Cloud Punk. Herlander Elias
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. This part is concluded then with glimpses over what post-cloud will be and what there will be beyond.
By Flávio Almeida – PhD and lecturer at University of Beira Interior and IADE — University Europeia. English version by Sandra Isoldi.
PART 1.0
In This Future ...
In this omnipresent Future everything has changed. For instance, there are half a dozen brands mastering the digital realm, and the separation between online [1] and offline [2] faded away. Everything is media, [3] digital, and therefore, digital media, [4] we just call it digital. But in fact, is it the “cloud” [5]. And, who or what is controlling it? What is noticeable is that a small conglomerate of hardware, [6] software, [7] and communication companies is currently controlling the “cloud”. Some people rise against this reality. However, in the present time we are so immersed in the Web Age that we cannot escape away from it nor remain unaware of it. After all, it is the chronological time of total information and the mighty control that it exerts on every domain of the human beings’ lives. From a pragmatic point of view, we’re nothing more but mere users and authorized consumers.
It is designated as GAFA the group of enterprises that it is lead by Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Once they were known as search engines, emotional computing [8] and social media, [9] or online bookshops, respectively, but now the GAFA group is a databank, storage service, consumerism club and media ecosystem, and financial-ludic center. This Cloud Age has formatted the consumerism, it has regulated gaming; it has centralized the access to information and got entertainment reinvented. The inexistent public was invented. It’s no longer about playing, sharing data, accessing news or editing files. It’s also no longer more about creating friend networks or professional or institutional profiles. Nowadays, the control in our lives exerted by who has both technological and economic power is defining what we should know or what we may know, and it almost won the battle for privacy. The gear is entirely on the side of private or federal institutions! Each and every data is retrieved from computers and other “smart things”. There is no private space left. This is a moment of a common and obligatory future. And in this future the machines seem to be winning. Products are already purchased by ourselves even if we are not aware of it. Brands and clouds are everywhere weaving bridges and connections.
What Orwell did not anticipate was that in this future the dictatorship of the “novelty or the new” has the consent of the present-day masses of the digital. We came to a point in which all the cloud’s information fits in one “singularity”, meaning in the palm of our hand − the entire network, the whole cloud, all the world-culture stands within our reach. And what does the common mortal amidst this financial-ludic dictatorship? He seems having fun, avoiding too much thinking because it causes suffering. We can add that it does not make sense anymore to be anti-system. Cyberpunks, [10] prone to the access to truth, knowledge and technologies, are a class facing extinction. Have they lost the war when it comes to information’s free right of flowing? Then, why is it that each and every data of ours lead to a “datification” whose master stands just on the other side?
It is in this scope of ideas that the cloud punk [11] comes to existence. The cloud has weaved a constellation of services on an optimal state for further access and consumption. Out of the ashes of the 80s and 90s of last century new heroes came up, characters simultaneously stylized and informed, proficient and revolutionary, that do not change the system from the outside, but rather from the inside. Elected as promethean characters, such new capeless and swordless heroes are experts when it comes to search, retrieve, manage and activate information, even in its raw state, of data.
As it all points out, the cloud is a remake of what once was a free and freedom-based Internet, when everything was basic, slow, interesting and rare. Today, the “futurists” are the ones dictating the trends of the cloud and they claim more data from people, using it as one’s heart’s content. The public of the cloud only stands accessing, sharing, consuming and playing. Somehow, in a sort of reaction against the masses stupefaction, cloud punks want more knowledge, more "world", and they deal with current corporations and creative hubs, as well as the forbidden areas of the web. Whether it is in the tall and ecological buildings, with their refined neons, or in the hallucinogenic night, cloud punks come up with a new signature: total access to the cloud, or to its entire information even in off-line mode. The new warrior of the obligatory future is an aesthete-soldier and a cyber-soldier dressed according to the fashion trends. Yet, he works with the cloud in a punk manner.
The cloud punks believe that information has to flow, and they also believe that there are singularities, people, events and unique media, more relevant than any other register. For example, the masses keen on the digital record quantities of yottabytes [12] of things that are irrelevant or that are stripped of emotional-symbolic value. Because once there were epochs in which the access to knowledge was outlawed (cloud punks know that!), as well as free access to the web, which they also acknowledge, hence we start witnessing a charge from the socially conscious cloud punks when it comes to disclose information and knowledge denied to the masses of the digital.
On Singularity
Author Kevin Kelly explains that “singularity” is a new regime in which, “our creations makes us better humans, but also one where we can’t live without what we’ve made. If we have been living in rigid ice, this is liquid— a new phase state” (2016, LOC 4314-5810). Following the same trend as Zygmunt Bauman, Kelly refers “liquidity” as being a new state where everything flows and rigidness becomes problematic. The updating and the innovating procedures towards the public began to be an obligatory stopping point. It just happens, as well, that the entire paraphernalia of technology is only making sense because we need to be wired. There is a reinterpretation of the bourgeois horror towards emptiness. It’s like driving a car in the United States; the Radio is always turned on. What the trends are indicating is that the ideal perspective relies on a comfortable access to the cloud and to technologies. Is there anyone capable of returning to the chaotic pre-digital media world? What Gibson labels as “the Non-Mediated World”? (in Neale, 2000). Within this new reality of ours, getting back to the world preceding the cloud and the singularity would be extremely painful and baroque.
As for Kelly there are two versions of “singularity”. One basic version stands as the human invention of AI (Artificial Intelligence); the second “hard” version has nothing to do with the super-intelligence in itself but rather with the ability of an AI generating far more superior AIs. Until now, this is the point that stands for us as a sort of “ultimate invention”, in which a computer AI or a hybrid one would have the capability of surpassing everything and everyone (2016, LOC 4305-5810). This is where the cloud punks come in, for they are believers that unleashing information is all about rendering the access to knowledge in a more liberal way, empowering people and machines, the crowd and the cloud. Thus, with a post-human attitude, the cloud punks log on to the web to further democratize and trigger stress tests. They are not terrorists; they just fight against the media-fomented ignorance. As it has been said so far, on behalf of intelligence, information and knowledge, cloud punks are fighting against the