If we were to ask ourselves, what the future would look like in 20
years, it would be almost impossible to imagine how far technology will have
advanced. If we look back 20 years ago to 1993, the difference between
technology and media use then to now is incomparable. No mp3 players, cd
diskman or iTunes. No flat screen/ digital tvs, no wifi, no iPods, iPads or
iPhones. No online banking or shopping and no Facebook, Bebo, MySpace or
YouTube! The list goes on and on. Yet today, these items and platforms are
what form the basis of how we live our lives. It almost seems impossible to
think how we could live without them. So in saying this, how far can technology
progress in the future?
It is almost as if technology is moving too fast. New devices and forms
of technology are produced regularly making it very difficult to keep up to
date with the latest goods on the market and the platforms in which they are
used. Keller Easterling describes the fact that, “ while accepting that a
technology like mobile telephony has become the world’s largest shared platform
for information exchange, we are perhaps less accustomed to the idea of space
as a technology or medium of information.”
There is no doubt that we are becoming more familiar with the idea of how
information and data can travel from person to person via the use of space
around us. However it is this feeling of hauntology that makes us skeptical not
only about what the future holds, but also the thought of being haunted buy the
ghosts of the past. An article by Gallix (2011), it refers to hauntology as “the
priority of being and presence with the figure of the ghost as that which is
neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive”. It originated in France from
Jacques Derrida where it appeared first in Spectres of Marx (1993).
With this thought in mind, it is evident that although we are constantly
evolving with new technology and media platforms, there is still an element of
fear that we possess of the unknown and what the future may hold. With the
rapid rate that technology is progressing it is only fair that we have these
questions and fears about the future of media and how we will be dealing with
them as time progresses.
References
Andrew Gallix
(2011) ‘Hauntology: A not-so-new critical manifestation
The new vogue in literary theory is shot through with earlier ideas’
Keller Easterling (2011) ‘An Internet of Things’, e-flux journal,
< http://www.e-flux.com/journal/an-internet-of-things/
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