Zygmunt Bauman and the digital society

Introduction

From its very beginnings, technology has always been the tool to ensure human's survival because of his weakness. It has always been a facilitator and multiplier of human faculties. Nietzsche (Nietzsche, 2002) called man ‘the animal not yet determined’ and Gehlen (Gehlen, 1988) a ‘deficient being’ who, in an attempt to ensure his survival, adapts the environment to his needs and dominates nature through technology. The ancient Greeks were well aware of this when they created the myth of Prometheus and τεχηνε.

Plato speaks of this in the Protagoras Plato, 1991 but also Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus, 1989): his gift of fire, taken from Hephaestus, would not have been sufficient if it had not been accompanied by the knowledge of Athena, that is, the practical application of science.

In the first phase, which we might call ‘simple technology,’ technology is considered an extension of manual dexterity, accepted and introjected as part of itself. It is with the Industrial Revolution (c. 1760–c. 1840) that technology begins to complexify, to surpass the human capacity for understanding and direct domination. Steam and then electric machines are no longer within everyone's reach, but require specialized personnel to operate them. The process of separation from nature that had already begun with the overcoming of animism is thus completed. Now nature is something alien to man – and even aesthetically ‘ugly,’ given the savage anthropization of industrialization − which it appears possible to dominate with technology. In this second phase, the machine is seen as a threat, not only because it takes away jobs, but above all because it is incomprehensible, something alien to normal usability. Its complexity, power and superhuman strength provoke fear: fear of the machine – as of all self-propelled, autonomous, automatic mechanisms, as panic representations of monstrosities imitating the functions of the living – accompanies the entire nineteenth century and even ends up in the Freudian list of the causes of the uncanny (unheimlich), to spill over into the machines of war and total destruction of the twentieth century. The digital revolution has swept away the fear of the machine, favouring a friendly use of it, accentuating its playful function, which was the first to be used in the personal computer, and then became a tool for work, communication and mediation.

What unites the noisy and cumbersome machine of the first Industrial Revolution to the latest generation smartphone is still its opacity. The incomprehensibility of the mechanisms that enable it to function remains, but people have now passively accepted this as a matter of course and limit themselves to judging it by its performance potential and aesthetic side: the technological object is a ‘discrete object’ that should be taken for what it is, without asking too many questions.

Not only are the new technologies no longer frightening – to the extent that it can be said that mankind, after almost three centuries, has finally overcome its phobia of the machine – but they have reversed the terms of the question: now it is reality that is frightening, and it is the machine that is called upon to play the role of neutral mediator.

Information can spread from peer to peer, using new technologies that open up innovative scenarios that enhance individualism. Bauman writes:

‘Information curtain descending’?

Where these difficulties are greater, the inability to adapt is more onerous, so effective, psychologically compensatory substitutes are sought. The new technologies lend themselves to act as escape routes, as emergency exits, representing almost the typical sublimations of our time.

The severing of the link with nature, considered hostile, has made the world something incomprehensible, combined with mistrust in science, which until now had proved to be the ductile tool for exerting dominion over the world, modifying it and bending it to the needs of the human habitat. Trust in science had travelled a long way to conquer the human soul, first stripping religion of its magical and superstitious contents, then reaching its zenith in the Enlightenment and Positivism, in the conviction, shared with modernity, that it could count on continuous and ever-increasing progress.

But something changed, following the tragic events of the twentieth century, which blamed science and its technological application for a disturbing dehumanization. The decay of the idea of progress, as it was conceived by modernity in its industrialized and economist version, has led to a change of direction, accompanied in this by the ecological movements.

In a society of interregnum, where signs of the affirmation of new values, new rules and where – as Bauman (2010) has shown – social relationships take on a liquid form and uncertainty prevails, the introduction of the technological medium between the human and the world is seen as salvific. It realises the ancestral dream of a technique at the service of man, it makes the artifice a neutral medium that allows one to distance oneself from nature, while retaining indirect control over it. Hence the use of new technologies in an unprecedented way to recover control over nature, albeit indirectly. Not a return to the past, but to a ‘new alliance’ that is accomplished by artifice, bypassing, at least for the moment, an obstacle considered insuperable.

