According to
the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the fate and condition of modern
advanced societies is that any action tends to become degraded in itself and to
become a spectacle or consumer item, regardless of whether it is true or false.
The avalanche of information and interpretations sent and received are all mere
simulacra of reality.
Modern advanced
society is characterised by a twofold human concentration: physical
concentration in large cities and enormous metropolitan areas, and at the same
time, the telematic connection in large communication networks that potentially
link the entire planet in a single “globalisation”. This extremely intense
double human interaction in modern cities and in the global
"telepolis" or "cosmopolis" of the Internet is essential to
understanding the contemporary human condition, and creates significant
phenomena.
First, the humanist ideal formulated by Terence in ancient Rome: "I am a
man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me," is now more apparent
than ever, even if it is only because nothing human (or which affects other
humans) is not really alien to us, i.e. it does not affect us or leave us
indifferent. From the new pandemics, to the current international economic
crisis, there is a risk (as pointed out by the sociologist Ulrich Beck) of all
sorts of things - however far away they seem – affecting us, and furthermore,
affecting very quickly and with unforeseeable consequences. Whether we like it
or not, we are now more than ever “one humanity”, with no watertight
compartments; we are a “global village” (McLuhan) both telematically and
physically.
However, enormous human concentration in swarming metropoli and in a single
network has not always facilitated understanding between humans, and to an even
lesser extent, the intellection of what could be called "reality",
and the empathetic link with a "truth" that can be drawn from it.
Paradoxically, the globalisation based on telematics, economics, technology and
tourism seems to take us violently farther away from the "world",
"reality" and the "truth of things", rather than bringing
us gradually towards them. This is perhaps the great paradox of an advanced
society focused on communication technologies, the "knowledge
society", of the "post-modern condition" ...