The Virtual World merging Reality

We live in the digital millennium where our lives are becoming increasingly more virtual. We are connected all day long and as many as 49% of the Norwegian population are surfing the web via mobile units like tablets or smartphones. This makes us easily available, and easy targets for interruption. New technologies like Google glasses will have an even greater impact on the integration between cyberspace and reality. Social media has contributed so that marketing now reach consumers faster. Word of mouth is spreading among consumers with the speed of light. Activity we conduct on the web is being monitored all the time. Cookies allow the advertisement to be more individualized targeted to each one of us. SOPA, NSA, PRISM og DLD are just some organisations that some fear are threatening our privacy and freedom of speech.

The virtual world also creates difficulties for our physical world. Amazon forces bookstores to fire their employees, or shut down their stores completely, while printed ad revenue keep falling.

With new technology and connectivity at all times are we moving towards a society where everyone can see everything. A society where we can easily monitor each other, and easier be monitored by others. A society where we find censorship necessary and where free speech is getting increasingly restricted. Censorship are also largely determined by the law and different kind of ethic rules in society and different organizations. Even in the marketing world there are rules on what you can and can not communicate to the public. In Norway you can not play on sex in commercials, you can not target commercials to kids, and you cannot make ads for alcohol or online betting. Laws like that forces marketers to find rules around, and play on sex in creative ways. Some of the Norwegian TV-channels broadcast from other countries like Great Britain to avoid these rules and still earn money on commercials related to online betting or targeted at kids. Toys commercials are illegal. But still it’s ok to use kids in commercials for shampoo and soap?

Online the marketing laws have not been occurring in the same sense, there is still not any clear rules for hidden advertising, ethics and the use of social media. But the government is trying hard to get control over all the communication that happens online as well. What you cannot say online is getting even more strict. After the Internet’s revolution we have gained a whole new world to deal with, and legislation has a new arena to penetrate; social media. The virtual world is about to merge completely with our reality and our everyday lives. The freedom for expression and a choice to be anonymous is getting more and more difficult.

“Everyone wants everyone to know something about everyone” (Amundsen, 2012). Not only do we monitor each other via social media, we also need to be careful for what we express and communicate to the outside world. “Social Media is the media we use to be social. That’s it”(Safko, 2010). Humans are social animals by nature. We need social stimulation and affiliation. Via social media one can expand one’s social network in the virtual world. We need social stimuli in order to share our thoughts, experiences, and get confirmation of our existence. On the web, we can easily express ourself, share what we have to share and show the world that we are a part of society. Uncritical we post comments and updates on social media and write “pink-blogs” about today’s outfit. On the web one can pretend to be just the person one want to be. You can troll, discuss and promote yourself exactly as you wish. Yet the continual restrictions for what we are allowed to express online forces our online presence to become more authentic. When you need to be careful with what you express, it might oblige people to act more cautious in what the communicate to each other. Especially online. People get boring and post updates of their dinner and their cat taking a shit and what not. True thoughts hardly gets out in the open. People get afraid.

We have not always seen the world as we currently see it. Looking at art as a reflection of our reality, we can see that the expressions, techniques and portraits constantly have been changing over time. Realistic paintings is something which have come along after a long time of experimentation and fine tuning over a long, long time. Approximately 500 years B.C. painters made ​​the greatest discovery until then; Abbreviation. The artists tried for the first time in history to paint a foot front view. This was then something that had never been tried before (EH Gombrich: 81). When this revolution had started it could not be stopped. Different ideas linked to the ideas of others, they borrowed ideas from one another and built new theories and techniques based on other peoples ideas. It would take a long time for us to illustrate the reality in an authentic way, and it was not until the photograph that we could truly make a genuine reflection of reality. When George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera in 1888 he made the photograph generally available to most people. Around the same time art changed from being something aesthetically beautiful and perfected to increasingly express something abstract and controversial. Now that we had a camera why would we paint reality? We could now use painting to express art in a different way, to express feelings or to portrait reality in a alternate way. With the photo art no longer needed to be an illustration of reality, but rather a freedom from it. “Passport portraits is viewed as an imprint of reality” (Danbolt, Meyer, 1988:30). It’s intended to illustrate who we are and whether we are those we claim to be. Even though we can’s really claim that the photograph is a mirror of our reality. A photograph is a moment caught in time and we have no information about the course of events around the image past and future. “The photography device gives us a picture of a person in a particular time in a particular light and in a given pictorial view” (Danbolt, Meyer, 1988:30). People change, places change, an image is not updated accordingly and thus becomes no more than a memory. Like the memories we post online will not always be removed or altered, and could never be forgotten or hidden.

