Though a couple of pages short of a hundred, this short book hits hard. In it, Byung-Chul Han outlines the reasons why the nature of new technology, has altered how we interact and relate with the world, though more importantly with ourselves. The sense of social, political instability, increased anxiety, panic attacks and decline in mental health, that has increased hugely since the arrival of the IPhone in 2007, is only one consequence.
'Information by itself does not illuminate the world. It can even have the opposite effect. From a certain point onwards, information does not inform - it deforms...Information now circulates in a hyper-real space, without any reference to reality.'*
I cannot be alone in wondering, quite why the simple move from analogue to increasingly digital lifestyles should have had such a profound, and largely detrimental effect on the stability of human civilisation. Well. Byung-Chul Han, in this book, gets closest to the nub of why. Why irrationality, stupidity, denial of the facts, and the perpetration of falsehoods, has become so gleefully widespread these days?
'Truth is a part of the terrestrial order. It gives human life stability. The digital order puts an end to the age of truth and introduces the post factual information society. The post-factual regime of information elevates itself above fact-based truth. In its post-factual form, information is thing-fleeting. Where nothing is arrestable, all stability is lost.'*
For a large part of human existence we have been tool makers, to improve the qualities of our lives. Tools we could handle, pass them down to our children and transfer the skills in the use of them. A tool is one part of a whole world of things which we develop a personal relationship with. They have history and memories invested in them by us. Whether that be a hammer, textiles, writing, music, wall painting or a carving of a god. This is the world of analogue, that the book, record player, art, craft, cameras, or theatre were further developments of. Tools can become personal possessions, extensions of our being, our intermediary and emotional entanglement with the world. Tools mean much more to us than their utility alone, through them we share our experiences, thoughts, responses, they are our reliable companions through the vicissitudes of life. We cease thinking about their usefulness and wear them, allow them to inhabit our being. Non-Things, by comparison are neutered objects, they introduce to our world technology a castrated level of feeling. It makes eunuchs of our engagement with life.
'Understood abstractly, experiencing means consuming information. Today, we prefer experiencing to possessing, being to having. Experiencing is a form of being.....we now live in a society of experiencing and communicating that prefers being to having. The old maxim of having - the more I have, the more I am - no longer holds. The new maxim of experiencing is: the more I experience, the more I am.....
The memories stored in things have suddenly lost all value; they have to give way to new experience. It seems that people are no longer able to dwell with things or to imbue them with life and make them their faithful companions'*
A smart phone has many uses, it is a phone, a camera, a portable office, a reminder, a letter writer, a film maker, music player, day planner, time keeper, to name but a few. It is a conduit for multiple forms of information, data and experiences. If it cannot be defined by just the one thing, but a multiplicity, it is in this sense a no-thing. And it's no-thingness imprisons our attention, but resists us developing any deeper personal relationship with it. When it breaks, or a new model comes along, we simply replace it. The 'thingness' of an object is related to the task we execute through using it. Scrolling through information, however distracts and dispels focus. It is, something we lose our sense of self in, rather then find it through. The information might be a thousand years old, but sans wrinkles, sans yellowing, it has no visible or sensory sign of its age.
'Non-Things are perhaps the food of the ghosts.'*
A kindle, may give us access to the entirety of all human book output from all over the world, but you will find it difficult to generate a personal relationship with it, to love it like you would a physical book. A book that you have sensory ownership of, that you feel between our fingers, turn it's pages, fondle it's unique cover, smell the papery newness of, and the whiff of it's ink. On a sensory level alone a kindle is a no-thing, it sits smoothly, blandly, passively and always feels exactly the same immutable object in our hands. It's hard to fall completely in love with a kindle, like you would do a favourite book. It's a means of reading, not a sensual part of the reading experience itself.
'Being connected is not the same as being in a relation.'*
We once owned actual physical photographs, photographs that however imperfect, captured a moment or a person, that somehow came to embody that person or moment. We kept it by our bed or near our heart. How often do you get a photo print done from a smart phone camera? I'll bet not at all. Because the camera on a smart phone worships only the moment of its taking a snap, we do selfies with their uncomfortably posed faces and grimaces. And once that moment has passed and we've posted it on Instagram, it is entirely forgotten. Memories require is to return to them, to remember, to recollect and not delete to release more storage.
'Digital time disintegrates into a mere sequence of point like presences. It has no narrative continuity. It thus transforms life itself into something fleeting. Digital objects do not permit any lingering. In this way they differ from things.'*
We have access to a huge range of music, and can listen to it only via a specific music platform. It comes free, if you don't mind the repeated interruptions of adverts. But you can purchase a premium subscription to be rid of them. You don't even have to buy a tangible thing anymore. Even if you do purchase a download, that merely provides you with regular access. You don't actually own it. You cannot hold it in your hand, you only play it just so long as you can access to it online. And if the streaming platform wanted to introduce a Paywall, between you and it, then it could easily do so. Your music is not fully in your possession anymore, like a physical vinyl record, tape or CD are, it's more like a conditional temporary loan from a library. At any moment your ownership could be removed, your right to hear it can expire.
'The smart phone is hard, it is not a digital teddy bear. Rather, it is a narcissistic, autistic object through which we feel, most of all ourselves. It thus also destroys empathy.'*
The essential no-thingness of how we relate to these various temples and conduits of information, is why prolonged scrolling becomes so draining and leaves you feeling depressed and purposeless. This takes our attention and give us very little back for it. The internet is a place of the 24/7 informational download. It's a place where data is mined, our time is robbed, and personal initiative is sapped It doesn't matter what the information is, whether that is true or false, wise or foolish, interesting or dull. It treats all information as though it were morally or ethically neutral. It makes no judgement about its worth or value, it is just information. Which is why a president can talk about alternative facts, and what were previously unacceptable pernicious opinions or actions, are treated as though they are just another view to pick from many equal views. This emptiness, this moral void that it exists in, diminishes the value of history and remembering the lessons that often need to be drawn from it. Unanchored from memory we drift in a morass of contextless information.
'There is no fundamental difference between being reachable at all times and being enslaved.'*
This book reads like one long hit on the head, concerning what we attend to, and what a deeper sense of engagement might be. How all that is being hijacked by the technology we use daily. Slowly changing what it is to be human and to interact with others. AI is simply a further extension of this data seeking, data sucking, information pumping and extraction process. This world that is being thrust upon us, lacks 'thingness', it lacks conscience, moral judgement, and wisdom. These are just a few of its notable absences, that make our future look increasingly impoverished and hence treacherous for our future survival. Every page of Non-Things had something pointed and pithy to say about our entropic malaise. That it speaks of our time, makes this essential reading.
'Non-things block out things, pollute them. Junk information and communication destroy the silent landscape, the discreet language of things.'*
CARROT REVIEW - 8/8
* Extracts from Non-Things by Byung-Chul Han, Published by Polity,2022.
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