The Overcoming of the Romantic Author in the Context of Contemporary Information Society

This text presents the concept of the romantic author in a broader context. Firstly, it points out its roots connected with antics (Bennett, 2005), then it describes its pre-concept, which is rooted during the rise of the typography (Ong, 2005), and finally it directly concentrates on the era where this concept is truly formed (Abrams, 1958). Based on these opening statements, the author of this text defines the concept of the romantic author in the sense of an individual sovereign creator in the context of western traditional authorship. Then the text points out its main goal to concentrate on the selected concepts, in order to demonstrate the contemporary overcoming of the author who is grounded in the western tradition. The author of this text uses an interdisciplinary approach in order to describe the topic, but primarily he prefers the approach of the media epistemology, based on which he classifies the subject of his interest in three key categories: firstly, he defines the concept of the romantic author in terms of its birth and its non-global character; secondly, he is oriented on the metaphor of the death of the author (Barthes, 1984), which Carpentier (2011) considers as a starting point for the weakening of the sovereign authorial position in order to present fantasies, which reflect this shift; and thirdly, he is concentrated on the term produsage (Bruns, 2008), where the author eventually (not just metaphorically) disappears, and points out the necessity of the produsage liberation from its techno-optimism. The article then presents two different approaches which reflect the actual overcoming of the romantic author in the sense of an individual creator in the context of the contemporary information society. The first one (Balve, 2014) refers to the birth of typography, which he describes in relation to the authorship in terms of speculative historical narration, and further he strives to keep this idea in the sense of genuine authorship, while he simultaneously points out its ideological construct. In contrast, the second approach (Sutherland-Smith, 2005) inclines to the overcoming of this idea, because it is no longer valid, and prefers establishing a so-called new order (Myers, 1998), which would simultaneously reflect this shift in the context of the World Wide Web. The author of this article prefers this second approach, because this very concept allows us to liberate the concept of traditional authorship from its obsolescence and to point out its very real overcoming. The text then comes to the second key point, constructed by the previously mentioned media epistemology, and clarifies the author/viewer convergence with the reference to Carpentier and his utopian and dystopian fantasies. Carpentier classifies them into three categories: firstly, into the modernist concept of the cultural professional, who symbolizes a nostalgic effort to keep the obsolete order; secondly, into a still modernist form of the author/viewer convergence, which is dystopian or utopian (produsage); and thirdly, into the postmodern, late-modern or fluid-modern form while he refers to the utopian participatory fantasy (Pateman, 1970) as the most preferred approach. The author of this text ultimately doesn't agree with Carpentier and prefers the concept of produsage as the only type of fantasy which captures the very real overcoming of the sovereign individual romantic author. The author then points out the necessity of liberating the produsage from its modernist utopian ideas and the need to accept the author/viewer convergence in full range (via produsage) and to put it into the context of contemporary Človek a spoločnosť [Individual and Society], 2019, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 62-73. The Overcoming of the Romantic Author in the Context of Contemporary Information Society 64 postmodern society. Then the author comes to the third key point and is specifically interested in produsage in the context of neo-Marxist theory as another example of its limitations, which could be taken as the new form of exploitation (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012). Therefore, Brown and Quan-Hasse see a certain connection between the produsers and factory workers who used to be exploited by capitalist industrial factory production owners. However, these authors also point out the differences between produsers and factory workers and they consider the ability of produsers to control the artefacts as one of the most important factors. The author of this article points out the overestimating tendencies of this aspect while referring to the decentralized nature of artefacts, which helps him to liberate this term from another utopian essence. Simultaneously, he points out that the contemporary overcoming of the individual romantic sovereign author is necessary to be understood rather as an option, which appears during web 2.0 era, than as a necessity which is always valid in absolute terms. In this sense, the author refers to the gallery products constructed in the form of traditional western individual authorship, which we face in the contemporary information society. In the last part, the author concludes by returning to the methodology of media epistemology. The author points out several paradoxes which emerge from the findings mentioned in the article. In reality, the romantic author is overcome in the context of contemporary information society, but formally, we are still able to face his nowadays version via the gallery visits or (simply) by the efforts to keep him alive in the world where he has already disappeared. According to the author of this article, the only way to fully accept this disappearance is to accept the author/viewer convergence by the produsage, which has to be liberated from its exaggerated utopian expectations.


