Digital consciousness: Emergence of new state of mind

Consciousness is an expression of experience, an expression of your higher grasping and control over life and reality. We say that someone is unconscious in their actions or thoughts, when we cannot find a rational or unreal reference to some of their expressions or natural responses. It can be termed as a complex result derived from the history of experiences, neural behaviors of memory and deep rooted social symbols from racial memory. 

Without a real reason or material connection, new forms of consciousness or unconscious will emerge in the society or individuals. Hence the collection of imprints of digital technology and modes of commodity production are very much reasons for this new forms of consciousness. Consciousness is never complete in a single human being. It is in between people and their social reflections. I am conscious about what people think about myself equally as what I think of myself. Thus our thought processes meet inside each one of us. Will this happen in digital experience as well?

Creative Commons: Fotopedia -  Making of Harry Porter

Digital consciousness is a nice term for this age of digital devices and digitization of experiences. Before you are digitally consciousness, you are naturally digitally unconscious. You will be exhibiting certain unique unconscious responses to digital surroundings and ecosystem. Like any ecosystem, digital realm also will have layers of experiences. digital art, digital signs, digital science, digital philosophy, digital religions, digital fetishism, digital ideology, digital pathology all will be part of this way of life that reflects in this new way of thinking. How is digitization coming to our life in such a big way? It is part of our professional and personal life alike. Workplace intimacy and expertise with digital technologies follow at home. The more we use them in our economic transactions and money making moments, it becomes closer to us. This is quite natural.

Digitization introduces a lot of layers and hierarchies of experiences. We bank on technology to pierce through these layers to reach out to more people virtually. Then these layers will become natural parts of our digital persona and virtual life. These virtual networks offer huge amount of 'life casting' to attract our interests. Digitization has huge capability to create a virtual layer that imitates you and amplify your like and dislikes. This reflexive capacity of digital medium can induces a hyper level of narcissism in our ego. It can override your balanced state of mind in great scales. 

CreativeCommons: Fotopedia: MessagePad

When we deal with digital experience, their is a certain amount of abstraction and condensation in this mode as opposed to analog expediences. It is always in beta. Data is never in final form. It continuously evolves with the digital interfaces. Thus human mind fails to a certain extent to generate a final reasoning or conclusion about digital moments. When we experience anything our mind works on both reality principle and pleasure principle. Digital experiences provides a digital layer that directly interact with human to create a satisfaction in both real terms and pleasure. Thus human mind continues to explore digital experience. 

When we take mind and body together and weigh the influence of digitization, it may seem that the mind is the most affected by it. Though mind may be the larger part of this engagement, our senses and active body organs also are part of this experience. When digitization enriches mobile technology, it becomes part of every moment of our conscious life as well. 

When you become digitally conscious, you affinity to devices and miniature details of life continues to increase and your mind will struggle with meta-narratives in every kinds of experience, be it politics or poetic, be it love or distastes. We are getting more details than we can comprehend in the capacity of human cognition for a moment of experience. It also alters the scales of space and time in the digital information communication and experiences. Thus building a perspective in digital experience becomes increasingly difficult. The moment our mind realizes this, it may either go into addiction or aggression. 

If we can treat digital experience as normal as real experience, this layer of hyper reaction and ideological affinity can be controlled. As we know, a mirror is always a mirror, irrespective of how much you like your reflections !

Can cinema be an art of deception?

Film Review: Malayalam movie 'Drishyam'

Not getting into the controversies about the originality of the cinematic theme, let me express some of my thoughts about a movie I watched recently. It is Drishyam directed by Jithu Joseph. Mohan Lal, Asha Sharath, Meena and Siddhik are part of the main cast. It has become a block buster and getting popular review comments and word of mouth publicity. 

The movie begins with the tag line 'Visuals can be deceiving'. At the end of the 150 minutes, one may wonder what is the visual that deceived us. It was the narrative and the entire movie screenplay that deceived us. Moreover it raised a few questions on my mind. 

Can cinema / literature be the art form of deception? The movie goes at length to showcase the efforts of the commonsensical hero to hide a secret. The hero is on a war of survival against the brilliant but morally drained and personally shattered police officer who has lost all sense of humanity to prove a crime.

So on onside we have a villager trying to hide a grave secret and on the other side we have a police officer who goes brutal to unravel the mysteries surrounding her son. Where is a social conflict here? 

There are sexual abuses happening at various parts of our country. Then where should we begin the story? Should we keep the camera on the life a person who commits a crime to protest the abuse and then praise his efforts and brilliance in hiding the secret for eternity? Of course not. 

Despite a decent behavioural acting by Mohan Lal and the other crew, the movie is a pack of spades and strained imagination. Like every other commercial film that boasts about the marvels of editing, this film tries to create a perspective that is just dependent on an actor. The story is dead somewhere in the middle. 

Not only visuals but every art form can be used as a device for deception. It is artist who applies creativity to expose anti social elements and express truth in its highest form of existence, whether it is dream or reality.