No more responsibility, no more disturbing involvement, digital technology allows for observation and addressing while keeping safe, on the other side of the screen, which has itself become the most effective and pleasant representation of reality. A democratization of emotional expressions is achieved too, as Bauman notes: ‘After the destructive phase culminating in postmodernity, now the new history or what replaces it, as a collective memory, is a digital trail that runs through the entire planet and records every human expression, regardless of the social importance of the issuer’ (Bauman and Bordoni, 2014: 107).

The ease of use and its wide availability give the impression of being able to potentially know everything and thus dominate the world. An indirect domination, however, implemented through the technological medium. But this impression of domination is only illusory, since true knowledge requires genuine in-depth study, direct experience with things and relations with people. It is, on closer inspection, a false knowledge induced by an innovative drive to consume ever more perfected technological products in order to fulfil the desire to be always up-to-date, present, informed, connected, ‘loved.’ There is no doubt that behind this behaviour lies the need for love, which in isolation cannot be satisfied except through recognition by others, those who in the idea of the net surfer take on the face of the community, that is, the lost environment in which to be welcomed and gratified. The positive effects produced by technological mediation – real time information, greater opportunities to communicate and learn, self-updating – are contrasted by the negative ones, or at least considered as such, in light of the social conditions of the moment: isolation; egocentrism; conceit; withering; and lack of future.

Technological mediation has a historical premise, without which its rapid emergence would not be explained. It is, in fact, the ‘primary screen,’ television (TV), which induced billions of people to look at the world through a medium. Thus began, over 60 years ago, a process of mediatization that was unprecedented and that Guy Debord has well illustrated with the concept of “spectacularization” (Debord, 2014), the transformation of every event into a spectacle to be witnessed with a passive, purely visual participation. The spectacularized society is the properly postmodern one. It is representative of a society that is sweetened, blatantly artificial; a society of appearances similar to a theatrical performance, which gives the impression of a positive, exciting, desirable reality and presents itself to the eyes of the beholder (only through the screen, because it finds its maximum expression through the medium of TV) precisely as a spectacle. It is only a harmful illusion, which leads one to believe in what it is not, a dangerous form of domination with alienating economic, cultural and above all political outcomes.

The transformation of the audience into a mass of passive and consenting spectators was then intended to promote consumerism and, at the same time, ensure social control with univocal and homologizing information. Viewers were given the only opportunity to know about the world what passed on the screen, with no opportunity to choose other than the channel, helping to extinguish any critical spirit. But with an undesirable effect, an unforeseen collateral damage: closure in the domestic sphere. TV as a window on the world in fact induced people to isolate themselves within four walls, in the conviction that on its own it was sufficient to know, to be informed, to participate, to maintain contact with reality. An invitation to closer individualization that was soon taken up, pushing people out of mass society. Watching the world through the screen became a habitual practice, a compulsory step without which it seemed difficult to approach reality; in many cases it became ‘the reality,’ so much so that only what was on TV was considered true, reliable, worthy of consideration.

This model passed naturally into the new digital technologies, which found themselves, so to speak, a ground already cleared, ready to welcome them. For younger people it is the only world they know: ‘The only social world they knew and had learned to inhabit was digitally operated. For them, the internet was as natural as the sea or a mountain’ (Bauman and Lyon, 2013: 125).

This is because the new frontiers of communication disrupt the principle of univocity, typical of mass culture, and are based on reticular communication, peer-to-peer, between individual and individual, without ideological, political or cultural intermediaries, other than those that are solely technological, dealing with digital technology, combined with the personal possession of the technological tool (because it is available on the market at an affordable price), gives the impression of great freedom.