The Concept of the Romantic Author
The concept of the romantic author is generally rather specific and problematic. We can find the roots of its origins long before it became established. Bennett (2005, 36 -38) connects these roots with a poet of antiquity who held the position of a mad seer or a prophet on the edge of a society, but was feted as an individual who was in contact with other-worldly wisdom that was presented through his artistic work.
The pre-concept of the romantic author in the sense of an individual creator is generally connected with the rise of typography; which is the finalized version of the written word, assigns a printed text to the concrete author, and simultaneously evokes the need to protect this authorial product through which it settles the basic condition for the establishment of copyrights: "Typography had made the word into a commodity" (Ong, 2005, 129). The establishment of typography creates the impression that the words of individual authors are becoming a part of private property, which also creates a reasonable aversion to plagiarism 1 leading to the protection of commercial interests connected with single prints (Ong, 2005, 128-129).
In relation to the romantic author, we find his roots in ancient times, and his pre-concept during the birth of typography, but his very real definition as an individual original creator is, of course, not established until the arrival of Romanticism. This kind of originality is then reflected in a specific style, where the author introduces his inner self: " (...) poetry is imitation, style is the man (...) it is the matter which mirrors the world, and the manner which mirrors the man" (Abrams, 1958, 231).
In this paper I use the concept of the romantic author as an individual original creator in the sense of the traditional Western concept of authorship, where the author takes the sovereign position and is fully connected with his authorial product (and they both are inseparable). This sovereign position of the author had been naturally a subject of discussion even before the internet era, especially in literary theory, nevertheless, even there we are dealing only with a formal weakening of this position, but not with its very real disappearance, which (as we will see later) eventually happens in the context of information society. The ambition of this paper is not to create some sort of diachronic review of several types of weakening of the sovereign authorial position, because this is not even possible due to the limited capacity of these lines. Instead, I will concentrate rather on selected studies which reflect the overcoming of this position in the context of the contemporary information society. In the case where I refer to the selected concepts of a weakening of sovereign position of romantic author, I am doing it only to gain further knowledge of a context which I use in order to describe the current-day situation. And this is the very one, which I am in this paper concerned with.
This article is also based on an inter-disciplinary approach; however the main position of my research is grounded in media epistemology. As much as it is not possible to adequately describe the current situation in the information society by using obsolete scientific texts, we cannot just rely on contemporary texts claiming that they are sufficient enough to ignore the previous ones. Therefore, I use three key points in order to describe the subject. First (as seen above), I present the concept of the romantic author in the sense of traditional individual authorship, which I later question in terms of a global universality. Second, I refer to the metaphor of the death of the author (Barthes, 1984) in the concept of Carpentier (2011) who considers this Barthesian metaphor as a starting point for the author/viewer convergence in order to present socially-constructed fantasies, which reflect this change in the context of today. Third, I talk about the produsage (Bruns 2008) as the concept where we face the very disappearance of traditional individual authorship in the contemporary information society. It should be clear now, that all these key points significantly relate to the subject of an author and to the shifts of his/her role during a historical time. Therefore, I will use the method of genealogy 2 in order to describe the shifts of the author/viewer to form constructions according to the topic structured into the key points mentioned above. The first one stands for an authorial sovereignty, the second one presents the conception where the sovereignty is weakened, and the last one reflects its overcoming.

Genuine Authorship vs New Order
Johannes Balve (2014) also points out the importance of birth of intellectual property during the era of typography establishment: "The origin of the protected authorship derives historically from Gutenberg´s revolutionary invention to produce copies of an original text by means of a new technology" (Balve, 2014, 82). However, Balve connects the rise of this protection with the growing numbers of copies and disseminations, while claiming that because of them it was the main goal (beside the less important economic aspects) to protect the individual thoughts of the authors from plagiarism (Balve, 2014, 82-84).
I strongly disagree with such a claim from Balve´s speculative historical narration, because this statement ignores the fact that the main purpose for this endeavor was to protect the commercial investments which were connected with the prints. Even though his interpretation is affected by this speculative approach, he is absolutely right when claiming that currently there isn't any clear global agreement about adhering to the rights connected with individual authorship (Balve, 2014, 83). According to Balve, the idea of individualism is in sociocultural and philosophical terms connected especially with Western societies (particularly North European and Anglo-American) where lies the idea of individual authorship, whereas Eastern societies (particularly Asian) are far less determined by this idea, because most of them are grounded in the tradition of collectivism (Balve, 2014, 83-87).
