A question of skin...
Over the weekend I reached level 70. Ding. The sense of achievement is also accompanied by a sense of relief. Some of you may be wondering just how much of one's time one needs to invest in order to reach level 70, but the likelihood is that most of you are not. Fortunatley for the curious few, Warcraft tracks this information: 30 days (720 hours). This is roughly equivalent to a full-time job for a five month period. Alternatively, for a few hundred pounds, you could pay someone from a developing country to do it for you (the proper expression is 'power levelling service').
I have attended a couple of conferences recently, speaking at some. Conferences attendees are mostly older people and, predictably, they just don't get it. 'Dogs bark at what they don't understand' Jaques Derrida famously remarked in response to his critics - and there is certainly lots of barking at such events. Rationalisations range in sophistication from the bald outburst that information technology is little more than a passing fad, to the lengthy piece penned by Jenny Diski in which she concludes that 'second life' is little more than a pale imitation of the real thing, for example.
My daughter, who is twelve, did not want to go with us on the walk around the lake, even though I promised it would take no longer than half an hour. She was busy - very busy. She divided her time roughly between three activities, each more deeply social in nature than anything pre-dating information technology: she played warcraft, she used MSN and Bebo, and she created two more 'skins' for her web-page. In the latter case, she had some fairly ambitious ideas so with a little help from me she learned to use photoshop. Each of these activities boils down to the same thing: extended experimentation with self-presentation, but in a world which has many more degrees of freedom. In Warcraft she spends much of her time 'sculpting' - creating, skinning and perfecting characters, then interacting with others - a kind of role-play or iterative experimentation if you like. Likewise with MSN and Bebo the goal is to make and remake one's self-image, forever developing forwards, social refencing violently: cutting, pasting, linking, embedding.
And so it is that the technological self is cut, pasted, linked and embedded - just as before but so, so much more.
And this is the crux, I suppose - as Deleuze and Guattari point out: qualitative diffences are spawned by quantitative differences - the morphogenesis of the human body begins with a few simple chemical gradients - differences in 'intensity'. So whilst it is true (as Diski and others are so quick to point out) that the online world often merely extends the same activity to be found in the offline world - the difference in intensity is precisely what is significant, because that is all that ever is. That is all that is needed for morphogenesis.
Another tack: Jenny makes much of the 'pink economy' - in second life she is approached by characters who offer to remove their clothing in exchange for 'credits'. How damnable. News recently reported on the scandal of teenagers, using facebook and web-cams to make money in exchange for indecent exposure - undoubtedly a disturbing thing. But what of the comparison between the two cases? What of virtual selves - is it all a question of skin? Who are these strippers in sexual life? Ageing ex-miners? Teenagers? Grandmothers at a loose end? Inhabitants of the third world, eeking out a living? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that in second life nobody cares what you really look like?
Another tack: why did facebook explode, I wonder? A large number of people who I haven't spoken to in years - school chums, ex-girlfriends, colleagues - are now brutally resurrected, plugged back into my ever-extending social map. There is an ominous feeling - a presentiment - it's like watching someone run thousands of cables through your home as you sit watching TV, connecting every device to each other, then running the cables through to your neighbours. You just can't help wondering what will happen when it's all re-wired.
Another tack: whilst the BBC's approach to diversity is laudably progressive, the general attitude mirrors that in most white liberal organisations, roughly 'if you're black we'll cut you some slack'. Neurological research, on the other hand, suggests that one individual's brain differs dramatically from the next - overall by as much as 40%. In other words, we inhabit an offline world which tends to make a big deal out of superficial differences and suppresses some very dramatic differences. The offline world tells us that we are either more different or more similar than we actually are, based on our superficial features. Is it all a question of skin?
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Social selection and the english mind
social selction and the english mind
The most striking thing about group selection theory, as opposed to individual selection, is the possibility that we internalise rules which benefit us as a group rather than as an individual - in plain english: if we contribute poorly to the group, we punish ourselves.
Evidence for this approach is surprisingly easy to come by - most notably people who are unsuccessful in relationships are prone to depression, which in turn enhances the likelihood that they will become socially isolated. This then sparks a positive feedbck loop; depressesing their immune system, creativity, sex drive and chances of becoming gainfully employed. A similar outcome results in 'learned helplessness' - Seligman's discovery that creatures unable to exert influence over their environments become depressed and listless. Peculiarly, the phenomenon is akin to 'thanatos', Freud's hypothesised 'death drive'. It's a very interesting thing, I think, this tendency which we have to 'self-destruct' if we aren't successful - and it links us in nature to a host of lower organisms (right down to the single cell level) that are inherently designed to evolve as a group - as a collective - rather than as individuals.
