A Beautiful Nothing?
It has been a while since I logged on to my Blog and I wonder what has changed in cyberspace....
On the surface not a lot!
Yet dig deep and yes it has!
The internet provides an unlimited edgeless space on which to practice creativity, an empty expanse to plug bikes for sale
or robotic electronic music.....
Or even just to share pictures of fluffy kittens...
Aacademic M. Nunes wrote in 1995 at the dawn of the internet...
"In short, the image of free and infinitely increasing information does
nothing more than deter the realization that the Enlightenment pursuit of
"knowledge" has imploded. "Information" has become a term
to describe movies on demand, electronic malls, and expanding numbers of
television channels; the media is "accelerating in a void" of the
banal (Transparency 3). Increasing sophistication in technology produces
more convincing simulations of information and more convincing strategies of
deterrence. The fascination of the depthless screen--"the superficial
abyss"--keeps us firmly rooted. With a wealth of information, we have no
time to realize that we have nothing to learn."
Or in other words.......
The removal of controls, censorship, editorship and obvious ownership on an infinite platform for written literature, has created the simulation of literature, a superficial explosion of words with no depth of meaning or worthwhile insight.
All voices are held equal and can join any number of conversations and interactions, the internet, rather than presenting a simulation of reality, has provided a space of play.
Baudrillard (cited by Nones) of course has something very complicated to say on the subject....
The scene/screen of simulation is a "depthless surface" which
allows for no play of images between metaphor and the world it (re)presents.
For Baudrillard, the screen presents an example of the "satellisation of
the real" by achieving the escape velocity of hyperreality: "That
which was previously mentally projected, which was lived as a metaphor in the
terrestrial habitat is from now on projected entirely without metaphor, into
the absolute space of simulation" (
Ecstasy 16).
No longer a
metaphor for change, the simulated highway of Internet becomes a form of
virtual reality.
So........... this huge chasm of space becomes filled with superficial fluff with all the intellectual weight of marshmalow.
This open postmodern writing does not guide or instruct its readers on its meaning but expects them to draw their own conclusions, any depth of insight contained will be fluid and unsubstantiated by external sources.
The ability to interact and 'talk' through writing in 'real' time has created "hypertelic" literature. (Nones, 1995) Writing as a communication tool has been until recently a store of information, an aide to memory, or a device to transfer information at a distance. The internet however has made it possible to write in 'real' time, have a spoken conversation via the written word. Baudrillard called this
"hypertelic" literature.
The instantaneity of this writing is an obvious source of much of the 'fluffy' literature found on the internet, no one chats to high academic standards without a lot of practice! By nonchalantly writing what we are thinking of as a conversation, we naturally slip in to bad habits, abreviations, bad grammer and lazy vocabulary.
But is it all bad????
By tearing up the rule book on Modernist meta narratives of high class elitest culture and using the pieces to create a democratized Post Modern pastiche of culture, we have realised Baudrillard's deepest fears a world of hyperreal simulation filled with hypertelic communication.
We are all now equal judges and juries of new writings in this hyperspace....... Good Luck!
