Why carnival?
Why lonely?
Living in the digital age, turn on your computer and take out your mobile phone, everything is composed of numbers. The process of digitization has greatly accelerated people's ability to obtain information in the form of transmission and storage of Byte, KB, MB, and GB. When society's productivity/efficiency improves, it means that the proportion of energy people expend to survive is further compressed. Most of the free energy will be transferred to areas that satisfy their spirit, thus further stimulating the power of digital. Therefore, we need to understand: Where will future users put their focus when they have more time to spare?
Crowd mass, after thousands of years of evolution from primitive society to the present, the most important goal is to survive. In a primitive society where food was scarce, the only way to maintain vitality was to obtain as much energy as possible and store fat (or convert it into muscle to provide strength to increase the probability of obtaining protein/meat) to avoid starvation. From a physiological point of view: until modern times, meat and sugar are still high-energy substances. When our lips/body come into contact with these high-energy substances, the genes accumulated over thousands of years can still make our nerve cells resemble Christmas trees. The same is illuminated, even in modern society where the probability of starving to death is extremely low.
Not only do we pursue "high-energy" substances physically, but we also have the same psychological needs: to gain a sense of accomplishment in defeating others (video games), to gain recognition from the same kind (likes in the circle of friends), to meet others The sexual impulses of the opposite sex (Momo), low-cost acquisition of goods (Taobao), etc., behind the development of every Internet company are the points that directly reach people’s hearts, and behind these points, most of them are the development of human beings to this day. The switch that remains in the gene triggers the nerve cells to "be electrified like a Christmas tree".
Back to the beginning of the article, "Why carnival?" 』. As people's ability to obtain desired information is enhanced, they will inevitably increase the frequency of using such digital tools to accelerate the triggering of the switch that stimulates their own nerve excitement. This process of accelerating self-stimulation looks like a human carnival from a third party’s perspective.
"Why are you lonely?" 』. This is also determined by human nature: everyone has the urge to be a hero, and everyone has the desire to be noticed. In the relationship network of traditional society, there are always only a few heroes and only a few beauties. Although this is balanced, it cannot fully satisfy the human thirst for spiritual pleasure. That’s why video games make everyone the protagonist, and Meipai is committed to beautifying your photos and making you mistakenly think you are beautiful. Just like the issuance of currency stimulates people's spiritual pleasure and stimulates the economic market, only the continuous issuance of credit and currency can stimulate people to speed up the development of the economic market. Therefore, the future Internet will not only connect people with each other, but also make a large number of customized and personalized designs based on "individuals", not only allowing everyone to watch news, videos, and updates that suit themselves, but also It will develop rapidly around the theme of how to improve personal spiritual happiness. Focusing on individuals is destined to be a process of reshaping the "temporary equality" relationship between people, and the final state of this process will definitely add the attribute of "loneliness" to the carnival of mankind.
Although Wu Bofan's "Carnival of Loneliness - Communication in the Digital Age" was written more than 10 years ago, the writing style and ideas are really good, so I record some book excerpts and insights here:
Case1: In the face of the current fast-food consumption on the Internet, many people have talked about shallow reading, being unable to tolerate complex processes, and preferring immediate/efficient feedback. In this era of rapid consumption, a novel TV method is slowly developing in Norway: slow TV. The so-called slow TV is a 24-hour real-time broadcast of footage of a train/ship traveling across the entire country. The viewing rate of TV is very high, because in such a huge era of fast consumption, people recognize this kind of "slow TV". And we can "desktop" this "slow TV". Computer wallpaper is no longer just a beautiful picture to slowly increase people's aesthetic fatigue. Desktop wallpapers can be broadcast live in the form of "Slow TV".
What is played on the wallpaper may be a picture from a camera on the other side of the world, which is different from traditional media playback: the user will not be deliberately forced to focus on the screen all the time, and there will not be a lot of dubbing and intense picture jitter/ switch. Everything is changing silently. Maybe in the camera, only the yellow line changes with the timeline, maybe there are only cows grazing with their heads down. This method is more environmentally friendly, natural, and immersive. If it can be made, it will be a very interesting small application.
Emerson once pointed out that a person and a person's "self" are completely different things. Everyone is a potential giant, but often appears as a dwarf. Everyone is a king, but he forgets his identity as a king and wanders outside his kingdom in middle age. The relationship between a person and his "self" is like the relationship between water on land and the sea. He always stayed in a shallow and narrow place, forgetting that the sea was his home.
Emerson called a person's "self" a person's "inner ocean." Many people live so far away from their "inner ocean" that they don't even know that this "inner ocean" exists. Only when people face nature alone (self-reliance) can they communicate with nature without interference. By returning to the external "nature" that is originally one with man but separated from him, he returns to the inner "nature", that is, "nature", and this is the ultimate unity of man and nature.
The act of invention is an act of creating "something" from "nothing". It is an honest and unceremonious saying no to the recognized "impossibility". It is a bold and bold rejection of common sense. Cautious offense. In the final analysis, invention means not following what others say, or it is a kind of methodical and decisive foul.
In fact, everyone has my blood flowing in them, and I also have other people's blood flowing in my body. I can't accept their impetuousness and stupidity just because of this. I even feel ashamed of it. However, if you want to live in isolation, you should achieve not only material but spiritual isolation, which means that it must be spiritually elevated. The world seems to be plotting again and again to intrude and haunt you with trivial matters that you can't get rid of. Friends, eaters, children, illnesses, fears, needs all come knocking at the door and say - "Come out and be with us". But don't be tempted and don't join in their noise. For those who have the strength to disturb me, I respond with the same expression that I have experienced before and am not surprised. No one can get to me without resorting to my actions.
