Between Analogue & Digital

If we begin to look more closely at the process of copying between the analogue copy and the digital copy we can evidence some interesting ideas between the two.  With the analogue copy there is always an element of 'detection' or awareness.  The viewer can detect enough similarity to connect the copy to the original and enough difference to know that the copy isn't the original.  Both occur at the same time, or at least in very quick succession.  One would imagine the similarity to be conceived of first, that register of recognition or similarity to the original, and then the difference would possibly become apparent second.  A copy can be conceived of as an attempt by the copier to remain close to or aligned with the original, or alternatively to artfully and creatively stray widely from the original, or anywhere between the two.  The original always holds greater value than the copy, albeit the artful copy that adopts a wide berth from the original holds greater value than the artless attempt at replication.  In this sense, the total amount of overall value between the original and the artful copy, or the original and the artless copy always fluctuates.  This is the analogue world and the world of simulation where difference is transparent.

Meanwhile the digital copy exactly replicates the original, the notion of the copy in the digital world in terms of 'portrayal' is null.  In the digital world a copy represents only a number or amount, and which copy came first, second or last has no relevence, there is no original.  However, the larger the number of copies available, the less value becomes assigned to all the objects or copies.  With each additional copy, an equivalent portion of value is deducted from each previous copy, while the overall or total sum of value across all copies remains constant.  The digital copy is not a simulation because there is no detectable difference apparent, there is no difference apparent period.  The digital copy is a simulacra in the sense that its difference is undetectable, yet it isn't a simulacra because there is actually no difference to detect in the first place.  Looking from the perspective of these poles or end-points really tells us nothing that we don't already know.

So what is the move from simulation to simulacra, what occurs 'between' these two states?  In effect, what occurs 'prior' to these two end-points?  The space between the analogue and digital state is a trip backward through time.  How does 'portrayal' become translated into numbers and how do we move from a state of awareness (the present) to a state of unawareness (the past)?  A move from meaning to numbers would have to appear attractive in terms of simplicity and ease.  It would have to mean that only human 'content' which can become equated numerically becomes valued, all else that is human will eventually wane.  And in order to actively move to an alternate state in which we are less aware, we would have to believe that move to afford us in some way.  We would either have to believe that we are ultimately moving toward greater long term awarenss or to be tempted by something that seems to us more important or attractive than the notion of awareness, at least for the moment.  Perhaps even in our move from simulation to simulacra, the direction of external reality has in fact switched.  Subsequently, in our belief of returning to the real we have in fact moved further from it toward the simulacra (which appears to be the same end-point but has been arrived at via an entirely different means).

Meanwhile, as we inhabit this reversed direction reality, what is occurring in our previous forward moving reality which is now ahead of us in time yet behind us in our reversed journey?  Is that reality simply fading away, now only a shell of a world without habitation?  Does the old reality continue to roll along forwards through time in our absence?  Or is reality only constituted of that which we are present?  Perhaps older generations and elites still reside in the old reality, travelling forward in time while younger generations, or popular culture, move forward into the past in a new reverse travelling reality, moving further from the forward and future travelling reality.  Have we always had two realities operating simultanously but rather travelling together toward the future only a slight distance apart?  Within this space between analogue and digital there seems to have grown a great distance.  Yet the bodies of those in the reversed direction reality still physically inhabit the forward direction reality, but their minds are 'elsewhere'.  Does this explain what the hyperreal is, the presence of a shell and the absence of a content?  Is this the lack of meaning we sense in society now, the absence of content in many?

Has society largely become a reversed shell without content which has been overlaid on top of traditional reality as we know it, like a ghost superimposed over a person?  The shell is the simulacra, the person is the simulation, and the space between the two is the hyperreal, ie. the person who sees both the person and the shell.  The shell cannot see the person, they can only sense it.  The shell can only see simulacra.  This explains how we can experience both a separation or cleavage of reality and a convergence of reality at the same time.  The cleavage explains the split of the shell and content of youth in two separate directions, Google Generation perhaps.  The convergence explains the person or observer who can see both the person and the shell, the before and the after, the separation and the collision.  This is the hyperreal, where time moves in both directions and spaces overlay each other simultaneously.  The shell is blissful in ignorance mostly, but is frustrated by continual suggestions about their lack of content, which is persistent and puzzling.  Meanwhile, 'people' are confused by the volume of information entailed in conceptualising the simultaneity of cleavages and collisions and the dual realities of the hyperreal world they suddenly have found themselves confronted with.  'People' find themselves able to conceptualise infinite spaces evolving continually between these collisions. Everyone inhabiting simulation, like in the past, seemed so much easier for everyone.  In the world of simulation, everyone just invisaged an internal and external reality, the number of realities did not vary or become imposed upon people as they are today.

Now we seem to have two extremes or burdens, those who conceptualise only their own internal reality, and those who find themselves conceptualising all the complexities of the hyperreal.  Those who only see internal reality see only themselves, or their own bodies.  But those who see hyperreal do not only see both their own body and mind, but can also see themselves and others, this is how we can see both inside and outside at the same time.  This also explains how people can be both split within and split 'between' as Deleuze and Guattari discuss in Societies of Control.  As such, society is also split in two; two classes.  Is this the point at which we no longer control capitalism, but rather capitalism controls us?