Publicado en Sin tema. com. José Ángel García Landa
Estoy leyéndome a pequeñas dosis Infinite Jest, la monumental novela de David Foster Wallace (1996), una especie de cóctel entre Pynchon y Barthelme sólo apto para ciertos paladares especializados (como el mío). Abstenerse de recomendarlo a amantes de la literatura así en general—aunque algunos sí apreciarán su creatividad lingüística y su ironía despiadada.
La acción tiene lugar en un futuro/presente alternativo, una postmodernidad que ya gira en vacío produciendo sus complots y fenómenos paraculturales de modo incontrolado, donde un mundo conectado por un InterLace informático/televisivo va consumiendo ficciones indistinguibles de la realidad. La infinite jest comienza desde la página de copyright, que nos avisa de que "Any apparent similarity to real persons is not intended by the author and is either a coincidence or the product of your own troubled imagination"—bien, también me tomaré un poco a broma la prohibición de reproducir fragmentos, porque quiero llamar la atención sobre un excurso que anuncia la burbuja de las empresas en red en 2000, o "the dotcom bubble" como se la viene conociendo, y otras burbujas que sin duda nos esperan en el presente, pasado y futuro indistinguibles. Profecía, profecía, pero basada naturalmente en la observación.
Bien, el caso ficcionalizado en la novela es el desarrollo de la videotelefonía. Resulta que tras un desarrollo espectacular de los videoteléfonos, se hunde el negocio cuando la gente descubre que le horrorizaba la manera en que aparecía en la pantalla ante los demás, con caras de memo, distorsionadas (ver aquí), caras poco gustables. Y se desarrolló un comercio de máscaras idealizadas primero, para hablar por teléfono, luego de imágenes retocadas, etc.—que a su vez llevaban luego a avergonzarse del propio aspecto en los encuentros en directo—hasta que por fin quebró todo y la gente se dio cuenta de que ofrecía mejor imagen de sí en la vieja telefonía sonora sin más, mejor que en la llamada videophony (de phony). De ahí que el mundo de Infinite Jest mezcle aspectos futuristas con otros retro. Bueno, pues esta es la lección sobre el mercado tecnológico que extrae el narrador, profetizando como digo la crisis de las dotcom... para quien se hubiese leído el libro, y se lo aplicase. Volveremos a repetir la misma maniobra, supongo, esta vez con las empresas dospuntocero, y otras que vendrán.
But there's some sort of
revealing lesson here in the beyond-short-term viability-curve of
advances in consumer technology. The career of videophony conforms
neatly to this curve's classically annular shape: first there's some
sort of terrific, sci-fi like advance in consumer tech—like from aural
to video phoning—which advance always, however, has certain unforeseen
disadvantages for the consumer; and then but the market-niches created
by those disadvantages—like people's stressfully vain repulsion at their
own videophonic appearance—are ingeniously filled via sheer
entrepreneurial verve; and yet the very disadvantages of these ingenious
disadvantage-compensations seem all too often to undercut the original
high-tech advance, resulting in consumer-recidivism and curve-closure
and massive shirt-loss for precipitant investors. In the present case,
the stress-and-vanity-compensations' own evolution saw video-callers
rejecting first their own faces and then even their own heavily masked
and enhanced physical likeness and finally covering the video-cameras
altogether and transmitting attractively stylized static Tableaux to one
another's TPs. And, behind these lens-cap dioramas and transmitted
Tableaux, callers of course found that they were once again stresslessly
invisible, unvainly makeup- and toupeeless and baggy-eyed behind their
celebrity-dioramas, once again free—since once again unseen—to doodle,
blemish-scan, manicure, crease-check—while on their screen, the
attractive, intensely attentive face of the well-appointed celebrity on
the other end's Tableau reassured them that they were the objects of a
concentrated attention they themselves didn't have to exert.
