Today with global capitalism each sector of the world has been introduced into a digital world at the same time, rather than going through an agricultural, industrial, and then technological process that has lead to this digital new media era. Now the 20 yr old generation has grown up with a sense of the same technology and ability of that new media.
In the next few generations students around the world will hopefully be experiencing the same amount of access to the new technologies. Due to this spread of materialism and products and the consumption of these products, our world has interconnected itself through the trading of those products - creating (of course) a circle.
However, capitalism has seemed to have taken a hit from "dematerialization" the new technology seems to enforce. Without a product to sell there is no consumption of that product unless of course one has changed the essence of that product to what was materialistic to a new conceptual and 'altermodern' product, but the question is can these still be sold? or is everything up for grabs? Ideas, beliefs, time, ..or knowledge.
The amount of information on the net void is infinite, the amount of credible information of the net is questionable. But Nicolas Bourriaud explains in the ending pages of his book The Radicant, that locations seem to take a huge toll in validity or legitimacy of art and knowledge. As a 'semionaut' in order to lead your audience down a path of progressiveness concepts and ideas you need art to embody the signs and visual, or audio, representations that will direct the world to understand what will be. The signs do not necessarily have an end, and obviously the journey is the art or the answer, rather than the destination, but Bourriaud is trying to express that these projects are merely "dots upon a moving line" where our contribution is shared with everyone in the world simultaneously and access is infinite, therefore making it never-ending.
"The quality of an artist's work depends on the richness of his or her relations with the world and these are determined by the economic structure that more or less powerfully shapes them -- even if, fortunately every artist theoretically has the means to evade or escape that structure."
A good artist is a "net citizen" for the media void which serves us and is there for us to spit anything into it. Although, the responsibility a net citizen has is to guide those within to sincere intellectual place of knowledge or interest. But there will always be citizens who are irresponsible.
This is NOT the Altermodern stage yet because everyone does NOT have equal access to technological void of knowledge in which everyone must be apart of to have an altermodern society, but are we close?
Sometimes people choose not to be apart of that society does this make impossible to be the altermodern society?No as long as the option is there, people NOT choosing it cannot prevent from societal changes to occur. One can chose to be ignorant and sometimes some people cannot handle the truth, so it is a practical precaution to choose not to participate as a 'net citizen' in this void where knowledge can be infinite (at least for the human's finite brain).
