Perceiving a fragmented unity: Antinomic Relations in Digitality

Since we live in a world of paradoxes, digital signs encode and produce meaning by exploiting antinomic relations that are constantly augmented thanks to the affordances of digital technology. These potentialities affect the way we negotiate mediated social practices and thus they can be considered as ideological tools. In this study, three paradoxes of digitality will be illustrated. The first antinomy finds its origins in the new concept of linguistic entropy (Petroni 2011): a wellorganized information disorder that is regularly governed by the usability guidelines, with an inevitable impact on language. The second paradox arises as the result of the process of remediation (Bolter and Grusin 1999) in digital environments which are conceived with a conflicting double logic. Digitality, in fact, wants both to augment its media (Hypermediacy), and, at the same time, to delete all evidence of mediation (Transparent Immediacy). Paradoxically, it wants to delete its media in the very act of multiplying them. The third paradox is that of mobility. Mobile technologies can play a pivotal role both in fostering a sense of co-presence, nearness and intimacy and in being experienced as alienating media.