Week 5: Information and Materiality
Hayles begins by discussing materiality and virtuality by talking about the rhetoric of genes and genomes. She defines the effect of "impossible inversion" in that "It constructs information as the site and control over the material world"(Hayles, 1999,p.72). However, she also points out that there is a danger in privileging information over materiality such that we begin to see information as being able to be divorced from materiality, feeding into a possible God-complex desire for immortality. Hayles(1999) goes on to explain that in bifurcated terms that are dialectics versus dichotomies or binary oppositions, the privileging of pattern/randomness over presence/absence in cultural perception and that is what creates the postmodern conception of virtuality(p.78). Although Hayles claims to be primarily concerned with virtuality and literary theory, one of her more striking claims is that our increased HCI decreases our sense of proprioception, or sense of our body's boundaries, as our perception of self becomes increasingly fused with the extensions of the screen and keyboard (Hayles, 1999, p.88). She ends this piece by coming back to the idea that virtuality involves a socially constructed or cultural component. Hayles(1999) concludes that virtuality is not about living in an increasingly immaterial world, but a cultural perception of "material objects interpenetrated with information patterns"(p.94). This claim about a decreasing proprioception and an increased perception of informational patterns as the underlying human experience reminded me of our discussion last week about information flows in the urban landscape changing our perception/experience of space. I was also interested in the idea that virtuality involves a movement from possession to access and castration to mutation. This also makes sense in terms of a Freudian perspective/readings in the literary world dropping away in favor of Foucauldian readings.
In "Men, Machines, and the World About," Weiner concerns himself with a role of social responsibility for scientists and our increased interdependence upon machines. This was a particularly interesting piece for its discussion about negative feedback regulatory mechanisms, but also for its warning against a blind worship of the machine. Although he mentions the movie Cheaper By the Dozen for the father's preoccupation with efficiency and mechanizing human movement, this piece also made me think about the movie Fail-Safe in Wiener's statement that a human check is not needed and "The answer for this: Any emergency you can think of, you can provide for in your computing and control apparatus"(Wiener, 1954,p.70). The main premise of Fail-Safe was just that you couldn't control for any situation and that in the face of complete machine control of nuclear arms there was a danger in the destruction of mankind. An interesting connection between Hayles and Wiener was that both articles look to genetics and biology for metaphors such as homeostasis and gene-encoding in order to think about the junction between man and machine or material/information. This led me to think about the perceived differences between processes within the human body like autonomic functions versus behavior, and even though behavior has a biological foundation, we attempt to appropriate that back to the immaterial spirit/information category as opposed to the meat/material.
In "The Realm of Pure Technique,"Hobart and Schiffman(1988) start off by marking a difference between classical views of information as substantive with modern ideas of information tied into algorithms and logic systems. Hobart and Schiffman (1988) reference Turing and von Neumanm: "Information's power, they both stressed, derives from yoking logical operations to electronic circuitry"(p.204). This fits with the framework information necessitating a strong material base. Also, an interesting concept that Hobart and Schiffman bring up in the discussion of analogue and digital machines is another possible reason for the modern privileging of immaterial information/material in that analogue machines reflect the noise inherent in their material whereas digital machines are "noiseless" essentially, therefore creating the illusion of both pure pattern and immateriality in digital encoding (Hobart&Schiffman, 1988, p.208). Also, a movement to speed meant need for superceeding of mechanical parts. As computers moved from macrocosmic to microcosmic they could circumvent the necessary time involved in inertia and friction of mechanical material by operating with electrons(Hobart&Schiffman, 1988, p.210) , getting us closer to "pure technique." However, interestingly enough, it is Shannon's work casting logic gates (and, or, not, nand, etc.,) into material electronic circuits that laid the groundwork for digitalization. Therefore, we are back to Hayles propositon that information is not possible without a complex, material base. In looking finally at Turing and von Neumann as participants in the science that was preoccupied with the triggering mechanism for the atomic bomb it is also striking to think of the immateriality/material dichotomy or dialectic in relation to the final effect--a nuclear explosion which was destructive beyond all previous weapons, and in a very bodily, material sense immediately, but with ramifications to our genetic code in the form of sickness and mutation for years to come.
Lupton's piece "The Embodied Computer/User" brought up another version of what Hayles claims in the movement to fusion between subjectivity and screen in the personal relationship most modern users have with their PCs. As a computer user unfamiliar with the workings of my PC, I could completely agree with the idea that similar to the idea of immaterial being mapped onto spiritual, the computer as an "object of information"carries with it a sort of mystique in the trust and faith of users who are not producers, designers, or even architectural experts as to how the computer works. Also, Lupton(1995) states: "I am face-to-face with my computer for far longer than I stare into any human face"(p.97). This is particularly true (and frightening) for me and the other segment of the population that lives alone, sometimes spending 48 hours of the weekend with only the computer as both portal to and stand-in for human contact. While reading this article online in the sickly blue glow of my screen I definitely meditated on the fusion of computer user with computer where the user's body is "inscribed and constructed" by the computer (Lupton, 1995, p. 103). Also, in Lupton's treatment of the embodiment of cyberborgs as masculinized, hard-bodied and rational in comparison to the sometimes feminized, sexually open and vulnerable bodies of the computer there were echoes of both Susan Bordo's book on The Male Body and Carol Clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws. In The Male Body, Bordo considers the culture of hard and soft metaphors as well as images of power/stability that is more mechanical/machine oriented than biological. Also, in Men, Women, and Chainsaws, in a chapter called "Opening Up," Clover talks about gender in the occult film in similar images of portals, openings, and penetration. In her example of the movie Videodrome where the male character's body is feminized and frightening due to the literal insertion of a VHS tape into his stomach, I saw some similar questions being raised in relation to gender, sexual subjection, and representations of technology. Lupton's point about the computer as an uncanny liminal, feminine, open space also connects back to the ancient construct of male/spiritual/mental/ rational and female/sexual/embodied.