Cloud Punk: The Digital Fifth Wave

By Herlander Elias

The cloud changes the game when it brings the logic of the network for commercial domination and it spreads the motto of the computer as terminal for streaming. Thinking beyond this is to realize that what "died" here was the computer. Without our daily digital media the cloud makes no sense. We may be in a hybrid point in some cases, but the cloud is more than a trend, is a macro-event of significance and a macro-fact. However, we can still rely on the idea of ​​Sterling and Gibson, who in the 1980s knew the computer would become more than a object of glamour and sophistication. The computer was from the start meant to be pure network, thus the cloud, and here comes a new wave of new things and the way people changed for using the digital media over the last 20 years. In the time of the cloud, the new heroes are the cloud punks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Jun 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925819618

Herlander Elias

Elias is a professional of Communication Sciences. Early as a graduate student he is concerned with research issues. He graduates in Communication Sciences at the University Lusófona of Humanities And Technologies, in Lisbon, and in a fast pace he finishes the first book on "Cyberpunk". Since 1999 the author endeavours in working as a Journalist on Internet-focused and multimedia-driven, IT news and entertainment magazines.

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Preface

It could even be a fiction book

It is a common thing fictional literary works which portray a dystopic future. Imaginary narrative is embraced by an uncomfortable restlessness when somebody tries to predict our machines and technology relation. This kind of future is unknown and there is a comprehensive fear. The future past narratives tried to anticipate what would be the present we experiment nowadays. Just for a moment, look around and you soon will realize that Skynet does not win, we are not source of energy to the machines, replicants do not kill humans, people need not to be genetically manipulated before born to be considered capable and we do not drive cars through desert-cities looking for gasoline. These are old visions of a future that does not belong to us. On the contrary, we live together with concepts as metaverse, data-telling, cloudware, cyberwar, blockchain, hyper-information and hierarchies’ fragmentation which provide an heterarchy culture of production and the diffusion of contents which is typical of a rhizomatic means. These are some of nowadays particularities. This is the reality we live in.

Notwithstanding, Cloud Punk: The Digital Fifth Wave, tells about our present.

In this work there is a deep reflection on the contemporaneity of a digital society, telematic, interconnected, hybrid, and one which produces and consumes a quantity of data unimaginable for the previous generation. We live in informative bubbles. Our online actions are watched. We give our consent, in a frightened pacific form, to be sold to big cloud companies. What is to be noticed in this work is the fact we live a process of memories, works, economy and consumer goods dematerialization and also of everything that can be scanned. In other words, the quality of the physical things is not a prerequisite for an object existence. What would be the physical existence of a work? The words I write here are equally true on a printed book or in an electronic book. The same movie exists in the theaters or in on-demand platforms. The object is not only independent from its materiality but it is also independent from its locality. The cloud is ubiquitous.

Our present is invisible to the most of the eyes. However, there are people who can see through the transparency of the immateriality. Differently from those who can consider this work as an example of a fiction with a near future flavor, there are others who notice the presence of a paradigmatic rupture of our way of existing and resisting in this world. To adapt and to transform: so it is and so it will be.

In this work, Herlander Elias reveals to us that he has a mind which walks in a lucid way by the threads of digital contemporaneity. He is a cyberthinker who can, with nimbleness, be away of the common places of discourses on technology. The author gifts us with an intelligent and intriguing thinking which certifies a serene capacity of detachment which turns the present we live holds flavors of a near future. He is, in fact, a person with attentive eyes to our time. Because he does not think only by himself, he thinks profusely and reaches multiple areas and disciplines.

It is noticeable that our post-digital society is not a theoretical concept anymore. During the reading, the author turns possible to us more than a conceptual comprehension; he makes us recognize the presence of this immaterial reality which crosses over our lives. He crosses over our humanity. He transforms us in post-humans who live in another habitat, with new biotechnological extensions. To accede this new habitat, nowadays extremely occupied by yotabytes of information created by us, is possible by machine intermediation only. The language of this new habitat, created by us, is perceptible by machine intermediation alone. We are creating a new universe, which cannot be experienced by tact, smell, or taste. Our human belief in heaven eternal life, in the clouds, has been turned in reality. The difference is that the place now is called cloud and our memories, in binary data way, will be there while there is energy to keep them there.

Nothing else is offered here besides present’s reality. This is fascinating.

By Flávio Almeida – PhD and lecturer at Universidade Da Beira Interior and IADE — Universidade Europeia. English version by Sandra Isoldi.

Introduction

Anywhere, anytime, it does not matter sophistication level or amount of belongings, culture and technology are always present in the human history. The act of creating and developing abstract concepts and artifacts belong to our humanity. Nature reconfiguration belongs to our nature. When we have the opportunity to create, we feel comfortable in the detachment, in the superlative, in the overcoming. Technology is a certificate of human intelligence, as well as of our arrogance. To be beyond, to be better, to be faster. Become the gods culture creates. Boats in order to dominate seas, planes in order to explore skies, vehicles in order to move faster, machines in order to have a demolisher strength , technology in order to be omniscient and to be omnipresent.