Throughout history we have seen freedom of speech been curtailed in various contexts. Hans Jaeger’s novel “From Oslo Bohemians” were seized and burned by authorities the same day that it came out in 1885. Jaeger was by Supreme Court sentenced 60 days in prison for “blasphemy and defamation of bashfulness and sexual moral”. We might understand that something like that could happen some 150 years ago, but no later than two years ago NATO troops at Bagram base in Afghanistan burnt an unknown number of Korans. Which further led to large demonstrations where over 2,000 Afghans went to protest at Bagram Air Base and resulted in over 40 people killed as a result. The difference in the various cases is that the troops expressed a form of expression, while Jaeger was diprived his. How one should express freedom of speech become a different discussion. With free speech comes a responsibility, we have ethical guidelines to deal with, we have laws and clauses, all of which help to control what we say and how we should say it.

The newspaper Nordlys wrote last fall about a man in his 20’s who has been arrested with suspicion of violation of the Norwegian Penal Code section 135a, which deals with racism. The man called himself BlackRanger on the social media Twitter. These kinds of events illustrates how freedom of speech has its limitations and enter into crime offenses. Perhaps some of our expressions are to be something we keep to ourselves and write down in your diary instead of uttering us on social media. Many limitations in freedom of expression may in time cause us to censor ourselves more frequently, and it may in a way create a fear of opinion. Lawyer Jonas Haugsvold suggested in an article in Minerva that we must be the classic speech faithful and encourage citizens to give their opinion rather than to warn them not to do it – even though it is never so bad, stupidly or offensive what might ultimately be expressed from them. There are several proponents of free speech. Organizations like the Freedom of Expression and Norwegian P.E.N. are fighting for freedom of speech when the light turns out to be absent, especially in media and journalism. Hacker Society Anonymous has long been a proponent of a free network and has frequently demonstrated digitally. Recently, Yahoo said  that they want to encrypt all information that moves between the organisations data centers.

Various books and movies have over the years been considered to be indecent, pornographic, racist and blasphemous, and authorities have therefore found it necessary to apply censorship to many of them. The “Mykle-case” from 1957 is Norway’s biggest literary process in Norwegian history, Agnar Mykle was accused of portraying pornographic in the book “The Song of the Red Ruby”. Mykle was eventually acquitted. 10 years later, Jens Bjørneboe got convicted for pornographic depictions in the book “Without a Stitch”. Bjørneboe himself said that the book was intended as a parody to speed up the debate about pornography in this country. Today, books like “Fifty Shades of Grey” is one of the most sold books. Time is changing, and what we censored before is not the same as today. The limits of free speech are constantly metamorphic. Yet we continue to set boundaries of what we think is good for the public, rather than being more liberal. As recently as 2011 Media Authority forbade three movies for sale and show in Norway, including “A Serbian Film”. The Norwegian tabloid newspaper VG said the film was “the world’s worst film” and wrote that the film flirts with necrophilia and depicting child pornography.

Through social media such as online forums you can anonymously discuss and ask a whole multitude of things you might not dare to ask about otherwise. The Norwegian underground forum Freak Forum have discussions on controversial topics such as pyro, hacking and drugs. DinSide referred in 2009 to the forum as a place “where the bad guys are discussing”. Paul Rune Sørensen Tuv, owner of Norwegian Freak Forum, defends the site to DinSide that they do not accept solicitations to crime, but legal descriptions of how things can be done they publish, and explain that they are ideologically for free expression.

Internet forums are not only a place for free speech about taboo subjects, but are also easy prey for spam and viral marketing. A number of online forums in 2006 became victims of disguised advertising from Coca Cola for the launch of their new product Coca Cola Zero. The concept is called Undercover Viral marketing, and is a term for marketing that spreads via social media. “Coca Cola tries with this type of marketing to bypass the laws, norms and regulations applicable in other media”, wrote forum user NoRemorse. Viral Marketing is something marketers increasingly make use of. They make videos that are spreading like a virus through social media such as Youtube and Facebook. Studies show that 53 percent of the users do not realize that the viral videos have a commercial message. Viral Marketing can in many cases be a violation of Norwegian Marketing Control Act § 3, but are in many cases neglected without further consequences.

