s a new year begins, the world is rushing towards greater uncertainty. Much that was taken for settled and sure only a few decades ago has been in a tailspin more recently.

In Pakistan, the uncertainty has been compounded by the issues surrounding the elections to be held in a month’s time. Since the last over military rule, democracy has been hitchhiking and piggyback riding, without actually falling flat on the ground. The effort is still on to not let it collapse entirely. The current situation offers ways and means to bypass rules, to circumvent laws and to ‘interpret’ to the last degree the letter of the law even where its spirit is manifestly different.

Compounded by the circumstances, the biggest challenge likely will be the way the artificial intelligence takes over our lives. Some glimpses of it were witnessed as Hollywood writers went on a strike primarily on account of the unknowns associated with the technological breakthrough as the disruptive impact will be felt before the opportunities that it opens for restoring the balance between the usual and the outlandish. Technology is not only making inroads into the arts but also shaping the market. New mediums have come into existences as indeed new ways to judge them by. The human response to what is serious and what is not, too, has been determined by the space made available through technological language. The firsthand experience of life is being supplanted by the immanence of the screen. It is becoming ubiquitous and its control of the mind and sensibility frightening. What is at its command is what is being seen as the possible.

Earlier, it was mixed media. Now, it will be something where the edges will be smoothened out further and a new form will emerge possibly independent of the forms that went into its merger. The new media might rule through the visual; the visual might rule the human expression. The word might be displaced by the visual, or a coding in written form.

There was a big debate about the survival of the cinema after the Covid-19 pandemic as more people got complacent about being indoors, consuming entertainment through digital means. It is still struggling to regain its glory having being overshadowed by the smaller screen and the digital options.

The new media might rule through the visual; the visual might rule the human expression. The word might be displaced by the visual, or coding in the written form.

The drift is seen taking an individual away from the other. Even the political struggle is being substituted by the screen’s ability to build an image or a view. Perceptions are taking over as one’s grip on the ground reality wanes. The difference between the two is shrinking to nonexistence. What one sees on screen is real; the rest might not exist. The instant verification of a fact or a happening is a constant and the reference to it endless. The instant validation is what is pushing out the space for imagining and guessing.

The divisions in the world are widening; the frontiers are becoming harder; and the fluidity of accepting and taking from others is diminishing. The hardening of positions is resulting in more frequent resort to force. Force is still the final arbiter of human activity. The way its relentless use is being permitted and justified is frightening, especially given the stockpiles of arms and ammunitions.

The immense fluidity unleashed by the overvaulting technological developments finds us losing our footholds. It is not surprising thus that the stated positions are not being put in the melting pot but are hardening all the time. The fear of losing the foothold is taking over. It is becoming an obsession with many and shuts out the uncertainty that may lead to another level of understanding or experiencing.

Screens have opened totally new dimensions, especially for the women. Only a century ago they knew nothing of the outside worldin this part of the world. The purdah was followed like a religious tenet and all the values of honour and prestige concentrated thereby. Today, mobile phones in hands, they surf the world. Their entire existence is now fractured between what they view on the screens and the restrictions in various forms still bedeviling them. The vicarious has still not become the real. The duality persists as the real is masked in the propriety of the outer. It may be too much to predict that the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ shall collapse into a single world over the months to come, but the walls will certainly be rendered porous as never before.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore