Digital Delta. Herlander Elias

      Other Published Works

      .(2020). Hypertrail: On Digital Media, User-Consumers And Brands Today. Tablo, Melbourne, Austrália / Apple BookStore / Amazon / Barnes & Noble.

      .(2019). Drone Society (Elias, H.; Pires, O.). Tablo, Melbourne, Austrália / Apple BookStore / Amazon / Barnes & Noble.

      .(2019). The Complete Men School. Tablo, Melbourne, Austrália / Apple BookStore / Amazon / Barnes & Noble.

      .(2019). Macromedium: The Internet As The Convergence of All Media. Tablo, Melbourne, Austrália / Apple BookStore / Amazon / Barnes & Noble.

      .(2018). Homo Cypiens: Man In The Age of The Macromedium. Tablo, Melbourne, Austrália / Apple iBook Store.

      .(2018). Cloudpunk – The Digital Fifth Wave. Tablo, Melbourne, Australia / Apple BookStore / Amazon / Barnes & Noble.

      .(2018). Cloudpunk – A Quinta Vaga do Digital. Lisboa, Portugal: Fronteiras do Caos.

      .(2018). Homo Cypiens 3-3: Massive Dynamics. Tablo, Melbourne, Austrália / Apple iBook Store.

      .(2017). Homo Cypiens 2-3: The Moving Frontier. Tablo, Melbourne, Australia / Apple iBook Store.

      .(2017). Homo Cypiens 1-3: And The Connected World.Tablo, Melbourne, Australia / Apple iBook Store.

      .(2017). Cloudpunk – A Quinta Vaga do Digital.Tablo, Melbourne, Australia / Apple iBook Store.

      . (2016). Brandware – Quando as Marcas e os Meios Digitais Colidem. Tablo / Apple iBook Store / Amazon.

      . (2013). Post-Web: The Continuous Geography of Digital Media. Odivelas, Portugal: FormalPress

      . (2012). A Galáxia de Anime: A Animação Japonesa Como New Media. Covilhã, Portugal: UBI - Livros LABCOM.

      . (2008). First Person Shooter: The Subjective Cyberspace. Covilhã, Portugal: UBI - Livros LABCOM.

      . (2008). O Videojogo e o Entretenimento Global: First Person Shooter. Lisboa, Portugal: MediaXXI-FormalPress.

      . (2007). Néon Digital – Um Discurso Sobre os Ciberespaços. Covilhã, Portugal: UBI - Livros LABCOM.

      . (2006). A Sociedade Optimizada pelos Media [The Media-Optimized Society]. Lisboa, Portugal: MediaXXI-FormalPress.

      . Elias, Herlander (Ed., 1999). Ciberpunk – Ficção e Contemporaneidade. Lisboa, Portugal: Dist. Sodilivros.

      Credits

      Please visit:

      Web site:www.herlanderelias.com

      Email:[email protected]

      Copyright© Herlander Elias, Author 2020

      All rights reserved. No excerpt whatsoever of this edition may be reproduced, recorded on a archive system, or be transmitted, in any way, or by any means, whether it is electronic, mechanical, photocopied, saved, or of any other kind, without the explicit permission from Herlander Elias.

      Authors:Herlander Elias

      Translation & Proof Reading: Herlander Elias & Ondina Pires

      Cover Design:Flávio Almeida

      Preface

      I was invited to interpret this work in an attempt to translate and introduce the content here written by Herlander Elias. The approaches I used were verbal and visual. Namely: this preface, the introduction to this book and the cover. In this preface, I ask you for your permission to talk about this book through my visual interpretation of what I understood to be the Digital Delta. Basically, the book is divided into three parts that explore, individually, the concepts of each of the elements that form the Digital Delta. Namely, Brand World, Digital Media, and Change. This triangular system is a model that helps us to understand what is currently happening in the digital society that has been built and developed with the Internet. It was from this understanding and guidelines that the author provided that I tried to graphically write my interpretation.

      On the cover there is a subtle mixture of warm and cold colors. On the face of the humanoid figure there are warm tones and cold tones on one side that spread throughout his body and his aura. The coldness of the machines and the digital mix with the warmth of life and the human. And the simultaneity of these characteristics that belong to us, defines us. We are human in a paradoxical route: we live emotional relationships with immaterial information coming from digital media. This reality permeates our entire material body. Hot and cold. We are also hyperconnected with countless people and information but, at the same time, we are alone. We are individuals with no defined identity in an information network with various social networks whose appearance changes according to the presence we want to mark in these territories. The connections of this digital universe, these nodes that make up the links on the Internet, are like the synapses of our neurons that control our bodies. We are not androids, we are not human-machines, we are not cyborgs, we are only humans. Technology is not yet materialized in us, it is inscribed in our contemporary way of being. This constellation of digital information is tacitly imprinted on our bodies.

      We are digitally influenced and digital influencers. We have multiple identities. We are physically impermanent, but the information we share online has the possibility of being accessible for centuries or even millennia. Our assets in this digital logic have no mass; we cannot touch the subscriptions and files that we accumulate. Nothing is permanent and changes are inevitable. Even the speed at which transformations take place is not constant. That is why Digital Delta is an urgent and indispensable book to understand the changes that we are going through in this reality that is physically and digitally constructed.

      Introduction

      We live an era where we do not own things we buy, but we buy them to those who don't produce anything. Here is a statement that reflects the picture of our current social context. Digital immateriality is present in our daily lives through subscriptions, services, access and viewing on-demand. Fleeting, incorporeal, abstract and virtual. We pay for these items, but we cannot keep them. We no longer accumulate objects. There is nothing we can resell once it is used. Instead of used objects, we now have expired subscriptions.

      Technology, as a rule, has the potential to transform the way we live, and digital communication over the Internet has transformed our ability to communicate to levels that were previously unimaginable. Not only in the immediacy of communications, but in the quantity, ease, distance and, mainly, the way we communicate. There are personal, loving or professional relationships that are created online and only exist in the immateriality of digital. People who know other people deeply, but never shared the same physical space. We are excessively connected to the virtual and increasingly bewildered by the physical world. To be accompanied by someone connected to a messaging application is to experience the solitude of an immaterial company ― the pixelated shadow of a distant presence. The voice we hear in our WhatsApp messages are binary codes in the form of simulacra of unsynchronized dialogues. We remain connected and present in our usual digital places. Sherry Turkle's concept of “alone together” is an accurate portrait of this digital society with people who, together, are absent from the company of the people who are sitting next to them in the long hours in public transports, at the dinner table or at a party.

      We feel an urgency to be observed and the need to be heard, nevertheless the digital network that connects us to millions of other people is saturated with an immense density of information. How can we make our voices heard in these circumstances? Perhaps, because we are not heard, we need to communicate more, post more, upload more photos and through these actions we send more information onto the web and the cycle remains ad infinitum. We multiply our presence space in an attempt to be seen, heard and followed in a virtual world that occupies our time. The management of social networks is too laborious, the volume of information is superhuman, the interactions are numerous, yes, but superficial. We could consider, for example, Instagram