Being-with-Internet

Before I begin with the recollection of your new favorite section of Being and Time, number 73, I want to say a few things about Heidegger.

There's books written about this guy, and way more books than about other troubled intellectuals who did bad stuff, because, well... because. Generally, the sides on Heidegger are two. Either he is a Nazi, whose philosophy is inseparable from his political history, or his philosophy is metaphysics, and not political. I'm of the opinion that his philosophy should be considered separately from his political history... and that this philosophy reeks of Fascism.

He's brilliant, sure. I've said before that Being and Time taught me how to write. Every word is so carefully chosen, not only as a signifier but within the delicate structural framework of syntax and semantics that is philosophy. Just look at all the quote marks thrown around words, and the italics. These are not just emphasis, thrown out casually. Each is done with the same purpose as putting a castle on a hill, rather than a valley. There is literally an architecture to Heidegger's prose, and it backs his philosophy across every square, grade, stairway, sloping rooftop, and empty space in his thought. It's some of the best philosophy of the 20th century.

But it's also Fascist. The more lenient philosophers and political thinkers will often let Lenin and other leftists off with a wag of the finger, and a wise word about propaganda, political movements, and state power out of control. But this is not just a guy with a captive audience, and ego-crush on history. The architecture of the thought is Fascist, and it is so close to really good metaphysics that it should scare anyone who still cares about metaphysics.

Of course, writing philosophy is one thing, and kicking Jews out of academia is another thing. Anyone can do either, but it took Heidegger to do both, and seemingly, with the same univocal hand and mind. There is mass Fascism, and there is micro, little-Eichmann Fascism, and then there is intellectual Fascism. Being and Time is the reason I give anyone I hear talking about "authentic" anything a long, hard look. No matter how much Heidegger will argue that there is no moral distinction between authentic and in-authentic being, you can hear the goddamn crazy in his voice. He is lining people up in his head. Just a few sections on, in 75 and 76, when he starts talking about "resoluteness", and "loyalty" to the being of history. And in the famous Rectory Address (which you should really read if you haven't, to know what I'm talking about), when I visualize him actually speaking this, it's uncanny.

The point is, when I implement Heidegger here to make certain points about Time, I am doing so with this in mind, and also, against Heidegger. I have no doubt that he, and many Heidegger scholars, would disagree with the reading I'm about to make, and that is good. It is intended to pull away from his philosophy. His writing is still very well done, and very powerful, and this section made me think about time in certain ways that drew out my conclusions. But I would not say that what I'm about to draw out is Heideggerian. Who knows, however; perhaps, if he lived now in the age of digital reproduction, he would see that authenticity for the sham that it is, and maybe his metaphysics would go in a different direction. Maybe not. This is the strange part about history: that ultimately, it both is what it is, and is what it isn't.

Heidegger's text will be in blog block quote style, and my comments will not. All emphasis is Heidegger's.

Section 73 of Being and Time: "The Vulgar Understanding of History and the Occurence of Dasein."

Our next aim is to find the right position for attacking the primordial question of the essence of history--that is to say, for construing historicality existentially. This position is designated by that which is primordially historical. We shall begin our study, therefore, by characterizing what one has in view in using the expressions 'history' and 'historical' in the ordinary interpretation of Dasein. These expressions get used in several ways.

The most obvious ambiguity of the term 'history' is one that has often been noticed, and there is nothing 'fuzzy' about it. It evinces itself in that this term may mean the 'historical acutality' as well as the possible science of it. We shall provisionally eliminate the signification of 'history' in the sense of a "science of history" (historiology).

Isn't this great?!? Okay, a helpful hint: look at the different implementations of the word "history". There is "history" the noun. There is "historical", the adjective, or the state of something being history. There is also noun of this adjective, "historicality". Then there is "historizing", the verb that is the act of something being made history (more or less), and lastly, there is "historiology", or the science of deciding what all these words mean.

Heidegger is very careful with these words, and the different between the different parts of speech will spell out how he thinks history functions, from a metaphysical and existential standpoint. In the next few paragraphs, we'll see how exactly he wants to separate and unify these terms.

