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DATA ENTITY

With the dawn of the digital age, the virtual communication channels are exploding. It has never been easier to share information with the world than with the built-in camera of a smartphone with access to the Internet. In 2013, 4.4 million exabytes of online data were registered for the first time in human history. This is roughly the amount of data ever recorded by humans. Since then, millions of terabytes of data have been added daily. With the incredible ease of data input and instant retrieval, the World Wide Web allows for a variety of connections that were previously unthinkable.

With the Internet of Things, an undreamt-of connection to the physical realm of people has been achieved. For this reason, the Internet can hardly be considered a closed system. Even if, or precisely because, it consists of very different rooms of perception, it is constantly in a state of high entropy with the real world.

A question arises. How far is it possible to describe such a state of high entropy between somatic and virtual rooms of perception as an entity, that describes the information flow of humanity on earth as a whole? If this is the case, common images and dialogues should also be available.

To understand the earth as an abstract unity by speaking of one world is much easier than to see the population of the planet as a unified species or society. Neither common perspectives, holidays nor rituals are recognizable. Unfortunately, it must be stated that the sum of cat videos and dinner photos alone is not enough to determine a meaningful integration of data globally. A fragmented focus obviously does not develop a common perspective or world view.

With the increased transmission of information within virtual rooms of perception of the World Wide Web, many forms of communication and patterns of behaviour are reduced to a level that basically corresponds to the basis of a contractual society. For as soon as an exchange of information becomes comprehensible and can be stored and retrieved, abstract concerns and sensitivities can be specifically excluded or analysed. When inner images and dialogues are transformed into concrete texts and images, clear social interactions can be defined. However, if in the contractual society of a somatic room of perception the personal hearing or confrontation in a dispute of the judgment is the last word, in a virtual room of perception for the time being only the programming of algorithms can be demonstrated. 

The absence of a microscopic information spectrum within a virtual room of perception on a global level, - as a habit of personal interaction that has been withdrawn - can lead to an individual inner vacuum that allows new common psychological constructions to be sought. This accelerates the desire to develop new common images and thought constructs, which can reach beyond the essence of one country and give greater importance to a supra-regional feeling. Thus, if a large virtual room of perception overlaps an individual somatic room of perception, it can apparently trigger personal feelings such as fear or happiness that are no longer locally caused or connected. This supra-regional sensation out of a collective psychological construct can very well lead to intensely personal experience, as the worldwide concern in the lockdown 2020 has shown. 

In the concentrated reporting on the newly discovered, aggressively infectious virus, many somatic and virtual rooms of perception have come together to form a comprehensive and worldwide perceptual space, with the attributes of one single room of perception. The basic tenor of this global perceptual space has been determined by the fact that not only all persons on this planet can be infected by the virus, but also that the whole of humanity may suffer damage that cannot be estimated. And due to the fact that nobody can simply leave the earth for the period of the infestation, in the end, all impulses from careful and sceptical rooms of perception at least led to the decision to proceed closed against this threat - even with different reaction times. In this process, something happened that could hardly ever be observed before. The entire reporting of the earth was more or less only concerned with one topic and that almost at the same time. All social channels, discussions and meetings were determined by it.

In this scale, only one parachute jump from the stratosphere 2012 was covered before. In contrast to the virus, the media coverage of the jump from the balloon capsule lasted only a few days or weeks. 

Based on both exceptional situations, however, the medial part of the Earth can be very well regarded as a closed system, which allows the worldwide information level on one topic to be seen as a state of high entropy.

This creates a strong flow of information between those people who have a lot of information and those who have very little information on the current topic. The intensive exchange of information from different rooms of perception is sufficient to create a jointly constructed picture for all participants in the global perceptual space. At first, this picture rears up like a young horse with inner dialogues similar to: "We humans can do everything", and keywords like heroism, bravery, courage or quite the opposite: "We humans are threatened by extinction", and keywords like fear, doubt, consternation.

However, these inner images and dialogues are never statically set in stone like the information in a book, but as dynamic as the reporting of the events themselves. The first inner image often remains until the ongoing impulses from the reporting have a lasting effect on the personal approach to reality. And it is precisely this that brings to life an entity marked with verve and energy as a collective and psychic construction. This means that all the inner individual images of each person come together to form one picture for short moments, sometimes for longer periods of time.

While jumping out of the stratosphere a picture of the unlimited possibilities of mankind spread, maybe even a personal pride in human abilities, joy about the successful action and more, the virus led to individual consternation and helplessness, and to the realization that no one alone will be able to solve this problem, this challenge, leading to individual helplessness and collective paralysis. While during the live broadcast of the stratospheric leap one could put oneself in the person of Felix Baumgartner, just like that, as if all the people of the world could fuse into one person for ten minutes.

In both cases, the information has transmitted itself like a virus from one point on earth in many directions at the same time. Sensations such as fear or happiness were transferred from virtual rooms of perception to somatic rooms of perception, even to inhabitants of the island of Tristan da Cunha.

For all the people living on this remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, however, the entity of perception of the lockdown 2020 must have manifested itself differently than in a metropolitan area, where it is always advisable to keep an eye on real-time radars of aggressively infectious diseases. In this way, the information of a virtual room of perception creates a superposition to a somatic room of perception. But on a remote island, it will be in a lower state of entropy than in a metropolitan area of a megacity.

However, the Lockdown in 2020 revealed yet another collective phenomenon. With the dynamic mapping of aggressive infectious diseases by recording when and where the virus appeared, a visual aid is becoming recognized that has been little noticed up to now.

Whereas in recent centuries the vastness of the universe was explored with telescopes or the deep abysses of matter were illuminated with microscopes, the data of collective behaviour now allow us to look into the common psyche. And even if one never wants to narrow down an individual personality, within the mirror of all and together, one is almost tempted to see the entity of data, that has come to life, is sinking down on Freud's couch.  

Through this extremely unusual digital faceted eye, which is fed by the information from very many smartphones and the individual data streams from personal Internet usage behaviour, individual actions can be made visible in a collective context and visualized as a living space-time continuum.

This statistical observation of data of individual behaviour in relation to common collective habits allows us to see the earth through the eyes of a data entity. In contrast to Hobbes' state entity, in form of a sovereign over worldly and spiritual matters, the data entity of the 21st century flows around the planet like huge dragons, decentralized and to the most diverse interests.