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Let us step into the realm of futurism, and peer into the ensuing abyss that is society’s future…
Ifeel that in contemporary, and future, civilisation artistic tradition may be under threat. Ironically, I surmise that the threat comes from technology, the very technology that, I claim, may be the purest form of Art. Will Art eat itself? I believe it is slowly starting to subsume itself. There are prominent signs of this happening. We can see this transpiring in the way that technology’s influence over us is growing exponentially and rapidly becoming a significant, formidable and monstrous part of our everyday lives. Its ferocity is driven on and perpetuated by the rise and expansion of more extreme, ruthless, dynamic incarnations of capitalism that staunchly promulgate and uphold consumerism and commodity-fetishism as the values, rights and privileges of the “free” populace.
Let us step into the realm of futurism, and peer into the ensuing abyss that is society’s future. We move here in order to speculate about the prospects and expectations of technology and, in turn, our lives. Personal choices and freedoms are, in fact, slowly diminishing. Algorithms and recommender systems, used prolifically in virtually every online store, Internet site and app., that makes use of personally targeted advertising, help you to choose what they think you would like to buy (e.g. what music the consumer wants to listen to or what movies they want to watch). However, far more than predictions, they function more effectively as dictations. These systems operate in a way that means your choices are made for you or forced upon you without ever even seeing the full plethora or range of options available.
This forcing may not be deliberate, however, intentional or otherwise, the operations will generate the same outcomes. Presently there exists such a vast pool of data made available through these systems that it would be possible to create/fabricate cultural artistic products that satisfied what the computer systems “predict” consumers will enjoy (purchase). This designing of cultural products to satisfy algorithms, I postulate, would inevitably lead to the dictation of all popular culture, where nothing is created for Art’s sake or for expression, but where we are told what we like and “Art” ceases to be Art and is created not for personal expression but for personal gain. I foresee that this could be the suicide of Art, art and visual culture.
“Still there are wider implications to consider if we collectively delegate more and more of our decision making to algorithms. The recommender systems used to personalise our entertainment choices could even start to shape culture itself. It is possible the films or plays would make more money if their authors wrote them to satisfy an algorithms idea of what people with particular tastes like to watch. If that sounds unlikely, consider that many online journalists already write news and headlines in a style that ensures that Google’s algorithms place their stories higher in search results. They are not just writing for their human readers; they are writing for algorithms too.” – Helen Knight 1
More concisely we can see the workings of this condition, and predict their future influence on culture, as follows:
Art and cultural items (artwork, music, film etc.) are created for expressive purposes.
People enjoy and purchase them.
The items customers enjoy and purchase most often are monitored in order to predict what similar items you might like.
These suggestions are then presented to, and effectively forced upon, the consumer, as they are offered no other choices.
The consumer is coerced into picking the prediction/dictation.
Because sales of the predicted items increase, copies and similar items are then created in order to satisfy your “wants” in the hope of being more lucrative.
This continues….
Artistic and expressive content within popular visual culture slowly diminishes until it ceases to exist.
Pop culture items are no longer produced with any expression, emotion, philosophy or ideology, they are only created to satisfy the predicted “wants” that were forced upon us by technologies predictions in the first instance.
Aside from the aforementioned workings of technology diminishing Artistic culture, there are other side effects of technology that will further assist and accelerate Art’s suicide. One of these symptoms could be social-media. With our lives becoming more and more influenced by the social-media technology, now inescapably woven into the fabric of our reality, We must ask: Is this technology diverting our attention from classical or traditional forms of Art and methods of expression? Are we becoming addicted to, and dependant on, such technology? Is it influencing us on much more subliminal and sub-conscious levels than most of us realise? Is it making us less expressive? Are we spending more and more time online and less time pondering, questioning and expressing ourselves through Art, philosophy and discussion? I believe that these are valid and important questions that must be asked. The way we live our lives in this technological era is subtly changing peoples habits. The psychological effects of such technology should not be underestimated. And furthermore, I might conjecture that prolonged use of technology and of social entertainment media contributes to the dumbing-down and re-optimisation of the human brain/psyche. The human attention span and other psychological workings are already being studied due to fears that they may be affected by such technologies. 2
Human participation in online simulated social networking can be termed collective isolation3. Collective isolation describes the phenomenon of social networking. This form of socialising is somewhat paradoxical as it relies on each participant being alone and isolated in order to communicate. We must ask some more important questions about social media: Are we witnessing a slow erosion of real-life social interaction into simulated, metaphysical communication, accelerated by social networking trends? And is this intentional? Does Socialising technology create a false, or illusioned, reality? Will this false Baudrillard-esque hyper-reality eventually lead to the inability of ones consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy? Is there really any solidarity or communication between the participants? Or, are we all “collectively isolated” and blissfully unaware of our impotence? I fear that worldwide, mass Internet-fetishism is leading us to communicate only on very simple and superficial levels. And this addiction is changing our behaviour, leaving us with less time, want and need to express ourselves through more traditional methods such as Art or philosophy. This could easily deteriorate further and lead to a total stagnation of culture, following the logic of The Second Law of Thermodynamics, I fear we might soon be witnesses to the heat-death of Art, expression and therefore all visual culture?