Current Response

Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman

We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Doing Away with Dualism

1) In How We Became Posthuman, Katherine Hayles blurs the boundaries between our bodies and the outside world, making it difficult to make a distinction between either "in here" and "out there" or "mind" and "body." We learn not only with our minds, she insists, but with our bodies as well. Our fingers know more about typing than our cognitive thought processes can say. Our very posture is embedded in our language (205). Our skin, she argues, is a "semi-permeable membrane" which works as a receptor for information. While traditionally our skin forms a border between our bodies and the outside world, our "posthuman" borders can extend beyond the skin to include any inorganic tool we use to enhance, correct, or modify sensory input. (Hayles gives the examples of cane, hearing aid, voice synthesizer, and helmet.)

Such a blurred set of borders calls into question the idea of dualism. If, in addition to coming from our minds, our thoughts are formed from our bodies' responses to living in the world, it is not quite so logical to cleanly separate our minds from our bodies. In this sense, we have always been "cyborgs," or at least a fusion--not a split--of two different ways of thinking.

Cyborg Versus Androids

2) In science fiction, the fusion is one of organic and inorganic substances. Hayles frequently discusses the androids of Blade Runner as if they were cyborgs, but it seems to me that in Blade Runner the androids are organic beings--or at least comprised of organic parts. Is something that is made from organic parts truly a cyborg? From what two forms are the androids fused? Would the genetically cloned entities in Logan's Run constitute cyborgs?

Technology's Slippery Slope: Tin Limbs and Absent Hearts

3). According to some, we already exist as cyborgs due to the inorganic extensions of our bodies (canes, hearing aids, etc). We are already "posthuman," and we

While creatures like Haraway's "mythical" beings or the streamlined man/machines in the Terminator movies do not yet exist, I do wonder at the whole-hearted acceptance of such a goal. I have a hard enough time accepting my reading glasses. Accordingly, I do not think I am not ready for wetware. Yet I wonder if my resistance to being codified as part machine--or moving towards an existence that embraces the machine--is informed by nostalgia for characters like the Tin Woodsman in Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Tin Woodsman give a step-by-step account of his disembodiment:

Disembodied Beings: Disembodied Earth

4) Hayles talks a lot about PK Dick's work, and the fact that large portions of narrative exist where the physical bodies of the protagonists are absent, incapacitated, or (literally) stored. I find such stories fascinating, especially in terms of the environmental projections they offer.

In science fiction, a typical computer "construct" that allows disembodied humans a platform to exist without their physical bodies is, quite frequently, an environmentally appealing scene when compared to the polluted reality of the real world. In Neuromancer, Case's face off with the AI occurs on a deserted beach, which, because of the presence of Linda Lee, becomes a locus amanti. In the Matrix, the streets of the city (New York?) are bright with sunlight--an impossibility in a world where the sun does not penetrate through the polluted miasma that has become the earth's atmosphere. In such cases, the disembodied subject exists in a disembodied, often idealized earth.

Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression

Précis

Derrida compares the idea of the archive to the process of memory in psychoanalysis. He specifically addresses Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable in relation to Freud's own work, Moses and Monotheism. Such an analysis of the "archive" (a word which in Derrida's essay takes on a wide variety of meanings) raises interesting questions regarding information storage, memory retrieval, and the implications of new technology as it relates to archive methods.

Outline

Part One: Note: Derrida defines the word "Archive" first in terms of "arche," which signifies "commencement" and "commandment." Derrida defines the word "Archive" secondly in terms of the Greek word "arkheion," which signifies a house, an address, or a residence of an Archon. In ancient Greece, an Archon was a magistrate who "represent[ed] the law." The Archons both preserved/guarded official documents and interpreted them. Accordingly, Derrida says that the archive takes place in a "house arrest," and gives the example of Freud's last house as one that has passed from private to public, a "passage from one institution to another."

Derrida next defines the "archontic" as having to do with topo-nomology (place and law) and with consigning, or the gathering together of signs. He defines consignations as the desire to "coordinate a single corpus, in a system or a synchrony in which all the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration," and says that an attempt to rethink the topo-nomology (in terms of Freud and psychoanalysis especially) would have serious consequences on archive theory or "archontic principle."

Derrida indicates that political power depends upon controlling the archive, "if not memory" itself.

Derrida states that his hypostheses regarding the archive all address the "impression left…by the Freudian signature on its own archive" and that he is intentionally using the term "Freudian," to signify both the proper name and the invention of psychoanalysis.