The TV set was only the terminal of a complex communicative apparatus that was precluded to the individual user, while the smartphone or tablet encloses all expressive and receptive potential, which transforms the passive spectator into an autonomous and creative actor. It is the announced end of mass society and the origin of a society without rules, where everything can be said and contradicted, everything can be allowed, and where, despite the broad freedom to relate with others, the individual suffers from extreme loneliness. A loneliness that derives from the same relationship with the technological medium, which – in becoming the mediator of the surrounding reality – becomes the only interlocutor with whom to relate, the referent in which to close oneself in an exclusive relationship.

Despite the greater concession to emotions, the behaviour of people in the digital society tends to be egocentric, to privilege self-interest, to the point of renouncing solidarity, one of the main characteristics of the community, which was maintained thanks to mutual support and the sharing of existential conditions. The new communities that form online on the basis of technological mediation – those virtual relationships that for Bauman express the ‘desire for community’ in a globalized context and that for Maffesoli (Maffesoli, 1996) indicate a regression to the time of tribes – seem to replicate the delimited and circumscribed spirit of aggregation of the origins.

Bauman discusses this in Retrotopia, his last book published posthumously:

‘Away from the tribes’ and ‘back to tribes’?

They are instead characterized by a strenuous selfishness, so much so that individuals who relate online use the technological medium to show themselves off, making it an audience in which to satisfy their desire for prominence and narcissism. Their aim is personal recognition, self-assurance, the opportunity to be noticed and admired for various reasons, which may be physical prowess or courage, originality or sincerity, creativity or willingness to communicate. But, also ready to cancel the friendship and leave the virtual community with a quick gesture on the keyboard, without any regrets. Because online relationships are fragile, precarious, temporary, destined to last only as long as they serve their purpose. Neither the personality nor the feelings of the followers count, only their numbers. It is a quantitative community, based on ‘likes’ and ‘followers,’ on which popularity and success depend, but also the economic return of advertising.

The freedom to communicate stimulates the desire for prominence as a way out of isolation. We move from the postmodern spectacularization of the world – artificial, falsified, offering an illusory image of reality – to the spectacularization of the self. Justified, in this case, by the inner need to achieve greater transparency and sincerity (at least in principle), as a reaction to the previous model, with the intention of showing the authentic face of people, the emotions and feelings that animate them and therefore make them trustworthy. In this transition from the spectacle of an artefactual reality, constructed at a table, offering a misleading, but at the same time attractive and perfected reality of a non-existent reality, to a spectacularization of the self, there is all the profound unease of a multitude that rejects homologation, single thinking and the hypocrisy of appearing better than it is, in order to manifest its own originality, beyond all rules, conventions and confidentiality, seeking to open up to others with the utmost spontaneity. Sometimes even with excessive naivety and confidence, with the risks one can well imagine. In this process, one even loses the sense of the private: the value of one's interiority, the defence of personal intimacy from the prying eyes of others:

It will be said that the renunciation of privacy is the price one has to pay to make oneself known and appreciated, to assimilate oneself to successful people, to public figures – actors, singers, sportsmen, politicians: the heroes of our time – who have made renunciation of privacy their way of life, always under the eyes of the cameras, a life in the shop window, trying to snatch a few hours of private intimacy in a stressful existence. Giving in to the lure of the spectacle of the self is not only narcissism, the desire to be the centre of attention, to be reflected on digital screens, but it is the expression of a profound need to be loved, a need sublimated through constant recognition, repeated attention, even momentary success, the confirmation of one's beauty or intelligence, courage or creativity.

A “like” is enough for gratification.

And the reiteration of this sublimation, which is never fully satisfying, like compulsive consumerism, in that it is but a surrogate for love and self-confidence, dismantles day after day the construction of the private, towards a social construction that tends to become more and more ‘public,’ without any respect for the individual.

