It was June 1921. Ninety thousand people gathered at Jersey City Arena to watch the boxing match of the century. After a fiercely contested fight, American boxer Jack Dempsey knocked out French boxer Georges Carpentier in the fourth round. What made this the fight of the century was not only the clash between two heavyweight champions: radio broadcasting also dealt a knockout blow to the circulation of the printed press. Beyond the thousands in the stadium, the match reached 300,000 people—not through print, but through sound technology. It was a revolution...
This revolution continues to reach millions of people today, with the development of the internet. With the development of social media, we can reach hundreds or even thousands of people instantly. In the 21st century, we now have some kind of divine abilities. There is no such thing as dying in the virtual environment anymore. The weight of the physical environment is replaced by a homogeneous circulation of information that will never disappear from the virtual environment. Information continues to radiate after us in the virtual environment, as if the light of a dying planet reaches the earth after millions of years.
With this radiation, it is as if everyone and everything in the 21st century wants to be constantly seductive. Hot people, transparent lips, luminous skies, a retro smile... This is the real contemporary nobility. It is as if we are in the situation that Byzantium once fell into. With the only difference: This time, the culture of worship is realized with the images of popular culture. This "iconophilia" constitutes the pop culture of our age. Now, if there is such a thing as being perfect, it means being "online".
Hasn't technology been producing models based on things it doesn't have for a long time? Pornography with sexuality, the extreme dimension of sports, the manipulative power of politics have been collaborating with technology for a long time... This powerful expansionist aspect of technology brings great victories even to the stupidest things.
All the realities and ideals that once served as principles and guidance for us are literally dying. The death of reality does not mean that it disappears. On the contrary, over-produced reality now makes it impossible to believe in it.
We no longer have the concept of distance, which used to distinguish value judgments and thoughts from each other and keep them at a distance. Opposite poles are disappearing, the world of sharing eliminates the lines of our definitive value judgments. Instead of the information that was formed and digested in the historical process before the media reached its current speed and power, the live news published today presents us with "something that resembles a movie" rather than reality. The real news, on the other hand, has already been torn to pieces and is moved to a position where we can never learn its real content.
On the other hand, the greatest punishment of technology in the 21st century ends with turning the things that prohibit it into images. Just as revolutions swallow their own children, technology today threatens to swallow the systems that once gave them the right to unlimited freedom and then tried to ban it. It is as if it is saying to us, "Do you want to be sacrificed? Then talk about your value judgments, destinies and prohibitions that I (technology) cannot reach."
Today, technological development and the sharing world it brings (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc.) confront us with the threat of turning into an image. “Becoming an image means displaying the positive and negative aspects of daily life without any secrets. It means being in constant communication.” Therefore, there is nothing left for us to hide in our perception of reality today. In the century we live in, that is why we no longer have any secrets...
Today, images are knocking out reality, just like American boxer Jak Dempsey knocked out French boxer Georges Carpantier after a very tough fight. And the last pieces of reality that we all have left are scattered around, and this is becoming the biggest revolution of the 21st century...
Ali Alışır
2014