Part Two: Exergue: (ex' erg) in numismatics, the small space below the main device on the reverse of a coin or medal; anything inscribed in this space)

D. says that the exergue plays with citation in order to set the stage, "In accumulating capital in advance and in preparing the surplus value of an archive." (This pun sets Derrida's stage, since the exergue occurs on the coin--a form of capital--and he will be discussing the "economy" of the archive).

Says that every archive is both revolutionary and traditional and that two examples of archival economy are found in inscription. They are printing and circumcision.

The first "exergue," printing, is typographical, because it belongs to the "external substrate" (the topos) and not on the body proper, as does circumcision. Asks where this outside begins, and says that this is the question of the archive.

Derrida proceeds to look at Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents," in which Freud "pretends to worry" that his hypotheses will not merit the paper he is writing them on nor the ink he is using to write, that, in short, he will deliver nothing new. Here the paper and ink form the "material substrate." Yet Derrida suggests that this is a "fiction of a sort of 'rhetorical question,'" since Freud will submit a solid thesis, i.e., the existence of the death drive.

Derrida says that the death drive is silent, never leaving "any archives of its own. It destroys in advance its own archive…It words to destroy the archive." The death drive is thus anarchivic. Yet the archive "takes place at the place of originary and structural breakdown of the said memory." The archive, according to Derrida, will never take the place of "spontaneous, alive and internal experience."

Says that Freud did not have modern tools of archival at this disposal and asks if this changes anything regarding an exterior model. Says that the future of psychoanalysis is at issue, especially in relation to the future of science. Derrida asks if the psychic apparatus of Freud resists the evolution of archival techno-science and briefly ponders the effects that e-mail and MCI might have had upon psychoanalysis in Freud's time. He makes bold predictions regarding such technology, saying that it "is on the way to transforming the entire public and private space of humanity…" He also says that such transformation will be accompanied by political transformation, esp. regarding reproduction rights. He also states that "what is no longer archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way."

Says that the theory of psychoanalysis is the theory of archive.

Derrida's second exergue is the circumcision. He says that a circumcision is the document of an archive because it "leaves the trace of an incision right on the skin… permitting glimpses of the abyssal possibility of another depth destined for archaeological excavation." This second exergue has to do with private inscription, yet Derrida quickly asks where we draw the line between private and public.

He gives an example of a blurred line between private and public archive by citing the Bible that Sigmund Freud's father gave to him on his 35^th birthday and the inscription it contained. In this case the substrate would be the "Book of books." He then talks about Yerushalmi's translation of the inscription, which will tie in to a later section of Archive Fever.

Part Three: Preamble

Here Derrida gives three meanings of the word impression, in order to explain the title of his work (Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression.) He first speculates briefly about what constitutes the "archive proper" and asks at what point the archive occurs. He uses his own typing on his word processor to question this. He also asks "where should the moment of suppression or of repression be situated in these new models of recording and impression, or printing?"

The first meaning of impression is typographic, "that of inscription."

The second meaning of impression refers to our "impression" of what an archive is. Derrida says that we do not have a concept of an archive, but a series of impressions.

The third meaning of impression refers to the "impression left by Sigmund Freud…"

Part Four: Forward

Says that the archive should call into question the coming of the future. Asks us to imagine a "project of general archiviology," an interdisciplinary science of the archive. Such a project would either have to include psychoanalysis or place "itself under the critical authority of psychoanalysis," which would, as Freud does, address the problems of archiving such things as oral tradition, public property, etc.

Discusses the tension in Freud's work between Lamarck's notion of the "inheritance of acquired characters by succeeding generations" and "the present attitude of biological science, which refuses to hear of" it. This is a crucial tension within MOSES AND MONOTHEISM, a thesis that invokes the notion of ancestral memory, if not one that is entirely dependent upon this notion.

Derrida introduces Yerushalmi's question, which is whether or not psychoanalysis is "genetically or structurally…a Jewish science." Derrida then discusses Yerushalmi's mode of address, which is not to the reader of his book, but to "Freud's ghost, directly." Derrida argues, accordingly, that Yerushalmi's tone is filial.

In discussing Yerushalmi's book, Derrida suggests that there can be no archive without taxonomy and titles, without classification and hierarchization.

Derrida says that archiving is a form of repression. Yerushalmi says that because we have written memory of the desire to kill Moses, we can conclude that the Jewish people did not kill Moses. If, as D. says, archiving is a form of repression, then Yerushalmi's argument is undermined.

Part Five: Theses

Derrida opens this section with two excerpts from Sigmund Freud. A third inscription follows: "I have long grown used to being dead."

Derrida says he will "risk a thesis on Freud's thesis." He says that all Freud's theses are divided, as is the concept (and all concepts) of the archive. D. says that the archive is divided and contradictory, that "nothing is less clear…"

Says that there is a tension between the archive and archaeology.

