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The media revolution

The media revolution is in full swing. But it involves more than issues surrounding newspapers or the Internet.

15.03.2013
© picture-alliance/ZB

When the Financial Times Deutschland recently vanished from the German media market, it not only marked the loss of a quality newspaper, it was also a clear symptom of a structural change in public communication which is taking place at numerous levels and is altering the whole of our social existence. Journalists have to share public attention with citizen journalists and bloggers, free newspapers satisfy specific expectations about the “free flow” of information, and many well-educated young people glean their information exclusively from the 
Internet.

Fortunately, the majority of German publishers are not reacting conservatively to these media changes, because they have recognized that the end of the printed newspaper does not necessarily mean the end of journalism. If you visit some of the major media companies, you will soon 
notice that the online journalists are not only on a par with traditional reporters, they are now setting the tone. But where is all this leading?

To answer this question, we have to look beyond the superficial symptoms and focus on the changes in people’s relationships with their media technologies as a result of the digital revolution.

Technology that appeals – that’s the great new mission of design. And the better it is accomplished, the more smoothly the modern technologies blend into the fabric of everyday life. Nowadays, technology is becoming an integral part of our person. Like clothes, portable media that act as information assistants amply illustrate how the computer has mutated from the black box to an item of clothing, and finally to an implant. The limits of my world are no longer defined by the limits of my body, but by the limits of my media.

Media technology is also always “social engineering”. This co-evolution of technol­ogy and society leads to socially intelligent and convivial technologies, to personal devices. We have long since had computers that are carried on and in the body. Peripheral devices become implantable appliances. Soon, robots will gain new lifelike dimensions and will act in a social manner. At 
the same time, people have developed 
corresponding social behaviour towards the media.

In a similar way to toys, the underlying idea is the social shaping of technology. 
But this design goal applies not only to media reality; it also applies to physically palpable new places. We have been able to refer to intelligent environments ever since microcomputers joined the ranks of our everyday appliances. We have already networked many everyday objects in order to keep them under constant control. People are online, but so are their artefacts. In 
earlier days, the technology of reproduction through film and television had already suggested equal access to the world for everyone. Simulation was the next step we took. It gave the many access to experiences that are in fact inaccessible, because of the many. Virtual reality is the ultimate consequence of the modern concept of reality: the world as simulation. The digital media offer us reality as a synthesis of the arts, a philosophy of the make-believe that can be experienced. Interface design in the digital world has caused the graphical user interfaces to disappear, or at least to recede from conscious perception. Thus, in the 
relationship between humans and technology, we have reached the opposite pole of contemplation: immersion.

Computers and cybernetics were the response to the control crisis that was triggered by the industrial revolution. Today, social networks are providing the response to the control crisis that has been triggered by globalization. The problem is called complexity, and it can no longer be solved through education. This has been replaced by the modulization of intelligence as a service and cybernetics as the science of control and communication. Whenever the complex systems of modern society 
are no longer manageable with the power of judgement, then the question arises whether the power of judgement can be replaced by algorithms. Since the free flow of information is more important than all of the issues surrounding matter and energy, it is no longer controlled by philosophers or other experts, but has uncoupled itself from the Enlightenment project. However, as this flood of information increases in magnitude, there is an in­creasingly urgent need for a service that provides interpretation or meaning. The wealth of information and the lack of 
attention are two sides of the same coin. Today, information is no longer scarce; instead, there is a lack of orientation. We are incessantly sending, receiving, storing and manipulating information. We are entrenched in global communication. And the absolute imperative of our existence is to be permanently accessible – anytime and anywhere.

Communication is demanding work which can now be carried out and conveyed from everywhere on the globe. But to avoid drowning in the flood of information, we need selection, filtering and evaluation techniques. We now know that intelligence is nothing more than a search technique and that artificial intelligence is structured by means of popularity algorithms. Now that information space is as large as the world, and since the entire world population is participating in digital communication, it is no longer possible to differentiate between searching and creativity. Here, intelligence is not created by programmes but by communication. There has been a paradigm shift: network logic instead of artificial intelligence. All areas of knowledge and life are being dominated by the self-organization of laypeople, who are now competing with the experts. Our philosophy is the wisdom of the many. All are smarter than the individual.

Consequently, Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement, “The medium is the message”, needs to be updated: The network is the message. The netizens are no longer interested in information media, but above all in relationship media. Consequently, the media networks are manifesting themselves as the production places of a new 
social wealth. In this case, the added value is created in the acts that characterize the social media: in sharing, giving and linking. In this way, communication enables the technological and the social to interfuse. We could also refer to this as relationship consumption.

The innovative aspect of these new media lies especially in the fact that their content is produced by the users themselves. No 
futurologist could have foreseen that blogging would create a new kind of public communication, in which everyone is 
every­one else’s audience. Nowadays, the barrier-free public is accepted as a matter of fact. The new media technologies are processes rather than tools. Users become developers, and the media are constantly redefined during the process of being used. Participation replaces reception. Both the author and the reader disappear. Characteristically, in the new media we publish first and then we filter. In addition to this, there are no longer any works. New cul­tural techniques are asserting themselves everywhere, techniques that put an end to the culture of the “Gutenberg Galaxy”: cut & paste, link & tag, copy & remix.

A current buzz phrase is cloud computing: a computer service as a public good. In actual fact, the activists see the Internet as the veritable public good. In order to understand its dynamics and its creative potential, one needs to understand social capital is being generated. Social capital consists of links, relationships and positions. If we want to discuss social justice, then we should no longer be distracted by the “social question” of the 19th century. We need to think in terms of the new nature of social interaction which is forming today via processes of self-organization. ▪

Professor Norbert Bolz teaches media studies at the Technical University of Berlin. The communication theory specialist concentrates on changes in modern society.