The augmented digital self
One of the global pressing agendas together with climate action, social inclusion, gender diversity is the so called digital transformation. Back in 1964 Marshall McLuhan wrote “the medium is the message (…) this is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium (…) result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves (…)” The phenomenon initiated by the internet and powered by smart phones, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and sensors/iot (internet of things) generated an unprecedented quest for speed, responsiveness, ubiquity and seamlessness altogether known as agility. Fascinated and engulfed at the same time in the digital aesthetics, individuals have challenged themselves to become the augmented digital self or as McLuhan would say the extension of ourselves. Digital features then transmute us into instantaneous (forwardable), shallow (a 280 character twitter fit), asceptic (virus free), good looking (instagramable, likeable), reliable (glitch free) individuals.
The evolution of digital media, music for instance, for the last 40 years is a good metaphor for the changes we have been facing with digital transformation. When musical recordings were stored on cassettes or vinyl records the recordings stored sound in an analog format. Analog recordings degraded each time they were played: physical contact is made between the recording and the player and before long you started to hear the cracks and pops associated with old recordings. Later on came the cds (compact discs) where the music is encoded on the disc as numerical information: the digital sound was created, carrying more portability and durability. In analog recordings the machine is always recording any sound or noise that is coming through the microphones. An analog signal is continuous meaning that there are no breaks or interruptions. Digital signals are not continuous, they use specific values to represent information. Digital media moved to mp3 and other similar formats now available in apps like Spotify, Apple Music of Deezer. To turn analog music into digital audio engineers compress music files to make them more manageable but this affects the sound quality (fidelity): digital recordings sacrify fidelity in favor of reliability.
In order to perform digital transformation whose benefits of access and scalability are unquestionable, a digital mindset is more than required. Indeed I have been somehow skeptical in sharing some thoughts about it without exploring its fundamentals or raising its implications:
- How far are we willing to compress, surpress or sacrifice naturality or organicity over to digital? Take the case of R&D intensive, hard science or deep tech type of projects very much dependant on scientific discoveries, trial and error, extensive user validations and struggle for market acceptance. Agility can accelerate but cannot replace the natural course of innovation.
- Should every digital endeavour become exponential and performing like sales machines by using every technology feature available to accomplish its objectives (ends justifying its means)? Actually digital winners (like Google, Amazon, Apple) have been taken from us all private information and identities; some of them have politically misused our info as in the case of Cambridge Analyctica+Facebook and fake news+What’s up. Digital does not prescind from ethical behaviour.
- To which extent sacrifice human essentials like creativity, intuition, divergence, negativity, melancholy, faith and other values to pursue digital performance? Digital filters conform us all to our own cognitive bias reinforcing beliefs but also prejudices. We should not undermine the consequences of unassisted A.I.
A counter movement has already begun, take the case of https://calmtech.com , https://www.digitaldetox.com , https://www.zebrasunite.com and https://www.nationaldayofunplugging.com. We are about to see a more consequent digital design where technology plays a supportive rather than a dominant role.
