Post-modernity and blogs

I've mentioned a few of the influences that new media exert on the definition of the self. There is a lot of openness - people sharing their thoughts openly to a large audience - a proximity to people, namely professionals such as journalists, lawyers or doctors who keep their own blogs. This proximity may be a consequence of the erasure of place as such, provided by the created cyberspace within the media. Proximity is related to the concept of immediacy, where people's thoughts are brought together in a much more immediate sense than in conventional places. In this case, the media goes further than erasing itself to pushing the boundaries of 'intellectual' relationships. However, the media is ever more opaque when sensorial presence and natural communication is at stake.

A useful concept here is that of synesthesia, or lack of it. The disarray of our senses can at times be experienced in the new media, in a parallel with the example of the discomfort experienced by early train travellers. We spend more time isolated and far from other human beings, sensorially speaking, while we may be closer intellectually speaking. To represent this point, consider the following picture of a cow in a prairie:

The previous image only suggests a cow in a prairie. It is far from the full experience of being in presence of the animal and the surrounding nature. The effectiveness of this process of representation, namely the photograph, is subject to a process of acculturation. It is not reality, and this our senses are ready to inform us. The same process of acculturation is at play when we communicate with others through new media. In new media, the multiplication of different forms of representation in the same space can contribute to a sort of dizzying effect.

Another aspect of this discomfort is the sudden rise in informational load that one is subject to. This malaise may be relieved in some sense by the building of communities and reliable affirmations of the new self online. The art project 'postsecret' refashions our feeling of togetherness by uniting us under a same endeavour, and bringing to light important shared feelings. In 'deviantart' one might find his place among people sharing the same sensibilities. A human side to the cyberspace is created in this way. Blogs, more generally, also contribute to this, not only from sharing feelings or thoughts and receiving feedback on them, but mainly from the perspective of affirming the individual's place within the huge stream of information. The Internet is refashioned around the blog's links which provide a user-centered view on the whole of Internet.

As a last feature, and in a contrary tendency to the previous affirmation of the centering of the subject with respect to the network, I want to talk about the constitution of the subject as a product of online interrelationships. Blogs written by several people, a 'blog team' are becoming common usage. Furthermore, the (cyber)subject only exists properly when acknowledged by references and comments made from other places in cyberspace. In that sense, it is difficult to achieve centrality in the traditional sense. Metaphorically, the cyberspace contributes to the demise of central, linear accounts characterisitic of post-modern scholarship. This trend could undermine a 'homely-feeling' within the new media, but I think we are yet to see surprising twists and redefinitions of the 'self', in terms of online expression and ways of life, in the near future.