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href="http://www.twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http://www.neme.org/events/self-as-actor" rel="nofollow" title="Share on Twitter"><img src="/themes/neme960/forms/svg/sm_twitter.svg" width="30" height="30" alt="share on twitter"/></a> <a href="http://www.reddit.com/submit?url=http://www.neme.org/events/self-as-actor" rel="nofollow" title="Share on Reddit"><img src="/themes/neme960/forms/svg/sm_redit.svg" width="30" height="30" alt="share on Redit"/></a> </div> <div id="content"><div class="container_24"> <figure itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="grid_6 noprint nosmall"> <img src="http://www.neme.org/images/1355t.jpg" alt="Kammari, Self as actor" class="ds noprint" width="230" height="300" /></figure> <figure itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="grid_18 noprint"><ul class="rslides"><li><img src="http://www.neme.org/images/1349.jpg" alt="Androula Kafa, Self as Actor " width="710" height="300" /></li> <li><img src="http://www.neme.org/images/1336.jpg" alt="Adam Harvey, Self as actor" width="710" height="300" /></li> <li><img src="http://www.neme.org/images/1347.jpg" alt="Self as Actor" width="710" height="300" /></li> <li><img src="http://www.neme.org/images/1354.jpg" alt="Lanfranco Aceti, Self as actor" width="710" height="300" /></li> <li><img src="http://www.neme.org/images/1346.jpg" alt="Baris Parlan, Self as Actor" width="710" height="300" /></li> <li><img src="http://www.neme.org/images/1345.jpg" alt="Christina Smiros, Self as Actor" width="710" height="300" /></li></ul></figure> <div class="clear"> </div> <div class="grid_18" role="main" id="main"> <h2>Colonising identity </h2> <p>The exhibition’s title, <em>Self as Actor</em>,<sup class="tooltip"><a href="#fn2" id="foot2">2</a><span class="tooltiptext noprint">Actor-network theory, sometimes abbreviated to ANT, is a sociological theory developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law.<br /> Bruno Latour, <em>Reassembling the Social-An Introduction to Actor-Network</em>, Theory, Oxford University Press, 2005</span></sup> which explores the omnipresent and ever more unavoidable relationship between humans, technology and other nonhuman actors. The role that digitality, especially the web, plays in our lives, has become a symbiotic feature of our social reality, reflecting an incessant shifting network of interactions. In addition, Benjamin H. Bratton’s <em>The Stack</em><sup class="tooltip"><a href="#fn4" id="foot4">4</a><span class="tooltiptext noprint">Grzegorz Wilczyński, "Demographic report: Facebook users in Europe." <em>Catvertiser</em>. Posted 25 July 2014, <a rel="external" href="https://www.catvertiser.com/blog/demographic-report-facebook-users-in-europe/">www.catvertiser.com/blog/demographic-report-facebook-users-in-europe/</a> (accessed 15 May 2018)</span></sup> Do Cypriots have a blind trust in the openness of the internet and its ability to connect and share with friends? Perhaps, but more likely, this small island’s geographical position close to the war zones and increasing military threats to Middle Eastern and Northern African regions together with its own politico-economic history bestow upon the inhabitants a state of constant anxiety. Cyprus, is an interesting case due to these factors, but also because of the pervading feeling of isolation from what is perceived as the Western mainstream is shared by many Cypriots. Almost 80% of the population embraces the European Union despite its present unstable vision of democracy and rise of far-right nationalisms which are also occurring in both sides of this island. In addition, 20% of the de-facto population in the north is subject to a <em>motherland</em> vision of Turkey. In both communities, Facebook dominates social media usage for both news and other purposes clearly indicating a shared distrust in official media channels. With a population of 1,189,085 people counted in the 2017 census, Cyprus had over 971,369 internet users of which 870,00 were Facebook subscribers. Without the prospects of a secure predictable future, concepts of borders/buffer zones and nationalisms which appear physically entrenched are given the opportunity to supposedly dissolve online creating the appearance of a more open place.<sup class="tooltip"><a href="#fn6" id="foot6">6</a><span class="tooltiptext noprint">Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, and Thore Graepel, Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior: PNAS April 9, 2013 110 (15) 5802-5805; <a rel="external" href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1218772110">doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1218772110</a></span></sup> In fact, today, machines can recognise personality types better than humans. This colonisation of personal data is already manipulating social media content with targeted personalisation coerced by rolling newsfeeds creating the perpetual state of a simulated ideology of positivity. As such “censorship is no longer about suppression ‘but about controlling your attention and your credibility.’”