In sincerity and authenticity, identity needs to be maintained and developed, but it is not subjected to the same feeding frenzy as in profilicity. Profilic identity, on and off the web, is to a large extent constituted by information, not simply by meaning. It needs to be constantly updated. A publication list that has no recent publications is worthless. A résumé that is blank for the past year will not get you a job. A new trip, a new activity, a new feeling are crucial to maintaining an active and presentable personal profile.

[Luhmann] goes decisively beyond Kant, especially in modern society, Luhmann states, we observe in the mode of second order observation. The reality that appears to us, is often not a simple reality, but the reality we see as being observed. When you watch this video on Luhmann right now, you are aware that you see me re-constructing Luhmann’s theory, and not the “thing in-itself” not Luhmann’s theory “as such". However, while you can see that I am “constructing” Luhmann’s theory you cannot see how you construct your own construction, of my construction of Luhmann’s theory. In other words, using Luhmann’s terminology, you can see how my “frames” condition my understanding of Luhmann—but while you do this, you cannot see the frames that condition your understanding of me

[Niklas Luhmann writes] “The mass media, it can be said, keep society awake. They generate the continuously renewed readiness to be surprised or disturbed”. The media system imposes insomnia on all of society–it becomes the global village that never sleeps.

[In Kant’s Copernican Turn] such notions as time, space, causality, substance, the traditional, topics of philosophy, were not actually any longer considered to be either in experience or beyond experience, but actually the conditions of experience. So, again, more concretely put, time and space are not actually properties of things, but they are forms in our cognition by which we experience the world. So they condition our experience of the world, they condition our experience of the phenomena.

Kant said that whatever we know “appears” to us in the way human reason—that is the mind or consciousness—constructs it. The purpose was by no means to dismiss these appearances as unreal, but to the contrary, to describe the cognitive means by which an apparent current reality is generated. Luhmann makes a very similar move. However, he does not analyze the generation of an apparent reality by means of consciousness (or the mind or reason), but by means of communication and in this case the media system.

[Niklas Luhmann] did write a book on the systemic dynamics of mass media, though: a first edition of The Reality of the Mass Media was published (in German) in 1995. Here, he defines the code of the mass media system as information/non-information. This code is rather peculiar due to one specific characteristic: once information has been communicated, it is immediately transformed into non-information: “A news item run twice retains its meaning, but it loses its information value.” This most crucial feature of the mass media system, the immediate self-reversal of its code through communication, is carried on into social media. Therefore, through their code sharing with the mass media system, they may be regarded as an evolutionary development of mass media.

The media system is, quite paradoxically, busy with making itself obsolete.

[Richard] Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, coined the term “meme” in analogy to “gene.” A gene is a biological unit that replicates itself and thereby plays a central role in the reproduction of life. Dawkins thought that a similar element must exist in society, or “culture” (as he tended to say somewhat imprecisely), and that this must be equally crucial for social evolution. Thus he originally conceived of “memes” as cultural items such as certain skills or ways of doing or making things, or as artistic creations, such as melodies, that could be imitated and thereby replicated to spread over time and space. The term soon became popular beyond its academic usage and was eventually applied to “internet culture” as well. Today, in loose connection with its original meaning in Dawkins’s work, it indicates “an idea, image, video, etc. that is spread very quickly on the Internet.”

Importantly, while taking care of an exhibition in such an encompassing way, a curator remains, to use Goffman’s term, “back stage.” This signals a distinctive distance between what is exhibited on the “front stage” and the exhibitor who works behind the scene. A curator is not an exhibitionist exposing him- self. The person is, by definition, distinct from the persona. In this way, as Formilan and Stark highlight, “curation is ultimately a non- authenticity process”. Under conditions of profilicity, the difference between persona and person is understood— by both person and audience— in the same way as the difference between a curator and what she exhibits. Both the curator and the audience are aware of this difference. Despite the attachment and identification involved and acknowledged in exhibitions, authenticity is, in a strict sense, never intended in curatorship. It is therefore non-authentic but not inauthentic.

Identity is physiologically embedded and can be proliferated and extended by “spreading one’s genes.” It would be tempting to say that the biological identity formation and procreation that occurs through genes finds its social- psychological counterpart in the identity formation and procreation that occurs through memes in “culture,” and especially on the internet. Just as humans have a biological urge to affirm and extend themselves by passing on their genes, they seem to also have a social urge to pass on their memes to others.

Modern society is “democratic”: it invites public participation and evaluation. Individuals expect to be heard and seen. Profilicity is inherently democratic as well. Profiles provide opportunities to constantly engage in evaluation, to express opinions and judgments, to rate and rank, and to thereby interact with and contribute as a constituent of the general peer.

In a highly diverse society, it is important to be able to curate different personas that work in various and often unrelated social spheres.

Given the close ties between profilicity and social media, this means that personal identity, too, must be fed.

Profilicity corresponds to today’s “transparency society” and “surveillance society” where we are constantly monitored. Pro- files are intended for exhibition to the general peer and are subject to the categories and labels that algorithms and artificial intelligence impose. But because they are intentionally curated and made to be shown, it is a misconception to regard them as lethal threats to privacy or autonomy. They do not reveal any innermost core, nor do they abolish agency altogether.

Today’s media knowledge is based on second order observation. In the media, we observe the observations of others, and this results in the “suspicion of manipulation” (or Manipulationsverdacht). This suspicion of manipulation however doesn’t make the media less important, to the contrary, they emerge almost miraculously as a “self-reinforcing configuration”. What is known to be known through the self-reinforcing media is not just suspicious, it’s also unstable—as Luhmann says, it is “varied from moment to moment”

Since the knowledge spread by the media is always incomplete and inconsistent, their prime function cannot be—unlike enlightenment thinkers had hoped—and unlike the media themselves sometimes proclaim—to educate society. The media can’t really “generate more knowledge” or raise conformity to norms, says Luhmann. for such education, the media are too contradictory and too partial.

Different from his main theoretical opponent Jürgen Habermas, Luhmann insists that modern society neither is, nor ought to be, geared towards some sort of basic agreement on what is true, or what is right. The media in particular cannot bring about such a “consensus”. Instead, Luhmann says, a prime function of the media is to “irritate” society.

The media, he says, make society “restless” and force it to cope with an always evolving “background reality”. “The function of the mass media lies in the constant generation and processing of irritation”. inconclusive social restlessness and constant irritation is neither good nor bad, but modern.

[For Niklas Luhmann] unlike for Maestro McLuhan, technologies are not part of the media system, they are the environment that conditions the media system

I am providing you not simply with “the facts” about Luhmann, I’m informing you about what I wish to become known to be known about him, and not about that which I think isn’t needed to be known to be known. When writing this script: I focus on distinguishing between facts I’d like to inform you about and those I don’t want to talk about. This is to say: I apply the code of the media system.

We use the media to inform ourselves about our world but on the other hand, we know there’s something fishy about them and Luhmann suggest, this is precisely what makes them interesting.