Week 5: Information & Materiality
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. ~MLK, Jr.
Lupton notes that the "dream of cyberculture is to leave 'the meat' behind and to become distilled in a clean, pure, uncontaminated relationship with computer technology" (p. 100). Shortly thereafter, Lupton quotes Stone as writing: ?Even in the age of the technosocial subject, life is lived through the bodies? (p. 102). These two quotes provide an entry into this week?s readings, and entry into how I feel about much new technology?.I think, maybe.
On the one set of five fingers, we have this notion, as pointed out by Lupton and Hayles and implied by Norbert (we are on a first name basis), that computers are being transcoded as humans and humans transcoded as computers. If nanobiotechnologists discovered today that they could implant hard drives into brains, I would sign up tomorrow, and figure out a way to pay for it the day after tomorrow. Or, if not brain implants, I am game for some body-based data transmission, as David links to in the wiki.
On the other five fingers, I realize and accept that I live my life through my body. And I do not think we can leave our bodies behind in physical life, but we can "augment human intelligence." But, I worry about how much we should augment human intelligence, or at least at what rate we should do so. Put another way, at what rate should we strive to become, as Hayles writes, "free" and "immortal like the gods"? We took a long time to become human. Social, technological, scientific advances were once measured by millennia. Now, we judge such advances by the day. As humans, we are adaptive in and through time, but we may not be made to adapt to constant changes in living conditions? Are we exceeding our ability to adapt to our own creations, our own mutations?
I do not think we will be able to leave the meat behind. And even if we do, we can never be pure information. As Hayles makes clear, information must always be manifested in material technology. Thus, we would be leaving meat behind for some other material 'thing' that would likely have its own set of physical limitations.
I do think it is interesting to think of genes as information: "The gene as the originary informational pattern that produces the body, even though logically the gene is contained within the body" (Hayles, p. 70). Similarly, Hobart and Schiffman write, "An information datum mirrors the atom. Information comes out of it, as it were, once we begin processing it in combination with other data" (p. 225). What this stresses is that humans and information are emergent forms that become manifest through interaction, socially and algorithmically. Even if we could become digitized, we would still need to interact with other information; we would still be social.
The boundaries between human and computer are blurry, and they are going to be blurry. When new technology is first introduced, we do not know what changes they will produce in us. And surely, they will change us. Marshall McLuhan understands media technology as extensions of our sense perceptions and body parts. Microscopes are extensions of our eyes; cars are extensions of our feet, etc. In The Medium is the Massage, he writes, "Media, by altering the environment evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extensions of any one sense alters the way we think and act?the way we perceive the world. When these ratios change, men change." Any technology creates a new human environment, and a new understanding of what it means to be human.
Because the boundaries are permeable, Norbert hits the prophetic and cautionary mark when he avers that we must not "bow down before the brass calf, the idol, which is the gadget" (p. 71): "If we want to live with the machine, we must understand the machine, we must not worship the machine" (p. 72). If we are becoming more machine-like, more information-like, more virtual, then it seems we need to understand not only the machines but also ourselves and our humanness. And this could imply that we no longer need to think of ourselves as primarily as matter or spirit, but something convergent, emergent quality in-between.
Lupton points out that we put a great deal of trust in our computer technology. I trust my computer to keep working. To remember what I cannot remember. I want to trust technology; I want to trust that hard drive implant. But along with that trust comes feelings of both pleasure/security and fears/vulnerability. And that?s how I feel about some new media, like Facebook. I want to trust that it is a good thing. But I fear that it might not be. I want to be a data flaneur, really I do, but Walden is my favorite book. What?s one to do?