Diving into the Informatics/Virtual World of a Human Separated from Reality: Our Virtual Twin in Our Echo Room

Industrialization, which is an order produced by steam engines, machines and telegraph poles, has created a central and mechanical universe design. The centralized state of centralization is urbanization and automation/mechanization. The industrial revolution gave rise to the formation of solid structures, institutions and centralization. At the end of the 19th century, magazines and newspapers, and since the second half of the 20th century, radio and television have had a significant impact on the shaping of society. Mass media (magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, etc.); It has been effective in determining the political, judicial, military, legal and social processes of the 20th century. Gutenberg's printing press both fixed and appropriated information. In the 21st century, with the digitalization process, information has lost both its constant and its owner/author.

Information tools, which have a significant effect on the formation of the minds of individuals, societies and institutions, have shifted to a different field of influence and ground with the access of the computer to the internet. The subject, who is not content with doing or producing something over the internet, has begun to live as an entity that takes into account his interests, desires and needs. This situation is the monetization of classical hermeneutics, that is, the transformation of knowledge into an economic tool. The information plane extending from the Gutenberg printing press to the televisions; We are witnessing an age in which the information lost its constancy with the inclusion of the internet in communication while it was the age of fixed information. Web 2.0 layout is a layout where the user feels like a king and each of the content producers can design. While classical mass media exist with content owned information, the content produced in digital-information technologies has neither authenticity nor ownership.

The internet, which is a upside of the industrial age and became widespread in the 1990s, has created a digital age without a central point, that is, decentralized. Centrifugal, user-oriented and open-access, the internet has become a huge market and has included everything in the commodification process. The emergence of the internet with artificial intelligence has led to the growth of information technology in a more exponential way. While in the 20th century, man was oriented towards knowledge, in the 21st century he is drowning in data, that is, information. People who are exposed to information have become a creature that can be easily manipulated, easily manipulated, and whose emotions and thoughts can be exploited. There is a virtual world in which the "docile" and "drugged" person wandering around in the virtual environment is under the delusion that he or she is "free" and (content) "productive". In their own echo chamber, everyone echoes themselves or their "sameness", not even realizing that they are in a vast panopticon universe (digitization) where they are subjected to surveillance.

It takes into account the mental and spiritual state of being in the virtual world rather than the process of material existence. The universal viewer of humanity, which is immersed in the data world, is now Big Data. At this stage, Big Data, that is, the digital panopticon, can trace the traces of "virtual", "digital", "hyper-real" identities. While the indicator of the political domination of the mechanical age was Orwell's Big Brother, the Big Brother of the digital age is Big Data, the master of data. At this stage, man must constantly produce data or content in order to appear or exist. Every piece of content he produces is a sign of him getting caught.

In the virtual world, which has become the domain of the domination of the visual, Foucault's "disciplinary  society" and Guy Debord's "society of the spectacle" have been replaced by a society of surveillance or surveilled. People have become a subject who is constantly wandering around in reels, shorts or stories, thinking they are watching but being watched. The human being, who exists "there/in the virtual" until she passes out, wanders in this virtual plane, thinking that she will find the bottom of the images or videos she passes with her fingers. However, he cannot find the bottom of this place, and his face begins to turn into a pale screen as he acquires a soul and mind that loses its depth and meaning with each passing day. This plane gives birth to a new morbidity that produces its own image and thinks that its image is real. In Baudrillard's words, he is like the student from Prague who bought his image in exchange for selling his soul to the devil.

The human being who is constantly being watched, thinking that he is watching, has turned being watched into a form of communication. With a high sense of voluntarism, people in the virtual world have become extensions of data and subjects of information. The virtual realm has become - as Byung Chul Han put it - a digital transparent prison. Chul Han even depicts Apple's glass cube-shaped store in New York as the embodiment of the ruthless domination of information.

We are not only dealing with a digital universe where our eyes and minds are engaged, but also with intelligent beings (smart phones-tablets, smart homes, smart cars, smart vacuum cleaners, etc.), although not as smart as humans for now. The Internet of Things and the presence of smart devices will raise issues of invasion of privacy. Promising "freedom", "self", "dissent", influencers and youtubers turn themselves into idols to be worshipped and do not hesitate to "block" those who criticize them. They do not give anyone else the right to live in their own "creation stages". They transformed themselves into a leader, their pages into a cult center, their discourse into a sermon, and their virtual followers into disciples. In this temple-like plane, the phenomena of the virtual world, which exist by producing content, claim to determine the political, religious and social views of those who are on its page. Influencers or Yotubers who have the delusion that their specific gravity is very high, so much so that they even have the delusion that they can direct people's will. However, for the majority of people, the pages of influencers and youtubers are virtual planes where one can - as it were - disconnect from the real personality and browse their pages. It is followed, observed, liked or shared there/virtually. Virtual spaces are the transition areas of fluidity. Influencers and YouTubers don't need to think much about politics and public affairs. His videos, images, all his posts are seen, liked or shared, after all, he is a social media influencer. Chul Han expresses this situation with the following sentences; “A political public opinion cannot be formed from influencers and followers. Digital communities are commodified forms of commonality/community. In reality, they are commercial commodities. They do not have the power to take political action.” 