While selecting this study, I wanted to show that the concept of traditional authorship always was, in the sense of the individual (romantic) author, strongly connected with Western intellectual tradition and couldn't be understood as a global universality, nor from the times it was established. Additionally, Balve points out how problematic it is to keep the idea of individual authorship currently, where several of them collaborate (also on the internet), and he considers such a genuine idea to be an ideological construct. However, at the same time (quite surprisingly) he doesn't want to abandon this concept and rather prefers to stay with the idea of genuine (individual, romantic) authorship; standing by its protection because of its genuineness -at least in relation to academic literature (Balve, 2014, 89-91).
For comparative purposes, I select another author who doesn't agree with this ethnocentric perspective. First, Sutherland-Smith (2005) points out the strong connection of the concept of the romantic author with Western intellectual tradition as well: "The Romantic concept of authorship emerged from developing legal notions of the author as the owner of a text in England in the mid-fifteenth century. This 'traditional' view conceived of the author as an individual creator of an original work" (Sutherland-Smith, 2005, 16).
Sutherland-Smith further claims that any interventions in an original product, which would destroy this idea of traditional authorship, are considered (by this tradition) to be an example of plagiarism, but (in spite of Balve) she simultaneously criticizes this ethnocentric perspective, which she considers to be too much under the influence of the Western construct of individual property (Sutherland-Smith, 2005, 19-26). Myers (1998, 13), as Sutherland-Smith (2005, 19) mentions, talks about the necessity of 'New Order' that would also include non-Western as well as a 'techno-literacy' perspective. Sutherland-Smith refers to this notion claiming that the traditional perspective is necessarily limited, especially in the present globalized world (not just Western), particularly in relation to today's information and communication technologies and to the tangled web 3 , which allow this global connectivity to happen. "Nowhere is this more apparent than in the textual environment of the World Wide Web and the Internet" (Sutherland-Smith, 2005, 19).
As we may see, while Balve strives for keeping the traditional concept of the romantic author in the sense of genuine authorship (even while realizing its nature is built upon an ideological construct), Sutherland-Smith invites us to break with this concept because this is what she considers to be realistically untenable and totally overcome in the context of the globalized information society. I naturally incline to this position just in order to be able to abandon the first key point of the epistemology mentioned above. It is, in fact, the only way to get to the second key point which allows us to abandon the frame of this ideological construct and to have a better look at the overcoming of traditional authorship.

The Convergence of the Author and Viewer
With regards to the untenability of the sovereign position of the romantic author, I will focus here on the concept of his metaphorical death, which in the context of today's information society abandons the framing of a non-scientific metaphor and eventually becomes real.
As mentioned above (as the second key point), Carpentier (2011) considers this Barthesian metaphor as a starting point for his further thoughts about the convergence of author (producer) and viewer (consumer or reader). From the Barthesian post-structuralist defined point of a viewer's interpretation, where a reader (or a viewer in broader terms) becomes the active creator of a text or a media content via his interpretation (but he is still formally separable from the author at the same time), we are shifting towards the world of new media and the produsage (Bruns, 2008), where the position of the author and the viewer becomes, in fact, inseparable (Carpentier, 2011, 183 -184). So Bruns' term produsage consists of the convergence of a producer (author) and user (reader or viewer) shortened through the term produser.
I would like to introduce these fantasies, because I will be working with them further in the text. Carpentier (2011, 185) basically classifies them into three types. The first one is the modernist fantasy of the cultural professional which basically separates the author from the audience consisting of amateurs. The second one, which is modernist as well, is the democratic-populist fantasy based on the death of the author, which is situated in the antagonistic position to the first type. The clash of these two modernist types generates the third one, which Carpentier mentions as the participatory fantasy situated in the postmodern, late-modern, or liquid-modern era.
In my opinion, it is necessary to point out that even the starting point consisting of the metaphor of the death of the author, which is a part of the Barthesian post-structuralist approach, is not in fact created in a postmodern, but still in a modern context. It would be false to think that the idea of 'post' automatically generates the connection between the thoughts that are fundamentally based on it. The post-structuralist metaphor of the death of the author undoubtedly questions the previous structures, but, on the other hand, still remains in the tradition of modernity.
