In the 1820s Charles Babbage designed his Difference Engine. It
was built, by Babbage with the help of engineers, in various bits
and versions in the 1830s and 1840s. Something like a complete,
working version, however, was only completed in 1991, the bicentennial
year of Babbage's birth, by a team working at the Science Museum,
London, sponsored by major computer companies.
Difference Engine Nº 1 has been retroactively designated as the
first computer and Babbage as the 'architect of modern computing'.
The computer industry is relatively new and by adopting, and belatedly
sponsoring, Babbage and his difference engine it lends itself
a history or an ancestry, in common with the other 'great' industries,
which it had previously lacked. The machine itself was able to
process numbers and could be programmed to make calculations.
One of Babbages favourite tricks was to have the machine 'count'
according to a mathematical formula then after a certain, pre-set,
time abandon this formula and produce seemingly random numbers.
In the years separating the original design and the complete,
working version of the difference engine computers developed beyond
'number-crunching' into communications, information management,
entertainment, education and almost every other field of (Western)
human endeavour . Because of this there has been much of what
Paul Virilio, in his book 'The Vision Machine', calls 'frantic
interpretosis'. Under the influence of this 'frantic interpretosis'
the computer has been credited with a gradual destruction of social
life or, conversely, offering the possibility of a techno-utopia.
If some commentators (particularly on-line) are to be believed
there will soon be a networked 'perfect' democracy where every
individual will have access to all information at all times and
be able to communicate with any other user by e-mail or video
conferencing. As Hiltz and Turoff propose,
'We will become the Network Nation, exchanging vast amounts of
information and social-emotional communications with colleagues,
friends and "strangers" who share similar interests ... we become
a "global village" ... An individual will, literally, be able
to work shop, or be educated by or with persons anywhere in the
nation or in the world.'
My thesis is that many of the changes pointed to by these techno-utopians
are not in fact revolutionary - they are simply a result of the
computer extending existing processes by increasing speed, storage
or access capabilities. However, there is already evidence of
one revolutionary effect and this is an epistemic shift at a fundamental
level which is caused by the increasing use of computers and digital
technology. This shift is at the level of our understanding of
language and of the constitution of the subject. Critical theory,
particularly Derrida and Lacan, had already reconceptualised and
undermined traditional ideas about the relationship between language
and the subject and also the apparent stability of the concepts
language and the subject themselves. The subject, as it is drawn
from the great traditions of Western thought functions as a centre
point from where it can survey the world and its objects. According
to this tradition, also, language functions as a direct translation
of reality. However I will attempt to show that this reconceptualisation
coincides with a disruption and a destabilising from another non-philosophical
direction. In many ways the new electronic, networked environment
of the internet, hypertext and the world wide web embody these
developments in critical theory and put them into practice, they
also suggest new avenues of investigation and shed new light on
this relationship between the subject and language.
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Certain characteristics of writing have, according to Derrida,
been overlooked or even repressed by the Western intellectual
tradition. These characteristics or attributes should be explored
because, he says, they point to failings and instabilities in
language which in turn point to, or suggest ways in which this
tradition, which is limiting and constraining, can be upset and
destabilised. The dialectic of absence and presence, or an exposure
of the importance of the dialectic of absence and presence is
fundamental to this process of destabilising.
To effect this process of destabilisation Derrida uses, amongst
other things, his strategic 'invention' différance. Différance
is not a recognised word in the French language. The verbadjective
différant describes the condition of deferring and of differing
but there is no nounverb to describe the activity of deferring
and differing. Différance, then, names an action which implies
or involves a temporal difference, to 'put off' until another
time, which is to defer and also a spatial (or spacing) difference
which suggests a difference in place, position or time, which
is to differ.
Derrida exploits this double meaning aiming to unsettle and upset
the relationship between the word or sign and the thing which
it is employed to represent. Language works by using a sign to
'present', or stand in for, a thing which is absent, in other
words, in the absence of the thing itself we signify the thing
with the presence of a sign. In this sense the sign is a deferred
presence. This substitution of the sign for the thing itself is
both secondary and provisional. It is secondary because the sign
is derived from the original and lost presence of the thing, and
it is provisional in that the sign is used as a movement towards
the thing, 'a movement of mediation'. Therefore using language,
a sign for a thing, involves différance or an action of deferring
and differing.
