USP Course work: Wave of Information
 
Wave of data and information
 
Zygmunt Bauman has created a term “liquid modernity” for our era as a term for the present condition of the world as contrasted with the “solid” modernity that preceded it. Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time to solidity and cannot serve as  frames of reference for human actions and long-term life plans, he says. Individuals have to splice together an unending series of short-term projects and episodes that don’t add up to the kind of sequence to which concepts like “career” and “progress” could be meaningfully applied. Such fragmented lives require individuals to be flexible and adaptable — to be constantly ready and willing to change tactics at short notice, to abandon commitments and loyalties without regret and to pursue opportunities according to their current availability. In liquid modernity the individual must act, plan actions and calculate the likely gains and losses of acting (or failing to act) under conditions of endemic uncertainty.
 
I compare information flow of our era with an ocean wave because of their similar power in success and damage. Ocean can sail your boat fastest and safest to the harbor or crash it with few waves into pieces of soon-to-become soil of the earth. Like a wave in an ocean, accessing or distributing valuable data can provide enormous privileges to people,  in another hand while not knowing how to deal with it might cause serious damage to the subject. Is it the ocean that decide over sailors destiny or is it the sailor who’s actions are being replied in a deserved way?
 
 
Advising professor Dr. Suzana Avelar
 
Site of the project:
 
 
November 30, 2009