Why the Internet leads us to the new Middle Ages

At the end of the twentieth century, the university fashion has entered the teaching of two concepts - this is the “end of the story” of Fukuyama and the “clash of civilizations” of Huntington. Not so much philosophical systems in the classical sense as the disposition of features and marks in the fields in the spirit of applied policy. One seemed to exclude the other, but in the end both were right. The story in the form that we knew, ended; The clash of everyone with everyone began.

The fault of this is not at all the religious fanaticism of ISIS, not a bomb of Korea or Iran, not growing China and India, and not even Weimar revenge of Russia. These are all symptoms. The reason is different.

Once again, back to the end of the eighties, where, according to Fukuyama, the Hegelian logic of history collapses. The thesis - democracy and capitalism - has nothing more to oppose, everything else is not an antithesis, but the archaic remnants of underdeveloped societies that have yet to become free.

Remember the classic VHS films of that time (“back to the future”, “terminator”, “one at home”, etc.) and try to abstract from the plot. We are only interested in lifestyle. It seems to be almost the same: TVs, cars, supermarkets, clothes.

One thing is missing. Internet.

For thirty years, in the memory of one generation, we survived a revolution, comparable not even with the invention of a steam engine, but with the fall of the Roman Empire. This is now, from history textbooks, we know that the ancient power died in 476, and, say, a Boheation born four years later, was not told about this.

Billions of fragments of meanings are available to everyone, everyone can blind anything from them. Well, or press one button and share a stranger. Everyone is not only a director for himself, but also a publisher, photographer, star.

If you read it with “consolation with philosophy”, written before the execution, it may seem that everything is familiar: consuls, censors and, of course, senators, and on top of this sophisticated stylistics with deregistering quotes from the ancients.

And at the same time, Rome is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe: the population is reduced ten times, the administration collapses, the temples are versed in bricks, pigs graze on the grassy forums. Already the grandchildren of contemporaries of Boetius will become ignorant barbarians.

What if we, like a Boetius, blindly convince ourselves that the civilization of the Enlightenment, directed into a bright future, is alive, while pigs have been grazed on our forums for a long time?

On Internet forums, of course.

We are accustomed to perceive the Internet and related social networks and gadgets as an obvious good and evidence of the next triumph of our technology. There was a photo, a plane, an atom. Now here is an iPhone. Every year is new: it seems to fit into the logic of progress.

Studying the repressiveness of the concept of “norms”, Michelle Foucault noticed noted that the concept of “progress” in the known meaning was invented at the same time, in the sixties of the 18th century. It completely contradicted the Christian (we are waiting for the end of the world), and the antique (all cyclical) perception of time, but corresponded to experience. The steam locomotive, previously unprecedented, could be felt, but Armageddon was not foreseen.

The stereotype of perception, which has developed during the time of Jane Osten and misleads us. This is pride and prejudice in a new way: the development of technology is progress, and progress is good. Such a simplified logic does not take into account another possibility: when the development of technology in itself destroys the social system built on faith in progress.

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No matter how Wiilyam Shakespeare Marshall Makluen quoted us with his division of the media into “cold” and “hot”, all communication until 1989 can be described by the word “vertical”. Only speed, quality and coverage changed - from Sunday sermons to TV presenter, from manuscript books to million newspaper circulations.

In the modern philosophy of structuralism, there is a hated concept of logocentrism. Simply, it can be explained by the figure of God the Father. That is, in a certain repressive way from above, which is embodied in religion, politics or media. And indicates how to live. Its authority is usually unlimited, the rebellion against it is accidental. The twentieth century remained the century of announcements and dictators.

Structuralists can rejoice. Logocentrism without special fanfare is dismantled before our eyes. There is a universal "game of beads", as Herman Hesse bequeathed. Billions of fragments of meanings are available to everyone, everyone can blind anything from them. Well, or press one button and share a stranger. Everyone is not only a director for himself, but also a publisher, photographer, star. Anyone.

The equal sign is placed between a serious investigation and a column of an astrologer. Between the scientific article and the quackery. Between the educational video and the video with raccoons.

Media, including classic ones, themselves fall in this horizontal plane. We lay down already. Vertical ties in a two -dimensional space look like a miserable point. The newspaper that can be sent on Twitter is discredited by default. It is overthrown and cannot be a celestial. The same - and with politicians.

It is no coincidence that in the Nobel novel by the Hesse novel a game of beads were engaged in intellectuals trained in specially allotted reservations. Because “playing beads” became about the entire population of the Earth, we were on the verge of an information disaster.

Imagine that everyone who wanted was handed out machines for printing money. What will happen tomorrow? That's right: cosmic hyperinflation will bring down the economy and return us to the Stone Age - to wild gangs, natural economy and barter exchange.

Smartphones - in fact, exactly the same, only a compact, printed machine issued to everyone. And he not only fills the noosphere with tons of garbage, but also deviates the information as such. She is too cheap. She is nothing at all. The equal sign is placed between a serious investigation and a column of an astrologer. Between the scientific article and the quackery. Between the educational video and the video with raccoons.

There are too many. Nothing else makes sense. In addition to the emoticon and like. And medieval wildness is much more emotional and brighter than logic and rationality, previously instilled in the media and education.

What is happening in Russia now is not unique. It’s just that Western countries have much greater the strength of the institutions and their inertia. As I said above, consuls and senators continued to work in Italy already captured. The power of habit. With us, she did not have time to develop after the collapse of the USSR, and therefore the new global obscurantism blooms a little early.

What to do? It would be possible to propose an information ecology: to consciously limit the issue of information, to endow it again with value and meaning; I am sure this will become a trend in about five to ten years, and now DJing-Deutoxes have come into fashion. But this, apparently, will be the last cry of despair before the new dark centuries. Perhaps our grandchildren, having crossed themselves, will communicate with each other emoticons, observing the execution of an elderly teacher who offended the city astrologer. Or the feelings of believers. Doesn't matter.

Author-chief editor of the site "Rain"