The first modernist type of cultural professional fantasy, according to Carpentier, evokes a certain type of nostalgia for its supporters in the sense of the possibility to delineate the formerly separable positions of professional authors and amateur audience. However, he also points out that falling too much into this nostalgia may also cause frustration, because the audience (and its members) will never behave according to the demands or elements (Carpentier, 2011, 190-193) 4 which define cultural professionals and their characteristics of production. In this sense then, the viewers and the members of the audience are perceived as the enemies of clearly delineated positions of subjects (Carpentier, 2011, 197-198).
In contrast, the democratic-populist fantasy, as the second type of modernist approach, substitutes the hierarchy of subjects with the idea of their absolute equity, which means the equity of the authors and viewers, the professionals and amateurs, and the audience and individual creators. Moreover, this fantasy has got two variations. The celebrative-utopian, as the first variation, takes the idea of absolute equity between the subjects as the objective ground for the realization of the very real shape of democratic society. However, the second one, the anxietatic-dystopian, takes that equity as a threat to the position of the cultural professional via user-generated content (Carpentier, 2011, 198).
The fantasy of the cultural professional tries to protect his dominant position because of nostalgic reasons through ignoring the convergence of the author and viewer (based on the metaphor of the death of the author) and together with the anxietatic-dystopian variation of democratic-populist fantasy (which doesn't ignore the convergence, but rather takes it as the threat of cultural professional) seeks to keep those positions of the subjects (the author, viewer, amateur and professional) in an obsolete, separable, hierarchical order. However, the celebrative-utopian variation of the populist-democratic fantasy doesn't admit this option for separable subjects and regards it more optimistically. Carpentier classifies both of these fantasies into a modernist theoretical approach and claims that because of this antagonistic settlement they become quite problematic through creating an undesirable tension within the democratic tendencies (Carpentier, 2011, 199). Therefore he points out the participatory fantasy (Carpentier, 2011, 199-201), which he prefers because it offers the option to formally separate the subjects based on their level of participation, and as a starting point for this approach he refers to Pateman (1970, 70-71). Carpentier prefers this theoretical approach because thanks to it we are losing the tension of the antagonistic modernist fantasies and we are still able to keep these participating subjects (without the necessity of their disappearance). However, he also admits that the realization of this approach is still captured within the utopian boundaries, because the idea of the option, where we could differentiate the exact level of a subject's participation, is in absolute terms more idealistic, than realistic (Carpentier, 2011, 199-200).
Nevertheless, Carpentier considers the participatory fantasy to be a breeding ground for the development of democratic ideas, because this fantasy doesn't allow generating another modernist fantasy (which would only create deeper tension) and doesn't admit the option of the modernist separation of cultural professionals from the process of shared authorship, where they have to share their symbolic power with the other participants (Carpentier, 2011, 200-201). The clash between those approaches in relation to the contemporary situation of shared authorship (either in the view of modernist, postmodernist, late-modernist or liquidmodernist fantasies) is, however, still present without the possibility to generate the overall winner (Carpentier, 2011, 201).
Personally, I prefer the term produsage, because (and paradoxically) only thanks to this concept there is an option to realize that we are definitely losing the sovereign position of the author who is shifted towards a produser on the dynamic platforms of World Wide Web. This convergence of the author and viewer, which transforms both of them into mutually inseparable positions based on produsage, could be understood as utopian, but exactly (and a bit paradoxically) thanks to this inseparability provides the best concept which adequately describes the contemporary situation on the Webwhere this inseparability has a status of a key characteristic, rather than a status of a mistake. Therefore, I don't agree with Carpentier who prefers the postmodern participatory fantasy, because while staying with the idea that we are able to differentiate the level of participation among subjects, he refuses to admit that on the platforms of World Wide Web, this idea is not possible to maintain anymore. As a way out, I prefer the need to admit the convergence of the author and viewer in the full range through produsage and to try to liberate this concept from its techno-optimistic tendencies. As we will see later, the produsage brings (despite the ambiguity mentioned above) another problems in the context of neo-Marxist theory, which should persuade us that it is not possible to understand this concept just through the democratic-populist or techno-optimistic perspective.