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”, said George Orwell. The Internet is a social platform, a marketplace, a dream world and a virtual world of opportunities and disappointments. An increasing censorship and limitations of expression creates a glossy picture of our reality and ourselves. Privacy must give way for marketers and for monitoring humankind. For the benefits of us all. In a world where we know everything about everyone, there are no secrets. In the shadow waits the anonymous to strike to save our rights. We must never forget that it is we who decide the outcome and the future ahead. “The greatest danger is ourselves, little brothers who together form the 21th century’s Big Brother” (Bénilde, Marie, LeMonde Diplomatique).

References:
Cammaerts, Mansell og Bingchiin Meng. “A Case for Promoting Inclusive Online Sharing”, MEDIA POLICY BRIEF 9, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Media and Communications, September 2013;
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/documents/MPP/LSE-MPP-Policy-Brief-9-Copyright-and-Creation.pdf (25.11.2013)

Dagbladet. «NSA overvåker datatrafikk i Danmark», mandag 25. november 2013, kl.04:11;
http://www.dagbladet.no/2013/11/25/nyheter/politikk/nsa/danmark/usa/30499708/ (25.11.2013)

Danbolt og Siri Meyer. «Når bilder formidler», Universitetsforlaget, 1988.

Gombrich, E.H. «The Story of Art». Phaidon Press Limited, 16^th edition, 2012.

Medie Norge – Fakta om Norske Medier . «Bruk av mobilt medieinnhold». http://www.medienorge.uib.no/?cat=statistikk&medium=it&queryID=369&aspekt=nyheter (26.11.2013)

Nrk.no “40 år siden dommen”, 29.06.2007;
http://www.nrk.no/kultur/40-ar-siden-dommen-1.2839527(25.11.2013)

Rahimi, Sangar, «Koran Burning in NATO Error Incites Afghans», The New York Times, 21.02.2012; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/world/asia/nato-commander-apologizes-for-koran-disposal-in-afghanistan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0(24.11.2013)

Safko, Lon. «The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success», John Wiley & Sons 2^nd edition, 2010.

The changes of yourself

We’re always looking to find ourself. Thriving to figuring out who we are.
Who are you? Who am I? I don’t believe we’ll ever find that out.

People are always changing in the most mysterious ways.
Even though your favorite color was green when you were younger it doesn’t mean that’s the color you still like the best. It don’t have to be, even though you want it to be. Some people seem to be stuck in these questions, like “what’s your favorite Movie? Music? Animal? Day of the week? Number?” etc. How the hell are anybody suppose to know these things? How do you define a favorite, and how do one set the criteria?
It’s like it’s expected by us to know what we like the most. Numbero ueno. Ichi ban. One.
What’s your favorite Food? Drink? Computer? Browser? Blogger? Web site? Place to shit?

I know what I like sometimes, and what I like better other times.
Suddenly I don’t  really like any of the alternatives anymore. I might just find something new, different and really weird to like. I can’t pick a favorite band, or musician, movie or book. It’s constantly changing, as long as I’m changing.

Like other people I’ve made a lot of lists with different favz, and I used to be a totally list “whore”.  Sometimes I use it as a reminder for «who i might be». If I actually sometime just might be figuring that out. But the questions who confuse me the most is that am I actually going to be defined by what I choose to like, what I choose to adore, love and admire? Am I going to be looked upon differently when I suddenly do not care for somethings anymore? Like my political, or ethical views. Politics change all the time, and political parties change their election program every year it’s a new election. Suddenly some parties starts to care more about animal rights, or the environment, or the educational or the health systems. The shallow stuff that’s floating on the surface, for everyone to watch. The real issues never even get debated. We don’t even care, and a lot of people vote for the same parties every year. But for some people the change and the new way of thinking is false, and a way to get populistic votes.

People seem to be assuming that when others find themselves backing away from what they used to like, it’s like stating that one is denying oneself. Like we are forgetting who we are, deep down.
I think differently. Who we are, deep down, can never be changed. It’s ok to try something new. It’s ok admitting you are not a Messiah. It’s ok admitting you’re human. People learn and  experience new things. People want to learn and get new experiences. And yes, that might be the main reason people are changing.

You always hear people commenting others, in different ways they’ve “changed”.  «She used to be so different, she’s not the same person that she used to be, she’s changed so much».
What the hell?
Off course she has changed, it would be more shocking if she didn’t.
You’ve changed, right?
You’re changing all the time, we all are.
So what, people don’t do the same crazy shit anymore, or listen to the same old music.
So what they dress differently. So what. So fucking what. It’s fucking negligible.
Get a life for yourself and stop judging people. Live a little. Change a little. Why bother?

