A brief theoretical examination of late modern cultural reality

Abstract

This article offers a brief theoretical examination of how shifts in technology affect cultural reality, and how these shifts influence the subject’s perception and understanding of itself, others, and the world. The article integrates perspectives from sociology, psychology, and media studies. The first section introduces French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whose work consistently explores the interplay between technology and cultural signs. Baudrillard offers a conceptualisation of Western culture as one of increasing abstraction. The second section elaborates Baudrillard’s theory within a psychological framework, drawing on phenomenology and identity theory. It is argued that cultural abstraction reflects a shift away from signs anchored in embodied subjectivity, thereby shaping how the subject understands itself, others, and the world. The third and final section analyses how the internet alters the production and circulation of media content. It is argued that the quantification of attention acts as a general equivalent transforming the conditions of circulation and consumption; that the nonembodied nature of the internet fosters a sense-making reliant on abstract social categories; and that media circulation and consumption on social media platforms fuses with social and collective identities, thereby “simulating” a polarisation of cultural reality.