The sign, as we know, is split into signifier and signified, also
language is a closed system of differences, in language there
are only differences, without positive terms. The arbitrary and
differential nature of the sign has important effects on both
sides of the sign, signifier and signified, the concept or mental
image and the material, physical marker which brings this concept
to mind. This means that a signified concept is never fully present
in and of itself, or as Derrida says, 'in a sufficient presence
that refers only to itself' . This is because in the differential
system all of the elements refer to or imply the presence of all
of the other elements, without which they would not exist, or
at least have meaning. Their meaning is created through this play
of absence and presence, the presence of an element implies the
absence of the other elements and they become present in their
necessary absence.
The trace of the other absence signs in the sign which is present,
in speech or writing, causes an inevitable deformation of, and
a slippage between signs. The effect of this trace also has important
consequences on the language of philosophy. As philosophy attempts
to define, describe or use concepts such as truth, being, centre
and origin then these words are subject to the effects of the
trace. And if there is this constant slippage between words and
concepts because of the play of absence and presence, or différance,
then these words and concepts can never establish a full and replete
presence for themselves. This, as Derrida says, undermines Western
metaphysics because it is a claim to full presence which underspins
metaphysical concepts and procedures. Presence is, indeed, the
foundation for many claims, philosophical or non-philosophical,
for example that a truth can lie behind, and therefore in proximity
to, an appearance, or that a 'zeitgeist' can inform or be present
within an historical era. The metaphysical concept of presence
also 'brings' the author or the artist into their work and it
is also responsible for the claim that a photograph can 'capture'
a person or moment.
It has been suggested by N. Katherine Hayles in her essay 'Virtual
Bodies and Flickering Signifiers' that it is only in being supplanted
or pushed aside that the importance of the dialectic of absence
and presence has been realised and reconceptualised. Instead of
being the ground for discourse it has now become discourse's subject.
'Presence and absence were forced into visibility, so to speak,
because they were already losing their constitutive power... In
this sense deconstruction is the child of an information age,
formulating its theories from strata pushed upward by the emerging
substrata'
Absence and presence have until now been dominant in the formation
of discourse, as Derrida has shown, but their relevance in a world
where discourse is increasingly produced electronically and digitally
is being reduced.
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In his essay 'Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce' Derrida
explores the theme of the transmission of information in 'Ulysses'
he treats the book as a kind of cyberspace. This text, originally
a lecture delivered at the Ninth International James Joyce Symposium
in Frankfurt in 1984, is an analysis of the various occurrences
of the word 'yes' in 'Ulysses' of which Derrida claims there are
222. He imagines a project initiated by the Joyce Foundation to
create '...in table form a typology of all the yeses in Ulysses,
before moving on to the yeses in Finnegan's Wake.' using an nth
generation computer to perform the task. This initial task is
not as easy as it might, at first, appear. As Derrida points out
there are more yeses in the French edition than in the English
one, therefore a count of yeses is required for all of the languages
into which 'Ulysses' has been translated. Then, Derrida, claims
that all 'yeses' are not identical and would have to be organised
into a number of different categories of 'yes'. He identifies
at least ten, examples are: 1. the yes in question form 'Yes?',
2. the yes of rhythmic breathing in the form of monologic self-approbation
'yes, I must', 3. the yes of obedience 'Yes, Sir'. This list though
is not definitive and cannot be closed, as Derrida says '...since
each category can be divided into two depending on whether yes
appears in a manifest monologue in response to the other in itself
or in manifest dialogue.'
In order for the work to be studied 'automatically' it must first
be digitised and it is in this transformation of the material
signifier present in the printed version of 'Ulysses' to the digitally
encoded electronic version, in which the text becomes a pattern,
that the ambiguous and slippery signifiers are set and stabilised.
A formal system is imposed on top of Joyce's informal system.
Derrida argues therefore that the various occurrences of yes in
'Ulysses' cannot be distilled or reduced to the simple yes of
binary computation (0 or 1, on or off, yes or no) and secondly
that the necessary reduction (of digital encoding) makes a fully
automated study of Joyce's work impossible.