I look back music wise and see myself listening to Spicegirls, Britney, ToyBox and other «kids music». I would never ever have listened to that today. Why? Because I’ve changed. Or in other words; I developed. Whatever reason it might be, I’m not exactly the same person now that I was 15 years back. That would have been depressing to live in a bubble of high school memories and a realization that nothing had changed in 15 years.

I’m not the same person today, that I was yesterday, or the week before that.
Does that make me a horse on the run? I’ll say no.

Even though my mind and my way of thinking is changing as I keep getting new perspectives on things, I still have all the me  inside of me. All my experiences is what I’ll take with me in life. Like my Kids-music-era; I learned a lot and I’ve decided that it’s something I don’t want to take with me in the future. To be more precisely:  It’s some kind of music I don’t feel a need to listen to anymore. Surely, I can hear a song once a while at a really bad after-party without being nagged down. Surely, I can sing  along in bad tunes. But the truth is I’d rather not, and I would rather not be at that after-party.

Maybe I’m just trying to justify the lost-sensation and give it a meaning, so that I won’t feel totally gone in mind.
I guess I like changes, and I want it just as much as 2pac.
Keep changing. Keep growing. Keep developing.

Social sadness

For so many people, life looks meaningless. We are on roller-coasters mentally.
To quote Pascal: “Nothing is more intolerable for men than a state without purpose, without goals”
For man works fine, as long as it keeps focus, as long as it doesn’t have to think too much, as long as it feels that it matters. A proven reality of being useful to society.

Many people walk around with a makeshift attitude to life. They live only conditionally, only in the present. They stop making plans for the longer term. They stop setting goals.
If it’s one’s sense of purpose to remain useful, to have a job, and that thus is a resource for the community, that could give you a feeling of belonging. But to be in a state of mind where you’re feeling low, blue or depressed, how will you overcome it. When you feel emptiness, a feeling of meaningless, a feeling that nothing matters, and nothing is everything, and everything is nothing. Really, nothing. How do you keep yourself floating above the surface?

This feeling also occurs in a figurative sense, the feeling of existential emptiness, a feeling that life lacks goals and content. People living a life in routines, and suddenly they get time to think. Suddenly everything seems so pointless. I guess a lot of us who have experienced the great pleasure of being drunk, just loves the day after. Hangover. Bad visions. Bad memories. Regret. Emptiness. You are feeling sentiment de vide.  Thoughts that may arise is that yesterday was totally pointless. You sit there with a headache and think that you should never drink again, and you’re allready dreading the job Monday morning. “Why?” You think. “Why am I doing this?” You say to yourself that you are not going to drink, ever again. And you know it’s a lie. Ask yourself;  “how do I change the situation?” “How do I change the outcome?”

Nietzsche said: “He who lives with a ‘why’, can withstand almost any ‘how'” This means that the consciousness that one’s life has a purpose, more than anything else help a person to overcome external and internal harassment’s. For those of you who have seen American Beauty, you will perhaps recognize the main character’s emotional existential meaninglessness. He set himself the typical questions about why and what, and concludes with a how. He quits his job and change his miserable life. He starts giving a fuck. Similar scenario in Fight Club.

Dostoevsky: “Man; a being who gets used to everything” Man is on the run from inner emptiness and desolation, during the flight crashing into a jumble of questions and empty boxes. Questions about life, themselves and the universe. People get lost in their thoughts. The tanks are stuck on a rolling tape in a circle. Man is by nature animated by a will to meaning, a yearning or a meaningful existence and struggle to achieve this goal. When this fails it is to believe that man is trying to numb the feeling of emptiness and intoxicate themselves by whatever satisfaction they can get their hands on, whatever that may mean personally. Sex, love, drugs, food, porn, social media etc. The will for desire occurs in the arena when one is standing there empty handed and disillusioned with nowhere to go. No meaning. No fulfillment. No goals. No visions for one self.

Love is the greatest thing in life, so I live in altruistic spirit to my fellow man. But I still see nothing wrong in people working for themselves, build their character and live in the belief that it will ultimately serve humanity. Yes, we are social beings. Individual unique snowflakes that together form a great white winter. But when summer comes, and we all melt away from each other, what do you want to be next?