The expression 'history' has various significations with which one has in view neither the science of history nor even history as an Object, by this very entity itself, not necessarily Objectified. Among such significations, that in which this entity is understood as something past, may well be the pre-eminent usage. This signification is evinced in the kind of talk in which we say that something or other "already belongs to history". Here 'past' means "no longer present-at-hand", or even "still present-at-hand indeed, but without having any 'effect' on the 'Present' ". Of course, the historical as that which is past has also the opposite signification, when we say, "One cannot get away from history." Here, by "history", we have in view that which is past, but which nevertheless is still having effects. Howsoever the historical, as that which is past, is understood to be related to it, either positively or privatively, in such a way as to have effects upon it. Thus 'the past' has a remarkable double meaning; the past belongs irretrievably to an earlier time; it belonged to the events of that time; and in spite of that, it can still be present-at-hand 'now'--for instance, the remains of a Greek temple. With the temple, a 'bit of the past' is still 'in the present'.

This is the first of four significations of "history". Something 'past', in that "'the past' has a remarkable double meaning; the past belongs irretrievably to an earlier time; it belonged to the events of that time; and in spite of that, it can still be present-at-hand 'now'.

What we next have in mind with the term "history" is not so much 'the past' in the sense of that which is past, but rather derivation from such a past. Anything that 'has a history' stands in the contect of a becoming. In such becoming, 'development' is sometimes a rise, sometimes a fall. What 'has a history' in this way can, at the same time, 'make' such history. As 'epoch-making', it determines 'a future' 'in the present'. Here "history" signifies a 'context' of events and 'effects', which draws on through 'the past', the 'Present', and the 'future'. On this view, the past has no special priority.

Second signification. History is a becoming, a separation from the basic dimension of time, or to describe it in a familiar but perhaps problematic way, 'how we make our fortune'. To take our place in history, or to write ourselves into the history books, etc. To separate a span of time from other spans of time, and to segment it.

Further, "history" signifies the totality of those entities which change 'in time', and indeed the transformations and vicissitudes of men, of human groupings and their 'cultures', as distinguished from Nature, which likewise operates 'in time'. Here what one has in view is not so much a kind of Being--historizing--as it is that realm of entities which one distinguishes from Nature by having regard for the way in which man's existence is essentially determined by 'spirit' and 'culture', even though in a certain manner Nature too belongs to "history" as thus understood.

Third signification. History is the works of man, as split off from the rest of Nature. Again, post-modernly problematic, sure, but the way we casually refer to history may be problematic. However, I might argue that it is not problematic at all. Differentiating any single thing, be it human, animal, object, or idea, from the rest of the shapeless undifferentiated chaos of the world, is the first step towards representation.

Finally, whatever has been handed down to us is as such held to be 'historical', whether it is something which we know historiologically, or something that has been taken over as self-evidence, with its derivation hidden.

And the last signification means, in my view, history as history, or those past, epochal, cultural products we refer to as history and manipulate and study as such. This is the "meta" signification I guess--the pure history that is the subject of history as science, outside of our memories, products, and opinions.

If we take these four significations together, the upshot is that history is that specific historizing of existent Dasein which comes to pass in time, so that the historizing which is 'past' in our Being-with-one-another, and which at the same time has been 'handed down to us' and is continuingly effective, is regarded as "history" in the sense that gets emphasized.

The four significations are connected in that they relate to man as the 'subject' of events. How is the historizing character of such events to be defined? Is historizing a sequence of processes, an ever-changing emergence and disappearance of events? In what way does this historizing of history belong to Dasein? Is Dasein already factically 'present-at-hand' to begin with, so that on occasion it can get 'into a history'? Does Dasein first become historical by getting intertwined with events and circumstances? Or is the Being of Dasein constituted first of all by historizing, so that anything like circumstances, events, and vicissitudes is ontologically possible only because Dasein is historical in its Being? Why is it that the function of the past gets particularly stressed when the Dasein which historizes 'in time' is characterized 'temporally'?

