TY - ICOMM

T1 - Soulful Technologies

T2 - Everyday Aesthetics in New Media

AU - Fausing, Bent

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - Samsung introduced in 2008 a mobile phone called "Soul" made with a human touch and including itself a "magic touch". Through the analysis of a Nokia mobile phone TV-commercials I want to examine the function and form of digital technology in everyday images. The mobile phone and its digital camera and other devices are depicted by everyday aesthetics as capable of producing a unique human presence and interaction. The medium, the technology is a necessary helper of this very special and lost humanity. Without the technology, no special humanity, no soul - such is the prophecy. This personification or anthropomorphism is important for the branding of new technology. Technology is seen as creating a techno-transcendence towards a more qualified humanity which is in contact with fundamental human values like intuition, vision, and sensing; all the qualities that technology, industrialization, and rationalization, - in short modernity - have taken away from human existence. What old technology has removed now comes back through new technology promoting a better humanity. The present article investigates how digital technology and affects are presented and combined, with examples from everyday imagery, e.g. TV commercials and internet commercials for mobile phones from Nokia, or handheld computers, as Sony-Ericsson prefers to call them. Digital technology points towards a forgotten pre-human and not only post-human condition.

AB - Samsung introduced in 2008 a mobile phone called "Soul" made with a human touch and including itself a "magic touch". Through the analysis of a Nokia mobile phone TV-commercials I want to examine the function and form of digital technology in everyday images. The mobile phone and its digital camera and other devices are depicted by everyday aesthetics as capable of producing a unique human presence and interaction. The medium, the technology is a necessary helper of this very special and lost humanity. Without the technology, no special humanity, no soul - such is the prophecy. This personification or anthropomorphism is important for the branding of new technology. Technology is seen as creating a techno-transcendence towards a more qualified humanity which is in contact with fundamental human values like intuition, vision, and sensing; all the qualities that technology, industrialization, and rationalization, - in short modernity - have taken away from human existence. What old technology has removed now comes back through new technology promoting a better humanity. The present article investigates how digital technology and affects are presented and combined, with examples from everyday imagery, e.g. TV commercials and internet commercials for mobile phones from Nokia, or handheld computers, as Sony-Ericsson prefers to call them. Digital technology points towards a forgotten pre-human and not only post-human condition.

M3 - Net publication - Internet publication

ER -