Says that the archive is achieved by the death, aggression, and destruction drive.

Part Six: Postscript

Says that the "trace no longer distinguishes itself from its substrate."

Thoughts

In the Preamble, Derrida asks "Can one imagine an archive without foundation, without substrate, with substance, without subjectile?" I am curious about the idea of the web as an archive without substrate.

Ancestral memory and acquired characteristic inheritance á la Lamarck is biologically unlikely (impossible), yet the expression of ancestral memory/wisdom in science fiction is extremely rich. In Gibson's MONA LISA OVERDRIVE the memory of the Yakuza is stored in black, cylindrical idols. In Orson Scott Card's WYRMS, the heads of the long-dead wise are stored in jars and consulted as need.

Michael Heim's "The Computer as Component: Heidegger and McLuhan"

There is a tone of optimism in this essay that is appropriate to the year of its publication (1992), a time when the future looked exceptionally bright for NT. Heim's tone is especially laudatory when he cites Ong.

I buy that technology has changed my world. I have a computer workstation. I do not typically work in the library. I used to, but I don't anymore.

I don't buy the prediction "by the year 2000, nearly every text of human knowledge will exist in electronic form."

Heim says that Heidegger's view of technology was "ominous and threatening" (306), but "The Question Concerning Technology" seems more open and ambiguous than this.

Heim's essay does address two paradigms of technical determinism: 1)computers as rivals and 2) computers as enhancements. I'm not sure they are either. Or that they are both. Or that they are neither.

Heim discusses Heidegger's criticism of language technology. (310)

It seems that Heim conflates language storage with language function (communication). (314)

WEEK FOUR

Heideggar, Martin. "The Question Concerning Technology" and "The Age of the World Picture"

Martin Heidegger

"The Question Concerning Technology"

A brief outline:

1. Wants to question technology in order to prepare a free relationship to it. By freedom he means a relationship that will "open our human existence to the essence of technology."

1. Technology is not the same as the essence of technology. Neither is technology neutral. Saying that it is neutral makes us blind to its essence.
2. Gives 2 possible definitions of technology. 1) Technology is a means to an end. 2) Technology is a human activity.

Technology is a whole body of activities.

3. These 2 conceptions of technology can be called "instrumental" and "anthropological."
5. Supports both definitions. Says that the instrumental definition is also accurate for modern technology.
6. Says modern technology is a means to an end. Says the desire to master technology increases as it threatens to slip out of our hands.
7. Poses the question--what if technology were no mere means? Says that where there is a means to an end there is causality.
8. Introduces 4 types of causality: 1) material 2) form 3) finalis/end 4)causa efficiens, who makes it happen.
9. Asks what "cause" really means. Where does the causal character come from? Why do these 4 things belong together?
10. If we do not look at such questions, then causality and instrumentality (the accepted definition of technology), will remain obscure.
11. The causa efficiens sets the standard, yet the 4 causes all belong to each other in that they are responsible for something else.
12. Gives the example of the chalice. Silver is its matter (1); Its aspect is its chaliceness (2); Its completion (rather than end)--"from out of them it begins to be what after production, it will be" is its telos (3);
13. The silversmith, however, is not the causa efficiens.

10. Says that poiesis is bringing-forth--or bringing (presencing) into being what was not yet present. Distinguishes between two sorts of bringing forth. 1) in itself, such as a flower's bloom and 2) In another, such as the craftsman or artist.

11. Says that through bringing-forth both natural in themselves things AND creations like crafts and art come to their appearance.

12. Asks what the essence of technology has to do with revealing. The answer is everything. Technology is no mere means. It is a way of revealing.
13. Says the origin of the word technology, techne, which is the name for the skills of a craftsman, but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Says techne belongs to poiesis. Thus technology is both a craft and a fine art.

14.Seems to say that the difference between old technology and modern is that old technology became its own thing (like a chalice), while new technology is used for something. Because it is standing reserve--stored for a future purpose, the revealing never comes to a completion.

25. Says the essence of modern technology lies in enframing.

33. On the one hand, "enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering that blocks every view into the coming to pass of revealing and so radically endangers the relation to the essence of truth"

34. Reminds us that once tehcne was also the brining forth of the beautiful.

I think it would be interesting to look at the way the "real" LA is re-presented and re-configured in science fiction. In the work of Octavia Butler, LA is an exaggeration of the freeways and barrios that already exist. In Morales' Rag Doll Plagues, LA is a place of contention between Mexicans who are "bled" for a vaccine against a deadly virus and the North Americans who "bleed" them. In John Carpenter's ridiculous (yet mildly entertaining) Escape from LA, the city has been demolished by a tsunami, and the only escape from its decadent excesses comes from surfing out of Dodge on a tidal wave.