If you aren't familiar with Being and Time then most of that just shot past you. Here's the gist, about which I can think of several professors who would be shaking their heads sadly if they knew I was writing. Heidegger believes that true being comes from being-there, in connection with various other beings, also being-there. Da-sein, get it? Of course, it's much more complex that simply being-there. There is 'care', which is the state of being with others in a way that one can say one is being-with them but also sort of seperate. And there is also time, which is a dimension in which Dasein must exist, for two there-being beings to be said to be there-being at the same time. Right? So time is necessary, for this true being, this Dasein. Not so far fetched, right?

Okay, so Heidegger is asking if history, of which we have just finished outlining four different ways in which we use the word, is the way that things be-in-time, then what is the relationship between history and these four different significations, and Dasein proper?

Personally, I'm more interested in his discussion of history than Dasein. As I said before, I think when he starts separating authentic being from inauthentic being is where he gets off course. There is no Proper-History, and Pedestrian-History. All of it is simply history, though it may have different facets. Same thing with Being. The thing about Being, is that no matter what you call it, what you dress it up as, or what titles and crowns you give it, it is still just Being. That's why it's so mysterious! Unless you eat psilocybin. Then Being is a whole lot of other things too. As my friend Steve once said, "energy is happen". But let's get back to history. Onward.

If history belongs to Dasein's Being, and this Being is based on temporality, then it would be easy to begin the existential analysis of historicality with those characteristics of the historical which obviously have a temporal meaning. Therefore, by characterizing more precisely the remarkably privileged position of the 'past' in the concept of history, we shall prepare the way for expounding the basic constitution of historicality.

The 'antiquities' preserved in museums (household gear, for exmaple) being to a 'time which is past'; yet they are still present-at-hand in the 'Present'. How far is such equipment historical, when it is not yet past? Is it historical, let us say, only because it has become an object of historiological interest, of antiquarian study or national lore? But such equipment can be a historiological object only because it is in itself somehow historical. We repeat the question; by what right do we call this entity "historical", when it is not yet past? Or do these 'Things' have 'in themselves' 'something past', even though they are still present-at-hand today? Then are these, which are present-at-hand, still what they were? Evidently these "things" have changed. The tools have become fragile and worm-eaten "in the course of time". But yet the specific character of the past that makes them something historical does not lie in this transience that continues even during their objective presence in the museum. But then what is past about the useful thing? What were the "things" that they no longer are today? They are still definite useful things, but out of use. However, if they were still in use, like many heirlooms in the household, would they then not be historical? Whether in use or out of use, they are no longer what they were. What is 'past'? Nothing other than the world within which they were encountered as things at hand belong to a context of useful things and used by heedful Dasein existing-in-the-world. That world is no longer. But what was previously innerworldly in that the world is still objectively present. As useful things belonging to that world, what is now still objectively present can nevertheless belong to the "past". But was does it mean that the world no-longer-is? World is only in the mode of existing Dasein, that is, factically as being-in-the-world.

Blam! My mind is blown! How can we say something is old, if it still exists right in front of our eyes? What is historical about them--because certainly there is something historical about them--is that they existed in a dimension of time that is-no-longer. They are from another epoch, whether it be the neolithic, the dark ages, "the Orient", or the 50s. We call them whatever we want, but still, they are in different rooms of the museum. Furthermore, they are in the museum to begin with. These things belong to our world now, but they also belong to another world then, which is definitely no longer this one.

The historical character of extant antiquities is thus grounded in the "past" of Dasein to whose world that past belongs. According to this, only "past" Dasein would be historical, but not "present" Dasein. However, can Dasein be past at all, if we define "past" as "now no longer objectively present or at hand"? Evidently Dasein can never be past, not because it is imperishable, but because it can essentially never be objectively present. Rather, if it is, it exists. But a Dasein that no longer exists is not past in the ontologically strict sense; it is rather having-been-there. The antiquities still objectively present have a "past" and a character of history because they belong to useful things and originate from a world that has-been--the world of a Dasein that has-been-there. Dasein is what is primarily historical. But does Dasein first become historical by no longer being there? Or is it historical precisely as factically existing? Is Dasein something that has-been only in the sense of having-been-there, or has it been as something making present and futural, that is, in the temporalizing of its temporality?