The innovative characteristic of the new digital technologies is that they go beyond the traditional instrumental use for the benefit of man and become a mediator between man and the world.

This happens because both the direct contact with nature of the origins and the relationship of domination over nature, desired by modernity, are broken, with an irremediable fracture that produces the inability to understand the world. This fracture can only be bridged by resorting to a mediator, technology. With its digital application in communications, with its friendly, intuitive use, it represents the good face of science, the chance for redemption, the opportunity to consolidate the ‘new alliance,’ after the great disappointment of which Günther Anders (Anders, 2025) speaks in the aftermath of the Second World War. Now the man of the third millennium no longer feels ‘old-fashioned,’ overcome by his own scientific and technological discoveries, which were beyond his control and which he saw as a threat to his survival (as in the case of the atomic bomb for Anders). He has now come to believe that he can dominate technology and use it as he pleases, even though he does not know the mechanisms that regulate it and make it work.

The ‘new alliance’?

In the long run, reliance on technology as an indispensable mediator for relating to the other and to the world, ends up replacing the other and becoming the object of the relationship. It ends up becoming the world itself and closing in on it, in the illusion that everything is complete and exhausted in the technological medium, which has become the faithful companion of existence. A symbiotic relationship is formed with it, almost one of psychological dependence, so much so that it cannot be renounced, on pain of real withdrawal crises. Its absence is perceived as a lack of ‘world.’

At best, the technologized individual can no longer relate to reality except through the medium, which becomes his interpreter, decipherer and even the memory of experience. Thus, lived experience is no longer introjected, but delegated to the external memory that preserves it and keeps it available for all eventualities. The rapidity of change alters the very idea of experience and makes it ephemeral, relative, fungible. Memory runs the risk of becoming an optional extra, delegated to databases, avoiding the effort of learning and remembering.

But that is not all: the world seen through the medium is filtered and reinterpreted; as it were, reduced to the language of the machine, whose logic allows it to be understood according to its own unmodifiable rules. The representation of the world follows the evolution of technology, which becomes its only authorized interpreter. In the worst case, however, the medium replaces the world. One could speak, in this case, of a kind of ‘technological autism,’ in which the individual refuses to relate to the other and to the outside world, limiting himself to maintaining an exclusive relationship with the medium itself.

This practice is understandable if only one thinks that the technological tool, by interposing itself between the subject and the world, facilitates understanding, reducing its complexity, eliminating obstacles and embarrassments. It is a formidable facilitator, a ‘friend’ that paves the way and makes it possible to overcome misunderstandings, shyness, hesitations to relate, inhibitions even of a physical nature. In personal relationships, in fact, the technological medium drastically reduces all kinds of psychological difficulties.

By eliminating the physicality of the encounter and its relational problems – linked to physical presence, corporeity, or even olfactory empathy – it creates the conditions for experiencing a virtualized sexuality that is consumed and exhausted within the same instrument, avoiding the embarrassment of direct intercourse.

It is no coincidence that so-called ‘virtual betrayals’ experienced on the Internet, without people having had the opportunity to meet physically ‘offline,’ are recognized among the causes of separation.

In the workplace, digital lends itself to increased employee control and develops obsessive forms of performance that disrupt daily life. With the smartphone, ‘just as snails carry their homes, so the employees of the brave new liquid modern world must grow and carry their personal panopticons on their own bodies’ (Bauman and Lyon, 2013: 54).

‘Technology as an indispensable component of being’?

The digital society in which we have just begun to live presents many illusory solutions and certainly not solutions to our problems. That is why it is necessary to clear the way of the mirage of a mediatized existence and to re-learn to know reality in a direct way, not using new technologies as a tool, but neither as an end.

Because technology is not a means. It is a human quality that must be recognized. Not projected outside itself, but introjected, made its own along with knowledge. It will therefore be necessary to recover technology as a ‘gift,’ the gift of Prometheus that allowed humanity to survive: technology as an indispensable component of being.