the composer is the lone creator, because he clearly needs the musicians. [Pause]
These days, we’re emerging towards a universe which is not fixed to a particular location.
This non-bound or non-localized universe is transported and mediated by non-localized carrier media.
All the new technical media are not bound to a location.
And the Subject that will be moving through this world created from remote data will itself be ...
... a cross-linked and entangled Subject, whose parts now can be seen as coherent from a relative point of view.
With that said, all plans for life will become useless if they‘re still connected to ideas like “duty,“ “guilt,“ “fate,“
“tragedy,“ -- ideas which are at the heart of European literature. It will not longer be necessary for Oedipus ...
... to kill his father and make love to his mother for the fulfillment of a fate he cannot escape.
On the contrary, you may say that he doesn’t need to kill his father in order to make love to his mother. [Pause]
In some way, the question also is:
“What will the situation be of the Subject, of the individual, in the media society of the future?”
Basic approaches to and marks of that future situation can already be found in the present.
Until now, the main idea has been: “Man is what he is.”
Today, the following idea can be found: “In the future, man will be able to become anything he wants to become.”
Until now, it has been true to say: “Know thyself,” which means: “You are what you are and you shall find out what you are.”
This is an epistemological ‘booting’ process. [like: a computer‘s operating system]
Today this slogan means: “Construct yourself! Find out, what chances you have!”
But this offer to construct oneself is contingent on the environment, or to be more precise, on the society.
Therefore, it has to be defined this way: “Find out which options society is offering to you!” In media society there will be the “optional Subject.”
This Subject will evolve towards the options offered by society. This Subject will only have to bring along the capability, intelligence and personality to take advantage ...
... of the offers and requirements that are nature’s leftovers – the very last concepts of nature which will remain to the optional Subject.
And of course, the “optional Subject” will get different alternatives from society. Options offered to young people will be different (for example, more revolutionary) than options offered to older people.
In media society, the Subject will go through various stages during his/her lifetime.
You may say that the Subject of media society is a positional (situational) Subject. During the optional Subject’s lifetime, the optional Subject will adopt various positions.
Consider debates concerning life destinies, for instance the lives of politicians who have revolutionary backgrounds. They become statesmen after being enemies of the state in their younger years.
In the past it was believed that a destiny awaits every person. Movie actors and politicians are good examples of how, in the future, there won’t be a fixed trajectory of a person’s life,
not even a continuous one. Future biographies will be volatile and fragmented. There will be stages through which every person will to go during his/her lifetime.
These stages are contingent on options offered by society and they are contingent on an individual’s capability to meet the requirements.
This means that the ego will no longer have the trait of being confident with self perception. You will no longer be able to say: “Cogito, ergo sum” (trans.: I think therefore, I am) [Descartes].
You will have to say that you are and you will be, and your whole being will be, contingent on what you are able to achieve.
Also, this [optional] Subject will no longer have a psyche like the one [Sigmund] Freud tried to define in his construct between the id, the ego, and the super-ego.
It will no longer be necessary for the super-ego to intervene in a regulatory manner to make the id change into the ego.
Freud said: “Dort wo Es ist, soll Ich sein” [trans.: There, where the id is, shall be the ego]. This means that where drives and the unconscious are reigning shall also reign rationality.
This set of rules, balanced between symbolic arrangement, imaginary arrangement and the reality principle, will be replaced by social structures in a far more radical way than ever thought of before.
As a result we will discover that our long-held belief that “man is” is no longer true.
Debates are starting today on genomic questions, post-genomic questions, cloning and DNA-code, thus giving way to these questions:
“How can the identity of an individual be defined? Is our identity located within our genes? Is the body and its anatomy the place where our identity can be found -- is this body our destiny?”
All these questions concerning what constitutes gender, proof of identity, identity games played by DNA, intervening and interfering into a fetus development by
genomical correction -- all of these debates, however much they might sound like biological questions, are indications, more than ever before,
that man is not only an anatomical, *** and social construct, but that we actually never knew what man really was.
For this reason, the idea of what man is, will change extremely. And all these current scurrilous television shows, despite being vulgar,
are indications of a new image of humanity – an image beyond humanity.
This not only has tragic aspects or aspects of decline, but this tragicomedy of humanhood also results in positive evolution for man.
So far, concepts of identity have been linked strongly to the definition of ownership – some kind of ontology of ownership.
You could say ego was defined like that: “The ego is what it possesses. Ego is what it is able to do.” In the future we will have an idea of ego that is much more liquid.
The experience of intimacy’s abandonment, exhibitionist sellout; all kinds of narcissism, which is exploited mass-media; exaggerated, egomaniacal stagings; that all mass-media turned into nothing but ...
... dilettantes in power with epigeal and exaggerated stagings of ego – these experiences in sensationalistic mass-media show ...
... how the ego tries to drop out from its theatre of being and heads to a theatre of illusions and simulacra.
These simulacra which media provides us with are a first glimpse into the evolution of the ego -- and of course this ego will no longer be the same as it has been before.
We are facing the disappearance of what we have known as the classical Subject. We realize that this Subject has never existed for real.