Here he is checking in with Dasein, by commenting on a difficulty. If the old stuff belonged to a world that is past, then in that world, it must have had Dasein (or the sort reserved for things rather than people) in order for it to really belong to that world. But the problem is, Dasein is characterized by it being now, among those Beings currently existing. So what happened to the old Dasein? Did it evaporate? Or is there as Dasein-shaped hole? Or is it something to do with the nature of Time as a continuum, that fundamentally supports the possibility of all Dasein, and through it, history? (WOW! You guessed number three! Good job! In metaphysics, it's always the most complicated rhetorical question that is the correct one. Either that, or none of them are.)

From this preliminary analysis of the useful things belonging to history that are still objectively present and yet somehow "past", it becomes clear that this kind of being is historical only on the basis of its belonging to the world. But the world has a historical kind of being because it constitutes an ontological determination of Dasein. It may be shown further that when one designates a time as 'the past', the meaning of this is not unequivocal; but 'the past' is manifestly distinct from one's having been, with which we have become acquainted as something constitutive for the ecstatical unity of Dasein's temporality. This, however, only makes the enigma ultimately more acute; why is it that the historical is determined predominantly by the 'past', or, to speak more appropriately, by the character of having-been, when that character is one that temporalizes itself equiprimordially with the Present and the future?

We contend that what is primarily historical is Dasein. That which is secondarily historical, however, is what we encounter within-the-world--not only equipment ready-to-hand, in the widest sense, but also the environing Nature as 'the very soil of history.' Entities other than Dasein which are historical by reason of belonging to the world, are what we call 'world-historical'. It can be shown that the ordinary conception of 'world-history' arises precisely from our orientation to what is thus secondarily historical. World-historical entities do not first get their historical character, let us say, by reason of an historiological Objectification; they get it rather as those entities which they are in themselves when they are encountered within-the-world.

If 'the past' is part of Dasein, how is it separate from our own individual pasts, and furthermore, separate from our sense of time in general? Well, let Heidegger introduce you to primary historicality, which is Dasein, and secondary historicality, which is the network of the world outside or our Being. Our Being relates to the world via Dasein, and objects relate to the history imbued to the world via Dasein, what he calls "the world-history".

This is where I step in. I am fine with a phenomenological reduction of history--things that are historical only are because we perceive them as such. But the only reason Heidegger is interested in creating a first/second order historicality, is so he can continue to privilege Dasein, the authentic Being, as something metaphysically more awesome than other things. After all, the 'volk's' sense of history is more important than, say, the history of production relations. Right? Because who cares about the factory, when OUR HISTORY AS SUBJECTIVE ACTORS is under discussion! Drill, baby, drill!

But really, look how he justifies it, as we continue:

In analyzing the historical character of equipment which is still present-at-hand, we have not only been led back to Dasein as that which is primarily historical; but at the same time we have been made to doubt whether the termporal characterization of the historical in general may be oriented primarily to the Being-in-time of anything present-at-hand. Entities do not become 'more historical' by being moved off into a past which is always farther and farther away, so that the oldest of them would be the most authentically historical. On the other hand, if the 'temporal' distance from "now and today" is of no primary constitutive significance for the historicality of entities that are authentically historical, this is not because these entities are not 'in time' and are timeless, but because they exist temporally in so primordial a manner that nothing present-at-hand 'in time', whether passing away or still coming along, could ever--by its ontological essence--be temporal in such a way.

He's so close, it kills me. He's right in saying that things do not become "more historical" by being older according to the timeline of years. And he's also right by saying that if "historicity" is not a factor of distance across this dimension, then temporal distance (say, number of years) in itself is "of no primary constitutive significance for the historicality of entities", and not because these things are somehow divorced from time, and timeless, beyond measure. They can be measured, and this measurement doesn't matter to their historicity.