Thinking that the greatest freedom is at the tips of his fingers, man has become a virtual being whose data is collected by presenting his thoughts, feelings and daily life to the virtual world, who is kept under surveillance, but who wanders in the virtual world under the illusion that he is free. Most people think that they are communicating with people, whereas they are in the situation of a prisoner who is isolated and locked in his cell.

The digital age is an age of real-time digital surveillance. New media technologies are information technologies that produce digital swarms. There are beings who cannot even exist in this realm with their true identity, but are merely "profiles" who claim to be self-actualized. Bot accounts, which are like a virtual human presence, can interact digitally and produce content such as false or inaccurate news and hate-inciting rhetoric. Through these bots, the social memory, thoughts and behaviors of children and young people, and therefore of the future, are determined. We are witnessing the true spirits nurtured by digital spirits. In other words, we see a world inhabited by identities that try to live by transferring the identity they have built in the digital world to this world like a digital twin.

Algorithms are a lever that understands our tendencies and drives our impulses. Mass media (magazines, newspapers, radio, TV), i.e. mechanical domination, has been replaced by information technology, i.e. cybernetic domination, which is a combination of the internet and artificial intelligence. The new rulers of the cyber age are the feudals of the digital realm who hold the data. We can say that there is no plane left untouched by digitalization. In Baudrillard's words, we experience the ecstasy of communication. One of the most captive planes of communication ecstasy is politics. While the speeches and discourses of politicians are fed by digital or virtual grounds, the same politicians have also fallen into the trap of thinking that digital presence is politically powerful. We are faced with the reality of politicians who assume that the subjects of the digital or virtual world are real and formulate policies accordingly, or officials who try to manage areas such as education, health and justice. However, the beings of this world are beings that interact more than living beings. The beings of this world, however, are interacting beings rather than living beings. Habermas explains that "the reasoning of a reading public is tendentially replaced by the exchange of 'tastes' and 'preferences' among consumers. ...The world created by the mass media is public only in appearance."  On such a ground, politics has turned into a spectacle/theatrical or, in Baudrillard's words, a trans-political phase.

By entering data into the big data hangar, the individual of Dataism has turned into a shift worker shoveling coal into a coal-fired locomotive. The caretaker of the virtual world, who has turned into the shoveler of the locomotive that thinks it cannot move forward unless it produces content, data or information/information, has fallen into a compulsion, that is, dependency.  The ecstasy and frenzy of communication has created an individual who lives with the thought of "what should I share", "what to experience and share it?". The human being who thinks that he is free from immaturity has become a being who is left alone with "like" and "share" buttons instead of thinking, reading and exchanging ideas, who is lost in the virtual, who has fallen from the state of maturity he thought he had gained to the state of immaturity.

People who are presented with impulsive preferences such as commenting on, liking and sharing texts, videos or pictures that fall in front of them, exhibit reflexes that are far from rationality on this fluid ground where time flows rapidly. In this world where intelligence/cunning is prioritized over reason, rationality has become "out" and intelligence/intellect has become "in". In this world, human reality has come into being, which, as Hume says, is not the being of reason but of "passion". In this virtual plane, the real is replaced by the fake, the good is replaced by the bad, and the attractive is preferred over the real. The relationship between the real and the virtual was radically altered by digitalization. This radical change deepened the rupture between classical and modernity.

We have been exposed to political understandings in which the politician with the number of likes or viral videos is seen as a "strong candidate". This is because political figures have assumed power in the context of popularity and viewership. In addition, each political segment lives in its own echo chamber, pushing those who are not of its own party off its screen or page. This is a new morbid/problematic situation caused by communication ecstasy. Pariser calls the algorithmic setup that contributes to everyone creating their own echo chamber a filter bubble. This atomized order leads to deaf, narcissistic and unemphatic communities that do not listen to the voice of the other. It gives birth to intolerant individuals who do not listen to each other, who live in echo chambers with only the people of their own world and cannot tolerate other worlds. This environment, where the habit of reading and listening is being lost day by day, wants to treat people, events and appearances in reality in the same way as it treats "reels" or "stories" in real life with the touch of a finger on the screen. Since he cannot do this, he prefers to give up listening or watching.

