Dumb courage… Time alters for the worse: it would be wrong to entrust the honour of noble minds (Marcus Junius Brutus)

Abstract

The article focuses on the unprecedented form of dominance inherent in digital communication. This domain is comparable to the epochal fracture that characterized the rise of capitalism in the world and is akin to the unacknowledged revolution (Eisenstein, 1986) that marked the advent of Gutenberg's typography.
The rupture and crisis of modernity demand a new narrative. Decisive is the role of technology, no longer a tool of the logical-sequential paradigm (alphabetical code) but, on the contrary, the "absolute master" of digital communication.
The disruption that the dominance of digital communication imposes on present society is initially the promise of the technologies of freedom (De Sola Pool, 1995). But then surrender, resignation, and total complicity to the dominant force of radical capitalism prevail.
The narrative controlled by the dominance of digital communication represents a reality free from conflicts and frictions (Gates, 1997). It's a flat reality. Against this narrative, I oppose a dramatic, long-term vision and a thought of conflict.
The global command of digital communication does not accept forms of constitution of a science that analyzes and reveals its nature and the conflicts it generates, nor a "negative" theory that renews an ancient form of critical theory (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1947).
The traumatic end of modernity remains obscure: the false universal peace of globalization falls apart, the hard core of modernity disappears, that defined by Kant: reason, and with it its fundamental tool, alphabetical ratio.
The appearance of a global wealth and well-being spreading is based on the ideology of a flat reality. Narrated by a conciliatory thought that knows no conflicts, inequalities, wars, and poverty.
This is the field in which outsiders live without perceiving the drama of their own condition. Outsiders are an intermittent subject but originated from these revolutionary and, at the same time, regressive processes. Outsiders are a reality and a current presence. A technologically equipped but culturally poor people. Fans, finally, are the degradation of outsiders.