Page 11 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014THEME 1Tensions and trends in digital cultureby Antonio Rodríguez de las Heras www.ardelash.es @ARdelasHIt is the observation and analysis of the cultural tensions that are appearing today as a result of digital technology that can help detect the gaps from where will spring the trends of the profound evolution which the world of culture is undergoing.In this article, therefore, I intend to identify the tensions I consider to be most significant, and to discuss the scope they may have.REAL VS. VIRTUALA first of these tensions is the one that is appearing between what we consider to be real and what we consider to be virtual.Digital technology has led to the appearance of a new virtual space. The Net is much more than a network of equipment and cables, it is the emergence of a virtual space. This means that on the other side of the screen there are properties that are different to those on this side of it. This side of it being the one we consider to be reality.A disturbing property that is immediately evident is that of ubiquity. The Net is a space with no places. There is no distance and no delay. As a network it is planetary, it surrounds us and every node, every item of equipment, occupies a place. But as a space, everything it takes in becomes ubiquitous. Thus, if there are no places, neither are there any distances and therefore, neither are there any delays. The Net tends to be an Aleph which, while it surrounds us,AC/Efits onto the tiny screen of a smartphone, like Borges’s Aleph in “a small iridescent sphere”: multum in parvo.It is difficult to resist the attraction of migrating to this space with no places, no distances, no delays. Words, images, sounds... they do not need to be transported by being fixed to a material support to take them from one place to another. Will the specific containers for such transport—such as books, discs, tapes—disappear? Will libraries, exhibition, concert and conference halls be emptied along with museums, cinemas, theatres where the material objects are to be found that support words, images and sound? Will migration depopulate these places?That the virtual have a placeThe first and unstoppable trend is the migration of objects and activities to the virtual world on the other side of the screen, to a space with no places. And this produces disorientation about what will happen to the terrain inhabited by the real, and what will we do with the places occupied by material and tangible objects. And it is at this moment of confusion when a glimpse can be caught of a contrariwise tendency that brings the virtual world into the real one.There are various indications, various manifestations, of this tendency.WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 1: TENSIONS AND TRENDS IN DIGITAL CULTURE CURRENT PAGE...11