Late modernity and cyberculture

Thus, late modern culture is a culture of crisis. In the late modern age, people have lost their faith in the further validity of all traditionally appliedtotality creatingeffects,world building principlesandpractices. This isobvious to a great extent; it is “in the air” so much that any kind of recall or listing can only spoil the full experience and understanding of the situation. Nevertheless, we cannot do without a short reminder.

The rulingrelations of productionand the social-economical world order went through numerous radical trans-formations during the 20^thcentury. Perhaps it is enough to refer to the worldwide economical and political changes following the socialist revolutions of the century, the boom and fall of socialist regimes, the restructuring and decay of the imperialist colonial system or the successive waves of globalization. The frequent changes of the ideologies ruling in the 20^thcentury partly displayed and partly actively supported the mentioned economical and political changes. In the grip of the multiplication and changeability of the coexisting ideologies, some thinkers even seriously propagated the paradoxical standpoint of choosing an ideology without an ideology. No doubt, the activities of avant-garde movements facilitated the radical pluralization of artisticstyles, which is so large-scale that we can talk about the cessation of styles. As an illustration, think of the dissolution of traditionalreligious systemsand the prominent multiplication of religions and religious associations. Rulingscientific paradigmscontinuously face challenges, and they have often been forced to change from the first years of the 20^thcentury. Perhaps it is enough to recall the scientific revolutions of the theory of relativity, quantum theory, Freudianism or genetics. The tradi-tionalworldviewbuilt on classical physics became plural even from the second part of the 19^thcentury, and at the turn of the century, worldviews created successively and piling up on each other were trying to create the scientific worldview of our age (Ropolyi 1985). Perhaps the situation has changed in this area inasmuch as because of the interpretations of the meanwhile developed philosophy of science, they pay more attention to the social context of scientific activities. However, science understood as fit into a social context looks even more “disillusioning”

since in this way, the necessary relativity of its evaluations, practicability and usefulness become clear.

As a result of all these factors – and numerous others –, the late modern man is forced to admit that he cannot find any useful world building principles and methods which would function with an unconditional validity in his concrete everyday existence, or ideologies and thought systems which would be able to support him intellectually in building his world. However, man cannot exist while being “deprived of his world”, since the existence of man is being-in-the-world. (It is obviously not a coincidence that Heidegger’s ideas, so expressively put in this question, developed in the critical years of the 20^thcentury) (Vajda 1990; Dreyfus 1991; Fehér 1992; Ropolyi 2000c) Without world building methods which could be used with a hope in success, man either diagnoses his helplessness and exists in the despair of “being thrown into freedom” and deals with the analysis of human existence,⁴or he satisfies his need to build a world by expanding his identity into being worldwide.⁵However, this latter method is clearly different from the egoist methodology of the modern personality built on ignoring. First of all, it is different in its relationship to reality: the world of the modern personality is real, while the world of the above mentioned post-modern personality is necessarily virtual.⁶Thus, the late modern answer to the failure of traditional world creating principles and methods is the creation of personal, individual and virtual worlds and submerging or withdrawing into these worlds.

4Many figures of existentialism who face similar problems can provide him with useful help.

5Here we deliberately ignore the otherwise often used solution in which man, for want of something better, still tries to operate the unreliably operable traditional methods of world construction for a while.

6We will develop a more detailed analysis of the structure, characteristics and functioning of the modern and the postmodern personality in the second volume of our treatise.

The transformation of culture in late modernity

This solution is obviously postmodern. In light of what we said above about the development of crises, it is clear that the postmodern personality of the late modern age can only rely on his own self, and as a result of the complete relativization of reality and the contingency of reaching actual reality, he can only build on his own self. “I am a barrier next to the river: hold on to me those who can. But I am not your crutch. – Thus spoke Zarathustra.” The postmodern man of the late modern age is holding on to online barriers and he is surrounded by a virtual reality.

4.3.1 Culture and cyberculture

The nature of late modern culture is also transformed as a result of the peculiar world building practice of the late modern age. Among others, we identified the reinterpretation and transformation of naturally given circumstances as the factual meaning of culture. However, reinterpretation and transformation is by far not an easy task in a crisis situation. We necessarily need some kind of “world” for the reinterpretation (in fact, for the transformation as well), that is, a coherent system (a “meaningful whole”, a semantic universe, a world view encompassing the whole of experiences and views, etc.) in which the meaning of the thing to be interpreted can be revealed by fitting it in it. However, in case of a deep crisis, it is precisely the world which can be identified as a coherent whole what disappears, becomes uncertain or unattainable. (This is why in situations of crisis, “culture fells off us”⁷, since the reference which gives a meaning to things disappears.)

