By RENATO ORTIZ*
In the communication system that surrounds us, everything needs to move as quickly as possible; speed is a categorical imperative.
Marx said that the destiny of commodities was to be governed by the idea of universal equivalent: objects, regardless of their intrinsic qualities, when reduced to a single common denominator, capital, could be freely exchanged among themselves. There is something of this in the world of information. It has become a kind of universal equivalent; content is secondary to the demands of circulation.
Good information is information that moves through a broad communication system. In a way, Norbert Wiener's prophecy, with his mathematical theory of communication, has come true: if everything is information, the flow that transmits it matters, and the accumulation of data thus becomes a quality. A good example is social networks. The screen of a cell phone reveals the disparity of the world: the damp brooms in the laundry area of a house, the photo of a wounded Palestinian on the hood of a war vehicle or a Chanel perfume, the nose job of a stranger, the news of a couple's fights from an obscure celebrity, the message of help for a child with a serious illness, the live by Caetano Veloso in celebration of his eightieth birthday.
The volume of information presented is evidence of the truth of what is intended to be stated. The list of events is infinite, they are lost on the horizon, they are countless; infinity fascinates, perhaps awakening a feeling of comfort in relation to the finiteness of life.
However, the communication system that surrounds us demands something more than that. Everything needs to circulate as quickly as possible. Speed is a categorical imperative. The validity of a fact is not limited to itself. It is necessary that its existence be perceived within a minimum time interval between what happened and what is reported. Ideally, the time lapse should be imperceptible. What matters is what is truly current: the photo of the hamburger I eat and send to my friends on social media; the latest news on the television news; the message I received and must immediately respond to via WhatsApp, etc. Speed and volume are essential qualities of the contemporary, of the overlapping of distinct times.
The newspaper's website The Guardian is suggestive in this regard. In it, the news is presented with screen time, the moment in which the upload was made. Criticism of Trump: 1 hour ago; death of Apollo 8 astronaut: 10 hours ago; historical analysis of the war in Ukraine compared to 1938: 7 hours ago; confusion on the Tijuana border: 27 minutes ago; Israel destroys 80% of Gaza schools: 2 hours ago; criticism of Trump by the Vice President of the United States: 1 minute ago. The information is accurate and innocuous.
It would be foolish to argue about the relevance of reading a historical article about the war in Ukraine given its screen time; or to be informed of the death of an astronaut, whose time of death has not been determined, several hours or seconds later. The illusion is that the accuracy of information can be apprehended according to a time scale that would vary from zero to the calends. Zero implies the simultaneity between the occurrence of the event and its effective dissemination in the public sphere, when reality and journalistic excellence would coincide. The simultaneity between the existence of an event and its dissemination would translate into the encounter of separate moments.
But it is possible to imagine another alternative to understand the lack of synchrony between information and reality. The newspaper Le Monde represents well this desire for the search for perfection, it would fall short of the zero to which I referred. Each copy is published with the date of the day that follows it: “Monday” appears in the title as “Tuesday"; "Tuesday" as "Wednesday”, and so on. It is one day ahead, the newspaper does not circulate on Sundays, the date of the edition. Below zero means the materialization of the dream of the ideal report, as in an oracle it would be possible to foresee tomorrow.
* Renato Ortiz He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of The universe of luxury (Mall). [https://amzn.to/3XopStv]
Originally published on BVPS blog.
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