Hypertrail

In agreement to author Mark Tovey, «hypertrail» (2008, xxxii) is the moment in which there is too much dialogue between brand and consumer, user and technology, meaning that people leave a historical and digital trail behind when sharing or searching data in the Internet. «Hypertrail» is also the focus of our research. We are facing a new era of networking and smart devices where brands we engage to dialogue with are the ones that connect and keep in touch with us ― they track us and anticipate every move of ours, meaning this we cannot flee from the huge trail we leave behind on the networks, websites and apps. As Tovey speaks about, we rely on the hypertrail, we track the brands and in return, they track us. Besides, brands are aware that we use our smartphones as complete devices for all facts in our lives and that nowadays we are all synchronized. This day and age is what Lipovetsky & Serroy call «hypermodernity» (2013, 13). Furthermore, this is the modernity in which digital media is being used to push us further in technology, science, information and consumerism. Never before has the system known so much about ourselves. In addition, there is more up to it. Without previous instance, have we confessed so much detail about our lives and shopping habits as we do online by giving up our privacy in order to use digital systems. What defines the online media is that is often «hypertextual or hypermediated» (Miller, 2011, 25), meaning that the digital media are context-aware of us and they rely on crossing information about us, thus anticipating every move of ours. Some authors, such as Turkle, prefer to label this media as «narcissistic devices» because we use them as mirrors of our own personality. We shop online, too. Therefore, we are «in» without noticing we do many different things in a «virtual» space without thinking very much as we used to in the past. Events, concepts, facts and actions just happen all the time and we go with the flow. We use special smartphones as extensions of who we are, and of how we think and behave. Whenever we take selfies, we are objectified in representations (Leurs, 2015, 192). This occurs because we do not care about the kind of trail we leave behind ― algorithms digest all our photos and web searches. We came to build a hypertrail online independently we are or not aware of that.

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