So, as far as Critical Theory is concerned, language is not a
code because of this unstable relationship between signifier and
signified, but in word processing/electronic writing language
becomes a code. If the typewriter is compared to the word processor
it becomes obvious that the typewriter exists in a discourse network
underlaid by the dialectic of absence and presence. One keystroke
produces one letter and striking the key harder produces a darker
letter. The system lends itself to a model of signification which
links a signifier to a signified in a direct correspondence there
is a one to one relation between the key and the letter it produces.
By contrast the connection between the computer keys and text
manipulation is nonproportional and electronic. The lightness
or darkness of the letter is unrelated to key pressure and hitting
one key can effect the whole text rather than just producing another
letter/mark. Thus this model of signification is not founded on
direct correspondences between signifier and signified. The text
can be altered in ways unimaginable with the typewriter and this
can be done instantaneously and with a single keystroke. The reason
for this is that in word processing language is a code, a pattern
not a presence.
_________________________________________________
The electronic mediation of information subverts the rational,
autonomous subject for whom language is a direct translation of
reality. This is because as well as being a tool for intentional
action, language also has another capacity/function and this is
in the structuring power that constitutes the subject who speaks
as well as listens. Electronically mediated communication has
effects at this level of language. The relation between the subject
and the symbols it emits and receives is effected by distancing
the speaker and listener and by the materiality (immateriality)
of the message no longer handwritten or printed on paper. In this
new mode of information the object becomes, not the material,
'real' world as represented in language but the flow of the signifiers
themselves. It becomes increasingly difficult, or even pointless,
to try and distinguish a 'real' behind this flow of signifiers
and this changes the subject's relation to, and perspective on,
the world and its objects and also, by extension, the subject's
location in the world. Describing the subject in the age of electronic
communication Mark Poster says,
'...it is multiplied by databases, dispersed by computer messaging
and conferencing, decontextualised and reidentified by TV ads,
dissolved and materialised continuously in the electronic transmission
of symbols. In the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari, we are
being changed from 'arborial' beings rooted in time and space,
to 'rhizomatic' nomads who daily wander at will (whose will remains
a question) across the globe, and even beyond it through communication
satellites, without necessarily moving our bodies at all.'
'The body then is no longer an effective limit of the subject's
position. . . . If I can speak directly or by electronic mail
to a friend in Paris while sitting in California, if I can witness
political and cultural events as they occur across the globe without
leaving my home, if a database at a remote location contains my
profile and informs government agencies which make decisions that
affect my life without any knowledge on my part of these events,
if I can shop in my home by using my TV or computer, then where
am I and who am I? In these circumstances, I cannot consider myself
centred in my rational, autonomous subjectivity or bordered by
a defined ego, but I am disrupted, subverted and dispersed across
social space.'
Lacan had already made the point that the subject is 'outside',
in relation to his concept of the symbolic order. It is already
the effect of, or constituted by networks. According to Lacanian
psychoanalysis the subject is the effect of the symbolic order,
an effect of the (symbolic) networks into which it is born. These
networks are social, cultural and above all linguistic. Even before
the child can use language it is already being formed in language
by its name and other things which the parents may say in its
presence. This is an example of the structuring power of language,
for Lacan it is only in the process of saying 'I' that the 'I'
is formed. For Lacan the subject is not a substance endowed with
qualities, or a fixed shape nor is it a container waiting to filled
be with experiences. The subject is, instead, '...a series of
events within language, a procession of turns, tropes and inflections.'
. A signifier is what represents a subject for another signifier
and this subject/signifier is, like any other signifier, arbitrary
and free floating.
Vision, images and 'the screen' are also important in the constitution
of the subject. However Lacan makes a distinction between traditional
ideas about vision and his concept of the gaze. The eye is a point-of-view
taking in the whole of the other (object). The agent of vision,
the subject, is the 'Cartesian subject' which is itself a sort
if geometral point in space, a point of perspective. This distance
between the subject and the object affirms the position of the
subject. This is the 'classic' Renaissance diagram of the cone
of vision as used in the formation of perspective. Lacan complicates
this diagram, where everything flows from the eye, to incorporate
'the gaze'.
The object, or the other, is finally only the image of the subject
projected onto the object. In the gaze diagram the subject is
only one position not as in the previous perspective model the
centre or the only position. 'We are beings who are looked at,
in the spectacle of the world...(The) gaze circumscribes us' .
In a move which inverts the first diagram Lacan claims that it
is the gaze which turns the subject into a picture.
Figure 1. Diagram of the Renaissance 'cone of vision'
Figure 2. Diagram of Lacan's 'Gaze'
Here instead of standing in the position from where light is projected,
as it is in the original model of perspective drawing, the subject
is illuminated by the light projected from the object, the viewer/subject
becomes, in essence, 'the screen'. On this screen according to
Lacan, identity is negotiated. Negotiated between the imaginary
and the symbolic, the image that the subject/viewer projects onto
one side of the screen and on the other side the image of the
subject/viewer as seen by the other/object. The screen is where
the eye and the gaze meet.
If we make the simple (perhaps simplistic) connection between
the image screen in Lacan's diagram of vision and the computer's
video screen then this becomes the surface onto which images are
projected and identity negotiated.
If a viewer/subject 'picks up' images from the internet, either
themselves or with the help of an intelligent agent it is conceivable
(probable) that a record of these image transactions could be
kept at the source/point of origin of the images or by the intelligent
agent on the viewer/subject's own computer. This database then
builds up an 'image' of the viewer/subject and it begins to collect
and feed the viewer/subject with similar images based on this
'image'. As the viewer/subject accepts or rejects images 'pushed'
to his or her screen, or finds new images independently, then
the database is updated automatically and the 'image' of the viewer/subject
altered.
There therefore exists a kind of (statistical/symbolic) image
of the viewer/subject which determines how the rest of the network
sees him or her. This image is created out of a number of images
chosen by the viewer/subject and as in Lacan's diagram these meet
on the computer's screen and this is where the viewer/subject's
network identity is formed.
As the number of databases which hold information on individuals
grows then the subject increasingly becomes the sum of that information,
or begins to be defined by that information. How we are seen and
how we see ourselves will increasingly be determined by this information.
Social security cards, library cards, drivers' licenses, supermarket
loyalty cards, credit cards and so on are all encoded with information
about the individual and when used they pass this information
on to a database so that each transaction maybe recorded. In this
way a detailed picture of an individual can be built up. With
the introduction, and the increasing use, of the internet for
shopping and also job application, house buying and even banking
the number of these databases is increasing exponentially. The
internet user may have access to a huge database of product information
but in return the user provides these 'on-line' organisations
with invaluable 'client' information. To make the connection back
to Lacan's concept of the gaze it is possible to say that the
user/subject may have an image of the product/object but the product/object
also now has an image of the user/subject.
Also as the individual subject spends more and more time 'on-line'
he or she will increasingly see or define him/herself in relation
to the various 'on-line' groups, special interest bulletin boards
etc. to which he or she belongs. This may not, at first, appear
any different from the process by which individuals see themselves
in relation to friends, family and work colleagues. However what
is different in this networked environment is that the relationships
developed 'on-line' are based purely on a digital encoding (pattern)
not a presence.
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Does this shift from absence and presence to pattern and randomness
manifest itself in any way? In her essay 'Virtual Bodies and Flickering
Signifiers' N. Katherine Hayles argues that pattern and randomness
are now encoded into all forms of contemporary literature and
film. This may be at the level of the physical object which constitutes
the text, most texts/publications are now written or typeset 'electronically',
or it may be at the level of content of the text. However due
to developments in the publishing and film industries it is probable
that most books and films produced now are at some point in the
production process constituted as a pattern rather than a presence.
This may be because the author has written the text or script
on a word processor. It may also be that a book is typeset using
desktop publishing software, or that a film has a digital effects
sequences or digitally recorded music. These are the non-explicit
examples of the shift to pattern and randomness, encoded into
the physical object rather than into the contents.
One of the differences that this shift produces in literature
is a change in the notion of point of view. In traditional fiction
the point of view is seen as synonymous with an embodied person
who describes what he or she sees, this person is the narrator
and his or her narrative implies/bears his or her presence. However
in the information narrative there may be different conception
of point of view, the narrator and the narrative.
