Expert in This, Guru in That, and Sense of Integrity

Digital technologies gave us the freedom to disseminate information with minimal monetary and time investment. Everything happens instantly and does not require someone's scrutinized moderation or approval. We are the sole moderators and police of our own content, unless it involves something utterly obscene or illegal that must be reported.

If you are an avid user of digital media and tools and are enthusiastic enough to create and share daily content, there is a high chance of establishing a strong online presence, attracting an impressive number of followers.

There is no problem with publicity and followers whatsoever, however...:

There is a widely used term on the Russian segment of the internet (RuNet), known as инфоцыгане, which literally means: info-gypsies or information gypsies. This term has a negative connotation that describes any publicly ambitious online enthusiasts who, in one way or another, lure an audience to their channels and accounts with questionable ideas, products, and services that make an instant impression on the viewer. 

The only constants that appear to matter in this equation are the power of conviction and personal charisma, while the true value of the advice, product, or service provided is not subject to critique or any digging. It is not to say that some of the bloggers or other public enthusiasts aren't insightful and inspirational, but the main issue that is laid out by the skeptical sector of online users is the possible harmful consequences for the naive and inexperienced portion of the audience. What if a superficial piece of advice from someone you admire and follow will do a great disservice to you in the long run? 

To become a successful influencer, you don't need any certification or license, nor do you need a formal educational background. There is no degree in Blogging or Influencing, after all. With this informational freedom, one can think that there is no obligation to do something with integrity in mind, ensuring that there is a true value behind the delivered message or material. As a result, many ambitious wannabe experts produce superficial content that does not pass critical scrutiny.

Perhaps online influencers, especially the ones who claim to be life experts without any formal education, must be explicit about it and provide disclaimers to ensure that the viewers do not take any of the pop-culture advice at face value.

Perhaps it would be helpful to incorporate virtue ethics into this whole process of content-sharing, as it considers the personal characteristics of an influencer regardless of the final outcome. It ensures that a person acts by the innate character traits that are virtuous, and therefore, by default, cannot cause any intentional harm to others. One would always and consciously choose the right course of action through the practical wisdom (phronesis in Greek).

Online Reputation and the Job Market

There is a common recommendation to minimize your online presence when it comes to the part of your personality that does not involve professional skills, because there is a risk of being eliminated from the job pool. This recommendation, in my opinion, can be limiting and damaging because it puts unreasonable constraints on your creative expression and the right to be authentic and spontaneous through whichever outlets you choose.

Present-day professional expectations of how the candidate should be seen have a discouraging factor because of their stifling effect. Don't say this, don't do that, don't be publicly YOU under normal circumstances... To be able to land a reputable job, you must have a professional presence at every turn, or else...

As a result, recruiters have a high risk of bringing on board someone featureless. There is only so much that you can grasp about a mysterious, reserved, and well-behaved new hiree. Not that it is not important to have good manners and exhibit respect toward your surroundings, but there will always be some grey area, something that is not fully understood and that later may take everyone by surprise, sometimes an unpleasant one.

However, if hiring managers have a generally sober understanding of who they are hiring, based on the candidate's both: professional skills and personal peculiarities, they will most likely bring on board someone who would fit in professionally and culturally. Personal peculiarities may divert one employer, but attract just the right one in turn, who receives your personality well, and maybe the kind that brings the exact values and vibes that they precisely need in their company.

Of course, it would be wise to moderate your public presence that does not represent you from the professional side, but completely removing it just for the fear of being weeded out from the candidate pool is a little personal betrayal. 

...How far should one go to create a perfectly acceptable social profile? 

Scientific Management: Digital Spaces and How Far Can We Go with Control?

Scientific Management is a controversial approach to work, which has been adopted by many agencies and employers, as any process requires consistency and efficiency to ensure that the production and manufacturing of goods meet set quotas and deadlines. A scientific approach to work management ensures that the outcome of individual and collective efforts is replicable and reliable, regardless of the frequency of times with which it's been performed.

Some perceive this approach as inhumane and unethical because it puts a person in a harsh framework and does not leave him any space for creativity. By design, the Taylorian scientific approach focuses on efficiency and reliability, leaving no space for improvisation. For the purposes for which it is designed, it proves to work as long as nobody deviates from the established rules and standards. 

Taylorian approach to tasks may be beneficial in every field of work or life. To maintain a large household, for example, strategically positioned appliances and furniture, and a certain order in which the tasks are completed, may significantly improve life quality and yield more physical and mental energy during the day to spend and enjoy more time with loved ones.