In summary, it seems we are not designed to survive as individuals, but to function as components in a group. Drugs such as Prozac subvert our existence at its most fundamental level, then: by tinkering with the internal mechanism designed to weed out failure and promote success.
According to Bloom, the healthy functioning of any networked group involves the optimal balance of 'conformity enforcers' (who ensure that adaptive traditions are followed) and 'diversity promoters' (who recklessly explore new avenues of behaviour or thought). But it strikes me that we are unlikely to fall into one or other category as individuals, and that depending on how we feel our propensity to 'stick or spin' shifts - so that groups that are on the up become more exploratory and groups under siege proportionally more conservative.
My own experience is that the more stressed I am, the less creative I become.
Just finished the proof of Julian Baggini's book 'A Journey into the English Mind'. Here are some statistics that I thought striking:
Percentage of women who feel happy with their bodies 2%
National daily paper readers 60-70%Local newspaper readers 80-84%
Percentage who disapprove of homosexuals in high office 39%
Percentage of 18-30 year old young women who have been victims of sexual assault after getting drunk: 36%
Average frequency of sex: once a week
Percentage who believe the national identity should be based on Christian values: 72%
His analysis of the English philosophy left me with two memorable points: our Puritanical Protestant past has left us with a binge and purge attitude towards earthly pleasures such as food and sex. And our sense of 'fair play' rests on conservative communitarianism - "giving and getting your due is what counts"; and this means that in practice the notion of universal rights is challenged.
It is a book which will engender a sense of despair in many liberals: in general the English scorn intellectualism, have an unhealthy relationship with food, drink and sex, think of rights in terms of club membership, prefer familiarity to adventure and commonly engage in courtship as ritualised rape, legitimised on both sides by alcohol abuse.
The most striking thing about group selection theory, as opposed to individual selection, is the possibility that we internalise rules which benefit us as a group rather than as an individual - in plain english: if we contribute poorly to the group, we punish ourselves.
Evidence for this approach is surprisingly easy to come by - most notably people who are unsuccessful in relationships are prone to depression, which in turn enhances the likelihood that they will become socially isolated. This then sparks a positive feedbck loop; depressesing their immune system, creativity, sex drive and chances of becoming gainfully employed. A similar outcome results in 'learned helplessness' - Seligman's discovery that creatures unable to exert influence over their environments become depressed and listless. Peculiarly, the phenomenon is akin to 'thanatos', Freud's hypothesised 'death drive'. It's a very interesting thing, I think, this tendency which we have to 'self-destruct' if we aren't successful - and it links us in nature to a host of lower organisms (right down to the single cell level) that are inherently designed to evolve as a group - as a collective - rather than as individuals.
In summary, it seems we are not designed to survive as individuals, but to function as components in a group. Drugs such as Prozac subvert our existence at its most fundamental level, then: by tinkering with the internal mechanism designed to weed out failure and promote success.
According to Bloom, the healthy functioning of any networked group involves the optimal balance of 'conformity enforcers' (who ensure that adaptive traditions are followed) and 'diversity promoters' (who recklessly explore new avenues of behaviour or thought). But it strikes me that we are unlikely to fall into one or other category as individuals, and that depending on how we feel our propensity to 'stick or spin' shifts - so that groups that are on the up become more exploratory and groups under siege proportionally more conservative.
My own experience is that the more stressed I am, the less creative I become.
Just finished the proof of Julian Baggini's book 'A Journey into the English Mind'. Here are some statistics that I thought striking:
Percentage of women who feel happy with their bodies 2%
National daily paper readers 60-70%Local newspaper readers 80-84%
Percentage who disapprove of homosexuals in high office 39%
Percentage of 18-30 year old young women who have been victims of sexual assault after getting drunk: 36%
Average frequency of sex: once a week
Percentage who believe the national identity should be based on Christian values: 72%
His analysis of the English philosophy left me with two memorable points: our Puritanical Protestant past has left us with a binge and purge attitude towards earthly pleasures such as food and sex. And our sense of 'fair play' rests on conservative communitarianism - "giving and getting your due is what counts"; and this means that in practice the notion of universal rights is challenged.