This modification of point of view is most explicit in the novels
of the cyberpunk genre, the point of view (or 'pov') itself becomes
a character which is not synonymous with a body/person. Networks
(of the future) offer the possibility of a 'pov' without a body,
just a consciousness which exists in cyberspace. The former, traditional
concept of narrator implies physical presence and the latter does
not. In the book which is credited with introducing cyberspace
and the cyberpunk genre, William Gibson's 'Neuromancer', describes
cyberspace as '...graphic representation of data abstracted from
the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.
Lines of light in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations
of data. Like city lights, receding...'
In this digital landscape subjects can roam through networks,
in the form of a pattern not as a physical presence, they may
be able to inhabit bodies in the 'real' world temporarily or they
may be able to take on some visible and virtual form inside cyberspace
itself. Case, the main character in 'Neuromancer' regularly 'jacks
in' to cyberspace through a direct neural link between the computer
and his brain. Links between the computer and the brains of others
allow him, at various points in the book, to enter the others
consciousness. His body is described as 'meat', useful only in
as much as it sustains his consciousness between excursions into
cyberspace. The contrast between the body and its limitations
and the disembodied consciousness which inhabits cyberspace highlights
the advantages of a pattern over a presence. A pattern can be
transmitted or transported through a network in cyberspace at
speeds that could never be reached by any material presence, for
example. Also a pattern is not subject to the ravages of time.
In relation to this tension between materiality and immateriality
Hayles compares the book the human body in that they are both
bodies which contain information which cannot easily be changed.
Once encoding has taken place then it (the book or the body) is
in durable form, unlike magnetic, digital and electronic encodings
which can be wiped or written over very quickly. The body and
the book share a kind of 'doubleness'. The body is a physical
structure which is also an expression of genetic information,
at least at the level of molecular biology. A book (or document)
is at once a physical object and also a space of representation,
a message.
'Changes in bodies as they are represented within literary texts
have deep connections with changes in textual bodies as they are
encoded within information media, and both stand in complex relation
to changes in the construction of human bodies as they interface
with information technologies'
In David Cronenburg's film 'The Fly' the scientist attempts to
turn his body into information and transport it instantaneously
across a short distance between two pods. However during the experiment
the information which constitutes his body is unexpectedly mixed
with a fly's causing a new pattern which when re-materialised
forms a halfman, halffly creature. For Hayles this filmic text
illustrates precisely the dangers inherent in privileging pattern
over presence. In 'The Fly' the eruption of randomness is seen
as an accident but, as Derrida has shown in relation to absence
and presence, pattern and randomness do not exist in isolation
and it is impossible to guarantee that they won't leak into each
other. Derrida's, and to some extent Lacan's, reconceptualisation
of absence as a productive force in language and the formation
of the subject is mirrored by the reconceptualisation of randomness
in certain scientific fields as not mere gibberish but essential
to the production of information. A pattern can be defined as
the repetition, or redundancy, of elements. Redundancy in this
context comes from Information Theory and is used to describe
the predictability of a message. Redundancy is important to a
successful decoding of the message by its receiver. If pattern
is only repetition then the message imparts no new information.
It is randomness which introduces variation and unpredictability
into the message. Randomness alone would not allow any information
to be passed, the message would not be able to be decoded, it
is only a combination or a play of pattern and randomness which,
according to Information Theory, produces new information.
Randomness mutates the pattern. Mutation implies both a repetition
of the pattern and also a significant enough change in the pattern
to recognise the interjection of randomness. But the meeting of
pattern and randomness, like the meeting of absence and presence,
is not catastrophic and it is not, to an information theorist,
unexpected. Pattern can only emerge against a background of non-pattern.
This possibility for, or even the inevitability of, mutation is
demonstrated in 'Toy Story' and it forms a central theme in the
film. In one house all of the toys are in their original form,
they are the reproduction of a pattern (without the irruption
of randomness), the same as the ones that millions of other children
have. Next door, however, the toys have been mutated, broken down
and reconstituted as hybrid monsters. The toys from the first
house fight to save themselves from mutation by their sadistic
neighbour. The film becomes a fight against the interruption of
randomness and the possibility of mutation.