When the virtual plane of people who are constantly provoked against each other by bot accounts based on people's identities, political opinions and ethnic structures is reflected in real life, serious social chaos can be faced. Living or being together on such a ground that is provoked against each other carries significant risks for the future of publicness. Indeed, Habermas argues that in the virtual world of the decentralized internet, it is very difficult to preserve the public sphere in the current state of communication. The algorithm or artificial intelligence that manages the data phase prioritizes quantity and leaves quality behind, making relationships more calculative than emotional. This calculativeness makes individuals and societies more self-interested. Social, legal and political decisions that take into account data and content ensure the existence of the digital commodity, i.e. data, rather than the existence of the individual. Dataism, which is based on the monism of data, is a new form of naturalism that ignores the difference of species. We are witnessing the decline of the real and the public on a plane where data is seen as more important than the demands of the individual and where human beings have become data strings.

We live on the brink of an era where a tweet is more effective than a book or article. On the plane where human beings are preoccupied with information, that is, information that is detached from reality, we are witnessing a hyper-real plane where the perceptual, not the factual, is respected. The nihilism that digitalization exponentially advances is like a glass lantern shaped by the heat of information technologies, gaining consistency with each passing day. The virtual world, which undermines existence, that is, factuality, day by day and substitutes itself for reality, has become a cavity that swallows reality. The universe where no one can be sure of anyone, where everyone misunderstands each other, and where there are people with fuel in their hands for the fire, is not a world of meaning but a world of commodities made of data.

The grand narratives (progress, rationality, secularism, freedom, etc.) that postmodernism spoke so hopefully about have died and we are faced with the Big Data narrative that has become the grandest narrative of all, shaping minds, emotions, discourses and behaviors. The result we have reached with search engines that make thinking and knowing unnecessary has led to data/information becoming an object of belief. In the virtual realm that everyone thinks is free, we experience the fate of the prisoners in Plato's cave in a different dimension. The human being, increasingly detached from the heavenly and the earthly, is being drawn away from the world of reality into the informatic virtual world.

In this hyper-reality universe, he travels on journeys he has not experienced, he has access to more information than close knowledge, he has many acquaintances, but he would not recognize them in the world of reality. He gets excited and pretends to be excited, but remains unexcited and insincere. In this universe where humans are in a state of resonance/vibration, there is a new type of being, homo-digitus, whose faces resemble each other due to the screen effect. In the plane of digitalization, a type of hyper-communication where speed, marketing/sales and teasing exist and everything is intertwined, privacy is eroded by eliminating distances. In this world where noise abounds and meaning evaporates, there is a challenge to both the heavenly and the earthly. In the simulation order, where the material universe is put to an end, where time is consumed and everything is thought to be achieved, everyone - voluntarily - reveals all their privacy under the delusion that they are free. While he thinks he is liberated, at the same time he is drifting in a realm where he is caught up. On this plane, the person is caught in the delusion that he exists by vaporizing both himself and the other.

In analog communication, which is the form of communication of our mothers or grandfathers, there is an interlocutor who exists in flesh and blood, whereas in the digital communication plane, there are addresses and profiles that we do not know whether they have a real identity or not in a fleshless, bloodless way. The neighbor or companion is replaced by a succession of profiles on the same page. Even on Facebook, the most intimate platform, we don't listen to each other and often misunderstand each other. Virtual worlds have become a resonant ground where everyone echoes his or her own advertisement, discourse and gaze, and has become a resonance world where everyone builds his or her world.

First of all, one has to live with the fact that the world one lives in is not a real world but a virtual world. He should know that his real space is the world of reality, and realize that the plane where time is best vaporized is the virtual plane. He should be aware that if he does not distance himself from the virtual world, which is the plane where privacy is violated, he and his values will evaporate in this plane day by day. He should know that meeting someone here will never replace face-to-face, knee-length “analogist” conversations. He should know that finding a cure for his illness on the virtual plane can have troubling consequences, that there can be no justice, no humanity (education) and even no fun.

Realizing that the most lasting legacy we leave behind is our posts and comments, we should not get caught up in keyboard reflexes far from thinking. Ultimately, we should keep in mind that we have the potential to become a digital prisoner who is observed or subjected to surveillance rather than an observer. Instead of living on the virtual plane or drowning in the noise of our own echo chamber, we should be in the countryside, mountains, slopes, vineyards, gardens, without missing the real life and the world, so that we do not forget that we are a being navigating on the plane of earth and sky, and therefore mortality and eternity.

Sources

Boris Groys, Akışta: İnternet Çağında Sanat, İstanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2017.

Byung Chul Han, Enfokrasi, İstanbul Ketebe Yayınları, 2022.

Byung Chul Han, Enfokrasi, İstanbul Ketebe Yayınları, 2022.

Johnny Ryan, İnternetin Geçmişi ve Dijital Gelecek, Ankara: Tubitak Yayınları, 2019.

Tom Goodwin, Dijital Darwinizm, İstanbul: Siyah Kitap, 2019.