In the 2010s, the word “phygital” became popular when people began discussing fidget marketing, an approach to advertising that combines physical and digital elements to create an interactive experience for the consumer. They also started talking about a new ideological paradigm that was drastically different from the ones that came before it, and how this represented the final merging of reality and virtuality in our daily lives, as well as a new age of corporate development generally. The concept of the physical world takes on additional culturally determined connotations in the current post-pandemic era, when the yearning for “analogue” is particularly strong and advanced digital technologies are entering a new phase of development. Digital companies have started talking about our hybrid future, and philosopher Alexandra Tanyushina knows what tech trends are coming up to back up their claims.
Chris Vale, CEO of branding agency Momentum Worldwide, first proposed the term “phygital” in 2007, but the notion of a physical-virtual hybrid world predates him. From time to time, it showed up in various forms among science fiction authors, then among the pioneers of cyberculture theory (e.g., in Alice Mary Hilton’s works), and lastly among scholars studying the network society. “In which a combination of social networks and media networks forms the primary way in which the most important social structures are organized at all levels.” was the final argument put forth by the second party.
It is possible to identify many postmodernist philosophers as early advocates of phygitalism. The work of Jean Baudrillard, who proposed the concept of “hyperreality”—the complete substitution of all signs with simulacra and the erasing of distinctions between reality and imagination—is frequently cited in this regard. “Aesthetic hallucination,” “a world woven from illusions and simulations,” and “fetishism of the lost object” are all definitions of hyperreality. Baudrillard uses Disneyland as a case study because it is a place of embodied illusions:
“The Disneyland imaginary is an apotropaic machine—it’s neither true nor false.” Real infantilism is everywhere, and this world pretends to be childish so that adults can fool themselves into thinking that adults aren’t here—in the “real” world. Adults actually come here to pretend to be children so that they can hide their own infantilism.
Naturally, postmodern readings of social practices were largely characterized by a critical tone. The concepts of digital cyberlibertarianism, cyborgization, post- and transhumanism, and technoethics in the vein of Roy Escott helped propel social techno-optimism into the mainstream in the 1990s, though it did not emerge in isolation from these movements. Against all of these notions, philosopher Peter Ludlow’s renowned 1999 compilation “Cryptoanarchy, Cyberstates and Pirate Utopias” will be published.
The aforementioned tendencies in Western European cultural tradition from the 1980s to the 2000s contributed to the formation of a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards the concept of combining the digital and physical realms. This is evident in the works of literature, films, and other forms of popular media from that era. But a new cultural logic starts to form in the 2010s, and it’s within this framework that a different way of thinking about complete digitalization emerges.
Virtualization debunked and the post-digital era upon us
We are currently in the digital era, but much like air and water, digitalization will be invisible in the future unless it is completely absent. “The digital turn has come to an end,” writing media futurist and theorist Nicholas Negroponte in 1998.
These predictions came true in many respects: the information and computing layer now encircles our whole lives, and digitization is really pervasive. But those outlandish forecasts that were popular in the late 20th century have not materialized: just as people do not drive their cars through cities, neither do we inhabit virtual simulations. Most importantly, the opposition “real-virtual” is being supplanted by the combination “physical-virtual” in contemporary thought. This is because, as the number of users actively participating in the development processes of online services and social platforms (e.g., blogs, wiki projects, and social networks) increased from the 2000s to the 2010s, the information layer started to gain real value and meaning, according to Tim O’Reilly, creator and popularizer of the Web 2.0 concept.
A new Internet culture was born at the same time as many different ideas came together to form what is now known as “post-postmodernism.” Their combined goal is to offer an alternative to postmodern theory by describing modernity’s cultural logic in a way that is both thorough and consistent. Mass culture mirrored the ideas of “new sincerity” and “new aesthetics” and their rapid spread, even though most of these concepts fail to withstand criticism.
Responding to postmodernism’s ironic skepticism and ambiguous outlook on the future, the modern generation has formed the “new sincerity” movement. Over time, it came to be associated with any kind of sensuality, seriousness, or value-oriented worldview in popular culture, and it found its way into popular online media, literature, film, and music.
In digital art, similar patterns have been noticed. Digital art practices, which have been grounded in the principles of dematerialization, virtualization, and telepresence since the inception of computer art, are reimagined within the “New Aesthetics” (a phrase first used by artist James Bridle in 2011).