And of course but these advantages were nothing other than the once-lost and now-appreciated advantages of good old Bell-era blind aural-only telephoning, with its 6 and (62) pinholes. The only difference was that now these expensive silly unreal stylized Tableaux were being transmitted between TPs on high-priced video-fiber lines. How much time, after this realization sank in and spread among consumers (mostly via phone, interestingly), would any micro-econometrist expect to need to pass before high-tech visual videophony was mostly abandoned, then, a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved of as a kind of chic integrity, not Ludditism but a kind or retrograde transcendence of sci-fi-ish high-tech for its own sake, a transcendence of the vanity and slavery to high-tech fashion that people view as so unattractive in one another. In other words a return to aural-only telephony became, at the closed curve's end, a kind of status-symbol of anti-vanity, such that only callers utterly lacking in self-awareness continued to use videophony and Tableaux, to say nothing of masks, and these tacky facsimile-using people became ironic cultural symbols of tacky vain slavery to corporate PR and high-tech novelty, became the Subsidized Era's tacky equivalents of people with leisure suits, black velvet paintings, sweater-vests for their poodles, electronic zirconium jewelry, NoCoat LinguaScrapers, and c. Most communications consumers put their Tableaux-dioramas at the back of a knick-knack shelf and covered their cameras with standard black lens-caps and now used their phone consoles' little mask-hooks to hang these new little plasticene address-and-phone diaries specially made with a little receptacle at the top of the binding for convenient hanging from former mask-hooks. Even then, of course, the bulk of U.S. consumers remained verifiably reluctant to leave home and teleputer and to interface personally, though this phenomenon's endurance can't be attributed to the videophony-fad per se, and anyway the new panagoraphobia served to open huge new entrepreneurial teleputerized markets for home-shopping and -delivery, and didn't cause much industry concern. (Infinite Jest, 1996, 150-51)
And of course but these advantages were nothing other than the once-lost and now-appreciated advantages of good old Bell-era blind aural-only telephoning, with its 6 and (62) pinholes. The only difference was that now these expensive silly unreal stylized Tableaux were being transmitted between TPs on high-priced video-fiber lines. How much time, after this realization sank in and spread among consumers (mostly via phone, interestingly), would any micro-econometrist expect to need to pass before high-tech visual videophony was mostly abandoned, then, a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved of as a kind of chic integrity, not Ludditism but a kind or retrograde transcendence of sci-fi-ish high-tech for its own sake, a transcendence of the vanity and slavery to high-tech fashion that people view as so unattractive in one another. In other words a return to aural-only telephony became, at the closed curve's end, a kind of status-symbol of anti-vanity, such that only callers utterly lacking in self-awareness continued to use videophony and Tableaux, to say nothing of masks, and these tacky facsimile-using people became ironic cultural symbols of tacky vain slavery to corporate PR and high-tech novelty, became the Subsidized Era's tacky equivalents of people with leisure suits, black velvet paintings, sweater-vests for their poodles, electronic zirconium jewelry, NoCoat LinguaScrapers, and c. Most communications consumers put their Tableaux-dioramas at the back of a knick-knack shelf and covered their cameras with standard black lens-caps and now used their phone consoles' little mask-hooks to hang these new little plasticene address-and-phone diaries specially made with a little receptacle at the top of the binding for convenient hanging from former mask-hooks. Even then, of course, the bulk of U.S. consumers remained verifiably reluctant to leave home and teleputer and to interface personally, though this phenomenon's endurance can't be attributed to the videophony-fad per se, and anyway the new panagoraphobia served to open huge new entrepreneurial teleputerized markets for home-shopping and -delivery, and didn't cause much industry concern. (Infinite Jest, 1996, 150-51)
Veo desde aquí el fin de la era de los blogs, estos dioramas idealizados o máscaras retocadas que nos ponemos... O que algunos ponen encima de una cara vacía de maniquí, para crear sujetos virtuales que nunca pisarán las calles. Una vez estalle la blogosfera como una globosfera demasiado inflacionada, será el momento de los espacios personales tipo facebook, accesibles vía teléfono móvil. Mientras duren.
Bueno, pues avisados van todos los que invierten demasiado en estas cuestiones de tecnología de la imagen y la comunicación. Y no sólo dinero, sino también tiempo y energías y esperanzas.
____________
PS (2009): Comparar las irónicas reflexiones de Foster Wallace con los gráficos que describen el Hype Cycle según los analistas de Gartner. También especialmente aplicable a las nuevas tecnologías y gadgets.
—oOo—
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