Under this family they group those more combative thought currents in reference to the recognition of the change and of their effects, in general and of the negatives in particular. They have been denominated" you reactivate" because their central characteristic consists on emphasizing in recommendations of nature correctiva in front of the verifications of the effects of the change, so much present as having projected.
The thought models selected in this case correspond to the realistic tecno, relatively little school diffused with a style confrontatorio very developed with regard to the Californian thought and, the construction of Giovanni Sartori, a combatant of the culture and of their survival.
This conception appears in 1998, like a reaction to the ciberliberalismo, opposed particularly to the vision of Silicon Valley and of the Magazine Wired, to which you/they par excellence consider its spokesman.
The exponents of the current point out that the emanated changes of the Digital Revolution have positive facets and negative facets. Inside the positive aspects, the technology makes the most comfortable and easier life, but it also affects up to now to the work, the family and the economy in forms impredictibles, introducing new types of tensions and confusions and creating new threats for the cohesion of our physical communities.
In that way, they begin verifying": in spite of the complicated ones and, often, contradictory implications of the technology, the conventional wisdom is regrettably simplistic. Ideologists, political and visionary they lend us a bad service when they try to reduce these complexities to stories without life of a destination of gelid ciber technologies or of ciber joy. These representations so polarized take us to hopes that defraud and to an unnecessary anxiety, and they prevent us to understand our own culture".
The tecno realism proposes him to be thought critically of the paper that the tools and the interfaces play in the human evolution and in the daily life. It leaves integral of this perspective it is the idea that the technological, although important and powerful current tide of transformations, it is, in fact, a continuation of the waves of changes that you/they have taken place along the history. "Looking, for example, the history of the automobile, the television or the telephone - I don't only eat devices, but also as institutions - we see deep benefits and also important costs. Also, we have the combined blessings of the current emergent technologies and we hope they don't have consequences impredecibles that should be approached by means of a reflexive design and an appropriate use".
After that introduction, the school develops its basic principles that you/they help to explain the essence of the tecnorrealismo:
The technologies are not neuter. A great error of conception of our times is the idea that the technologies are totally free of inclinations or tendencies. That is this way because they are come as inanimate devices and they don't promote certain types of behaviors on others. In fact, the technologies are loaded with social, political and economic, looked for and not looked for tendencies. Each tool provides its users a peculiar way to do the world and concrete forms of interactuar with the other ones. It is important for all individual to consider the tendencies of the different technologies and to look for those that reflect our values and aspirations.
Internet is revolutionary, but not utopian. The Net is a tool of extraordinary communication that he/she offers a great variety of new opportunities to people, the communities, the companies and the Governments. However, as the ciberespacio becomes more inhabited, every time he/she resembles the society more in general, in all its complexity. For each aspect builder and beneficent of the on-line life, there will also be dimensions that are malicious, perverse and ordinary.
The government has an important paper that to play in the electronic frontier. In spite of what you/they affirm some, the ciberespacio is not formally a place or jurisdiction separated from the Earth. Although the governments should respect the rules and the customs that have been created in the ciberespacio and they should not strangle this new world with ineffective regulations or you censor, it is absurd to say that the public sphere doesn't have sovereignty some on that he/she makes on-line a mistaken citizen or a fraudulent company. As representative of the town and guardian of the democratic values, the State has the right and the responsibility of helping to integrate the ciberespacio and the conventional society. The technological standards and the problems of privacy, for example, are too important as to only trust them to the market. The software companies have little interest in preserving the open standards that are essential for the operation of a really interactive net. The market encourages the innovation, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee the public interest.
The information is not knowledge. The information is moving more and more quickly to our surroundings and its access becomes cheaper; the benefits are evident. Said that, the proliferation of data is also a serious challenge that demands new measures of human discipline. He/she should not made a mistake the emotion of to acquire and to distribute information quickly with the task, more desalentadora, of transforming it into knowledge and wisdom. Independently of that advanced that they can end up being the computers, they should never be used as a substitute of our capacities basic cognitivas to know, to perceive, to reason and to judge.
To connect the schools is not the salvation. The problems that have the public schools of United States - unequal financing, promotion social, excessive size of the classes, infrastructure in decadence, absence of standard - they don't have almost anything that to do with the technology. In consequence, more technology won't lead to the educational revolution prophesied by the president Clinton and others. The art of the teaching cannot be replied by the computers, the Net or the" education at distance." These tools can, of course, to improve even more a high quality of the teaching. But to depend on them as if it was a panacea, it would be a serious error.
