To elucidate, a description of the cyber aura, framed with the different cyber reception aesthetics, along with the changed perception of the audience is vital to grasp the new paradigm of the virtual. I will base my argument on Benjamin’s epistemic essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit[1]/Der Erzähler[2] as well as Lippmann’s sensual approach. Benjamin argues that the storyteller and recipient gets alienated from oral experience and loses the skill as a storyteller and a mind devoted to contemplation, and that the technical reproducibility makes one lose the respect of the aura.
The constant striving of humanity for presence of the aura is a decisive moment for the perception. The decisive question is if this holistic experience enables the act and process of contemplation, even in the virtual lack of Here and Now. The internet conveys a Here and Now that is, given that the user is endowed with the necessary technology, available anywhere and anytime and thus everpresent. One is faraway, so close.[3] In the Cyber, the Here and Now becomes virtual and therefore untouchable, i.e. at first completely detached from the manufacturing process, but also infinitely consumable, reproducible and circulable. The internet offers a severe challenge to the Here and Now, since there is no need to capture and value the moment, which is continuously available and can be permanently re-accessed. This constant availability destroys the value of the presence, rendering the act of reception completely dis-sychronized and dis-placed, random and casual instead of special.
Concerning the topos, cyberspace is a virtual filing system that is accessible from any computer at any time. This über-availability of “the moment” and “the place” results into a de-chronologicalization of the time dimension, the chronos, as one does not actually be on time to perceive the act, and, due to the fact that one does not have to be there, on the loss of the common topos, place, and even individual apparatus, as the same information is decentrally available via the apparatus and via several paths.
Within this cyber system however, the dominating function of the media is undergoing virtual change. While the Here and Now is lost, the individual has gained the most decisive power of all preceding media forms. The act of cyber reception is determined by the user, not the producer. Cyberians choose whenever and wherever to access, as well as whatever interests them.
Within radio, television and print, the available materials are provided by a central, professionalized medium, that determines the time frame (television and radio schedule, as well as print publication), the location (in front of a radio or TV apparatus), as well as a hierarchy (radio, TV and print) of the available pieces of information. Up until now, one can claim that the media still retains the function of providing the main input within this system, as well as building and providing cyber infrastructure.
This choice of paths and speed result not only in power, but also loss of orientation, as the individual prod-user interacts in an environment that is detached from a common rhythm and choreographed spatio-movement. The loss of liveness is the loss of tradition and ritual[4]: There is no time- and space-wise determined and scheduled gathering any more.
Already at the advent of mass media, Walter Benjamin regards, in his essay The Storyteller/Der Erzähler, the task of the writer as well as producer as a mere functional distinction, caused by the shifting of the roles and responsibilities.[5]
The novel role of the former user is the true revolution. Axel Bruns describes this merging of the user and producer to the prod-user and the continuum of texts with the term produsage, which he introduced in his Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.[6] To speak in the terms of Bruns, prod-users prod-use their own discourse within their own community. More and more, the community discourse becomes an alternative paraspace to the professional online-media industry. My argument evolves from the individual internet user, the community, the innovative forms of shaping the internet discourse (produser, Bruns), to the novel character of internet usage (produsage, Bruns), that I will explore in my research.
For the first time, the user can re-present oneself in cyberspace with technological means via virtual characters. The cyberstoryteller not only shapes the discourse, but also networks differently.
The individual has gained the most decisive power of all preceding media forms. Former mass media experiences occurred within an anonymous crowd of people and with a limited interaction, such as during a concert or a cinema screening. The internet medium is still available for and geared towards the masses, but is consumed by individuals within a community that (s)he in part determines and (s)he can participate in, making a choice[7] with whom (s)he would like to communicate. The individual chooses the URL cyberpath which (s)he would like to walk on, and the cyber-user picks what (s)he would like to see or hear. Most importantly, the individual decides with what pace (s)he would like to perceive those items.
This former user is simply not (just) a user of provided information, or a recipient within anonymous masses any more. (S)he not only directs the reception of media products in ways that exceeds past media experiences, and, while still remaining a user, (s)he becomes the producer. Both technically as well as personally, a tracing and tracking of usage as well as towards the establishment of a network become possible. I argue that the former mass becomes a connected community network.
[1] Benjamin, Walter: Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Frankfurt: suhrkamp 1963, p. 13.
[2] Benjamin Walter: Der Erzähler. In: Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften. Frankfurt: suhrkamp 1961.
[3] U2: Stay (Faraway, So Close!), from the Album Zooropa, 1993
[4] Peterson, Mark Allen: Anthropology and Mass Communication. Media and Myth in the New Millennium. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books 2003, p. 151.
[5] Benjamin, Walter: Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. In: Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften. Edited by Siegfried Unseld. Frankfurt: suhrkamp 1961.
[6] Bruns, Axel: Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Lang 2008. See also his online platform http://produsage.org/, <15.>.
[7] One could discuss the notion of “choice” here, since the choice is a carefully generated tool, derived from “real-world” social interactions, “six degrees of separation”, as well as the virtual profile and interests. However, it is a novelty that the community is created, and that the reception is not a random experience within the masses any more.
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