<sup class="tooltip"><a href="#fn8" id="foot8">8</a><span class="tooltiptext noprint">Alexei Yurchak, <em>Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation</em>. Princeton University Press, 2006.</span></sup> with its paradoxical nature of social change where the anxiety of the individual is somewhat appeased by their own reflection on the screen, what Adam Curtis also recognised as our own personal echo chambers.<sup class="tooltip"><a href="#fn10" id="foot10">10</a><span class="tooltiptext noprint">Hannes Grassegger & Mikael Krogerus, "The Data That Turned the World Upside Down." <em>Vice</em>. Posted 28 January 2017, <a rel="external" href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win">motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win </a> (accessed 12 January 2018).</span></sup> Interestingly, in February 2016, Nafeez Ahmed wrote an article published by <span class="caps">INSURGE</span> intelligence where he outlines the call for contractors by the US Department of Defence to mine social media posts in order to develop methodologies for them to deduce what users are feeling and thinking with the objective of anticipating their future actions. Ahmed quotes from the DoD’s call: </p> <blockquote> <p>Social meaning comes not just from the manifest content of communication (i.e., literal information), but also from latent content — how language is structured and used, as well as how communicators address each other, e.g., through non-verbal means — gestures, head nods, body position, and the dynamics in communication patterns.<sup class="tooltip"><a href="#fn12" id="foot12">12</a><span class="tooltiptext noprint">Hall, Stuart. <em>Myths of Caribbean Identity</em>. The Walter Rodney Memorial Lectures. 1991.</span></sup> Unfortunately, this future is now full of precariousness and regenerating a sincere sense of global solidarity in order to combat these threatening obstacles that face us has been reduced to a small number of scholars, critical technologists, and activist groups. We have created a world where the idea of truth or the real is no longer a dependable referent. Real issues such as human rights abuses, homelessness or climate change cannot compete with mindless viral videos, fake news (post thruth), conspiracy theories, cute pets, and the controversial obsession with “dark tourism” selfies. The upsurge of citizen journalism and digital publications have enabled all forms of social sharing from all political spectrums resulting in the exponential growth of intolerance, racism, islamophobia and anti-semitism. The access to personal broadcasting is supposedly meant to transform us both in regard to ourselves and in regard to others.</p> <p>Like all empires, the one created by mass data accumulation, is only interested in expanding. The control of the <em>coloniser</em> is now defined by the monopoly of the data <em>colonised</em>. This has been further expanded in <em>Surveillance Capitalism</em> by Shoshana Zuboff<sup class="tooltip"><a href="#fn14" id="foot14">14</a><span class="tooltiptext noprint">Thomas L. McPhail, <em>Electronic Colonialism: The Future of International Broadcasting and Communication</em>. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981.</span></sup> he anticipated a new concept of empire that will be based on controlling the mind using repeated mass media messages. The conditions for controlling the global masses has now developed far beyond McPhail’s gloomy prediction.</p> <p>During our very recent past, connectedness meant conversation and sharing physical closeness. Now it means listening to and sharing feel good, non threatening ideas with strangers and fusing into one interconnected vast network containing outsourced memories, experiences and information. This outreach can be useful as it may increase our awareness of issues and information on a global scale however there exists the very real danger of disconnecting on a local and physical level, remaining uninformed on what is happening in our own immediate community if it is not posted online. It is this disconnectedness which has debilitated our present condition making us actors in a perpetuated unreality. British journalist, Carole Cadwalladr, stated in her <span class="caps">TED</span> talk that the technology Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Jack Dorsey “have invented has been amazing. 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