Enhanced Reality: If we choose to look as detachedly and objectively as we can, wearing the uniform of a future historian, at the era and society in which we live - in the broadest sense and without geographical limitations -, I think we will agree that we will be the subject of study for future generations regarding the relationship we have developed with social media.
Just as the relationship between humans and television and the way the Internet changed our lives 15-20 years ago are now the subject of study, we ourselves will be the subject of study on how we integrated social media into our everyday lives.
(In case anyone doubts the importance of social media, they can take a look at this research that shows how many hours we spend each day using them, their reach across countries, their growth rate, and many other data)
The Theory of Augmented Reality
I think the big difference compared to the other stations on the historical map of the Man-Media dipole is that now is the first time that the world of the Media does not run parallel to reality but has become our reality itself. We no longer live two lives: one offline and one online. We live an amalgam of the two where our identities, our professions, our friendships, information, reality itself move on a single line. A line made of both physical and digital elements. I will call it, arbitrarily , enhanced reality .
As this excellently worded comment on Reddit shows, we no longer just surf the internet. We exist on it all day, every day in one way or another. We might be walking down the street but have the geolocation of a dating app turned on, we might be at the theater and read live comments about the show on Twitter, or we might be shopping at the supermarket and scan the barcode of a product with our phone to see how much it costs online.
This new augmented reality in which we operate brings about hundreds of changes that cover a wide range of our daily lives, from our personal relationships to the building of our own character. In the following paragraphs, I will try to focus on the part of our personal identity and how it is shaped within the context of augmented reality.
The Theory of Two Selves
If one looks at academic publications that analyze the average user of digital social networks on an anthropological and psychological level, one will come across references to the “struggle” between the two selves, the analog and the digital, the difference in expression of the two, their usually diametrically opposed character and of course the reasonable question of what the user’s true character is. The one he has in the “normal” world or in the digital? The most recent studies even spoke of the term digital dualism which interpreted the confusion of the boundaries of these two identities, which often crossed into each other’s fields. A typical example is the habit of Twitter users to introduce themselves using their Twitter name in specific social situations while in others using their real name.
The Transition to a Fipsian Identity
So human nature itself, combined with the evolution of technology, has caught up with the aforementioned theories in the turn as the rules have changed. In augmented reality, we do not have 2 selves but one with a basic identity, the phygital (an equally arbitrary term derived from the word phygital). The phygital identity brings together characteristics and elements that are, for the time being, strange and foreign as we have not encountered them before in the past.
I will categorize the elements of our new self into 3 larger groups. Content, Data, and Identity. That is, what material we share, how it is processed and interpreted, and finally who it really belongs to.
Preparing Content for Us Without Us
During the rapid development of the internet and social networks, the prevailing view was that this was the first time that such an obvious democratization of the means of expression had taken place for the average user. The mistake was that we confused the ability to express ourselves with the ability to make it public. We assumed that because our writings and photographs could potentially reach the screens of hundreds of thousands of people, we also had hundreds of thousands of ways to express ourselves. Which, of course, is not the case.
So in terms of content, that is, what we create and how we communicate it, the material and the general context pre-exist, determining and limiting to a very large extent what we will share with other users. Algorithms have created a newsfeed based on their own parameters, photo filters have been selected based on their appeal, trending topics guide you to what to comment on, emoticons push you to give a psychological background to your writings and of course social media itself knows before you who you should address, reminding you “do you want to tag your friend here?” or “why dont you congratulate your friend for his new job?”
Our Identity Is Measurable
The next important feature we encounter in mapping our new selves is the role of numerical data in each person’s attempt to create an identity. All social media “characterize” their users based on quantitative rather than qualitative data. In the new era, you are defined by the number of followers you have, the likes your photos get, and your klout. Only by maximizing these data, you grow as a person.
In recent decades, the way people defined themselves came mainly from purchasing products through which they acquired a specific identity. Then it moved to the self-brand stage where each of us managed our digital self like a business by choosing the area in which we would “operate” e.g. sports, politics, arts (strategy), what we would communicate (marketing) and how we would communicate with others (customer service).
Now, the average social media user has moved on to the next stage. From a brand, they are transformed into a meme generator. In augmented reality, what matters is how many times the material you post is retweeted, which is rarely, if ever, produced by you. We act like hunting dogs looking for interesting secondary material that will bring us very high numbers through which we will gain social recognition.
Characteristically, Stanford University recently published a study that studies the role of each user in the dissemination of information until it reaches the level of being considered viral.
The Lack of Ownership
Finally, our new self is not defined by ownership and personal possession. Our new self no longer belongs to us. All of our personal information, from the most insignificant to the most important, has been registered on this impersonal network called the Internet. The most interesting element in the issue of privacy on the Internet is the user's own desire to make public even information that is not even asked for.
Nowadays, our memory and our experiences have much less power than the storage capabilities of social networks. When we want to look back at the past, we consult our profile newsfeed rather than our own memory or a possible conversation with a friend. It is no coincidence that at the end of each year all social media offer us the opportunity to “remember our actions” through short videos.
Impersonal algorithms know ourselves better than we do. After we have given them all our personal information, they are now the ones who suggest who our next friend on Facebook should be, what book to buy and what music to listen to.
The Next Step
The mixing of these two worlds and the logical creation of an augmented reality was inevitable since technology became an integral part of our daily lives. Even if today, some are hesitant or not convinced of the existence of this augmented reality, the only certainty is that in the coming years something like this will be undeniable but perhaps even obsolete in the face of the development of new phenomena even more powerful in terms of creating personal confusion. The development of virtual reality applications is certainly such a phenomenon.
Related links: Marginal Utility Blog
Huffington Post