But he thinks this proves that it is a sort of history that is therefore separate from our "present-at-hand 'in time' ": our present sense of the difference between past and future. It's a tautology--because Heidegger believes that current, present Being is fundamentally distinct from all historical, past senses of Being, then the difference between our appreciation of time-as-presence must be fundamentally different from our appreciation of time-as-history.

I would argue precisely the opposite. Our only sense of time is of time-as-history. Many philosophers have argued that the cone of perception extends only into the past. Of course, it is infuriating to us that we cannot "remember now", because as soon as we do, it is past. But think about it--what he is describing about history is precisely how we think about time. Our sense of history is not concerned with the difference in years. But our sense of history is certainly no separate from our subjective sense of "time passing". So doesn't this lead us to believe that our sense of history, and our sense of temporality are unified?

The trouble, it seems to me, is our necessary layering of measurement onto the segments of time. Remember the second signification of history? After the first, that past is both past and present, there is the second, that any particular past, is a derivation from such a past-present. A number line extends to infinity in both directions, but the minute you grab any segment of that number line, you must identify some sort of units to clarify which portion of the line, in relation to all other portions. To say segment 1,2 is different than 3,4 is easy; but to say segment 1,2 is different than -infinity,infinity is much more difficult. Hence, we develop the term 'zero', the point from which we extend in either direction towards infinity. But remember, 'zero' is also an infinity point. "Now" is just as non-existant as "zero past" and "zero future". Sure, we think about the past backing its way up to Now, just as the future extents outward from now. But this is simply a factor of time's passage, which in dimensional geometry, isn't actually "going" anywhere. Imagine backing up in time from a point in 10,000 BC all the way to Zero Past, or the point at which the dimension of time expires. Just as much of a pain in the brain as trying to "remember now", isn't it?

But this is the way we think about time. You could call it the Dasein in Time, or the fundamental condition of Time (or history, if you want to try this argument from the Marxist angle), or the authentic, primary history. It really doesn't matter what you call it. Time still is what it is, and is what it isn't. What we do know is that we have a sensation of time, and a sensation of history as time 'that is past'. If we reduce time and history to our phenomenological perception of it, this is what we are stuck with. We have the line of time, we have the expression of various segments along it, and we have the head-pounding problem of when we try to invent zeros for this line, in order to measure it correctly.

I contend, what is primarily historical, is this problem. We will always hurt our heads thinking about it, but we won't stop trying to think about these zeros, either.

But what is very interesting is what these meditations have uncovered about the way we think about time, which we ignored, maybe because our heads hurt so much, or just out of habit, trying to keep all the measurements straight. When we look at them, they only ensnare us further into the problem, but in ways that are very interesting, and provoke thought about new aspects of the problem.

Heidegger's four significations of history are true. We think about the past in terms of a unified past and present. We separate the particular past from our 'sense of the past'. We use history to define our world, and our place in the world. And most interestingly, we take up the material of our history, and study it as history, to try to know more about ourselves.

And all of this changes, the more work in historiology we do. The more 'raw data' of history we accumulate, and the more we categorize it and sift it, bringing it into our 'now', the more our history changes. What would Heidegger have thought of the Internet? No authentic Being out there, to be sure. But an awful lot of other stuff. Lots of being-in-general. Lots of history, both being studied, created, and lost. The Internet is a giant web of presence, but a presence that is impossible to measure, and is never infinite. It changes our perception of temporality, but nevertheless extends our temporality, allowing us to look at particular moments and segments in repetition, completely skip other moments, and interact with history at a speed we find comfortable, whether fast or slow. The Internet is a master tool of historiology. It is a SF nightmare scientific tool, but the tool is set to work on our perception of the world, and can never be unplugged, and we cannot look outside of its scopes anymore. The Internet began as a repository for data, but now it is the tool for producing the data, distributing the data, and the tool for producing the tools, and the relations of production. The Internet is the world-history, both as a repository thereof, as creator, and conduit, and content. You can unplug from the computer, but you cannot unplug from world-history. There is no timelessness outside of cyber-time. There is history that signifies in a seperate segment from cyber-time, but because cyber-time is part of our phenomenal perception of temporality, and part of our history, there can be no temporality existing separately, and no alternate history. There is only one history--a tangled web of then-and-now, ever changing, re-expressing itself, and constantly being experienced.