It is a book which will engender a sense of despair in many liberals: in general the English scorn intellectualism, have an unhealthy relationship with food, drink and sex, think of rights in terms of club membership, prefer familiarity to adventure and commonly engage in courtship as ritualised rape, legitimised on both sides by alcohol abuse.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Technology And Presence
Technology and presence
Jacques Derrida "To write is to produce a mark which will constitute a kind of machine that is in turn productive... The writer's disappearance will not prevent it functioning", and "All writing, in order to be what it is, must be able to function in the radical absence of every empirically determined addressee in general... This is not a modification of presence, but a break in it, a 'death' or the possibility of a 'death' of the addressee".
I would like to paint a picture: imagine that I work from home. Unbeknown to my employer, I die. Someone with access to my emails goes back over the history of what I have said, picks up my workload, and so far as my employer is concerned I have not died.
Another: whilst a female friend is away on holiday they ask me to maintain their (female) online character (to gain experience), I log on as them and bump into one of their friends, who says 'Hi'. How do I respond? Do I maintain the illusion that I am them? Am I (simply by virtue of being that character) actually them anyway? How do I say 'I am not this person who I seem?' - isn't this eerily similar to real life?
I suppose that what I am getting at, is that in Derrida's terms, technology is an extension of writing: i.e. it is all about absence, not presence. And I suppose this represents a fundamental and subversive shift in phenomenology and meaning of the kind which prompted Nietzsche to write 'God is dead'.
Over-intellectualisation? I don't think so: podcasting is all about not 'being-there' (Dasein), homeworking is all about not 'being-there', email is all about not 'being-there'. Technology 'exists' in a way which subverts my existence so that something which we (I) took for granted - my being - is now something that can be messed with, displaced, even hijacked.
How did it become meaningful, for example, that today we can talk about 'identity theft'? Perhaps you think this has something to do with credit cards and dodgy garages? Think again: due to the crude nature of the SMTP protocol used to transfer mail, it is easy for me to send emails as you... think on it; in the next five minutes I might send emails to your friends, family, co-workers, lover, boss etc. which would unquestioningly be accepted as having come from you. Most likely this email might read '...because I am going to be working out of the office over the next few weeks, please use my email at insert_yourname_here@hotmail.com to stay in touch...'. It is a trivial task to send emails as bill.gates@microsoft.com, god@heaven.com, or even mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk.
Traditionally philosophy dealt with binary oppositions: good/evil, god/satan, being/nothingness, right/wrong - and most people still think in these terms. It has been one of the great advances of philosophy in recent years to muddy the waters, to show that there never really was clarity after all - so that, for example, even in the good old days it was possible to wonder if a person was really 'there' or if they were merely 'in disguise' or a 'ghost'. So what I am pointing to with technology is not a complete reversal in crude terms - 'suddenly absence takes the upper hand', but rather a radicalisation of absence - a poisoning of being by absence, in the way in which (Socrates reports) the egyptian god Thoth was judged to have offering his invention of writing not as a supplement but as a poison to speech. I find it interesting, I suppose, that technology - the extension of writing - has ultimately fulfilled the prophecy made in Egyptian times, that it would poison being/God, and bring about a kind of death.
If we look at future trends it is curious how being/presence is poisoned by technology; 'presence-based technologies' - such as SIP (session initiation protocol) which, combined with technology such as RFID tags, will effectively enable communication technology to locate 'you', know 'what you are doing', and adjust accordingly. Of course, in fact 'you' could be dead - so long as someone is wearing your tag and answering your emails it matters not a jot to technology.
After all, that is the beauty of txt: you can pretend to be something, you can pretend to be somewhere, you can control your presence so much more carefully. But a malicious person with your phone may cause havoc.
Not long ago many things required your presence; meetings, conversations, chairs in offices - but soon there will soon be very few things that require your presence: sex (possibly not even this), eating, the lavatory.
It is interesting also, I think to trace this corruption of being through production technologies. Begin with the live performance - trace a line through the record (sender absent in time & space), through the live broadcast (receiver absent in space), join them at the recorded broadcast (sender absent in time, receiver in space), continue onwards through film and end with the podcast (all absent in time and space) - where even the broadcast no longer requires your presence. Imagine an assasin tracing your movements: previously he might note that you always stopped to listen to the archers at five past seven, to the today programme at six thirty am. Now he notes only that you eat and sleep at roughly the same times - all else is negotiable - because its presence is negotiable. And so, ultimately, is yours.
Jacques Derrida "To write is to produce a mark which will constitute a kind of machine that is in turn productive... The writer's disappearance will not prevent it functioning", and "All writing, in order to be what it is, must be able to function in the radical absence of every empirically determined addressee in general... This is not a modification of presence, but a break in it, a 'death' or the possibility of a 'death' of the addressee".
I would like to paint a picture: imagine that I work from home. Unbeknown to my employer, I die. Someone with access to my emails goes back over the history of what I have said, picks up my workload, and so far as my employer is concerned I have not died.
Another: whilst a female friend is away on holiday they ask me to maintain their (female) online character (to gain experience), I log on as them and bump into one of their friends, who says 'Hi'. How do I respond? Do I maintain the illusion that I am them? Am I (simply by virtue of being that character) actually them anyway? How do I say 'I am not this person who I seem?' - isn't this eerily similar to real life?
I suppose that what I am getting at, is that in Derrida's terms, technology is an extension of writing: i.e. it is all about absence, not presence. And I suppose this represents a fundamental and subversive shift in phenomenology and meaning of the kind which prompted Nietzsche to write 'God is dead'.
Over-intellectualisation? I don't think so: podcasting is all about not 'being-there' (Dasein), homeworking is all about not 'being-there', email is all about not 'being-there'. Technology 'exists' in a way which subverts my existence so that something which we (I) took for granted - my being - is now something that can be messed with, displaced, even hijacked.
How did it become meaningful, for example, that today we can talk about 'identity theft'? Perhaps you think this has something to do with credit cards and dodgy garages? Think again: due to the crude nature of the SMTP protocol used to transfer mail, it is easy for me to send emails as you... think on it; in the next five minutes I might send emails to your friends, family, co-workers, lover, boss etc. which would unquestioningly be accepted as having come from you. Most likely this email might read '...because I am going to be working out of the office over the next few weeks, please use my email at insert_yourname_here@hotmail.com to stay in touch...'. It is a trivial task to send emails as bill.gates@microsoft.com, god@heaven.com, or even mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk.
Traditionally philosophy dealt with binary oppositions: good/evil, god/satan, being/nothingness, right/wrong - and most people still think in these terms. It has been one of the great advances of philosophy in recent years to muddy the waters, to show that there never really was clarity after all - so that, for example, even in the good old days it was possible to wonder if a person was really 'there' or if they were merely 'in disguise' or a 'ghost'. So what I am pointing to with technology is not a complete reversal in crude terms - 'suddenly absence takes the upper hand', but rather a radicalisation of absence - a poisoning of being by absence, in the way in which (Socrates reports) the egyptian god Thoth was judged to have offering his invention of writing not as a supplement but as a poison to speech. I find it interesting, I suppose, that technology - the extension of writing - has ultimately fulfilled the prophecy made in Egyptian times, that it would poison being/God, and bring about a kind of death.
If we look at future trends it is curious how being/presence is poisoned by technology; 'presence-based technologies' - such as SIP (session initiation protocol) which, combined with technology such as RFID tags, will effectively enable communication technology to locate 'you', know 'what you are doing', and adjust accordingly. Of course, in fact 'you' could be dead - so long as someone is wearing your tag and answering your emails it matters not a jot to technology.
After all, that is the beauty of txt: you can pretend to be something, you can pretend to be somewhere, you can control your presence so much more carefully. But a malicious person with your phone may cause havoc.
Not long ago many things required your presence; meetings, conversations, chairs in offices - but soon there will soon be very few things that require your presence: sex (possibly not even this), eating, the lavatory.
It is interesting also, I think to trace this corruption of being through production technologies. Begin with the live performance - trace a line through the record (sender absent in time & space), through the live broadcast (receiver absent in space), join them at the recorded broadcast (sender absent in time, receiver in space), continue onwards through film and end with the podcast (all absent in time and space) - where even the broadcast no longer requires your presence. Imagine an assasin tracing your movements: previously he might note that you always stopped to listen to the archers at five past seven, to the today programme at six thirty am. Now he notes only that you eat and sleep at roughly the same times - all else is negotiable - because its presence is negotiable. And so, ultimately, is yours.
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