I want to share my thoughts about an excellent essay and author1. This is my first attempt at writing a short review on SN, and I hope you will appreciate it.
In this brief essay, Han discusses transparency, a concept of great importance in contemporary discourse. It is both a term and a slogan. 'Transparency' has come to dominate public discussions on topics, such as corruption, freedom of information, and even interpersonal relationships.
According to this usage, transparency is essential for democracy as it affects the political, economic, and private spheres of life. It allows anyone to access information about anything. Everything and everyone has been made transparent, revealed, or exposed by the apparatuses that exercise collective control over the post-capitalist world.
However, transparency has a downside that is ironically related to the absence of mystery, nuance, and shadow. The apparent accessibility of knowledge conceals the loss of privacy, homogenization, and erosion of trust.
According to the author, the desire to accumulate more information does not necessarily result in greater knowledge or confidence. Technology creates the illusion of omnipresent content and non-stop information monitoring, but we lack adequate interpretation of this constant flow of information.
In this manifesto, Byung-Chul Han denounces transparency as a false ideal, the most pernicious and powerful contemporary mythology.
Is he like, right or what?
Footnotes
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Byung-Chul Han (1959-) is a Korean-German philosopher. He taught philosophy and cultural studies in Berlin (UdK). In his writings, he is characterized by a wide eclecticism, dealing with classical fields of philosophy, such as ethics and theology; with complex contemporary phenomena, such as technology and mass media; but also with concepts such as transparency, violence, exhaustion. Han has staunchly avoided public appearances, yet is one of the most translated and widely read philosophers in the world. ↩