Topical Media

"Real time means less than three seconds, so that anything giving news 
within five goes under the umbrella of historical information." - Reuter  


Information as such radiates such availability that it evokes only pure 
revulsion. As being per se, it is just a little more than life can 
handle. Data can never be taken for granted. They must be made to 
resonate and processed through state-of-the-art equipment. Processing 
technology must be continually updated to prevent data from escaping and 
regaining their obstinate parasitical silence. Decay and erosion are 
major issues in the world of the recording and processing industries. 
Data recorded on magnetic tapes or CDs instantly cover themselves up in 
soothing static, soon giving up all legibility in terms of significance, 
listening pleasure or other methods of pacification. It is only when the 
smooth generators have brought them to life that data become amusing. No 
recreation without creation. Watching the telephone or listening to movie 
reels is no longer a form of entertainment, but a sign of real obsession.


Back in the days when messages were still carried by sailing vessels, 
they were allowed to ripen into reports. Data developed into news because 
they had a chance to mature. Only when accompanied by opinions and 
commentaries could the message escape such crushing remarks as, "What 
business is that of mine?" By consolidating and concentrating the mixture 
of incoming messages, editors could impart their daily coherent 
worldviews. The substantialist presentation of ephemeral sensation 
enabled citizens to absorb the news as a segment of the daily package. It 
successfully provoked a general interest by appearing as a regulated 
encroachment on the ritual of personal existence. News originated 
outside. Inside, it caused the necessary reactions, spreading through the 
national community as the topics that gave it the required solidarity.

The notion of topicality originates with the acceleration of transport. 
The significance of the event was increasingly determined by absolute 
time. The interval left for the message to parade itself as today's item 
was reduced ever further. For example, on January 23rd, 1766, the 
"Amsterdamsche Courant" reports that the King of Denmark has fallen 
seriously ill. On January 28th, it informs us that "Copenhagen is plunged 
into bitter mourning over the passing of its beloved Monarch," even 
though in fact he had already died on January 14th. In other words, the 
moment of the monarch's death lasted two weeks. In telematics, this 
regime of the interval is utterly defeated, while reports of tales from 
elsewhere become neverending stories. Reports are no longer delivered in 
segments, but as part of a continuous flow centered around local time. 
News no longer reaches you, but is permanently present. Instead of 
occupying a fixed place within daily routine, it can be consumed whenever 
desired.

Until recently, obstinate personal timetables were still curbed by the 
programed media. They managed to lend an aura of news to info by 
selecting, saving and dressing it so that the ritual digestion of 
international titbits regained its air of collectivity. News reports 
became platforms for local nationalities. The dictates of time imposed by 
the programers and their television guides gave one the comfortable 
feeling of having made a personal choice by switching on the set. 
Programed media presumed that the consumer as subject would naturally 
collaborate with the makers in giving a meaningful context to the 
presentation. It is when data succeed in escaping such dictates and 
television becomes a piece of furniture like sideboard family pictures 
that topical media are introduced. 

Topical media appear as an interruption of the program. The fatal 
topicality of traffic (traffic information broadcasts, ghost drivers) is 
used as a means of coercion to stay tuned, even at home. Life itself is 
conceived of as a traffic flow that must never be interrupted. One 
unexpected result of the capacity of topicality to suggest relevant 
hierarchies that justify jumping the queue was the media users' 
fragmentation as subjects: As far as topical media were concerned, they 
no longer had a say. The equality between news and entertainment was 
restored by settling topical media on a wavelength of their own. At 
first, news still interrupted the regular program, but this invasion was 
soon allotted its own channel. But at the same time this eliminated the 
pretense that topical media have a universal right to all those aged 8 to 
88. Every minority was delivered its own message. Thus, the notion of 
conquerable markets became an integrated part of the medial and the 
liberal proliferation of channels could commence.

The secret of topical media is that they present themselves as separate 
media to the point where all programed media are temporarily switched off 
or banished to tiny subscreens. Topicality's now or never is incompatible 
with lasting ratings. To everybody's surprise, the inflammatory character 
of spontaneous news bursts soon turns out to be the ultimate 
stage-managed affair. Those who are looking for in-depth information are 
better off having a chat with the neighbours or reading a book. 
Topicality and news are mutually exclusive. Once topical media start 
broadcasting live press conferences so that journalists will have 
something to write about, the interval in which events can turn into news 
is destroyed, as we watch the reporters on screen get up to report what 
we've just been watching. Long before the cameras arrive at the scene, we 
have already videotaped the stills of the camcorder witness. 

When we can watch Nobel prize writers write their awardwinning novels via 
bulletin boards, or witness the shooting of a Hollywood feature to be 
released next spring via movie channels, or listen to live broadcasts of 
telephone conversations between world leaders, or follow the studio takes 
of a world-famous musician's CD live on radio, and when the only reports 
we see are about the production process of special reports: then the end 
product lags so much behind topicality that it can only be appreciated as 
waste. Why bother to buy the disc at all, when all of us have just spent 
months listening to the new track's recordings, minutely evaluating the 
various takes? The public is placed into the position of permanent 
journalists, while the viewers must keep on switching to get the message. 
Thus, the period of reception is given an active interpretation.

Waste has always been a pure object. One promising consequence of the 
silly urge to consolidate collected data into an end product screaming 
for a cool design is that all it does is attract more waste. Nobody needs 
to read the magazines, because everybody knows what graphic programs they 
were made with. But that which loses its meaning regains its secret. 
Obsolete media have succesfully restored their silence. By nature, data 
evoke suspicions that they are not alone. They are always found in 
groups. Data may operate but cannot be received as such. Every single bit 
of data counts; data never lose their obstinate character. One cannot 
simply adress data, one must know which language to speak. To look at 
data is to objectify them - as waste.

Topical media are media in progress. No longer able to produce instant 
documents, they roam the regions of raw material forever. At present, the 
avant-gardes of hard info study the next phase, in which the redundancy 
of end products will go without saying. They frantically test the 
data-vacuum cleaners developed in their own laboratories. The collection, 
attraction, gathering, tapping, clipping, copying, categorizing, storing, 
restructuring and, above all, saving of data is their life fulfillment. 
In perfect keeping with sovereign media, they no longer require an 
audience to tackle their chosen subject. They are more and more amazed at 
the inexhaustibility of their data sources. Like traditional computerized 
societies, they perform a ritual to exorcize the social data surplus. But 
this anthropological approach to archaic modes of reconciliation ignores 
the fact that the problem of waste concerns all of society. There is a 
great danger of the amount of data exceeding its critical limit and 
exploding. A handful of priests wielding their data-vacuum cleaners can 
do little to avert the threat of crucial data carriers going up in 
flames: The incident as event.

Even the miniaturization of data storage cannot prevent the impending 
overload, but merely contributes to its amplification. Compressed 
nanodata are still objects, with all the power to strike back. Just like 
material waste, data can only be relocated, not destroyed. The ecological 
answer consists of data prevention ("Prevention is better than storage"). 
But this magic formula inevitably creates Gulag-style media-free zones 
and an educational censorship to erase data-intensive periods from 
history, for example. These solutions are as conceivable as they are 
outdated. Only the strategy of data recycling - to compost information as 
the manure for fresh events and phenomena so that they in turn may 
revolve through the wheel of mythical history as data - offers some hope 
of an effective reduction of immanent data accretion.
??