Transcript The Dialectics of Digital Collectivity

The Dialectics of
Digital Collectivity
Harry Halpin
University of Edinburgh
http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin
The Californian Ideology
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The greatest obstacle in
understanding digital
technology is the promise of
the utopian technological
future, which far from
illuminating technology,
merely serves as an
ideological closure that masks
the material and cognitive
relationship between
humanity and technology.
Dubbed “Californian
Ideology” by Barbrooke.
The Return of History
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The negation of futurism can
be found in what Jameson
terms in The Political
Unconsciousness “the one
absolute and we may even say
'transhistorical' imperative”
to always historicize.
It is precisely this failure of
technology to be historically
understood allows it to be
identified as a miraculous
autonomous essence.
Objectification and Dialectics
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From Hegel “emerges
the central mechanism
of the dialectic, the
notion of
objectification.”
The notion of
objectification is far from
idealistic, but instead is a
purely material one, the
creation of objects by
the externalization of
modes of abstract
thought.
Dialectics and Technology
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As articulated by Andy Clark, is
that these externalized tools can
then be internalized so that the
tool itself is part of our being,
incorporated into ourselves in
such a seamless way that we do
not even recognize it as a tool.
Since the initial externalization of
our thought as technology is
always wanting in comparison to
the problems thrown our way by
the world (and the problems
created by the technology itself),
even after we have internalized
the technology we must then
externalize technology again.
Time, Space, and Collectivity
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The dialectic of collectivity and
individuality, and the dialectic
between time and space.
The former dialectic allows ever
richer sharing between humans
mediated by their externalized
tools, and so their own sense of
self becoming moving from
individual to collective. The latter
dialectic between time and space
subsumes temporal-spatial
dimensionality at bequest of ever
lower latency of the human and
the machine, and so their
increasingly tighter coupling.
Time-Sharing: The First Moment
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The first moment in the
technological dialectic towards ever
decreasing latency between humans
and machines was the creation of
interactive computing by
McCarthy through time-sharing
that took advantage of the fact that
the computer, despite its
centralized single processor, could
run multiple program at once in a
non-linear fashion, so instead of
idling while waiting for the next
program or human interaction, in
moments nearly imperceptible to
the human eye, it would share its
time among multiple humans.
The Moment of Space: The Net
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This led Licklider, inspired by
symbiosis in the natural world, to get
a position as director of the IPTO
(Information Processing
Technologies Office) at ARPA to
push an agenda of “man-machine
symbiosis” by funding a network of
time-sharing computers.
Licklider's lieutant Bob Taylor and
his successor Larry Roberts
contracted out BBN to create the
Interface Message Processor, the
hardware needed connect the
various time-sharing computers
across the USA.
Man-Machine Symbiosis
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The fig tree is pollinated only by the insect Blastophaga grossorun. The larva
of the insect lives in the ovary of the fig tree, and there it gets its food. The
tree and the insect are thus heavily interdependent: the tree cannot reproduce
wit bout the insect; the insect cannot eat wit bout the tree; together, they
constitute not only a viable but a productive and thriving partnership. This
cooperative "living together in intimate association, or even close union, of
two dissimilar organisms" is called symbiosis.
Man-computer symbiosis is a subclass of man-machine systems. There
are many man-machine systems. At present, however, there are no mancomputer symbioses. The purposes of this paper are to present the concept
and, hopefully, to foster the development of man-computer symbiosis by
analyzing some problems of interaction between men and computing
machines, calling attention to applicable principles of man-machine
engineering, and pointing out a few questions to which research answers are
needed. The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and
computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the
resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and
process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines
The Moment of Collectivities
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Via time-sharing, users could
share resources, and digital
collectivity emerged for the
first time.
The network was to defeat
the confines of space, and by
its ability to encompass all
networks via the software of
TCP/IP to create the
universalizing Internet.
The Human Augmentation Project
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Engelbart, one of Licklider's
researchers, realized that one
of the the primary reasons
for the high latency between
the human and machine the
interface of the machine
itself, as the keyboard was at
best a limited channel for
machinic communication. In
the course of meticulous
experimentation in search of
low latency, Engelbart
invented the mouse.
Engelbart and Collective Intelligence
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Man's population and gross product are
increasing at a considerable rate, but the
complexity of his problems grows still faster, and
the urgency with which solutions must be found
becomes steadily greater in response to the
increased rate of activity and the increasingly
global nature of that activity....
by "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a man
to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his
particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in
this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid
comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree
of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier
solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems
that before seemed insoluble
Xerox PARC
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The temporal dimension returned
for as soon as many users logged
onto a single time-sharing machine
the latency between each individual
user and the machine increased.
The vision of the personal
computer invented at Xerox PARC
sought to resolve this
contradiction by giving each user
his own high-speed personal
machine whose latency would be
uniform, regardless of time of use.
Atomization and the Ethernet
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Yet the personal computer
sacrificed the important
functions of networking and
collectivity that existed in
time-sharing machines.
Ethernet, local high-speed
networking of personal
computing, allowed the
personal computer to go
beyond its individual
isolation, so letting
computers join networks and
establish collectivity without
the drawbacks of timesharing.
The World-Wide Web: Universalizing
Information Space
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With both the personal computer and the Internet permeating
society, Tim Berners-Lee of CERN invented the World Wide
Web as a universalizing information space, created by a singular
naming convention that subsumed the chaos of previous
Internet software.
Web 2.0: Collectivity on the Web
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However, the hypertext web had
few authors and many users, and
was an individualizing experience.
This was superseded by the Web
2.0, which is merely the
development of the Web to allow
contribution and modification, and
so making the Web a truly
collective space.
The Semantic Web hopes to make
the Web a truly universal space by
giving URIs to things not
accessible on the Web.
Latency and the Self
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With ever lower latency
provided by the penetration
of wireless and broadband,
the universalizing
information space of the
Web is now a constant
feature of our form of life,
and our knowledge is more
and more externalized and
common.
Against Embodiment
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Could it be that the humanist
individual is a historical
notion, not even a coherent
transcendental and
biological category.
So that the focus on
embodiment as in “having a
body” and in “having
irreducible context” is
ultimately a reactionary
notion?
After all, coffee-cups are
embodied.
The Future of Collectivity
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Collective Intelligence as the
seamless social power of
what Pierre Levy defines as
“a form of universally
distributed intelligence,
constantly enhanced,
coordinated in real time, and
resulting in the effective
mobilization of skills.”
Which might just be our last
best hope today in the face
of ecological and social
collapse.
Late Capitalism
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Technology is the
concretization of our social
relationships, which have
gone from being posthuman (Hayles) to antihuman (Althusser).
Due to this lack of selfconsciousness, collective
intelligence is today held in
check by more primitive
social forms of the late
capitalism and the
accompanying ideological
form of modern technofuturism.
Questions?
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Merci!