Really, its not just the Internet. Any tool, any object in the world changes our interpretation of it, and our Being in the world. When you pick up a hammer, your hand is changed. It can bash in nails. It can bash in heads. It is still your body doing these things, but it is doing it as part of being-with-hammer. The Internet is the same, only we are all connected to the same Internet. We are being-with-Internet. It's not all the same Internet, but none of it is different. It is all part of the same world. It is only so apparent because it is instrumental in our perception of history, which as you remember, is how we visualize our selves in the world. We all have always been connected via the ecosystem, and via our species, and via the distributed genetic logic of our interior chemical structures. ACGT. All of our chemistries speak the same language, and are in the same temporality. But because of consciousness, through some peculiar mechanism, we are driven to understand the span of time and space by segmentation, by splitting it into categories, and egos, and nows and thens, lines and dots, and all the rest. Now, with these consciousnesses interfacing with the same machine, we are starting to bring these individual, conscious-ego world-histories back together, re-writing and re-reading our historiological understanding of our own histories, and creating the world-history anew as we go. We are ditching some of the more quantitatively temporal segmentation strategies as we go. Minutes of the day.... time zones... yesterday versus the day before... what does it matter? All that matters is what history continues to be, and continues to show us about itself. And, what it still refuses to allow us to comprehend, by way of its own structure.

It will be said that these deliberations have been rather petty. No one denies that at bottom human Dasein is the primary 'subject' of history; and the ordinary conception of history, which we have cited, says so plainly enough. But with the thesis that 'Dasein is historical', one has in view not just the ontical fact that in man we are presented with a more or less important 'atom' in the workings of world-history, and that we remains the plaything of circumstances and events. This thesis raises the problem: to what extent and on the basis of what ontological conditions, does historicality belong, as an essential constitutive state, to the subjectivity of the 'historical' subject?

The easy way out would be to say that in this post-property Internet dimension, nothing belongs to anyone any more. Not even history; not even historicality. Historiology, the province of entrepreneurial metaphysicians, is now open territory to anyone. But, this is not really the answer to the question. Historicality does belong to someone; it has to, if it is something distinctly historical. You can't have a phenomenological reduction without someone to observe the phenomena. But I think what has changed is, what it means to 'belong'. We are not really atoms in the structure of world-history, nor amino acids, nor even electrons. We are fully conscious and individual animals, capable of independent worldly life and thought, that never the less choose to plug in and share with each other, creating new dimensions of time, space, and being where there were not before, and leaving old ones behind in the recesses and gutters of our collective memory. And that, when you start thinking about it, is really much more complicated.

The Future is Totally Crazy

I also wrote a new article for The Brutalitarian, during an accidental caffeine and pseudoepinephrine frenzy.

Don't worry, I did go back and edit it later.

But, the article is still a thick circus of time-travel, Internet/informational riffing, Kantian metaphysics, and Science Fact/Fantasy.

It all started when @greatdismal, (who I guess is some guy who writes SF books), posted a flurry of updates about atemporality. It got me all in a tizzy, because I have this little twitch about time and history (yes I am the sort of person that has a twitch about time and history). It has a lot to do with politics and post-structural theory, but to cut off the story of my theoretical life, let's just say I have a certain feeling that the world would be a much better place if we all thought about time more in terms of Bergson's concept of "duration", rather than according to a humanistic timeline of history. More feeling, less fascism.

Anyway, you may say I'm a loony, anarchist metaphysician, but I'm not the only one.

So, reading Mssr. Gibson's tweets got me all a-thinking, and I had to go read the second section of Bergson's Time and Free-Will again. Which naturally, got me thinking of Kant by way of Deleuze. (Both of Deleuze's essays about Bergson and Kant respectively, are very highly reccomended. By someone, probably. By someone with an interest in blowing your mind.)