We will discover that what we have known to be the ego and Subject has alway been a bourgeois fiction. So the ego will now share much of what it has formerly seen as its property.
Distributed reality -- distributed and divided virtuality -- will also be true for the ego.
The individual will share organs. Inherent parts – from anatomy through genes, from organs to genetic code – everything -- will be shared.
This means, you will no longer be able say: “I am what I am because this is my hand, my liver, my heart.” Already now, we’re experiencing human beings living with a donated heart or an alien hand.
There will come a day when you will ask yourself: “What is now still mine?”
The individual will no longer be defined by what he/she possesses and will no longer say: “This is my nose, this is my hand.”
Everything can be corrected. Eye color can be falsified, skin color can be changed.
The ego will be defined as the sum of what it has been experiencing and what options are still possible.
The ego will no longer be defined by the continuum of space and time, of flesh and bones.
The ego will develop rapidly with the range of options and varieties of construction which will be offered to it.
Probably this new ego will be better than the one we know from the classical history of mankind.
A second vision of media society concerns the evolution of human senses.
Generally, human senses are divided into long-distance [remote] senses (such as the eye and the ear) and close-range senses (such as tactile perception, the sense of touch, skin and fingers).
All technical media, such as television and telephone, are remote media (tele = greek: far off). These media have been helping us developing our remote senses.
As they are tele-media, they cannot help us develop our close-range senses.
For this reason, the eye and the ear – especially the eye – dominate our apperception and this has yielded an explosion of visuals [visual forms of expression] in our society.
The consequences are far-reaching. One consequence is the development of a society of remoteness,
based on remote data processing, in which our long-distance senses will be supported by telemedia – data produced by our senses will be processed.
Our world of close-range senses – that is the world of Plato‘s Cave – will turn more and more into a world of remote senses and distances.
The emergence of this remote society will obviously have far-reaching consequences on the psychical configuration of a Subject, as well as on classical ideas, like morality.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.“ – this is a typical command of a cave-world, a close-range community, which is built on neighborship. [Pause]
Communities, as we have experienced them until now, originate in biological or ideological categories, for example skin colour, race, social class, gender, language.
These ideologic, social and biologic principles of society are disappearing because we are evolving towards living in a remote society, a society of communication.
In a technically originated society, conventional criteria for deviation and integration will no longer play an important role.
In a technically based community you will be able to hide which social class or generation you belong to. You will be able to hide your gender and more.
Crucial factors will be accessibility and capability using technical media, which the community will be based on.
A large group, probably 70 percent of the world’s population, has no access to these media. This will create a new class society within the media society of the future.
Society will be divided into people who are excluded from technically originated communities of communication and the others.
There will be enormous tensions between these classes. The group of excluded ones will be protesting, possibly even in some kind of war-like manner.
There will not be clashes between continents but clashes between communication societies and all of them will be saying:
“Everything we are communicating technically is going to be transmuted into a video.“
This is how communication transmutes an artificial thing into a natural one, as it were.
Technically based communication transmutes a fictitious thing into a concrete one, a virtual entity into a real one.
This interdependency between virtuality and the senses’ reality happens through communication,
and not as before through communities which are based on religion, language or nationality.
We are now witnessing ourselves as parts of global fusions that are executing huge maneuvers that are bringing instability to the whole system.
The beginning of network society, the nature of transnational companies and global functions are showing
that no longer will categories of nearness, nation, race and language be determining factors in the rise of communities.
Unfortunately, at present, most of the determining factors are economical and technical ones.
A struggle will start for predominance in these communities of communication. These are the new conditions of a society separated by space and time.
Cinema and television are early examples of virtual spaces. Cinema was collective reception of an image at the same place.
Television has shown collective reception that is not happening locally but is distributed.
Now virtual reality occurs through video games which again are bound to a location.
However, someone will succeed in developing a new kind of projector and virtuality that will then also be distributed.
Hundreds of people will enter collectively into virtual space like we are already experiencing in online-games -- a kind of tele-games.
A person will be located in front of a screen but will also subjectively enter into the space beyond the screen.
Nowadays, it is like this: “I am part of this space, which I am seeing.
I am part of the system that I am observing. If I am here, located in real space, then I am part of this real space.“
Up until now, I have only been an external observer in the world of imagery.
I have not been able to participate in the imagery.
But the aim is to make myself an external and internal observer at the same time.
“Internal observer” means that I am becoming part of the system that I am observing. I am part of the imagery, I am embedded within the image.
And this image will become more and more capable of creating three-dimensional illusions.
It will become a part of my real space. And do not forget, the image itself may change.
In the new image technology, I will become part of the image and my behaviour will change the image’s behaviour.
Vice versa, the behaviour of the image will change my real world. This shall be called “reversibility.”
In the future virtual world, at first there will be virtuality of information storage.
Information will not be caged indelibly anymore in photography, film and video.
Within a computer-generated image, virtual image information can be changed anytime.
Thus, virtuality of information storage occurs. I am controlling the content of an image.
With this variability of an image’s content comes the viability of changing an image’s behaviour.
The image will behave like a living system -- “life-like.”
“Life-like” means that between the in- and output of a system, there is no exactly predictable, deterministic plan.
