Authentic Human Experience: The Implications of Technology on Creative Capabilities

Abstract

Within the construct of modern life the human condition is deeply mediated by technology and information, wherein the potentiality of an authentic human experience is hindered yet facilitated. Authenticity may be sought through various means, one of which is through creativity, associated with the breaking away of deterministic and intrusive external forces. The extent to which technology forms creative capabilities is evident by the democratization of production and consumption. Here several works are useful in illuminating the limitations and potentialities of such production and consumption capabilities to bring about an authentic human experience, beginning with Jean Baudrillard’s The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures and Simulacra and Simulation as well as Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share Volumes II & III. Bataille’s idea regarding transgression of the world of utility provides an opening from which to experience authenticity while Baudrillard’s negates the possibility thereof due to the disappearance of the real in a world absorbed by simulacra. The stance undertaken by Bataille is advantageous in that it that it is able to account for the maneuverability in human experience thereby evading the absolutism Baudrillard’s work steers into. To further unfold the idea of such maneuverability the work of lawyer and activist, Larry Lessig is utilized. Notably, Lessig’s talk on “how laws chokes creativity” promotes the democratization of creative and cultural production by way of the reduction of legal restraints regulating copyright content. In effect, Lessig proposes a reconfiguration of production capabilities in which the emerging configuration is conducive to creativity, but is also susceptible to the service of utility. Thus, the spectrum of maneuverability and its consequences has a gradient quality thereby there is merit in the constant struggle among theories.