The technical reproductivity which so much disturbs Walter Benjamin, in the 1930’s, is largely signified again in the post-digital era. To create identical beings is desirable today. Digital reproductivity results in a reliable copy. From one original it is possible to create two originals. There is no demerit in the reproduction. Literature, music or movies artistic objects, for instance, are identical in theirs structural genetics: a long recipe made of binary code. The cloud relies on the copy to distribute content to its users. In the cloud, the copy is the original and, for users, what matters is the copy. The difference is in the way people enjoy the work.  A movie in the theater is not more original than a movie in a streaming service. A physical book is not more original than an electronic book. The difference inhabits in the transcription of these works from a mean to another.

At the moment I write this text, I work at different semantic levels in my computer. At one extreme, there is the organic structure of my being and my cognition to articulate those words and, at the opposite extreme, the intersemiotic translation to a binary language where computer can perform their functions. Finally, another machine received instructions to precisely paint with ink specific parts of this exact piece of paper. In the case lecture occurs in a electronic device, pixels will perform the function of create the necessary contrasts in the screen. The original printed version of a book, photograph, newspaper or magazine which someone can buy at the newsstand, currently, are physicals adaptation of an immaterial digital original. In one level, a person should meet the desirable material. In another level, the material (and many others) meets the person. However, the meet of the second is possible through an artificial intelligence mean, by machine learning about user personal preferences.

In the post-digital, among a sea of copies, user is the differentiating element. It is an unique entity which generates content, manages data, generates apprenticeship and, at the end, runs away with content. Each user is unique and its singularity cannot be reproduced, nevertheless, the content is influenced through mass media. As individuals we are unique, but in the cloud we are sorted in tags. We are known by our browsing history, by the content we share, by the likes we give to the things. At the end, who are we in this post-digital era? What is the self-knowledge level we must have?

In April 2018, Mark Zuckenberg, Facebook’s CEO, was taken to testify at the United States Senate as consequence of the inappropriate utilization of millions of users data on his social network. It is alleged that these data were processed by a data mining company and they were used to influence ballot intention in the 2016 election of the United States. This is a meaning event in many aspects for the assimilation of the post-digital reality and the cloud inflict to us. It is proved the power of the data, tags and information sharing that the users do for leisure. These data are valuable only thanks to their giant number and to the ordination capacity that the digital allows. Laws do not contemplate this new form of crime yet, or at least, there is no clear limitation about ethics in the use of available data.

Our spare time is a corporative necessity. The access to this data will be available through trivial entertainment content pages and access consent was offered spontaneously by users themselves. It is through our cloud activity that companies will comprehend our personalities and preferences in order to act in the physical world and, in this case, to influence ballot results.

In this present that aims to unknown courses about how humanity will coexist with the post-digital advent, there is a clear concern with the cyberwar. This term cannot coexist with the dystopic fictional imaginary anymore. Cyberwar is real and the companies that has necessary valency to obtain and to store data of millions of users in global scale are moving already in order to armor their commercial interests. This step was taken by the Cybersecurity Tech Accord signed in April 2018. This agreement was signed by 34 companies with large participation and presence in the cloud and it makes clear the non-collaborative intention with government in cases of war or cyberspace crimes. The agreement says about civil empowerment and it assures rights and security for cloud users. We live a time where corporations come together in order to resist to the States. These are times where not only economic power, but also data power take precedence over Nations power. This is one of the fifth digital wave consequences which the author proposes to unravel throughout this work.

This work is divided in six parts organized in a way to explain first of all the related ideas between the post-digital era and the ones behind the concept of cloud punk. After this, the author will develop many arguments based on this problem to conclude then his arguments about the cloud punk and our digital contemporaneity.

1.0 Part will introduce the main and basic concepts of cloud, about paradigmatic changes in the post-digital era, the consummation and entertainment formatting and about the incoherence of trying to be anti-establishment in the contemporaneity, as the cyberpunks were. These digital space agents get out of the scene in order to open space to a kind of version 2.0: the cloud punks. They are, altogether, individuals with corporation power who believe in the propagation of information in order to potentialize people and machines. The author will introduce the discussion about the importance of data and how they are essential to the development of artificial intelligence, and consequently to the interconnection inside the cloud. In fact, 21st Century is the century of gathering everything in data (datification). This will turn it possible a fundamental inversion of rules between content and its users, once now information will find its users. Those who access the cloud turn themselves in artificial intelligence research aims in order to provide content. Inside this huge labyrinth of information, the cloud punks have access to the best information. This model of reflection will help with a better comprehension of what post-web and post-computer phase will be.