 When scientific management is taken too far, however, it may cause a lot of frustration and dissatisfaction at work. The present-day definition of such experience is micro-management. Constant and relentless monitoring took the form of a watchful digital eye: the camera. They are strategically positioned in every corner of a building, with the exception of bathrooms (but you never know), and every activity, every move, and even facial expressions are captured. Unless we pretend that it is not there, there is really no genuine way of relaxing and getting comfortable around our workspaces. There is a quiet and creeping sense of terror within us about the fragility of the situation, about the ease with which we can be replaced, for subtle reasons, and with no constructive feedback. This is the case when Taylorianism went too far, far beyond the simple task control, all the way to our cells and under the skin, we can feel it in our lungs....it interferes with our daily inhales and exhales. 

With all of these advanced technological tools that can easily track and monitor our daily activities in physical and digital spaces, is it absolutely necessary to take away our autonomy? Why not have faith in our best intentions and give us some space for a more improvised yet meaningful and purposeful expression? 

The Meaning of Time in a Digitized World

 How we experience the passage of time really depends on the intensity and quality of our focus, and how quickly or slowly it shifts from one subject to another. Emotions we experience during a particular timeframe count because based on them we can perceive time as something dreadfully slow or something that we do not even notice. When we perform something repetitive and mechanical that doesn't require a complex thought process, we feel that time is still, but we can't wait to get over it and move on to something more exciting and sensational. Another way to experience time is not to think of it at all: it happens naturally when we are fully immersed in the process and engaged with it completely with our mind, body, and soul. In such cases, the time goes by swiftly.

However, when we look back, the aftertaste of such experiences is felt in a reversed way. The series of dull and mechanical activities that may accumulate over several years feel so insignificant that they are perceived as a few months and the motivation to do something interesting and more engaging in the near future still persists. On the other hand, the accumulation of complex, exciting, and fulfilling activities, even if they were all accomplished within a month, may feel as if they lasted for a significant time period because of how rich in quality and satisfaction this whole experience has been.

Nowadays many of our activities involve digital spaces - their range is vast and diverse, and they may include something dull and repetitive, such as data entry, or, on the contrary, something that requires a higher cognitive effort, such as programming or drafting. 

Another dimension that may be played out independently or represent a part of some other cognitive process is creativity. A painter spends hours and days in his studio, working on a masterpiece, immersed in a creative flow that elevates his existence above time, gravitational forces, and an earthy sense of being. Some magic happens within the boundaries of that physical space. When such creative forces are extended onto the digital interface, do they persist in their quality even though the tools that are used to express that creativity aren't organic but artificial? It may be the case because when an artist continues to be fully and undividedly immersed in the flow regardless of the chosen medium, it suggests that this unique dimension, which is above time and space, is still available to him.

Organic Social Experience in a Digitized World

It is worth mentioning that the more mediums are introduced into our daily lives, the more distanced we find ourselves from each other physically. This has become especially apparent with the introduction of high-speed internet. Yet, we find ourselves effortlessly and quickly connecting with the entire world on a mental plane, capable of interacting with anyone regardless of their geographic location. We may find ourselves striking virtual friendships that can be deep and exciting, full of substance and content that can be explored further.

The globalized virtual platform allows even the humblest among us to find solace in digital organizations that focus on a specific field of interest or concern. We can articulate our thoughts and bring up apprehensions anonymously, without risking being detected and ridiculed openly.

The humblest and the shiest introverts have an opportunity to become recognized virtually and shine through with their unique technical skills, whether it is gaming, designing a platform, or hacking a system. They do not need to go through the anxiety and stress of networking and presenting themselves to the physical mass. It is enough to have solid hardware with rich memory and high-speed internet within the boundaries of their own room. This experience could be both satisfying and rewarding for such focused and introverted individuals, even if it means missing out more on natural kinds of interactions where social skills are very noticeable and desirable. 

But what about those among us who crave traditional types of interactions where shared physical spaces are a vital part of our interactional experience? It seems that because of how quickly and constantly our intellectual curiosity is satisfied with a single click of a "search" command,  the need to ask insightful questions in person hasn't only become obsolete, but the skill of asking good questions has deteriorated. It appears that everything that we need to know is available at our fingertips, and we unhesitantly replace a more fluid and dynamic type of information with a static one, generated through a digital search box. 

A lot of dialogues are gradually reduced to need-based interactions, where language is used conservatively, with a limited and focused vocabulary. These types of dialogues are practical and actionable, and they can release a lot of productivity into our daily lives when we need to run errands, complete a project, or a simple transaction, but they do not predispose to allegorical improvisations, where the social plane could be used as a verbal playground.

This social transmutation, of course, happens unnoticeably. It might not take a long time until we find ourselves in an excessively linear and structured world, where not only its architecture is flat, predictable, and repetitive, but the conversations that happen within its boundaries carry the same characteristics. 

If we end up finding ourselves trapped in such an extreme state of structure and predictability, will we be aware of it? 

Or will we immerse in it so seamlessly that it will be deemed an organic and innate capacity within us, a genetic imprint that will become a part of our ancestral memory?

And those few among us who may fall out of the dormant state now and then, will we be able to recreate organic conversational spaces? 

