The name is absent

by factors external to the sender. The relationship of the message between
the receptor and the emissary becomes more and more estranged from the
latter who sees with impotence how the meaning of his message is modified.
Now, this is not a new experience in western societies as epistolary and
telegraphic communications have existed for centuries, but the intensity of
this phenomenon has increased considerably since digital and virtual
technologies have become integral to our lives as a means of communication.

It is clear that if we are not to be disconcerted by the information we
receive, we must gain consciousness about the relationship between reality
and the devices that we use to observe it. Hence, computers must be
understood as a tool, a simple medium. Digital technology has transformed
the perception of reality with the high fidelity of its copies, but, in spite of
the ability to simulate reality, there is always a distortion, not always
identifiable, between the sign and the referent, in this case, between reality
and the simulacrum. Following a classical semiological example, we can
illustrate this with a photograph of a cat: although the cat on the print is the
one captured by the camera, it may not be perceived as the same cat: the
lighting, colour, camera angle and lens may influence the viewer’s perception
(Yuen, 2000: 3). Therefore, the perception of the content may be modified
by the context, in other words, by the devices we use to capture, edit, send,
receive and reproduce the object. In this sense, Negroponte suggests that
‘the medium is not the message in a digital world. It is an embodiment of it.
A message might have several embodiments automatically deliverable from
the same data’ (Negroponte, 1995: 71). Technology is still producing a filter
in the reproduction of reality but it seems that we are on the way to
achieving a perfect reproduction of the original copy and, in this process,
originality will lose its value and will become an irrelevant concept,
reminding us, once again, of Baudrillard’s (1983) state of the Hyperreal.

The effect of new technologies is exemplified by the way in which we
interpreted the messages produced by digital images in the Gulf War.
Suddenly, the analogical image that we perceived by way of photography and
cinema became obsolete and was transformed into bits of an abstract reality.
It was the inauguration of a sterilized war in which the information, being

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