The information wants to be protected. It is certain that the ciberespacio and other recent developments are challenging the laws and structures of protection of the intellectual property. However, the answer is not to discard the laws and existent principles. On the contrary, it should be upgraded the laws and antiquated ideas so that the information he/she receives, more or less, the same protection that he/she has come having in the context of the old media. The objective is the same one: to give the authors the enough control on its works so that they have the incentive of continuing creating, while he/she stays the right of the citizens to make a fair use of that information. In none of the two contexts he/she wants the information" to be free." On the contrary, he/she needs to be protected.
The waves are of the society and this he/she should benefit of their use. The recent delivery of the digital spectrum to the broadcasting companies highlights the corrupt and ineffective use of the public resources in the land of the technology
. The citizenship should benefit of the use of the public frequencies and to retain a part of the spectrum for educational, cultural ends and to facilitate the public access. More private use of the public property should be requested.
To understand the technology should be an essential component of the global citizenship. In a world governed by the flows of information, the interfaces - and the underlying code - that presents that information they are becoming powerful social forces. To understand their strength and their limitations, and to participate in the creation of better tools, it should be a fundamental task of a committed citizen. These tools affect to our lives as much as the laws and we should subject them to a similar democratic control.
Sartori doesn't try systematically in its work the topic of the Net. The question is approached incidentally, working on a central thesis that, toward ends of the XX Century, the homo sapiens has entered in crisis, a loss of consciousness crisis and of capacity of knowing.
In their book" Homo Videns"
, he/she carries out some reflections that it is considered of importance to pick up here. The first of the statements contextualiza their vision with regard to Internet": I Affirm again that the possibilities of Internet are infinite, for well and for bad. They are and they will be positive when the user uses the instrument to acquire information and knowledge, that is to say, when he moves for genuine interests intellectuals, for the desire of knowing and of understanding. But, most of the users of Internet are not it, and I foresee that it won't be, of that class. The paideia of the video will make pass Internet to illiterate cultural that quickly they will forget the little thing that they learned in the school and, therefore, illiterate cultural that will kill its time in Internet, in company of" twin souls" sport, erotic or of small hobbies. For user's type, Internet is mainly a terrific way to waste it cheats, a splendid way of losing the time, investing it in trivialities
. It will be thought that this doesn't have anything of bad. It is true, but neither there is anything good. And, of course, it doesn't represent progress some, but just the opposite".
After this introduction / pronouncement so loaded with scepticism, it mentions Furio Colombo": The Eden of the net is to the other side of one it cancels that he/she is opening up... only for some few ones.... Different hierarchies of brains will manage the computers, they will play and they will experience with them. For those excluded it is the interactive game.... to fill an immense free time" and, starting from there it sustains" the few of Furio Colombo is not culture men; they are but very addicted to his work, the new gentlemen of the media and of the nomenclature of the world of the computers. For the culture man, the salvation it doesn't consist on passing over the it cancels that the Eden of the net takes, but rather it cancels it that it protects it of the avalanche of messages. Because the individual can suffocate in Internet and for Internet. To have too much offer ago to explode the offer; and if we are flooded of messages, we can end up drowning in them".
The Net like destruction of the culture:
The precedent appointments frame the author's thought. In fact, for Sartori, the real value of the Net is null, at least as for the development of the culture. In this sense, the means is identified, as for its power of deterioration on the individual's critical trial and envelope the culture, very similar to that of television, to which considers as an element but and the main of high deterioration of the capacity of thinking and, in fact, a very efficient element for the annulment or atrophy of the critical trial.
In that mark, it loads on Negroponte, to which identifies with the banality of the cybernetic gospel. Beyond the critic explicitly ferocious, it develops an intrinsic concern - and legitimate - it has more than enough two fundamental questions: the education and the ethics. "But the final objective is not Internet; it is the" cibermundo", prophesied and promoted, more than for any other author for Nicholas Negroponte. In their book" The Digital World", the new step of the progress is summarized this way: the digital world, the one that receives can elaborate the information" reseteándola" like want, with what the formal control on the message is individualized, his is made. It gets, this way, a" cibernavegación" - very visual and visualized - in the calls virtual realities, in an almost infinite decomposition and alteration (assembling) of images, forms and figures.
Neither I deny that the sailing in the virtual thing - that is as saying in the simulations - it can be vastly stimulating. Those that project aerodynamic forms, for example," they simulate" for many decades: and perhaps the gospel of Negroponte steals the idea - diffusing it to millions of people - to the specialists that have used simulation techniques since they have processors. Be as fuere, for the common humans the cybernetic sailing is only kind of a video game. And if they take this sailing too seriously, the cibernautas" common" they run the risk of losing the sense of the reality, that is to say, the limits between the true thing and the false thing, between the existent thing and the imaginary thing. For them everything becomes trap and manipulation and everything can be manipulated and falsified. But as the virtual realities they are games that don't have probabilities of becoming material realities, the negropontismo it can end up generating; in an end, an alienated feeling of power and frustrated, and in the opposed end, a public of eternal dreamer children that you/they lapse a lifetime in imaginary worlds. The easiness of the digital era represents the easiness of the drug.