This shift from absence and presence to pattern and randomness
is also increasingly apparent in our lives. In an increasing number
of 'everyday' situations and environments the presence of a subject
is also being supplemented by a pattern, in electronic banking
a pattern in the form of a password or key number are used to
access an account. DNA samples (a pattern) taken at the scene
of a crime can place a defendant as can an eyewitness (a presence).
The right of entry to computer systems and an increasing amount
of information is determined not by any presence but the knowledge
of a pattern, a code, a password etc. An illegal entry into a
network by a hacker is noticeable through a coded trace rather
than a physical trace of presence. Also, significantly, a pattern
can represent or perform tasks for a subject on the network, web,
internet in the form of a 'bot' or a personal/intelligent agent.
These programmes can respond automatically to e-mail, search out
information for a subject or provide/deliver information on a
particular subject.
Under these new conditions texts (verbal and visual) and bodies
(textual and human) have been altered by becoming a pattern rather
than a presence. Social security cards, library cards, drivers'
licenses, supermarket loyalty cards, credit cards and so on, are
all encoded with information which is passed to a database so
that details of each transaction may be recorded. In this way
a detailed picture of an individual, its movements, habits, preferences,
and spending patterns can be built up. With the introduction,
and the increasing use, of the internet for shopping, job application,
house buying and banking the number of these databases is increasing
exponentially. The internet user may have access to a huge database
of product information but in return we can say that these products,
or the organisations which promote or sell them, also have access
to information about the user.
'The return channel in an interactive system...will...transmit
back to industry much relevant information about consumer demand
and consumption. This information will include the consumer's
identity, the time and place of consumption...and product characteristics.
This data...will generate an invaluable portrait of consumer activity
for marketing purposes. These systems will create a truly cybernetic
cycle of production and consumption; because every consumptive
activity will generate information pertinent to the modification
of future production.'
It is through the expansion of these databases that the subject
or the individual becomes increasingly 'present' as a pattern.
The pattern takes the form of a dispersed and also invisible/immaterial
collection of digital records stored in geographically distant
places but available via the network in any place at any time
for those who have the right of access.
If the characteristics of language, particularly those described
by Derrida, and the characteristics of the computer's formal system
are introduced into this discussion of the subject and the database
then it is possible see that their meeting produces effects which
will have consequences on the individual or the subject, as it
is constituted in the database but also, necessarily, as it is
constituted outside of the archive in the 'real' world.
Writing is ambiguous, it relies on context to anchor its meaning.
In the absence of author and context writing is open to different
interpretations. When this ambiguity is apparent in fiction then
the effect is liberating for the reader, it allows him or her
to feel that they are part of the process of 'forming' the text.
However in the formation of a database using a computer programming
code is limited and ambiguity is removed by the structure and
characteristics of the machine's system. As we have seen in relation
to Derrida's analysis of 'yes' in Joyce's 'Ulysses' the computer
is only capable of comprehending a simple yes or no. Yes, which
Derrida shows can have many and various nuances and ambiguities,
is reduced to a simple 1 or 0 of digital encoding.
Thus the computer and its databases arrange information in rigidly
defined categories. In relation to relatively un-contentious information
such as a subjects name, age or address then this fixity of form
is not limiting, in fact, it increases the speed and efficiency
of many important procedures. However when the information becomes
more contentious then the reduction of this information to an
unambiguous yes or no or perhaps a value on a scale of 1 to 5
then the system fixes something which, outside of the database,
is extremely difficult to limit or quantify. The structure or
the grammar of the database creates relationships between pieces
of information which do not exist outside of the database. But
it is not difficult to imagine how these relationships may produce
effects outside of the database. This means that by turning individuals
into patterns determined by information entered into database
fields databases or archives these individuals become constituted
by manipulating the relationships between bits of information.
What is more individuals willingly participate in this self-constitution
as subjects of the normalising gaze of, what Mark Poster, calls
the 'Superpanopticon', or the network of databases which hold
all of this 'personal' information. These databases and networks
are not seen as an invasion of privacy or a threat to our individuality,
they are seen as benign and the multiplication, and dispersal
of the 'patterned' individual which they create is not seen to
have any effect on the 'real' and present one.
© Jonathan Fox