I happened to discover at the library that a new book by Byung-Chul Han, my personal favorite author/philosopher, had come out, so I immediately borrowed and read it, jotting down a few sentences and several thoughts that crossed my mind along the way.
Preface. In the novel <The Secret Crystallization>, the Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa describes what happens on a nameless island. (abbreviated)
Rather, what makes things disappear is our intoxication with communication and information. Information — that is, Unding, the non-thing — blocks the front of things and makes them fade entirely. We live not under the rule of violence but under the rule of information. The rule of information is disguised as freedom. Digitalization de-thingifies and disembodies the world. It also eliminates memory. Instead of retracing memory, we store vast amounts of data. In short, digital media replace the memory police. Digital media complete their tasks without any violence and at little cost. (abbreviated)
Unlike Ogawa's dystopia, our information society is not quite so monotonous. Information pretends to be an Ereignis (event). Information lives on the thrill that surprising events provide, Reiz der Uberraschung. But the thrill doesn't last. Soon a craving for new thrills arises. We become accustomed to perceiving reality for the purpose of thrill, of surprise. As information hunters, we no longer see the quiet, plain things — the ordinary, the incidental, the usual. Things that lack stimulation yet anchor us in being. p9
The preface alone is profound. Especially the wording, we live not under the rule of violence but under the rule of information, is uncomfortable yet irrefutable. As the author says, at some point we began to store instead of remember most events and information. Ah.. no, we can't quite say 'we'. It only applies up to the MZ generation, who experienced both analog and digital. Most of Gen Z are already natives. Starting with the iPhone and the rise of the smartphone, a great deal of change has occurred. Back in my vigorous thirties, when I'd just leaped into the IT industry, I too was rushing with ideals of mobile, convenience, sharing, openness, and transparency as eagerly as anyone. Of course, after being harshly — mentally clobbered? — by The Burnout Society and Byung-Chul Han's subsequent books, some change is happening in me as well.
The resident of the smart home has no worry at all. The goal of the digital order is no doubt the overcoming of worry. Yet Heidegger views worry as an essential feature of human existence. p14
The core feature of storytelling and memory is narrative continuity over a long time. Only stories create meaning and context. The digital order, i.e., the order of numbers, has no story and no memory. Thus the digital order fragments life. p15
As one of the IT practitioners sitting next to this uncomfortable truth, this is also, personally, why a service planner must have a funnel mindset. Funnel analysis is often used in marketing for acquisition, development, and retention. But it is something that must be examined to build a service narrative from the user's standpoint — the user who reacts and responds to the service the organization provides.
The motto of the digital order is this: 'To be is information.' Then being is wholly disposable and controllable. In contrast, the thing as Heidegger speaks of it is the incarnation of the thingliness of human existence: the embodiment of finitude, the embodiment of facticity. The infosphere has a double face. The infosphere gives us more freedom, and at the same time exposes us to increased surveillance and manipulation. p15
Inside the smart home, we are not the autonomous conductor. Rather, we are conducted by various agents, by invisible metronomes.
As one of the IT practitioners sitting next to this uncomfortable truth, believe it or not, the platforms leading Web 2.0 — especially ad media, payment-related services, and social-related services — most services apply here. As noted earlier, just as the smartphone I used for mere convenience transformed my life into one of storage replacing memory without my realizing, we have, through the various Web 2.0 platforms, been numbly exposing our being — our information (finance, preferences, personal data..) — in the same way. This is probably the backdrop to Web 3.0, which professes DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), and to SSI that goes beyond DID, and the stirring blockchain ecosystem. Of course, much of that meaning has been eroded by coins and exchanges.. Personally, I suspect this phenomenon resembles the flow of the 2000s IT bubble that preceded the J-curve which IT began drawing from 2010.
Information entropy — that is, information chaos — plunges us into a post-factual society. The distinction between truth and falsehood disappears. Information now circulates in a hyperreal space disconnected from reality. Fake news is fully information. That information can create greater effects than facts. What matters is the short-term effect. Effect replaces truth.
