me to the question of identity also in modernity so of course I mean as we can see that identity is shaped and can very geographically from country to country or continent to continent but increasingly today our identities are shaped by technology for example on the internet which is also enabling what Lumen called second order observations of the world so on the internet in particular we don't always see the world directly but as it's being observed or as it's being represented we observe observers so in this context your recent work has talked about profile based identity or the term that you coin for profilicity which is replacing the authenticity or internal inner based identity so do you mind explaining this concept a little bit more and this term that you coin profilicity yeah thanks for

allowing me to talk about this I want to connect this directly to Lumen and build it on Lumen's works so Lumen has these two basic characteristics of modernity or modern society the one is the one we already discussed which is usually the one that is pressed most functional differentiation the transition of a stratified society towards a functionally differentiated society but then particularly in his later works he brings in this closely related second concept which is the concept of second order observation anything second order observation is also perhaps an equally important characteristic of modern society now what does that mean the concept is actually rather simple you don't look at something directly when it would be first order observation but you look at how something is being observed by an observer that second order observation you you observe something via someone who observes it and he says this is basically what all function systems do in modernity and I think this characteristic is actually perhaps even more important and more globally because we talked about the problems with functional differentiation for instance with respect to China more globally applicable than the first one is less problematic than functional differentiation as a characteristic of modernity and again according to him second order observation always existed but it wasn't like a primary mode of observation let me explain that's not Lumen but I think it's a simple example it doesn't come directly from his works let me explain this this transition I think one one good example to explain this transition is the emergence of the notion of the of the picturesque you do you know this notion of the picturesque something is picturesque just

that something is beautiful yeah it's an aesthetic term you

use it also in German you say oh this is very it's pito resque and means basically something looks like a picture it wasn't aesthetic category that became popular in the in the late 18th century so people would travel around traveling became already popular among the elite at that time whatever they would travel to Italy and so forth and they would look at the scenery right and then they would say oh this is so beautiful it just looks like a painting right and that's picturesque it looks like a picture okay and that became a major aesthetic category at the time so you would look at things at at at scenery at the landscape or at a person as well let's say at at a beautiful person and say oh why is she or he beautiful because she's so picturesque she looks like in a painting right and that would be like an aesthetic excellence and what happened there is basically a switch from first order observation to second order observation like so to speak traditionally you would look at a painting of a person let's say and then you would say oh the painting is really good because it just looks like her so you would have a first order observation you look at this person and then you look at the painting and then you measure the quality of the painting you say it's a really good painting because it looks like her it it fits my first order observation or you say it's a bad painting because it doesn't look like her so the first order observation would be the measurement by which you judge the quality of the painting but then with the emergence of the picturesque we have a total reversal of this logic we look at someone and find her good looking because she looks like people in paintings look or we look at the scenery because and find it beautiful because it looks like a scenery that is depicted on a painting that we've seen somewhere so that is the switch from first order observation to second order observation we measure the what we see first order the landscape that's right in front of our eyes by measuring it with second order observation by looking at a landscape as it has been observed