The Hermes Syndrome: Myth and Reality of Our Global Media(ted) Omnipresence

As it is commonly recognized since the Enlightenment, Prometheanism has become the secular version of a new cosmology. The idealized by Aeschylus' play Greek hero symbolizes our rational discourse in modernity. However, it is paradoxically ignored that, once Prometheus won the battle with divinities like Zeus, (wo)men acquired Hermes’ services as well. With the gift of new media technology, from a messenger of Gods, Hermes turned into a messenger for all Prometheans and united them into a media universe with unprecedented consequences. This paper explores the occurred communication revolution through such a media change in our own times, and explores the constitutive axes of the so labeled in here as "Hermes syndrome".

a.With the space and time compression, it offered us the divine privilege of personalized social "omnipresence". b. Enhanced world consciousness. c. Transformed localities into glocal enclaves. d. Connected activist groups as planetary movements. e. Created networks for associational and corporate webs. f. Made accessible knowledge depositories. g. Formed a visual and printed political citizens’ "agora". h. Broadcasted instantaneously world events. i. Communalized mobility. j. Synthesized (un)realities, k. Allowed dispersed collectivities to operate as "I-Thou" individualistic relations. In sum, to use K. Marx's assessment about Prometheus, Hermes was sanctified as well, and (s)he can now be recognized as another "saint of media(ted) humanity”.