Abstract
Samsung introduced last year a mobile phone called "Soul" made with a human touch and including itself a "magic touch". Through the analysis of Nokia mobile phone TV commercials I want to examine the function and form of digital technology in everyday images. The mobile phone, its digital camera and other devices are depicted in 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 is now brought 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 not only a post-human condition, but also a forgotten pre-human condition.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Digital Reflections |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Place of Publication | London/New York/Sidney |
| Publisher | Creative Commons |
| Edition | 1 |
| Pages | 1-25 |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 2018 |