Unlike information, truth has the solidity of being. Endurance and invariance are core traits of truth. Truthfulness is facticity. Truth is facticity. Truth resists all change and manipulation. That is how truth forms the ground of human existence. "One might conceptually define truth as that which humans cannot change. Figuratively: truth is the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us."
Truth grants a pause to human life. The digital order ends the age of truth and opens a post-factual information society. The post-factual information regime rises above facts and truth. Information, with its post-factual nature, flees from the courtroom. Where nothing is firm, every pause disappears.
Where one piece of information ceaselessly pushes in after another, we cannot have time for truth. In our post-factual culture of stimulation, what dominates communication is excitement and emotion. On the time axis, excitement and emotion, unlike rationality, are highly unstable. Accordingly, they make life unstable. Trusting, promising, and taking responsibility are also time-intensive acts. These acts stretch beyond the present into the future. Everything that stabilizes human life is time-intensive. Loyalty, cohesion, obligation are likewise time-intensive practices. p19
The resident of the smart home has no worry at all. The goal of the digital order is no doubt the overcoming of worry. Yet Heidegger views worry as an essential feature of human existence. p14
One might misread p19 as contradicting p14. This is a section I paid special attention to. Daily life, from which the pause has vanished and into which information endlessly pours, leaves no margin for maturation or reflection. Consequently, most social media — the digital communication space — is dominated by content that triggers excitement and emotion. And yet, ironically, I came to think that even in such a digital daily life, humans naturally display the essential features of human existence. An existing human shares the special records and interests of his or her day on social channels. The traits of existents who chase content tied to excitement and emotion naturally pollute? the digital space. They naturally induce instability and incompleteness. It seems this is a digital version — or digital/analog mixed version — of the worry Heidegger spoke of. From the standpoint of a digital space defined by true/false, this is clear pollution. I personally pay attention to this reactive phenomenon. Perhaps it is precisely through pondering and researching this part that we might find one of the ways to expand what Elon Musk once called a Web 3.0-the-likes-of-which-we-have-never-seen into a somewhat? more existentially grounded ecosystem.
Another time-intensive practice is 'lingering (dwelling) Verweilen'. Perception clinging to information does not gaze slowly and long. Information shortens our breathing and our seeing. Lingering next to information is impossible. Lingering next to a thing, contemplating, seeing without any intention — these could be called the formula for happiness — are pushed aside by information hunting. Today we race after information and fail to arrive at knowledge. We take everything into note (zur Kenntnis nehmen) but never reach realization (Erkenntnis). We drive (fahren) to every corner, yet have not a single experience (Erfahrung). We communicate ceaselessly but do not belong to community. We store massive data but do not retrace memory. We accumulate friends and followers but do not encounter the Other. Thus information develops a life-form without endurance or continuity.
Right. Acknowledged. So, what can I do now — and right now? What should I be doing? This, more than anything, makes my heart race.
The human being of the future has no hands. He no longer handles things, and for that reason one can no longer speak of his act.
The hand is the organ of labor and action. The finger, by contrast, is the organ of choice. The handless human of the future uses only fingers. Instead of acting, he chooses. He presses keys on a keyboard to satisfy desires. He also wishes to own nothing. Instead, he wishes to experience and to press. p22
For a moment I flinched. I don't even press keys with my fingers. Because most of my reading notes on the main text are not typed — most of them are snapped through Google Lens and then copy-pasted by sliding my finger across the screen.
As I've been containing a few thoughts into a few sentences.. I've inadvertently included too many spoilers of the new book. I'll leave subsequent notes in Notion. If by any chance there are folks running a book study on Byung-Chul Han's books, or planning one, or wishing to do one — I hope we might find a way to connect someday and share thoughts together, and with that, I'll end this post.
https://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=301051207
The Disappearance of Rituals
A philosophical reflection on the way we relate to the world in a digitalized age — from smartphones and selfies to smart homes, IoT, and AI. Byung-Chul Han, who dreams of being a 'physiognomist of the thing-world', portrays information...
www.aladin.co.kr
