Reflections on blindness in digital culture: paraphrasing José Saramago

Abstract

Digital technologies have transformed the way people organize and communicate today, influencing various areas of knowledge and what is produced in and by digital culture. However, online consumers experience the consequences of what could be considered detrimental to the social relationships of our time, namely excesses. From this perspective, the allegorical novel Blindness (1995) by José Saramago, introduces a "white blindness" that affected an entire city. This blindness would represent, in the creative conception of the Portuguese writer, the excess of reason, whose result would be the desensitization of people. Could we, then, consider that Saramago, through this narrative, was foreseeing a chaotic development for post-modern society or merely expressing a pessimistic view of humanity? We aim to weave a dialogue between some ideas presented in Blindness and aspects of the contemporary digital context and to reflect on interpersonal interactions in digital media in light of Saramago's allegory and studies from scholars who deals with digital environmment. To this end, we used qualitative, bibliographic research, based on theoretical contributions from Fisher (2023), Hissa and Araújo (2021), O’Neil (2020), Bridle (2019), and Han (2015). Through the analyses performed, we obtained results indicating that the blindness of reason, presented in this novel, resembles the excesses produced in the digital context. These excesses can lead to user illness and a lack of alterity. We conclude that, in opposition to this situation, the "pedagogy of seeing" proposed by Han (2015) is necessary.