From Industrial Production towards Produsage
Brown and Quan-Haase (2012) are trying to design a new method of approach towards the study of produsage, while referring to Karl Marx (1938/1880 5 and to Italian autonomists and critical theorists, in order to find the method in these theories which could be used in the current context of social media and produsage (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012, 488-489). The autonomists follow up the concepts earlier defined by Marx, and they are connected with him through his similar interest in industrial production and in the improvement of workers´ position within this system which is designed according to the industrial interests; though both of them are using different strategies to achieve it (Brown & Quan-Haase 2012, 490-491). In this battle for a better position of industrial workers, we could find there the parallel in relation to the produsage.
As the factory owners were dependent on workers (and their work), so are the owners of social media platforms dependent on the activity of produsers (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012, 491). In the environment of web 2.0, the rising power and activity of produsers, who are a part of a certain community, even raises the market value of the social media platforms, where the produsers are concentrated (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012, 494).
Based on my opinion, this moment is very important in the context of our topic, because there we could see that the concept of the romantic author is overcome not only in the perspective of an individual sovereign production, which is spread among the collective activity within the community of produsers, but also in the perspective of the financial rewards connected with these products, which are created during this production process. From a Marxist and autonomist perspective, a produser does not receive any financial reward for his work, and his overall activity in the form of a user generated content leads only to an increase in the market value of the platforms. The produsers provide the content to the owners of these platforms for free, therefore they are being exploited.
However, even though the produsers are being exploited by the owners of web 2.0 platforms as well as the workers by the owners of industrial factories, it would be false to think that their positions are completely identical: "While workers in the industrial era had predefined and predictable work hours, Web 2.0 sites and services consist of a fluid and looselyconnected network of produsers" (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012, 496).
We could find other theoretic differences while we are (based on the recommendation of A Workers Inquiry 2.0) concentrating on the very results of produsage, which means on the artefacts 6 (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012, 498-499). The authors of this text claim that the artefacts are the results (and reflections) of especially non-capitalistic subjective needs and consciousness of produsers (not of the platform owners). From a Marxist and autonomist point of view, the final products do not have such a social-political dynamic, because the workers are not connected with them mentally, but, on the contrary, they are alienated from those products. Brown and Quan-Haase further claim that in case of produsage, it is the autonomous members of the web 2.0 community who regulate their collaborative participation, while industrial workers are directed by the authoritative industrial owners. In comparison to produsers, the industrial workers do not have any power and control over the final product and they are subordinated to the industrial interests in the sense of monotonous capitalist production 7 rather than characterized by diverse and creative activity which is just connected with the produsers (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012, 500). 8 Nevertheless, I would like to point out that in the Brown and Quan-Haase conception, we are there also, in reality, dealing with a significant overestimation of the produsers´ ability to have a self-dependent control over the artefact, because these artefacts do not necessarily stay in just one place (they are not necessarily centralized), but they could be disseminated across the network (to become decentralized) to the point, where the produsers totally lose control over them. On the one hand, this loss of control over the product (artefact) relates to the position of an industrial worker again, on the other hand, it doesn't eliminate other key differences between him and produser which were mentioned previously. Unlike the industrial workers, the produsers do have a chance to form the artefact to a certain level, but it would be false (or utopian) again to think that they have the artefacts totally in control. This is actually the reason why I talk about the topic of several approaches towards the subject of the author in terms of media epistemology, because the construction of this subject is not just a matter of a coincidence. In order to describe this construction, Foucault uses the term dispozitiv as a social praxis which is considered to be quite common in a specific historical era, e.g. in relation to sexuality (Foucault, 1978), and which is always connected with a certain type of institution, e.g. prison (Foucault, 1977), that is constructing the subject via its power. 9 In relation to our topic, we may see that the dispozitiv of typography and its subsequently developing legislation helps to form the subject of an individual author and his rights, but (on the other hand) the dispozitiv of web 2.0 helps to destroy his authorial sovereignty and forces him/her to accept the role of the produser, who is being exploited by the powerful owners of the dynamic platforms. To put it simply, the dispozitiv of web 2.0 does not allow the author to stay in the position of an individual sovereignty (even if he/she would like to) and this is exactly the reason why he/she is, thanks to the produsage, irretrievably overcome. Therefore, we should be very attentive when talking about the subject of produsers and their artefacts. Ultimately, the thoughts about what could be brought by produsage in the future are without a doubt very important and stimulating. As the authors claim: "As a result, the artefacts are both a critique of the present and evidence of what may be possible in the future" (Brown & Quan-Haase, 2012, 506).