We will finish all being" digigeneracionales"
and in the cibermundo?. I hope nr. Negroponte is really the apprentice of sorcerer of the postpensamiento. In the world that he promotes and it eulogizes, it is the machine the one that makes everything. He fakes that it is not this way being that the multimedia-cybernetic world is a world governed by a" logic to circulate" without center some (it is no longer a world governed by a lineal logic and of causal concatenation). It sounds well, but it doesn't mean anything. Because" logic to circulate" it is only a metaphor, but as logic it doesn't exist. The logic establishes the rules of the correct thought (that if at all they are rules of deductive concatenation, not of causal concatenation); and the center notion belongs to the logic when the right notions and left belong to the mathematics. Therefore, the" circularity" of Negroponte it only evokes a heap of nonsenses".
Sartori traffics toward a construction of its own vision of the cibermundo, almost" reactionary", if he/she is bought with most of the analyzed authors, except for those currents that we have denominated as" political." But the root of its rejection doesn't rest in a political conception, but in the excess, the abyss generated for the thought by the" excess of information" and for the danger of atrophy of the sensibility and of the ability of exercise of the critical thought. "For the prophets of the digital world and of the cibernavegación the fact that the users in the net, or of the net, be rational beings he/she doesn't have the most minimum importance. These prophets know very little of rationality; and also, they offer something to change: an almost infinite freedom. That is the new cantilena. Since among television, Internet and ciberespacio, the options that open up before the cibernautas are, or they will be, hundreds, thousands, millions: so many that it is impossible to count them. We will not even have to look for the programs or the informations that we want: he/she will make it for us the navigator. This way, because, the individual easily will be able to assist any curiosity or interest.
The truth is that the digigeneracionales says freedom but in fact they mean (and it is the only thing of which you/they understand) quantity and speed: a growing quantity, more and more big of bits and an elaboration speed and of transmission every bigger time. But quantity and speed don't have anything to do with freedom and election. On the contrary, an infinite and limitless election is an infinite and disproportionate fatigue. The disproportion among the product that offers in the net and the user that it should consume it is colossal and dangerous. We run the risk of suffocating in an exaggeration of which we defend with the rejection; what leaves us among the exaggeration and he/she swims her. The bombing excess takes us to the atony, to the anomia, to the rejection of the indigestion: and this way, everything finishes, in short, in an excess.
An ulterior aspect in our new way of being and of living it is the growing and omnipresent artificialización. The homínido of the Pleistoceno is already a man because it is endowed with prehensile hands, with those that he/she can carry out numerous actions and that they will enable it to end up being homo habilis and homo faber. Paradoxically, to today's man the prensilidad practically no longer serves him. The homo prensilis atrophies in the homo digitalis. In the digital age our chore decreases to press bellboys in a keyboard. This way, we live contained without any authentic contact with the reality, with the real world. The" hiper mediatización" (in the thesis of Gehlen, 1990) it deprives us of our experiences, experiences first hand and he/she leaves us at the mercy of the experiences of second hand. That which has serious consequences. Because each one of us only understands really the things on those that he/she has a direct experience, a personal experience. There is not book, neither speech, neither representation that can make the times of our own error. To learn how to swim it is necessary to be thrown to the water".
The" homo digitalis": I empty and stupid:
The thought reflects toward an evolution / the individual's involución in a fall of the culture, caused by the technology interactuando with that culture and creating a context of intellectual deformity. This way, the homo sapiens passes of being homo faber, then to homo videns and, on the wave of the technology to be homo digitalis on the ruins of a culture, until arriving to its transformation in homo insipiens. Internet would give the final touch so that it reaches that condition.
He/she calls to the reaction in front of the Californian gospel in a thought coalition with Furio Colombo. "Also, the preliminary remedy is always, to all the effects, in the taking of conscience of the problems and in the determination of resisting and of reacting; and it is very important to react protesting frontly against the arrogance and the intellectual verbosity of the negropontismo, of the prophets, or more good of the gurus, of the brave new electronic world.
