Parallels

Finishing reading some theories written by the proclaimed patron saint of the Wired magasine Marshall Mcluhan I started creating in my mind some parralels between hypoteses that where launched by him and real events that are happening in over times . His theories where quite complex and their spam predicted the event of globalisation and the ememrgence of a new type of culture . he was a media theory guru and started analysing what is the impact of media in general on the world . His
theories made space not for answers but for more questions and he predicted the emergence of the informational culture before anyone could even see things coming .
One of his theories was related to the electronic age in witch we find ourselves ; and age in witch there are no such things as remote places and where everything is happening now because of the hyperconnections and linking possibilities that the world wide web offers . He started comparing humans with the cave man in a metaphorical way describing the living spaces from the cities of the twenty first century as electric caves that are interconnected trough digital media . From television that became a window to what is happening in the world to the communication networks that where brought out by the emergence of the world wide web . This concept is powerful because it puts people in general in new aura transforming the cosmopolite inhabitants of the city in “ cave people “ that are connected trough the web . There is one subculture in witch the same phenomenon happens and that works on the same basic pattern ; that subculture is the otaku culture that is formed out of individuals that become part of an unreal universe and that enclose themselves in this universe becoming part of what is called a subculture . These people are connected trough digital media and the new places of encounter are not the corner cafe' s but chat hubs or topic related networks that are virtual . They are an indoor species that are addicted to the web and subordonate to their tool of communication . They are invisible enclosing themselves into a new world where socialization and outer daily activities are part of a new type of comunication , information being transmitted trough different auxiliary and sometimes
un ortodox ways . Being connected to this a network and having the russian constructivist theory that said that “ time is measured in distance “ in the back or our heads puts things in a new light . If “time is measured in distance” and the distance in the digital age is realtime is not the web the highway of the future , in witch the response is real timed and telepresence is the new presence . We are comunicating more and more trough squares ( monitors) being trapped into cave like universe where the web is becoming the new outside .
Another thing that can be related to this theory are the paintings that where made by Mandeloin Visendorp ,the cofounder of OMA and the wife of Rem Koolhaas ,when she was still in the Architectural Association in London . Her paintings have a surreal flair and expose urban minimalist composition where there are no people that inhabit the “outside” So if the monoliths that are painted on the canvas represent a form of inhabitable architecture that means that the “outside “ is of no interest for the inhabitants of these forms . They are focused on the web generated reality where everyone can communicate and participated to onn line conferences of meetings at any moment of the day . With this technology the remote dissapears and everyone be part of the same action . This form of communication is pushing the boudaries of things is all kinds of directions transforming communication as we know it into a form of dynamic experiment .
If the television was the infrastructure for an informational society where you could take your information from different sources channels then the web is the infrastructure for a prossumer ( as writer phillip K dick said ) society where one individual is not only a reciver of information anymore but he becomes a producer of information that can be distributed trough all kinds and different means , from avatars to social networking hubs and all kinds of information placement tools .
A prosumer can be seen as a filter between the real and the virtual ; anyone is a filter to something for exapmple a painter makes a painting that in manny cases can be a reinterpretation of the real world or a new world that only exisists on the canvas but it was generated by the brain that worked as recomposing machine of the real and generated the outcome of an abstract painting .We cannot deny that imagination is under the influece of the reality and that we are inspiring ourselves sometimes involuntarily out of the real world .