It’s funny because I’d been working on my duck face all summer only to encounter Han and get told that my engagement with an informaton turns my countenance in a non-thing that is information, or a digital illusion. But so what? If we must abide a terrestrial order, why can’t our lives be optimized to the point of not caring that frees us up to play and indulgence? Can’t we still abide a terrestrial order where humans find joy in information that doesn’t prompt lingering or thinking, or puts us within a gaze reach of another person or community? Who says that staring at the image of a lover on a phone screen doesn’t have any affective quality that lends itself to epiphanies? When I stare at a picture of a lover on my phone I am still triggered in the same ways I would be were I holding a physical image of them with the date on which the image was taken scrawled on the back of it; or were I physically holding them. Does the picture of them need to occupy space in a photo album or be ensconced in the space between my mirror and its frame or my wallet for me to mourn the space-time difference between her and myself?
The emphasis Han places on matter mattering more than information, or things that wind up submitting to digitization, is a little astounding. Granted, I can appreciate waxing poetic about the physicality of a photograph or palpating in one’s hand a family heirloom passed down, but that doesn’t necessarily negate the “so this actually exists”-ness of digital photography, that for Han, is the “elimination of a referent”. But it doesn’t actually beget “weakening the connection with the referent”.
Han’s use of Barthes and his theory of photography in the wake of his mother’s passing is convenient, then, if we liken the fragility of analogue photos to fragility of human life. It ages, writes Han, “it is born and dies” (29). We also die, yes, but does the staying power of digital photography and “possibilities of digital post-processing” when it comes to our images actually compromise our seriousness as a kind of “human being who is burdened by destiny and history”?; does it really “[express] a form of life that devotes itself playfully to the moment”? (36). I’m not convinced that images of the chaos and destruction in Gaza right now are playful, nor do they absolve the human being of destiny and history. If anything, looking at those images thrusts the viewer into the present moment, “permit[ing] lingering,” taking stock of what they hold dear, as if Barthes himself, holding an image of his mother (35). I think Han, then, is being a little unfair towards the rest of us humans and a little shortsighted about what we could and do actually get by submitting ourselves to the Cloud.
In addition to no longer holding pictures in our hands, the emancipatory effect of the infosphere as Han sees it makes us handless and therefore we haven’t a grip on life anymore. This isn’t to say that we’re wildly, aimlessly spinning out of control but rather that the instant gratification that comes with having everything qua information at our fingertips thanks to our smartphones is supplanting meaningful engagements, replacing them with perceptions that make us “short sighted and short of breath” (7). Han writes that the “lack of anything to hold on to gives way to the hovering lightness of play” ergo turning the human into a player who instead of with hands but fingers becomes a player in a game of choice rather than action. Han’s critique of information as evolutionary retrograde and stumbling block to our happiness and humanness echoes that of a great many experts who worry that technology without borders is making us less empathetic and more obsolete. The participation of technology qua information in capitalistic agendas of profit and gain have turned the human being into an apathetic surplus of labor and life worth, according to some. And so it goes that the “emancipatory effects of digitalization promise a form of life that resembles play,” and one that is the catalyst for “the end of history”. Citing Flusser, Han anticipates a world future where, while handless, the human being essentially throws their hands up at the idea of things; instead “she no longer needs to engage in the tedious work of overcoming the resistance of material reality…human beings of the future will program machines to do the work – they themselves will be handless…no longer [handling] things, and can therefore in this case no longer speak of acts” (9). Here again I’m not convinced that the playfulness Han detests doesn’t make us prone to resistance; if anything, we play as a form of resistance and overcoming. Life is hard – and too hard – and there’s no cure for the human condition (Setiya 2022). By not burdening ourselves with having to act because our lives have been optimized to the point of not having to think and instead only having to choose–and have that reality be universally felt–it might not be so bad that political action is impossible. But only because it’s no longer necessary. And with that kind of freedom, that level of optimization, maybe instead of being engrossed with our smartphone, we can actually enjoy the circus as it presents itself, with some bread.
[HAN, 2022]; [SETIYA, 2022]
Han, Byung-Chul. Non-things. Polity Press, 2022.
Setiya, Kieran. Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. Riverhead, 2022.