I for one am a happy prisoner of the "verbal straitjacket," and do not agree one bit with Kubrick's statement that certain feelings are "inaccessible" to words. I do, however, think, that lack of feeling might be better expressed visually, because the cold majesty of the film 2001 was better expressed in this visual format than it was in the book. In 2001, a film that examines the lack of feeling and emotion in a futuristic society, words are devalued. They are too personal. I find that my empathy comes much easier in written fiction than it does in visual fiction. I find character identification easier and more pleasurable when it comes from words. Perhaps this is why 2001 is a better film than it is a book (my opinion, obviously). That is, 2001 is not a movie about individual characters; it is a movie about ideas. The novel, on the other hand, always focuses on a character, whether it is "Moon Watcher," Dr. Floyd, Frank, or Dave, and I never felt that I left the characters behind. By the end of the film, in contrast, I feel like I have definitely left something (humanity?) behind.

WEEK TWO

Beings of Light and Air: Donna Haraway's Cyborg and Norbert Wiener's Genie in the Bottle

In his delineation of Cybernetics, Wiener uses the rhetoric of the fairy tale to express the negative potential of machine intelligence. At the end of "Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation," for example, he compares computer technology to the monkey's paw in W.W. Jacob's short story, to the runaway broomstick in Goethe's Magician's Apprentice, and to the Genie who must be tricked back into his bottle in the Arabian Nights. Even more disturbing it seems, is the concluding sentence of "Men, Machines, and the World About," in which Wiener says, "Gentlemen, when we get into trouble with the machine, we cannot talk the machine back into the bottle."

In contrast to this, Donna Haraway's uses fairy tale rhetoric to present the cyborg as a positive potential of technology. In her Manifesto, such a creature is a fulfillment of an ideological project, an "ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialsm." The cyborg exists in a "post-gender world" (a world, incidentally, where a sentence beginning with the word "Gentlemen" becomes impossible). Her creatures are clean and light. They are "ether, quintessence," calling to mind the fluid form of the genie pouring from its bottle in a wash of colored light.

Reading the two writers side by side, the rhetorical strategies of myth and fairy tale become evident. Wiener warns of technology running rampant, and of our inability to stop its swift progress. He presages the mal-functioning HAL-9000 in 2001, the treacherous robot who betrays Ripley in Alien, the house-gone-amock in Demonseed, and the impenetrable, planet-destroying Death Star in Star Wars. All are expressions of technologies that have gone past the point of human intervention; they are computers whose programming has run too fast for the contingencies of "real time." This is precisely the kind of functioning that Wiener warns of when he writes in "Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation":

This sort of negative casting of new technology has evolved, however, with the wish fulfillment that Haraway's cyborg represents. And this mythical cyborg, too, has its expression in science fiction.

In Gibson's work, for example, Molly Millions is a combination of both flesh and blood and deadly and expensive wetware. In The Matrix, Neo and his cohorts "learn" by having information transferred into their mind in a process that emulates the protocol of a file transfer. In Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Hiro Protagonist exists in the real world as a sometimes-deliverer-of-pizzas and in the Metaverse as an "audiovisual body." Even such mainstream films as Robocop express the acceptance of the cyborg by offering us heroes that are fusions of flesh and metal. (Whether or not such films serve the "ironic political myth faithful to feminism, etc." may be another matter.) All such works express at least some element of the cyborg--the meshing together of flesh and data, muscles and wires, the real world with the world of circuitry.

OTHER THOUGHTS

PHILIP DICK'S definition of science fiction depends on the reader.

BREAK KEY Versus the ESCAPE KEY

WEEK ONE

Alan Turing's "Imitation Game"

In "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Alan Turing proposes a seemingly simple strategy in order to examine whether or not machines can think. He calls it "The Imitation Game," and it poses the following question: could an interrogator (C) determine the difference between a machine (B) and a man or woman (A), based on responses to a series of questions that C asks the other players to answer?

The following restrictions apply: C cannot be in the same room as either A or B, nor can he hear the tone of their voices. His questions will be conveyed to the other players and their responses will be handed back to him in the form of written or typewritten transcripts. Based on these responses, C must make judge which of the two is the machine and, if he guesses incorrectly more often than he guesses correctly, we may conclude that--while we may not have answered whether or not machines can think--we have at least clouded the claim that they cannot, since a seemingly impartial third party has been unable to distinguish the words and thoughts of man from cogitations made of metal.

