The virtual culture - The Internet: a new information economy?

The development of "virtual reality" has given rise to fears that the proliferation of fictitious worlds and the time spent in such environments will ultimately cause Web surfers to lose all sense of reality. Formulated in this way, this fear is groundless; at least since the time of the Lascaux painter, men have always lived largely in imaginary worlds, even if concretely represented. What is new is that, more so than in the past, these worlds will be adapted to everyone’s particular needs and tastes, even going so far as requiring complex pairings in order to enable them to communicate. This is precisely the essence of a virtual reality.
Virtual reality is characterized by the provision of means (ergonomics, software, semantic, etc.) which allow an effective pairing between two environments. This pairing creates a virtual space, seen differently by those involved in it and one in which they can share what is necessary for communication. Between two people, the pairing may consist of filtering and processing elements to be retained in the situation of one of them and that it is appropriate to provide the other with: scene-setting, creation of an avatar, translation of speech in real time (when such software is available), etc. In the case of man/machine relationships, virtual reality consists in providing the means for a mental representation, which permits interaction. In this sense, browsers, which have allowed the Web to develop, have offered users a representation of information as a graph and the ergonomically efficient means by which to travel this graph (hypertext links). In the case of a movie, virtual reality consists in adapting its content to the spectator’s (long and short-term) characteristics - a single movie may therefore be seen differently by different audiences (scene content, plot development, etc.).
As will be seen, evolution of this type does not only cause one’s sense of reality to be lost but destroys reality as the only reference which is identical for everyone. By attributing greater significance to context than to messages, it amounts to as important a revolution as printing was in its time.
Before printing, writing served only as an aide-mémoire in the oral diffusion of texts. The message was supplied with its context (i.e. what it is necessary to know beforehand for the work to be correctly understood). The commentary of the speaker clarified obscure points in the message. To the listener, the sense was rarely ambiguous for long. Printing has not only allowed widespread circulation of texts but has also separated the emission and reception process.
From this standpoint, humanism was characterized by an attempt to reconstruct the context that allowed ancient texts to be understood. This interest in texts considered as context-free entities has, to an extent, conditioned the evolution of western civilization in several fields:
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the attention given to other civilizations has progressively developed cultural relativism;
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the difficulty of reconstructing context from the work itself has allowed the development of the modern esthetics based on ambiguity (a work of art is something which is not directly understandable; its value lies mainly in the effort it requires to rebuild the adapted context);
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the interest in texts which provided their own context quickened the expansion of the scientific method;
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the fetishism of original texts and contempt for imitation and recomposition, both techniques used in oral creation, have ultimately resulted in a precise definition of the concepts of author and of plagiarism which, in the XIX century gave rise to copyright.
It would obviously be absurd to attempt to describe what a “virtual culture” would consist of. This culture remains to be invented. However, one can imagine that it is the opposite of what has just been described. Value lies no longer in the text but in the context; the notions of original work and of author become blurred in the face of creative tinkering and the combination of existing elements. Symbolism gives way to imaginary process.
By way of conclusion, a number of assertions about the Internet economy are given below. They arise more or less directly from the above analysis on the current development of Web sites. These assertions have been presented as blunt statements in order to form a clear-cut scenario. In a field which is undergoing continual change, like the Internet, such a scenario, even if consistent, should be considered at best as a tentative forecast.
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Even after the introduction of secure payment procedures and of micropayment, access to Web sites will be largely free of charge.
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All commercial transactions will, in the long term, be initiated on the Internet, i.e. the decision to purchase and the upstream phases of product design will take place on the Web, whilst downstream functions (delivery, invoicing, payment, etc.) will, according to the circumstances, take place either on the Internet (electronic commerce) or via conventional distribution channels.
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On the Internet, value lies in the composition of large communities of loyal customers: exploitation of such communities will be based on the ability to mobilize them to invent new products. Web site managers, currently experiencing a deficit (but enjoying high stock-market capitalization), are becoming essential intermediaries in the definition and marketing of practically all products and services.
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In the case of companies which concentrate on the creation of customer bases, the firm, defined as all the strategic information to which it controls access, will be replaced by more fluid entities which are more receptive to cooperation with their competitors.
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Copyright will progressively be replaced by protection of customer bases and will generate an economy of links on the Web. Free access to information on the net will be compensated by a better exploitation outside the Web, particularly through secondary products.
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As the value of information now lies principally in its contextualisation, content (movies, TV programs, books, etc.) will evolve: the concept of author will disappear (distinction between the person who actually creates and the person who signs in order to boost the sell), the products will have very short lives (already visible in publishing), and the content will be more or less automatically adapted to various audiences.
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The development of a virtual reality will enable everyone to interact in a relevant manner with a reality whose aspects will have been previously sifted out and prepared to optimize the communication; hence, a transformation of current social controls.
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The Internet is unstable, less for economic reasons, as is sometimes imagined, than for political reasons. Digital networks develop free markets so fast that social regulations, legal adaptations and, more generally, State supervision cannot keep up. This could lead to possible reactions of rejection which will affect not only the Internet but also current confidence in the virtues of free markets.
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