When the citizen of the late modern age is forced to expand his own personality and extend it into a whole world, his own world becomes the reference of all things at the same time. As they used to say a long tome ago: the measure of all things is man, of the existence of what exists and of the non-existence of what does not exist.⁸In order to create our own personality as our own world, we need to reinterpret the once already reinterpreted naturally given circumstances yet again, that is, the revaluation and transformation of the social environment is the task here and this is precisely what the late modern citizen does: he revaluates and transforms the circumstances of the indi-vidualgiven by society, and he regards the thus created new world of values ashis own culture.Of course, such revaluation is possible without a crisis – artists often practice it – but in the circumstances of a deep crisis, it is emphatically needed and it presses down as a real necessity on the person who exists in the crisis. The world of values developed this way in the late modern age iscyber culture. Thus, cyber culture is significantly different from culture understood in the “traditional” sense. On the one hand, traditional culture is created through the re-valuation and transformation ofnaturally givencircumstances and forms the content of thesocial system as such, while cyber culture is created through the revaluation and transformation ofsocialcircumstances and it forms the content ofweb life, a new form of existence. On the other hand, culture is based on therealpractice of revaluation and transformation of humancommunities, but cyber culture is based on thevirtualrevaluation and transformation practices of humanindividuals. Culture is created by people, cyber culture comes into existence; culture develops world-like creations, cyber culture explores virtual worlds.

We can regard several arts as the historical “antecedents” of cyber culture (for example, poetry) or any other “in-dividual world creating” activity. In in“in-dividual artistic creative processes, virtual, “world-like” works of art are created. For creating world-like circumstances, the artist has to revaluate and recreate the social circumstances.

During the creative process, the situation of the artist is otherwise very similar to the situation of an individual in a deep crisis; think of for example the requirement of disconnecting from real circumstances and other creative artistic techniques. True, the artist usually puts his own self in the situation into which the late modern individual is “thrown”, what is more, for the artist this is a life situation which only exists during the creative process, while for the postmodern individual, this isthelife situation.

However, the web citizen, the late modern postmodern personality that creates cyber culture and lives in it, uses other tools for the virtual revaluation of the world than the artist. It is the use of information technology what makes the web citizen capable of revaluation; on the other hand, the artist applies artistic techniques which are adjusted to his genre. Therefore, the world of artistic creation and cyber culture can be very similar as regards their content so their differentiation might seem somewhat unjustified, but because of the different nature of their production technologies, it is still suitable to separate them. At the same time, it also has an immense significance that the use of information technology essentially makeseveryoneable to understand a practice very similar to artistic activity and as a result, it decreases the “elitist” nature of artistic work and artistic tasks, and leads to the “democratization”

of the whole sphere of art and makes it available for the masses.

7From a poem by Attila József. (The note of the translator).

8The Ancient Greek Sophist tradition worked with this radically worldview. It would not be surprising at all if the popularity of Sophist teachings increased significantly among the followers of cyber culture.

The transformation of culture in late modernity

In this way, cyber culture is popular art andvice versa(popcultures.com). But it is an artistic activity which the web citizen is forced into. Cyber culture – similarly to traditional culture – is supported by something. Traditional culture is supported by communities, and cyber culture is supported by the virtual cyber community sustained by web citizens. The cyber community is created by the countless web citizens expanded into a worldwide form, what is more, in a peculiar form of organization and mode of existence in which their own world-like quality does not suffer any damage. Earlier we said that society or the social system is the type of entity the form of which is created by communities and the content of which is created by culture or cultures. We can add here thatweb life is the kind of entity the form of which is created by cyber communities and the content of which is created by cyber culture.

We would like to draw attention to the fact that the circumstances of web life are not social circumstances but re-valuated and transformed social circumstances; consequently,web life represents a new human form of existence.