After suggesting the "Imitation Game" as a sort of identification tool, Turing then sets out to defend what he perceives will be possible arguments against the claim that computers are capable of thought. While I found his defenses for the most part interesting and cogent, I have trouble accepting his refutation of (4) The Argument from Consciousness and (5) Arguments from Various Disabilities.

Turing dismisses the argument from consciousness as solipsistic, since "according to this view the only way to know that a man thinks is to be that particular man." He continues, saying, "Instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks." (446) This seems to me to a rather arbitrary convention. We could just as easily have a "polite convention" that very few people, in fact, ever think at all. Nevertheless, even if we could agree that "everybody thinks," I am unconvinced that thinking has anything at all to do with consciousness--even though Turing treats one as a function of the other.

While it's unlikely that we could hammer out a definition of "thinking" or "consciousness" that everyone could agree on--Turing says as much in his opening sentences--the word "thinking" often has a connotation that is distinct from "being conscious." "Thinking," for example, often implies a mental act that will lead the thinker to a conclusion or solution. Consciousness, on the other hand, is often viewed as a state of perception that allows one to be aware of oneself within the context of one's surroundings.

The first word, thinking, is procedural. The second word, consciousness, is not necessarily so. For Turing's foil Dr. Jefferson, consciousness is something that is emotive, self-aware, and vulnerable to the emotions of others. Could such a consciousness effect one's thinking? I believe so, yet while my state of consciousness can detract, distract, or enhance my thinking, the fact that one can influence the other does not make them the same thing.

I admit that cutting a distinction between the two is a messy and sticky process, yet I maintain that they are distinct. At any rate, I think the question "Are machines conscious?" is a different one from "Can machines think?" and deserves its own line of inquiry. Perhaps a better strategy for Turing's defense would be to say that thinking, while perhaps related to consciousness, is not equal to consciousness. In this way the Argument from Consciousness becomes irrelevant to the question of whether or not machines think.

I have a similar doubt regarding Turing's defense of objection #5, Arguments from Various Disabilities. In this section, Turing addresses the complaint, "I grant you can make machines do all the things you have mentioned but you will never be able to make one to do X." Examples of "X" include such diverse impossibilities as "use words properly" and "enjoy strawberries and cream."

Turing's defends this "shortcoming," saying, "Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy this delicious dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic." Why? I think because he is arguing against something that should not be a part of this investigation. Whether or not a machine can think is a separate issue from whether or not a machine can enjoy strawberries and cream. The first, thinking, is a procedural and conclusion-driven activity that is distinct from the second, "enjoying," which is a result of sensory perception--a function of consciousness.

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS

I find it interesting that Turing's imitation game is a variation on a game about identifying gender. Perhaps this is appropriate, since characteristics of both gender and intelligence are hard to pin down. I also found this interesting to think of in light HAL, who seems quite asexual, and 2001 as a whole, which has little in common with the overt salaciousness of CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

Hal can think. Hal is conscious. Dave pulls the plug. Why? In Prof. Maleuvre's class we talked about how disconnecting Hal was a metaphor for severing our dependence upon technology. However, Hal has stopped existing as a mere technology at this point in the film. He has become more human than any other human character, and becomes an almost sacrificial figure when Dave kills him. Is his death necessary? Maybe his is a double death, in the sense that Dave kills him 1) to sever all ties to technology and 2) to sever all ties to humanity, since we are moving towards "Jupiter and Beyond," our next phase in evolution/existence. However, I am not sure that this holds out, because our "next step" of development is represented by a human-like fetus in a world-sized womb.

Language as a technology: My husband and I happened to watch CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND over the weekend, and I noticed the use of language as an obstacle in the film. In the first scene there is a confusion French, Spanish, and English, as various characters attempt to explain what they have seen. A fourth language, music, is introduced when the old man says in Spanish, "El sol salió anoche y me cantó." (The sun came out last night and sang to me.) Language as a confusing force in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is in sharp contrast to the controlled and unambiguous representation of language in 2001.

In 2001, verbal communication has become so formulaic and unexpressive so as to seem mechanical. This is even further cemented when Dr. Floyd goes into the voice print booth to clear his identity when he comes to the moon. As he is walking towards the booth, the secretary poises her finger over several rows of language buttons, each of which says either "English," "Spanish," "Russian," etc. In this moment, the poetic and expressive potentials of any given language have been completely and mechanically reduced to a metallic protrusion on a sterile keyboard. Language has become like any other technology.

At the end of the film, when Dave severs his ties to such technology by unplugging HAL, we have a reversal of language capability. HAL's voice begins to thicken; his words become less distinct, and finally melt into sounds that have more in common with the grunts of the apes at the "Dawn of Man" than they do with intelligible human speech.