AIs, or devices, in the end it is possible to “be” in the cloud and use datification in our advantage, on behalf of a better comprehension of reality.
Who speaks of unveiling the roots of digital change, so that one may embrace these very roots, is Kevin Kelly (2016, LOC 98-5810). Perhaps the problem lies in one concept of digital culture imported from biology: “interactivity”. Just in one epoch, like our current one, in which the cloud is basically a double-synchronization macro-service, it is due to interactivity that people answer back to us, in any service, interface, program, game, app or digital brand. Should there be no interactivity and especially “hypertext”, and nothing would be as connected as it is today. Once the wires vanished away, the connections stood still, always operating changes even when it seems that nothing is going on between the cloud, the interfaces and our devices.
Two types of interactivity are described by Marie-Laure Ryan, without which, in our understanding, there would be no transmedia and expansive storytelling [28]. In Ryan’s there are “selective” interactivity (where text interpretation fits in) and “productive” interactivity (which deals with our active participation in the construction of the text). As for now, the interactivity that embraces us is the selective one. It starts to be scarce entertainment, information elements not demanding active participation from ourselves in order to provide a feedback of sense. From design to videogames, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) to cognition, everything requires response, effects, research, all features coming from “knowledge”. From Ryan we assimilate the “selective interactivity” criteria ([orig. 2001], in Evans, 2011, 95). The reality of the cloud that changed young people’s behavior and promotes themselves as cloud punks relies on the user’s contribution to fulfill the sense. The question lies in one knowing if anything makes sense today, even if it got to be datified.
Young Cloud Punks
It was Sherry Turkle who highlighted that young people were interacting with the Internet, in the 1990s, thanks to the “triumph of anarchic exploration”. They were asking fewer questions and interacting more; dealing with the digital was intuitive. The “Facebook Generation” changed the scheme; it interacts less intuitively, interactivity is more selective and, yet, the final interactions are quite multiple when compared to the questions asked. The cloud punks are different: interaction is constant and instantaneous, as indispensable as having electricity at home, and the amount of questions asked have increased. More than resorting to search engines, the cloud punks talk and deal with AIs. They are learning in a selective and productive manner with machines and vice-versa. What drives them is knowledge, not money, because data is the new capital. This is one of the reasons why the cloud punks are the new heroes of the Datification Age. Time and knowledge converge into search capital systems. First there was digitization and later searchability. In this way one finds all the time something designed to be found. Without the digitization process no information would be found nor would it be datified. We still need to know who or what finds what or whom. The cloud finds everything, and it finds us, but assures it seems otherwise — that we are the ones finding something through the cloud.
Commercial editor, Suzanne Bidlake, explains that adults deal with the digital by means of logic, experience and persistence, and equally by trial and error. Though it is young men that have a totally different approach, as it is intuitive, explanations come afterwards(2011, para.5). We may add that the anarchic exploration mentioned by Turkle is still dominating. Cloud punks have been raised with this world, with the “cloudification” of the digital that altered every habit regarding information, entertainment and knowledge access. The cloud punks also do not understand that there is both an ancient digital and a new one. Moreover, for them age differences or generation differences do not matter, for we all stand now at the same time in the cloud. This is the cloud of all generations, but this is the generation of the cloud getting ready for a cloud-enabled social change. Young cloud punks already began dealing with AIs much as previous generation interacted with social media, search engines and web [29] pages.
The common denominator distinguishing the cloud punks, besides their skills in dealing with datification, is how they use the cloud, not as a “fourth power” (something typical mass media and mass society-style), but instead as a battle for information and knowledge. Manuel Castells had already alerted us that the media were not the fourth power, but rather a battle for power(in. Silva, 2009, 138). When it comes to cloud punks the search-capital used and the access to the history-medium, that is the cloud, is transforming all digital activity in a chase around knowledge.
In The New Digital Age, Jared Cohen underlines that “the future will be shaped by how States, citizens, companies and institutions handle their new responsibilities” (2013). And the cloud punks are precisely aware of how to manage these new responsibilities. Following the same trend we do accept what Kelly says regarding the way such responsibilities do not only vanish, but they are increasingly important in the Cloud Age: “These technologies are not going away” (2016, LOC 105-5810). It seems that to speak of technologies (let’s say digital media ones) is same thing to speak of responsibilities, or of a battle for power, in Castells (1999a) sense, or about selective interactivity in Ryans’ manner. According to Cohen’s perspective, in the future no one, stronger or weaker, shall be insulated from what, in the majority of cases, is entitled as “historical changes”. And the truth is that the cloud has produced several historical changes, for it modified the way we entertain ourselves, the way we consume, learn and how we get to be informed, and even how we drive cars from the “car-cloud”. We still do not know who exactly shall be more important and mighty in reality, if it will be the individual, the State or the corporations. One thing is sure, the cloud punks are experiencing the future; they live ahead of their time, at their own time, capital-time. Cohen believes that being “savvy” will be one of the greatest and most important attributes for the future. And for which reason should one be expeditious in the Cloud Age? Because the whole data environment demands sintony, synchrony and agility to deal with the environment, which itself keeps requiring constant updates. Kelly himself even manages to refer this environment as a simple “memory”, that it is too! In his words:
“An interactive, extended memory of people you met, conversations you had, places you visited, and events you participated in. This memory would be searchable, retrievable, and shareable. A complete passive archive of everything that you have ever produced, wrote, or said. Deep comparative analysis of your activities could assist your productivity and creativity. A way of organizing, shaping and ‘reading’ your own life” (2016, LOC 3647-5810).
The reason why it all stands in the digital makes easier both the search and the “searchable”. The inexistence of something outside the cloud cannot stop being equally scary. The archive of totality, such “history-medium” is what Kelly identifies as the scope where devices assist us (we have in mind AI) about contents of our personal and professional life, where seriousness and creativity come together.
Somehow, cloud punks are the “new wave” of disruption that Nicholas Carr (2008, 40) speaks of. These two elements, the new wave of people and the punk disruption are detectable on cloud punks. Each logging into the corporate grid, into the branded network and into both interesting and interested cloud, is something recorded, marked, connected, sought and findable. By playing with these features cloud punks wittingly leave by on the cloud indelible and controversial messages. After all, the new wave thinks differently about the new mediatized and smart digital world. There were stages of publishing and searching over the history of the cloud. The current stage is a stage of time, history, narrative and capital search. The question, as Kelly remarks, is no longer focused on copies, but rather on the originality of the messages uploaded onto the cloud. More than the connection, the value now is on the media that can connect into more media. The more people may have access, comment and connect to something, authenticate and integrate the “major transmedia talk”, the more the cloud gets smarter. As for now, the environment is in itself considered to be smart. Kelly knows this and stands out that the most important thing is “to have work flowing” (2016, LOC 1100-5810). Regarding the entire “history-medium”
