La “seconda modernità” del digitale

Abstract

As a consequence of several variables, we are today in the “second modernity” of digital era, to put it in the words of Ulrich Beck. The success of the World Wide Web has led to unpredictable consequences. The “enchantment” that protected the digital universe as a symbolic bell is, in some ways, in an ongoing process of dissolution. At the moment this process has had no impact on the collective imagery, but just on a restricted part of the world population. That is to say that critical media scholars, who want to reveal the material nature of digital. Today, the ethereal imagery typical of the “first modernity” of the digital universe seems to be questioned. But more generally, many of the mythical forces that had supported the success of the “digital revolution” are now being accepted with growing suspicion. Therefore, a brief reconstruction of the transition from the “enchanted” phase of digital as an immaterial universe, to the “disenchanted” phase of materiality is proposed.  The aim of this article is therefore to discuss the genesis, the rise and the progressive decline of the imagery of the “first modernity” of digital and to synthetically analyze the features of what has been called the “second modernity” of digital.