Читать книгу The Digitally Divided Self: Relinquishing our Awareness to the Internet - Ivo Ph.D. Quartiroli - Страница 11

The digitization of reality started with number crunching, a process close to computer language. Computers were initially used for scientific and engineering calculations, later extending to reading, writing, studying, working, entertainment, travel planning, connecting with friends and family, dating, sexual arousal, shopping and banking. And these activities are happening only online for a growing number of people. The “Internet of things” promises to go even further, radio tagging any object on earth with an Internet address, sucking all matter into the Net like a vacuum cleaner. The Net’s voracity doesn’t stop anywhere – including Body Area Networks that will be monitoring people’s physiological parameters.

The Net continually adds to the list of human activities which can be represented digitally – charming us with amazing applications, digitizing traditional needs and desires, and stimulating new ones. The transformation of desires into needs is one of the main activities of technological society, which in this regard shares the attitude with capitalistic society.

But we can just go offline, right? Again, true – but the Internet tends, like a gas, to expand in time and space. It follows us anywhere, through wireless connections and smartphones. With the immediacy of communication through the Net, there is a reciprocal pressure for answers to be fast. If we stay away from the Net for only a couple of days, we could miss an important job message, our friends’ updates, a notification from our airline, a juicy invitation from a person we’re attracted to, a nasty comment on our blog or social network page which we need to remove, a credit card transaction, the choices in door handles from our architect, library and credit card late notices, or a message from the insurance company.

With most of our colleagues, friends and family online, being offline will feel like living in a remote corner of the planet. Therefore, we are more than willing to transfer our lives to the Net, display them on social networks like Facebook, preserve our private documents in the “cloud,” and embrace technologies which promise to amaze and empower us. We can happily disembody into the cloud like a “pure” angel.