For example, a cat is a living system. I can step on the cat’s tail but I cannot predict how the cat will react.
A white cat will not morph into a black one but I cannot predict whether it will run away or jump towards me.
This is how it will be in the world of images in the future.
In my function as a behaving person, an observer with a behaviour, I am giving input to an image and I do not know exactly – I cannot predict – how the image will behave.
The image will have life-like qualities. This means I am in this image and the image’s behaviour resembles that of a life-like system.
Therefore, I will be able to migrate into that image.
The fact that my behaviour has an impact on the image’s behaviour and vice versa, this I am calling “reversibility.”
So now we have four concepts: virtuality of information storage, variability of image content, viability of image behaviour and the reversibility of the relation between image and reality.
This means virtual imageries will share qualities with the real world; for instance, the law of cause and effect applies to them both and connects them.
I will move through virtual space and it will have an impact on the real world. And my behaviour in the real world will affect the image.
Imageries and real worlds, or more precisely virtual realities and realties in the ordinary case, will interact and become more and more indistinguishable.
One important vision of the media society is the migration of men into virtual space.
Earth will become inhospitable. You will not be able to escape by leaving earth.
You will still live on this globe but your only escape from the inhospitable environment will be in narrow shelter-like cells where you will fulfill all your needs inside a virtual space.
As with musicians and composers needing a conductor, it will be a collective work and every one must carry out his part.
And this collective procedure will be practiced extensively with the spread of new media.
The creator today says: “I can force a world into an image. I can force a world into an artwork, into a closed artwork,”
but this will change. The concept of authorship will change.
One example you can find today is someone like Andy Warhol using a photograph and keeping the origin to himself;
he keeps the name of the author secret and multiplies the picture a million times by serigraphy.
However, at the end there is the signature of Andy Warhol.
That is what is left of bourgeois ontology: The signature of Andy Warhol for the purpose of achieving an appropriately high price.
But Andy Warhol did not actually craft even one of these pictures.
What we see of his work -- the picture of newspapers, death, Coca-Cola, goods -- these pictures are coming from a world of reproductions.
This means reproductions and the act of reproducing have replaced the act of being.
The copy has long since replaced the original -- for example musical techniques like sampling, developing new sources of computer based techno music, covering, DJ-ing.
The concept of authorship is losing its importance. That does not imply the vanishing of outstanding individual achievements.
These excellent achievements, for instance the aforementioned music which is different from the music made before,
are the results of long-term processes of acquiring skills and approbation.
Today many radical artists, for example Cindy Sherman and others, are consciously undertaking these processes of achievement.
So we have to forget about the idea of authorship as well as the concept of the individual.
Cloning and copying will not only be issues of biological debates but also of intellectual debates.
In this field new possibilities and varieties of operation will be designed and offered.
The transition from close-range society to remote society I was talking about before can be found symptomatically within the transition from modernism to post-modernism.
Modernism, for example, is to a great extent a catalogue of bans and rules; what you may do, what you must not do, what you have to be afraid of.
Big Brother’ for example was a vision. We should be afraid of the big supervisory machine.
Today ‘Big Brother’ is the title of something we are allowed, even that we are supposed to enjoy.
You can say it like this: What was forbidden is now commanded. What you had to be afraid of is now to be enjoyed.
In the past you have been told: “Do not go to the red-light district.”
Today you are told the exact opposite: “You have to enjoy it.”
Thus: “You shall! You may!” are new slogans, compared to those you were told before: “You are not allowed to!” and “You must!”
The prohibition of *** is one of the most severe and fundamental indicators for how a community of nearness is consolidated.
If I am living in a cave, it is obvious that not sharing a genetic community makes genetic sense (as it is advised in the example of Noah’s Ark) due to the risk
of certain problems of degeneration. This law is no longer relevant if I am acting globally as an agent of chromosomes.
The prohibition of *** is applicable to a community of nearness in which man is an agent of chromosomes.
Now I am quasi disbanded from this complicity with the genes. I can spread genes globally, not only in one cave.
These are revolutions whose elevation and fractures we are experiencing continuously.
This transition from bans to rules shows us that the whole scale of values, which has fused and crossed in society, is no longer valid anymore
because this scale of values was established by a community of nearness.
At the very moment when this nearness no longer occurs, in the instant when the sense’s data is no longer generated by close-range senses,
the perception of the world by our brain is mainly produced by remote data received from machines, not by remote data from the eye and ear.
From that moment on begins a certain expropriation.
If I sit in my living-room, I will see [images of] the furniture [which are generated] with my own eyes.
If I watch television, I will see images which are not originally generated with my own eyes.
We know the expression “consumer chain.” Consumers are the last stage in the food chain.
We are now the last stage in the data chain.
We sit in our living-rooms but beyond [our television screen] is a long chain of cameramen and cameras recording image data.
Remote machines are producing data. This data is brought to my living-room through data lines, satellite,
radio, TV and so on and I am at the end of that data chain.
Man is only a peripheral device within this network of data, data crossing and data chains.
And this Subject, which is now only an agent within a globally crossed data network,
cannot be the same as that one which was master of a locally limited and bound universe.