La saturazione nell’era delle reti sociali: dallo spazio al tempo

(Saturation in the Age of Social Networks: From Space to Time)

Abstract

The age of social networks suggests a new phenomenology of saturation and brings to light various strategies to confront it: from a spatial saturation resulting from an excess of goods we move to a dimension related to the excess of information and connections. In this context, time becomes the parameter of saturation.

In the time of excess, goods and commodities pack physical sites, and saturate spaces and needs with evident risks of dysfunctionality not only in terms of the use of environmental resources, but also, even beforehand, in terms of our individual ability to choose. The paradox of choice, already highlighted by literature, has not prevented our space from filling up with objects, thereby saturating places and needs. The filling up of commodities compresses the space of desire itself, which gets to be quickly satisfied even before its very expression. The manifestations of saturation concern not only the material but also the subjective, emotional, and mental space. The paradox of choice invites strategies of simplification, heuristic ways capable of reducing the uncertainty of mistakes, and also strategies of de-saturation.

The time of access confronts us with other conditions of saturation that are situated more on the side of time than on that of material resources. An infinite variety of information and opportunities opens us. Within the new context, how does the paradox of choice present itself? The Internet presents us with a dematerialization of space. Paradoxically, precisely when space becomes an unlimited realm of virtual goods, time is compressed, packed up with opportunities, information, stimuli, and messages. Saturation moves from the realm of space to the realm of time. What are the effects of time saturation and what strategies are enacted by the individuals so as to respond to excess in the epoch of constant connection?