No matter where exactly the produsage is going to lead us, it is still quite safe to say that it has already divested us of the concept of the romantic author in terms of a sovereign individual creator. At the same time, it is very important to realize that apart from the environment of web 2.0 platforms, we are still able to encounter the individual author in terms of a cultural professional. To put it simply, even in the era of the information society, we have the option to go to a gallery and encounter the authorial exhibition which is presented in the spirit of the Western concept of individual authorship. Then, it would be too much of an exaggeration to take the overcoming of the romantic author in context of the contemporary information society quite literally or in absolute terms. By analogy, it would be quite similar to think that we couldn't find any trace of agriculture in industrial society just because the agricultural society had been replaced by the era of industrialization.
Nevertheless, it does not change the fact, that these authorial gallery creations have the status of finished products, not the status of never-finished artefacts of produsage. As well as facing the convergence of the author and viewer on web 2.0 platforms, we are facing the convergence of the medial content consisting of dynamic pieces, which could be evolved by produsers 10 and thanks to it they are eventually losing their finalized form of a product that is related to the nature of gallery framing. Today, we should understand the overcoming of the individual creator as the new option, not as the absolute force. This new option is very significant, because it causes the very real disappearance of the individual creators and their products for the first time. On web 2.0, we are not losing the option to present the anonymous creations, but we are losing the option to present the authorial products. The creators merge into inseparable produsers and their products into never-finished artefacts.

Summary
In this article, we focus via media epistemology on three key aspects connected with the topic of the overcoming of authorial sovereignty in order to be able to generate the conclusion. In relation to the findings mentioned above, we are facing then the obvious paradox: where we would like to consider the concept of the romantic author in sense of an individual creator as a universality, we are simultaneously facing his ethnocentric Western character built upon the ideological construct of the genuine authorship; and on the other hand, where we would like to consider the concept of the romantic author as it was overcome, we are facing the intentionally nostalgic ignorance of the death of the author or the anxious bias from his convergence with other produsers.
We also came to the conclusion that even at the beginning, the concept of the romantic author wasn't universally accepted by far, and even in the context of the contemporary information society, we are not able to claim that this concept is absolutely overcome or eliminated. However, not having the possibility to provide a clear-cut answer about this topic is not a mistake, but a characteristic gained from the nature of the findings mentioned above. Even though the contemporary concept of the individual romantic author is already overcome, we can't deny that we are not able to be confronted with several cases of the traditional authorship away from the environment of the web 2.0 dynamic platforms. In addition, the concepts, which do not deny the overcoming of the author/viewer convergence, are eventually influenced by the utopian and dystopian tendencies. This is the reason why I think that it is necessary not to deprecate the produsage just because of its modernist tension (because any other fantasy does not offer the very real disappearance of the author) and to try to understand it without overwhelming enthusiasm, which means to liberate this concept from its utopian techno-optimism and from its overall populist construct built upon the idea of the realization of the democratic tendencies by (contemporarily exploited) produsers. In other words, the original modernist based fantasy of produsage should be liberated from the utopian idea of total equity among the produsers, but meanwhile it is necessary not to forget about their convergence, which causes the disappearance of the sovereign position of the author thanks to the inseparable positions of the produsers. Further, it is necessary to cast away the democratic-populist ideas and to confront them with the reality of exploited produsers and to abandon the overall techno-optimism, even by accepting the decentralized nature of the artefacts, which takes away the option for produsers to have them in absolute control. This is the way how to liberate the produsage from its modernist captivity in order to be able to take it without overestimating its impact in the contemporary context of postmodernism. Last but not least, let's not forget that the participatory fantasy mentioned above is due to its insurmountable utopian nature not suitable for the very real understanding of the overcoming of the sovereign author. Only through this approach are we able to realize what exactly the very real overcoming of the sovereign individual authors and overall traditional authorship could bring to (or take away from) us in context of the contemporary information society.