Page 15 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014objects that can be taken apart, not fragmented (which entails breaking a unit). And people will choose the pieces in bulk and will extract others from these objects in pieces to make their own combinations with them. Formats of activities and closed, inalterable, preserved objects, will give way, either because of their own material condition or because of the protection of regulations, to works that, because of the way they are conceived, will be capable of having their pieces extracted and recombined amongst themselves or with others obtained from the bulk offerings.This recombination will also propel cyberdiversity (when biodiversity on this side of the mirror is in decline). Until now distance fostered cultural diversity since it isolated communities in places distant from each other enabling them to have their own cultural evolution. The transport and communications revolution is ruining this way of producingthe specular presence of a new virtual world amongst us, the digital world, leads to efforts by the real, the tangible, the material, all that is subject to distance and delay, that may be hundreds or even thousands of years old, to be reflected somehow in the virtual world. If that were not the case, the question would be asked how is it, being inevitably in front of the all encompassing mirror, that there is no reflection? So, knowing that the other side of the mirror has different properties, what will the virtual version of every real thing that migrates be like? It is a fascinating journey of discovery, only a short stretch of which has been covered.Nothing stays stillAnother experience with the small in this planetary space is similar to the 19th‐century experiment carried out into pollen suspended in water by Robert Brown. While we may have the impression of the Net as an immense storeroom it can be seen that it is all in a constant flow of ones and zeros, in all senses and in all directions. A microscopic view of the apparent stillness of everything that migrates from the real world to become installed in the digital medium reveals great agitation. The Net is not a container where, like shelves, packets are stored or where books are kept as in a library, but is where the content, at the scale of ones and zeros, is suspended and subject to Brownian motion. If this motion ceases the ones and zeros become sedimentary dust. Information, the digital object, is not lost but becomes buried under this sediment and as time passes, like archaeological remains, its recovery becomes more improbable and difficult.This state of suspension in the digital space, this Brownian motion, is achieved when things are accessed, shared, replicated, withdrawn, taken apart, recombined, if there is continuous activity with them. Only in this way can persistence in the digital world be understood because stationary conservation, such as is possible with material objects on this side of the mirror, is a vain hope that becomes buried under a sediment of ones and zeros.culturaldiversity. But,contrary to whathas beenbelieved, in theuniformity ofthe big in thespace withoutplaces, of digitalspace, lumps of the small appear to be resistant and they alter the possible homogeneity. And because the small is also open the capacity for combinations of components has rocketed, components which, outside of the virtual space would have distance and delay as almost insuperable barriers to find each other and fit together.The duality created by the real world and the virtual world explains this constant resonance between both sides of the mirror. The small and open that emerges powerfully on the virtual side has repercussions on this side, the real, and this is what has led to formats and ways of doing things, which until now have been accepted, being changed for others which are in greater accord with what is happening on the other side of the mirror. In turn,AC/EThe Net is fraying due to obsolescence and combats this with innovation, which in turn comes into competi‐ tion with what has already become establishedWHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 1: TENSIONS AND TRENDS IN DIGITAL CULTURE CURRENT PAGE...15