SOMEXIT: THE END OF "SOCIAL" MEDIA

With everyone joining the hype about AI, the increasing digitisation of our lives and the seemingly endless possibilities the internet offers, let's have a dystopian look at post-digital life. Are digital media doomed? What actors are involved? How the end of digital media look like? What are the social consequences? Here is some food for thought.

Why the humanities must contribute to digital questions

I know, it is not very intriguing to begin a series by describing how it might all end. Following the argumentation of influential thinkers like Harald Welzer (Arbeiterkammer Österreich, 2023) and Ulrike Hartmann (2022), digital technologies will largely cease to exist due to the incompatibility of the sustainability (finite resources), contemporary capitalist economy (infinite growth) and societal challenges (digital media pervades all areas of life) trinity. The SoMExit (social media exit) seems to be inevitable. This, paired with the observation that science — and the social sciences in particular (Park, Leahey & Funk, 2023) — struggle to innovate or disrupt (Cowen & Southwood, 2019), asks for different approaches prioritising and practising a more future-constructive research paradigm. The low potency to disrupt could be attributed to a lack of intersectional diversity among scientists (Kozlowski et al., 2022; Zivony, 2019) and their respective methods (eg. Winker & Degele, 2011). However, my perception is that social sciences contribute to a lethargical mass of knowledge-making that does not focus on constructiveness but self-perpetuates its uncontested status and raison d’être. Furthermore, the outputs of social science research are often intangible (Gelman, 2021) which exacerbates the feeling that social sciences are useless (Love, 2017). If researchers of the humanities were more self-confident, my view is that we could assertively co-create the future and function as a normative corrective that determines ethical and social change to protect society from its relentless strive to create and blindly adopt every innovation laid in front of them. It is against this background that I wish to contribute more constructively and pragmatically to the design of our future. The ability to ethically reflect — external to the boundaries of natural science paradigms and formulas — and instrumentalise insights across disciplines to disentangle the “complexities and intricacies of humanity” (Strauss, 2017, n.a.) makes the humanities an underestimated asset.

Are we living life in or with media?

The idea that we live a life in media instead of a life with media was first postulated by Mark Deuze (2011). He argued that due to media ubiquity it becomes invisible (Deuze, 2011). We are all familiar with situations in which we ask if anyone has seen our mobile phone whilst we are holding it in our hand. Yet, as attractive as this observation may seem, critics have argued that deduction may be unreflected and too convenient (Kubitschko & Knapp, 2012). Moreover, examples were rendered where humans utilize digital media decisively (Juris, 2008; Sassen, 2008; Sundaram, 2010; van de Donk et al., 2004). This critique elicited a response from Deuze (2012) in which he reiterates his argument and proposes a paradigmatic approach to study this phenomenon by helping people to ‘live a good and beautiful media life” (p. 367).

Moving on from the scientific vernaculars of digital media, the World Bank provides interesting and unambiguous statistics about media use and technology trends. Over a time span of 10 years (2010–2020), the global percentage of access to electricity has risen from 83.57% to 90.48% (The World Bank, n.d.a). The percentage of individuals using the internet has doubled from 28.79% to 59.64% (The World Bank, n.d.b). Per 100 people, 105.46 people had a mobile phone subscription in 2020 while in 2010 that average was at 75.85 subscription per 100 people (The World Bank, n.d.c).

Another great example of technology development is the artificial intelligence sector, whose dynamics have been impressively summarised and visualised by Roser (2022a; 2022b; 2023a). It is believed that AI and deep fakes can jeopardise democratic stability (Milmo & Stacey, 2023) — digital appliances with analogous outcomes. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that technologies and digital media are circulating among us in large quantities. Concurrently, technologies are shrinking in size whilst their computational power increases substantially (Roser, 2023b; Roser 2023c; Routley, 2017) and acquisition costs decrease constantly (Roser, Ritchie & Mathieu, 2023). Digital interconnectedness and active network membership has long been associated with real-life benefits such as information richness and speed and exchange of ideas and knowledge (Jackson, Rogers & Zenou, 2017; Ortiz-Ospina, 2019). This narrative explains why technologies and digital environments are so powerful against the backdrop of a globalising society. Furthermore, there is the dawn of the internet of things (Marsan, 2015) which in connection with AI has the potential to disrupt the technological development and our relationship with digital technologies even further because appliances like smartwatches are facing a process of miniaturisation and are thus becoming smaller and smaller.

The omnipresence of digital media and their effects on perceptions or reflections of reality, society, social environments and media-self relationship must be investigated. If digital media is doomed to cease to exist, what are mechanisms and strategies to communicate this and how can a smooth transition be ensured? What comes after digital media? What are the ramifications for our social behaviour?

© Luka Paul Vethake, 2024