Week 5: Information/Materiality
Hayles, The condition of virtuality
Hayles distinguishes between (but does not fully separate) materiality and information, claiming "Virtuality is the cultural perception that material objects are interpenetrated by information patterns" (p. 69). Hayles's analysis of discourse as rhetorical software is very pertinent, as she points out the conceptual inversion of DNA/Body (or, information/materiality) that we've come to accept. Hayles suggests that the medium precedes the information. Similarly, Raymond Williams, in his analysis of TV and its cultural forms, writes that the technology precedes the content.
In reading her question of whether information should be identified with pattern or randomness, I recalled Kittler's recycling of an old Rilke piece. In his writings on the gramophone, Kittler discusses the en-/de- coding processes of recording sound. As an example, he takes one of Rilke's musings on the gramophone, in which Rilke asks, essentially, is there nothing to which you can't apply the [gramophone] needle? And suggests applying it to the striations of a man's [actual, bone] skull, to see what sound that would make. Is the resulting sound information? It's certainly signal. It seems we can tease this out in other directions, also. By continuing with Kittler and his Lacanian trialectic, we could conceptualize this in terms of imaginary/real. If we so choose, we could also look back towards the Manovich's references to semiotics and the paradigm/syntagm. Finally, we could also consider how Manovich's database/interface applies here.
Wiener, Men, Machines, and the world about
When Wiener compares the functioning of the human body with technology, I can't help but think of Hayle's discussion of (the inversion of) information/materiality, and of Kittler's examples of how we reconceptualize the person through the technologies of a particular time. So, when the gramophone was in vogue, some suggested that our brains functioned like a gramophone. In this sense, it becomes evident how technologies, while arising from cultural forms or needs (cf. Williams) in turn affect our understanding of ourselves.
A lot of Wiener's thoughts relate to the loss or mutation of human / biological subjectivity and the machine apparatus. A point that has been taken up by recent scholars such as Packer or Sloop (and, on a more abstract plane, Kittler) is the notion that the discourses of techno-biological imbrications always situate the responsibility for error and chances of failure with the biological-human component of these systems, rather than the technological. Therefore, we relieve the technology of all responsibility, but in a weird sort of twist, we proceed to grant the technology more responsibility (e.g., when the technology is designed to relieve the human of ever more control).
Hobart and Schiffman, The realm of pure technique
This article covers the history of digital computing technology, placing particular emphasis on Turing's and von Neumann's roles in the development of what we now recognize as modern computing architecture. The take-home point for me here ties into Hayle's observation that information cannot be separated from materiality. The materiality of the technology largely determined the type of information it could process or produce. This is most clear in the description of analog vs. digital machines. More efficient material production helped realize the informational potential of these machines. That's not to take a technologically deterministic standpoint, however, since the informational and material needs for which these machines were created were preexistent.
Lupton, The embodied computer/user
Lupton, in some ways, builds upon Wiener's notion of the mutating relationship (or increasing symbiosis?) of the biological and technological. Lupton notes not only he great impact a computer has on emotions, quality of life, and other areas, but she explicitly mentions how computers and their capacities inscribe themselves on us. Lupton fleshes out the relationship between technology and culture/body, by showing how we also inscribe bodily concepts to technology (rather than the other way around, which I mention earlier in my blog post). Lupton also makes a case for technology influencing us and perhaps reinforcing the materiality of our bodies in the way extended use of technology has potential physical side effects that include weight gain. This idea works against the notions of the immateriality of the body in an information-driven, post-modern, technologically-focused age.
I disagree with Lupton's assessment that "the overt reason for portraying computers as human is to reduce the anxieties of computerphobia" (p. 107). The Wiener reading shows how computers were envisioned from the beginning in biological and human terms.