In the last decades of the last century we used to have separate encounters with writing, reading, education, information, communication, images and entertainment. The present century changed the illustrated order in which we carried out these activities. Technology modified the narrative arc of all fields of our existence. Today we consume each of the indicated activities at the same time and generally in the prosthesis that we have implanted in our hands. In such a way that, when we now face culture, education, information, images, reading and entertainment all of a sudden and through the same means, we receive and process something wrong. But we are still functional. The empowerment of the dynamic ended up fascinating us, this new speed, living with that role overload that it generates. We go like Edgar Allan Poe’s man of the crowds, to nowhere, lost, seeking to have more time but anguished for not knowing how to use it.
There is a common practice in the market economy called downsizing, whereby companies give less quantity of products for the same price. The inflationary escalation drives them to look for this type of formulas to hide the increase in the price of products. This is how we see bags of snacks, fried foods, coffee, canned drinks and a large number of other products that seek to hide the increase in prices and continue in the market.
Give yourself time and see the products you consume, both at home and in restaurants, and you will see this tendency to put less quantity than usual without altering the price. This generally goes unnoticed by those of us who are not so aware of the content and quantities as of the price. However, it is important to point out that it is a legal practice, at least in Europe and Latin America, as long as companies reflect the new amount on the containers and wrappers.
In art, culture and entertainment we also have a reduction in the products, goods and services that they promote. In this case, the phenomenon occurs with the participation of the three agents involved: the commercial brand owner, the content creator and the consumer thereof. I have seen up close how the headlines of successful television series are produced, the millions of dollars it costs to make them, the art that is in them, the great technological deployment they use, and for what? They have stopped seeing since the option exists on the platforms to skip the introduction. A model that does not want to put production at risk due to the scant attention that cultural consumers receive today.
I have spoken with composers, musicians and arrangers because, due to the model imposed by the brand owner Spotify, have seen the commercial need to modify the writing and composition of the songs. They are removing introductions, because people don’t have the time or patience to listen and steal a few seconds from the model.
Museums also suffer from this new vice of speed (so described by Paul Morand). Museum institutions no longer explain, they are now limited to showing and recreating the hemispheres, the same as educational institutions. In music videos we have the same tendency, the closed space and the green screens have killed the nature of the locations. All you have to do is watch the latest promotional video of Fito Paez with Ángela Aguilar. Wow, with what Fito was in this field. And what about the publishing industry, where self-help and self-deception books, that literature of evasion and the ephemeral phenomenon of Book Tubers, are reliable proof of this sensory vertigo in which we live. From this gimmicky lightening of content, from this lack of time for artistic and cultural consumption, from that sad live way in which we live together (permanently connected). As if that were not enough, AI arrived making everyone believe that they can be prosumers and prodususers. Many feel they are creators of songs, essays, books, scripts, etc. What they still do not know is that they are standing in a sea of true creations protected by copyright. Intellectual property, they call it.
Although inflation is caused by changes in fundamental variables of the economy, which increase demand or deteriorate supply, and hence the increase in prices and strategies such as reduction, the cultural reduction to which I refer, does not occur by economic inflation, but by technological inflation. For an empowerment of the emotional, for the incessant flow of content, for the imposition of dynamism in the audiovisual industry, for the exaltation of speed and a culture that exacerbates change for change’s sake.
We are facing the vertical diffusion of tastes that Bourdieu spoke of. Only now from the algorithmic prediction of our behaviors. The brand owners have profiled us. They know of our time crunch and unfortunate desire for the new over the good that encourages filmmaker John Carpentier’s age-old imperative: Whatever you do, make it move. Creating, it must be said, requires time, dedication, discipline, life experiences, creativity and, of course, talent. See culture as a stimulant, in Bauman’s terms, and not as the relaxant that AI comes to sell us.
