Information Technology Reference
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circumstances lead us to speculate about the socially and culturally magnifi ed
impact of the times of their audiences. Let us see why.
An active Facebook user seeks to project a certain image of themselves in order
to cause a specifi c impression of their life, identity or personality, through the care-
ful selection (and manipulation) of the photographs that they post in their profi le,
the comments they add or the products that they say they like. This social network
also provides other web applications that can help to magnify or expand this virtual
identity, one which is created
ad hoc
and may have anything from a very close rela-
tion with the person's true reality to no relation whatsoever. This manipulation of
identity is done in the present and involves altering the past (choosing which events
to show and even changing or ignoring others). Nevertheless, when manipulating
the reactions of their audiences through altered representations of themselves, they
want to shape their own future. When individuals do this, they reveal their particular
and social values, as well as helping to strengthen said values among certain groups.
The information provided on the web may also, and likewise, be available in a more
distant future. People of that time, the distant future, might perhaps evaluate our
own time on the basis of this preconfi gured information extracted from our present,
which will be their past.
Let us consider another example of the idea expressed in the fi rst paragraph. Day
after day, we are witnessing an increase in the ability to record, store, edit and reveal
the testimonies of the people of the present for the people of the future. Although in
bygone days it was possible to conserve the autobiographies of human beings, digi-
talization has expanded and generalised that capacity: many more people of the
world can transmit their opinions, their histories, their stories and their impressions
on the web, because the instruments are increasingly more user-friendly, and the
cloud is so much larger and more widespread. In doing so, they can also surround
these testimonies with audiovisual resources to expressively emphasise sensations
or emotions (such as the use of certain music, the inclusion of sound effects or the
adding of animations or infographics). The emotional intensity of everyday experi-
ences is thus made more powerful - it is 'spectacularised'. If they prefer, narrators
can start creating their own versions of the past (enriching it, mixing it with images,
selecting the details that matter or explaining one version of the reality, while ignor-
ing another). In consequence, modern-day narrators can leave, as their legacy for
the future, their own creative version of the present and also their creative version of
the past. Given that there are fewer sources about the past, it is not outlandish to
believe that there is an increasing possibility for present versions of the past to gain
in relevance and have an impact on future explanations. Before moving on to a third
and fi nal example, readers should be reminded that the modifi cation of history, of
the past, is a recurring aspiration of certain governmental regimes and states, which
means that refl ections like these are more necessary than ever.
As a fi nal example, let us imagine that somebody creates a narrative about a past
circumstance (either their own or not) that includes distant people or places. Thanks
to the use of immersive display techniques, such as 3D, augmented reality or meta-
verses, creators pursue high narrative engagement experiences for their audiences
and achieve them. Due to the verisimilitude that narrators are able to imprint on