Analyze the most popular social software at the moment: WeChat, QQ and other social software are all based on the relationship network around the individual. Maimai is for the work chain, while Momo is for making friends with strangers. way to expand. In fact, we have found that more than 90% of your WeChat friends do not need to communicate. The reason is that although they are related in the physical world, their personalities in the psychological world may be completely opposite. The network will record the books you have read (Amazon), the videos you have viewed (Youku/iQiyi), articles (Zhihu), the music you have listened to (NetEase Cloud Music), etc., and if these data can be If aggregated, we can find ways to provide a social circle suitable for a certain type of people based on all the records you have browsed. And this kind of social circle based on data aggregation and fitting is likely to be more than 90% of the people you want to communicate with. Socialization not only means point-to-point communication, it will ultimately carry the mission of data aggregation, classify each scattered point, and finally find each scattered point in the cultural circle that belongs to it, thereby constructing and strengthening each pole. A cultural circle with distinctive characteristics. When people of the same type come together, they not only share "the same knowledge base", but they also usually have a similar sense of mission and collide with each other to produce a steady stream of new content.
Technology itself has an unstoppable will to survive:
The process of evolution has been incredibly accelerated through the migration to machine form. The machine in turn has an effect on the person who extends it, and the machine thus has a vicarious reproductive function. Every technology creates new tensions and needs in the people who create it. New needs and their new technological responses are born as we embrace existing technologies—an ongoing process. Specifically, as an extension of the human brain, computers have autonomous power once they are manufactured.
It forces people to optimize it and improve it. It arouses people's desire to pursue more, faster, better and more cost-effectively, and people become servants of their own desires.
McLuhan described this phenomenon as "man and machine making love." People create machines (computers) out of desire (will) and "make love" (technical communication) with it. In the process of making love, it satisfies people's desires and at the same time arouses higher and stronger emotions. Desires, desires and behaviors escalate. But technology is a deceiver who is not single-minded. It has constantly updated incarnations. Once a person possesses a certain incarnation of it (a certain generation of technology), it means that he will soon become its abandoned wife. It regained more youth and vitality in this relationship, but people lost their beauty in this relationship. People who possess a certain generation of technology become the collective outcasts of the new technology in subsequent times. In the technical field, it is true that "talents emerge from generation to generation, and each takes the lead for three to five days."
Through a kind of media, a person's certain senses and skills are extended, expanded and enhanced. For example, television makes people's eyes become "clairvoyance", and the telephone makes people's ears become "sound ears". However, a media is not a complete extension of a certain human function, but only a certain aspect or a partial extension of the human function. While people extend and expand their "sphere of influence" through "external objects" such as telephones, televisions, cars, etc., they also weaken their abilities on the other hand. While people gain many "conveniences" and "advantages", they also lose Another convenience puts you at another disadvantage.
Opium deprives and mutilates us in a way that makes me quite comfortable and comfortable. The media, which is often presented as various machines (television, telephone), always enslaves us in a "gentle and considerate" way, charmingly and charmingly enslaving us. Empty us and fill our feelings with all kinds of happiness, so that we have no time to feel what we should really feel and pay attention to. The way the media affects people can be vividly called "massage".
Imprisoning people in a state of servitude with deceptive ease and pleasure, causing the imprisoned to lose the soul and eyes to recognize their own location, and willingly stay in their own "prison cell" , that is, making the imprisoned willing to become
All human organs and the extension of their functions are ultimately a medium of communication (communication). The function of clothing to keep out the cold is purely for the individual (the individual knows how cold or warm he or she is when wearing the clothes), but clothing quickly became a communication medium after its appearance - playing the role of storing and conveying information in people's social lives. . We often hear the saying that a person's clothing is very personal. But the so-called "personality" here does not mean pure "individuality", but a certain uniqueness and novelty relative to others and appealing to other people's eyes and other people's evaluations. Just as there is no such thing as "personalized clothing" in the strict sense. Because whether it is a computer or clothing, it is a communication (communication) medium that embodies the connection between people.
The reason why the pursuit of fashion trends is so short-lived and so comical and farcical is that it is ironic from the beginning: the trend-setter is ostensibly acting on the clothes merchants Such a personality, but did not realize that he was submitting to the rights of countless pairs of "omnipresent eyes". He unconsciously acts based on the looks of others rather than based on his own judgment. The behavior of "pursuing individuality" naturally becomes the behavior of "pursuing impersonality".
Case2: The reason why the QQ show is very popular among lower-grade students is that the QQ show is not a prop for showing to oneself. To a large extent, QQ show is a kind of cloak for showing off to others. Wrapped in this virtual cloak, it implies the unique taste of today's young people, their pursuit of beauty, and their sense of accomplishment in being cool. I thought of an APP model that should be popular for a while: 3D version with cute faces + social expressions. Form of expression:
1. Forcibly turn on the phone camera and activate the facial recognition system.
2. It will only classify facial expressions into several categories, and at the same time build a three-dimensional cartoon character model to convert the user's real-time expressions into corresponding dynamic cartoon expressions.
3. The status of cartoon characters can only be controlled through facial expressions.
4. Further make socialization more vivid, more concrete and cooler!