The following discourse may be full of exaggerations, but it reflects some visible social trends, where an informational exchange is escalated in speed, fragmented into smaller particles, and peeled off from any verbal residue that is not practical or focused. 

If we unplug ourselves from this relentless cycle even for a moment, we may discover a void that has been quietly and steadily expanding within us. 

The Medium is The Message, But in Which Way?

 There are so many mediums that were introduced to us in the past couple of centuries that we haven't even noticed how dramatically it impacted not only the form and shape of our physical architecture but also the architecture of our relationships with each other and with our own selves.

How do we understand that not only the content that is delivered through a certain medium has the message (or is the message), but the medium itself, regardless of its content, is, in fact, the message?

When we think about electricity, there is no well thought, or articulated message in it, but in itself, it creates the concept of time and space when it becomes an indivisible part of our lives. It delivers light into our homes, lightens up the streets, and serves many other functions beyond lights. 

Electrical current could be considered a message because it represents a certain era within which it exists and the degree to which certain societies are exposed to it. The medium's message could be understood when it is compared and contrasted between different societies. For example, the societies in which electricity has a more widespread presence, how different are they from the, so to speak, less fortunate societies that more often than not follow the phases of natural light?

Because of how subtly electricity shapes our lifestyles, we don't even realize when it happens. We just accept it as a given fact, and build our lives around it: we are awake during the evenings and our cognitive and physical activities do not stop at the sunset. But this is just one of the many examples that demonstrate how radically, and at the same time subtly, one medium can shape our lives and even alter our anatomical and cognitive abilities.

The same principle can be translated into other mediums that shape our lives unnoticeably: iPhones, laptops, smartwatches, and the internet itself, of course. They are indispensable parts of our social architecture and therefore symbolize everything that is fundamental to our survival within the technocratic socium. It is not just about the status, but also about the mere survival principle: how technologically savvy are you? How fast can you adapt to newly emerging technologies with their automation at an escalating speed? If you are behind, you miss out on life: staying in touch with others, updating your professional skills to meet new criteria, navigating through automated systems in public spaces such as transportation, check-ins and outs, purchasing, subscriptions, and other vital interactions with digital data.

It is very easy to get carried away with those all-accommodating and all-consuming technologies, forgetting about what's essentially natural for us as humans. How are we to survive in wild environments where you must follow a natural GPS such as the Sun? Is it unnerving to even think about the possibility of being unplugged from the internet for more than a day? How about one month or a year?

If the messages that our mediums carry aren't apparent or are very difficult to define, it is helpful to put them in comparison with other, more secluded cultures, where those mediums are introduced. 

When oriental societies come in touch with new mediums, one can see how difficult it is for them to preserve their authenticity under such an abundant volume of information, and the channels through which it is delivered to them. Hardware and software capture their lives and turn them into a cultural surrogate that has no authentic cohesiveness or unity based on their core, ancient values, but rather connects them on the basis of a temporary interest: a function or a transaction. To an oriental society, the medium could, therefore, carry a completely different message: isolation, fragmentation, uprooting. 

Because of how deeply we are immersed in our technologies, we sometimes pass inadequate judgments towards those who are somewhat behind in utilizing these "intuitive" and fundamentally important tools/mediums. The older generation may struggle to figure out how to use some of the settings and programs on the phone screen, and a younger person may conclude that they are illiterate or "slow". In doing so they devalue all of the solid, real-life experiences that an older person was exposed to. 

It appears that the messages that mediums carry could have strong historical significance, but could also be controversial, conflicting, and sometimes even biased if they prompt us to pass harsh judgments onto our surroundings. 

Either way, the medium is the message regardless of its content because it shapes our society and carries a historically significant impact on the destiny of our civilization.

Digitized Romance

The dating scene can be overwhelming. An abundance of choice is an illusion that gets easily disenchanted within the first few message exchanges. It is sometimes hard to tell if the author on the other side of the screen is a real human or a bot. Why? Because an AI bot and a contemporary communicator have a lot in common: they utter very generic expressions that could be universally exploited. 

There is a sense of discomfort and suspicion that accompanies you during this digital quest. Most of the time text exchanges are so generic and predictable that you start questioning if there are any real people left within your geographic radius and within the Nation as a whole. Who creates those profiles? Are they AI-generated to simply boost user interactions and lure them into buying a monthly membership? But then how ethical it is to have naive users continuously interact with bots, building false hopes for them, and taking their time and money? 

Another disturbing aspect of online dating is interaction with actual users. In some cases, it could be simply dangerous, because there is no way for the system to check the user's reputation and criminal background. And as long as they provide sufficient information in a profile and pay for the services, they can interact with others freely. 

The idea of digital dating could have been exciting if there wasn't so much ambiguity and risks around it. There is no pleasure in exchanging empty and generic words with chatbots, or otherwise sketchy individuals. This is not to say that every real user is sketchy, but simply to indicate that there is a serious problem with language and communication and a predisposition to be deceived.