As Furio he/she does observe Colombo, to who tries to understand the new communications and does he/she wonder what it goes by the net?, of who, for who and for bill of who?, we should only respond with sarcasm and denigración.... who is against us it is deformed and it is an inadaptado. And this, Colombo comments, it is a position that doesn't have precedents in the trajectory of the science and in the evolution of the technology. The expression - to be digital - it is also the definition of a state of grace. The grace has it or you don't have it. Who doesn't have it? Who doesn't believe in the gospel of the bit according to Negroponte.
I continue mentioning it (you could not express better)... the conviction that we are wanted to inculcate.... it is the following one: you don't pay attention to who puts objections to our faith. The objections don't count because they don't exist antagonistic. It is simply those" without roof" that camp to the margin of the net. Of a preacher one cannot want more. How he/she is possible that so many people they are allowed to charm for such a modest argument level on the part of an industrial expert of the circulation in the net... it is difficult to explain. Be not maybe so difficult of explaining, but anyway, it is unacceptable".
Sartori looks for a thought alternative, leaning on in Vico whose ideas - two and a half centuries after its time - I agree in the recognition of its validity. That alternative looks for an in route to the state of intellectual barbarism that the technological environment causes in most of the contemporary individuals.
"The formula of Giambattista Vico was that verum et factum convertuntur, that is to say that the true thing and the act transform the one in the other one. Vico tells us with it that the man can only know the own one to make. It is this way mainly in the strictest sense that he/she commented previously. And the nucleus of the question is that in the telematic world most doesn't have any idea absolutely of how he/she is carried out the" miracle" of the telever and, also, the man multimedial no longer makes anything. Their direct experience, the one that lives personally, is limited to press the bellboys of a keyboard and to read answers in a screen. For him there is not learning given by knowing making. Vico is also the author that has elaborated in its New Science, of 1730," an eternal ideal history", divided in three ages, the first one of those which, the initial age, it is thought with great imagination like a society of" horrible beasts" lacking reflection capacity, but endowed with strong senses and enormous fantasy. The man of the postpensamiento, unable of an abstract and analytic reflection that every time he/she babbles more before the logical demonstration and the rational deduction, but at the same time strengthened in the sense of seeing (the ocular man) and in fantasizing (virtual worlds), he/she is not exactly the man of Vico?. He really finds it.
He also finds in the credulity and in the superstition. The progress of the science - we have been said from now on from the Illustration - it would liberate the man of the irrational beliefs. Nevertheless, the technology, as it advances, a more credulous included man is taking place and - inocentón - that the medieval man. Why? Because the medieval man had absurd beliefs that, however, they were defined by a Weltanschauung, for a conception of the world, while the contemporary man is a to be boneless that he lives without the support of a coherent vision of the world. In this stable reference absence, the man believes because there is not reason some for not believing (Galimberti, 1994) Then, it is not paradoxical that the country that has a bigger technological science, United States, be also the country of more credulity and that more hugs cults of little it mounts. Will they be saved and rescued by the world of Negroponte these" sick of hole"?. It is little verosímil, since they are the product".
In the last part of their thesis it ends up synthesizing with the thought of the average mentalistas, but with an inverse result in the conclusion, the mind connection gives empty for the intrinsic condicionamiento of the instrument.
"The homo insipiens (fool and, symmetrically, ignorant) it has always existed and it has always been numerous. But until the arrival of the instruments of communication of masses, those" big numbers" they were dispersed, and for it same they were very irrelevant. On the contrary, the communications of masses believe a movable world in that those" dispersed" they are and they are been able to" to gather" and this way to make mass and to acquire force. In principle he/she goes well; but in the practice it works worse. And here Internet enters mainly in game that he/she opens a new and gigantic game. Because the freeways of Internet open up, rather, they open up wide open for the first time especially to the small madness, to the extravagancies and the misplaced ones, along the whole arch that he/she goes from pedófilos (the private bad habits) to terrorists (the public flagelos). And this opening is more significant as long as as soon as the man softened by the multimedialidad is lacking elements stabilizers and without roots" firm." This way, because, although the mind poor and of spirit they have always existed, the difference is that in the past they didn't count - they were neutralized by its own dispersion - while today they are, and meeting, they multiply and you potencian.
A man that loses the capacity of abstraction is ipso eo unable of rationality and it is, therefore, a symbolic animal that no longer has capacity to sustain and less still to feed the world built by the homo sapiens. On this aspect, the specialists in the means remain silent to ultranza, and their chatter only counts us the radiant arrival of an universe in vertiginous evolution... in the one that all individual and all reality are dedicated to be dissolved and to melt. The man has decreased to be pure relationship, homo communicans, inmerso in the incessant flow mediático. If, homo communicans, but what does it communicate?. The hole communicates hole, and the video boy or the man dissolved in the flows mediáticos it is only dissolved".