In order to explain its development, we had to study the social context of scientific and technological knowledge, however, for we will probably have to analyze the processes of artistic world creation its detailed characterization.⁹ Cyber culture in the strict sense of the word is a relatively new phenomenon: we could not claim about many of its versions or followers that they are older than 10 or 15 years. The understanding of its characteristics and novelty is quite varied (Lévy 2001). The following websites belong to the inexhaustible sources of studies focusing on its discussion: [Alan Liu’s voice of the Shuttle; Cindy Grant Creative Hat’s; Cyberculture; .netculture.; Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies; popcultures.com; Silver 2000].

4.3.2 Culture on the Internet

The primary and natural source of cyber culture is the Internet. (Here we do not discuss its occurrence in other environments, e.g. pop music or computer games.) Nevertheless,traditional cultureis of course also present on the Internet, indeed, its presence is important and plays a significant role in Internet use. We can identify such representations of traditional culture on the Internet as for example books, newspapers, magazines, consumer goods, official administration, scientific publications, works of art – but we can think of for example participation in religious ceremonies or electronic correspondence. The cultural services that are available and can be used through the Internet regard the Internet as a modern tool. Without any doubt, the Internet can function as a modern tool and satisfy the needs of such people. Of course, the characteristic features of the Internet appear and are effective in these cases as well, for example its speed or communicative complexity through which it treats traditional cul-tural values in a somewhat, but not essentially modified form. For example, electronic mail, apart from a few of its characteristics, essentially expresses the same values as traditional mail.

We can also observe the presence of cultural activities on the Internet which consciously utilize the opportunities offered by the Internet and as a result essentially change traditional activities and value worlds but which are con-nected to the prevailing social circumstances and can be characterized with the possible goals of this social envir-onment. The program of theconscious transformation of culture (Agree 1998) is probably closely related to Habermas’s standpoint in the modern-postmodern debate. We can mention the initiative of the MIT in Boston as a characteristic and significant illustration of such ambitions. One of the most famous universities in the world displaysall of its teaching activitieson the Internet since 2002 September (MIT OpenCourseWare 2002). Anyone is free to join into the education process through the Internet free of charge. The leadership of the MIT is hoping that their initiative will find its followers and soon everyone can access the most authentic sources of university knowledge. The ideal of using the Internet for cultural purposes played an important role among the motives of the decision of MIT. As one of the officials said, it is unbearable that only selling T-shirts is realized from the possibilities of the Internet when the cultural state of society could use more than that. Though they do not give a degree – people still have to pay for that – they give knowledge. In fact, they have been trying to utilize the Internet in education since its appearance. The idea of the so-called virtual university is quite old and we could see many versions of the realization of the idea. It seems that the method followed by MIT will encourage other initiatives to do something similar.

The third cultural sphere represented on the Internet can be categorized ascyber culturein the strict sense of the word. The eminent example of cyber culture is the World Wide Web itself. The multitude of websites and the links which create connections between them are the two determinative components of it. The characteristic form of cyber cultural life is the creation ofpersonal(and institutional)websitesand the active and passive activities

con-9Several postmodern thinkers stress the “aesthetical” nature of the postmodern age [Jameson 1991; 1997; Kroker – Cook 1991; Clark 1996], the consequence of which is that the viewpoint of aesthetics fulfills a significantly more essential role in understanding our worldview in late modern age than in modern age.

The transformation of culture in late modernity

nected to them. A new type of cultural unit is represented on the websites based on personal choices and decisions and built of fragments of traditional culture. This version is most often deficient and bleak but without any doubt, it is personal. The personal contents are quite prominent for learned visitors, even though they often exclusively contain popular elements. The culture of the postmodern personality is reminiscent of the popular and not the

“high” versions of traditional culture. It seems as though the democratic nature of cyber culture did not only put an end to the gap between popular and high culture, but it also revaluated and put an end to high culture. The spread of the so-called “blogs”, “weblogs” and “podcasts” points to this direction (Jarvik 2002). The “blogging” or

“podcasting” person does not (only) publish his scientific or artistic results on the web but his short, contingent or occasional notes, ideas, thoughts and associations, to put it shortly, his opinion about anything what makes him concerned in connection with the current natural, social or web processes. The “blogging” or “podcasting” web citizen is the web citizenper se, a full member of the web standing in front of us in his full armament and he is the eminent creator of cyber culture.

The transformation of culture in late modernity