2.0 Part has its theoretical focus on different aspects of cloud phenomenon. There was a behavior change, not only in the contents distribution way, but also in the way users prefer to obtain them. Music and movies streaming services have become themselves more and more popular. Access rights takes place instead of music and movies illegal download without definitive possession of the consumption material. The neo-liberalization of the information is one of the key subjects of this part. The cloud is also the place of contents insertion (it is never a place of contents exclusion) as well as the articulation of these same contents by cloudware. The author will state that one of this scenario articulation agents will be the cloud punk who assumes simultaneously consumer, producer and activist rule inside a reality where we are less the owner of things we buy and more the owner of the operations we perform in the cloud. He will approach also the questions as continual scanning and the perception reality is becoming boring for post-digital users; this, occasionally, would clarify partially the users confessional behavior who decide what they want to share. This behavior is essential to keep the cloud and artificial intelligence system of big corporations powered and in continuous evolution. This constant interaction between corporations and users turns into products which will never be completed once they receive permanent feedback.

Next chapter, 3.0 Part, begins by the humanity relation with the search for information in the antiquity until nowadays where corporations search for information in order to create a giant library for users to access them. The question here is that the access to the cloud contents becomes paid and the cloud punks fight against this corporative tendency because they believe in the advantages of the free traffic information. Afterwards, he will deal with the collaborative creation theme and design and creativity contribution in order to resist to the automatism in data manipulation and to keep human subjectivism in the cloud. That is the way main characters of cloud post-digital reality are created: the CEOs, the creators and the anonymous mass. Then he will talk about digital nomadism and cloud punks role at the always continuous cloud digital space due to the novelty dictatorship, among other factors. The dominance of the cloud represents the dominance of the world, as the author. This results in a kind of cyberwar by searching the most valuable thing in the post-digital era: the data. Cloud war is powerful enough to modify reality, or at least part of it. And this war is opened not only to the corporations, but also to the State and obviously to the cloud punks. In the end, the author talks about the new narrative cloud presents to our society. A narrative made up from our registers and data.

4.0 Part deals with mobility primarily and the importance of the mobile communication technologies have in the post-digital era. With these new technologies, new ways of gathering our everyday data reign. Computer has become obsolete with the advent of mobiles, tablets and wearables. Content formats available to the cloud are adapted to these devices. The author states that capitalist society has melted into the information society and the current cloud is an hybrid of high-tech with fast-capital. The cloud is an ecosystem populated not only by data, but also by real individuals through their avatars. In this situation, where corporations are impressive , once they have their own cloud control, the cloud punks are characters who have some marginal power once they can gather data and generate connection in this ecosystem. What is produced inside and for the cloud has an elevated value because of the convenience and integration with digital universe. The author mentions the e-books sold by Amazon’s case and, as per his own definition, the cloud become a history medium of archive consumption by subscription. This macro-narrative formed in the cloud is decodified  by the cloud punks through data interconnection. In this chapter, the author will talk about online research approach of digital masses, pre-computer realities, post-computer, pre-web and post-cloud and also about the habit of young in the cloud.

5.0 Part begins with a reflection about the term cloudites and cloudgenics, agents who meet themselves at opposite sides concerning their relation with the cloud. Researches and posts made in the cloud will stay there and their users will lose subjectivity by gathering of data. Our identity will be made up by our searches, buy habits and sharing. Alternatively, dark data offers privacy and escape to corporative control. Machines count on data in order to study us. It is a fundamental part to study us in order to offer more services and we are more and more dependents of the cloud and its services. We live in a cloud society and we become homocypiens. Instead, there are the data dandy and its disinformation phobia, virtual absence, non-gathering data. As such the cloud punks, data dandies have eminent digital literacy, however their objectives and ways to be in the cloud are very different. The connection with the cloud is more and more wide and information agglomerate are more and more giants. If the access was possible by a desk computer before, there are now multiple ways to access data. The author creates parallels between this spatially free shape of access fluidity and the concepts of liquid modernity, of Bauman, and the desirous space, of Deleuze. The voluntary isolation of the cloud punks will be discussed and also how is the present scenario of the not linear world addicted in the big data and its financials unfolding.

In the end, on 6.0 Part, the discussion will begin by the macro-circuit and the desire by constant connection to the cloud by its users; and the desire by the cloud punks of having the possession of all available information on-demand. This mass expansion leads to a global monoculture in order the corporations can have their products culturally accepted as much as possible by people. Media landscape and ideas control is the aim of the new post-digital empire. These landscapes are more than multiple information channels; they offer multiple levels of shapes to be and to interact. The mediascapes and ideoscapes were and are powered by their users. For the author, the cloud is a post-cyborg environment full of signs, brands and ideas. It is a macro-narrative space and a civilizational history medium. Later, the author talks about a cybersphere and the new way of life and consumption habits imposed to the users. Games, promotions, novelties, prizes and others commodities and activities are designed for this digital multiverse. Regardless the cloud has been dominated by artificial intelligence, the cloud punks can notice the hyper-history behind this reality: they are the native of the cloud. They are connoisseurs of patterns and creators of signified. And their greater advantage over artificial intelligence is creativity in the manner of act and of interact.