Now, I was planning one of my "positivity" posts about Kant's metaphysical exposition of time, because it's pretty cool, and one of those things I keep returning to in philosophy, case in point. But because I was also thinking about cyber-space, and because I am always, always thinking about the Internet (help me. please, somebody help me) I put away that blog post for a minute, and started thinking about cyber-time.

At this point, I was already on my second cup of coffee, and then had a bout of sneezes, which sent me to the medicine cabinet.

The rest, as they say, is totally cognized cyber-time.

But this article is actually pretty good. Yes, it is bizarre how 5000 words can land in a flurry of three hours, and yes, it will probably not appeal to anyone not interested in the metaphysics of time and cognition, and yes, I had to go back and do a significant amount of editing upon the realization I had used the word "consciousness" over fifty times in six pages. But, I already did all that editing! Now it's pretty tight. If I added a little Bergson and made the language a bit more academic, I would totally turn this in as a course paper.

But seeing as the only course I'm currently enrolled in is, "A Literature Tinker's Guide to the Ever-Increasing Spiral of Crackpotism", (my average is currently a C+) I have instead uploaded it to the Internet.

Basically, the gist is, although the timeline of history is a perfectly good metaphor for our temporal understanding of the world, the Internet and a capacity for abstract thinking we will simply abbreviate as "SF" is allowing us to get more towards the root of our intuitions of time-relations--and as such, we are now, bit by bit, being able to violate that temporal timeline in what we might, according to the metaphor, call "time-travel".

LOL

So, there you have it. Crackpot Metaphysics Ltd, free for you on the Internet.

Eichmann Design

So, what's the deal with Bruce Sterling anyway?

He certainly seems to have his hyperlinks in a lot of Internet pies.

I suppose if your credit in many projects is labeled as "____-visionary", then that sort of thing just spawns new links to things.

Also, he would appear to be just a good old-fashioned interesting guy (sort of a Man of Letters for the media age).

The point: here I am, again, posting about something he posted. (Though, let's just say it straight out--his blog is by far one of the best sources for "original" content posts. That is, I find many things from him first, and then see it re-posted other places. Sort of like the re-posting I'm committing right now.) A lot of hyperlinks--a lot of pies.

Anyway, the something is this thing - http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000228.php

I'm not going to give it a cleverly-named hyperlink. Frankly, I would rather not post about it at all. I even instituted my new "24-hour" policy, saving the link and waiting 24 hours (about a week in Internet time) to make sure I really had something worth saying before I posted.

And that asshole's picture on the linked page is still pissing me off.

Alright: so I don't know if he is an asshole. He could be a great guy. But because the content of the page is driving me crazy, I'm going to pretend he is a jerk, (and not say his name). Because that's what we do with "Little Eichmann's" right?

Whoa! Easy there, tiger! Why don't you just stick to insulting the guy personality?

Because this is micro-fascism, pure and simple.

I have nothing against product design, or information architecture. I am huge fans of both as disciplines, and am constantly amazed by the people who do this sort of work.

It is just this simple fact: the concepts that he proposes in outlining the conjunction of product design and information architecture, what he calls "experience design", go against everything I know about believe about theory and philosophy.

I'm not saying he's incorrect. I'm not saying he's inaccurate. He may describe the current field of design and information architecture better than anyone ever has. But what he is describing is against just about everything I know and believe.

Philosophy and modern critical theory, though often giving credit for bringing the relativism and anti-moralism of the post-modern age to the mainstream, are not laissez-faire disciplines. It is precisely the prescriptive nature of theory that rejects such dogmatic world-views as idealism and moralism. Of course, after the philosopher finishes his tirade about the errors of the world, if you ask him/her "so what do you actually believe?" you will probably get a good deal of specious circumambulation and general backpedalling. This does not mean s/he does not have an answer to the question, it simply means the answer is impossible without a lot of well-practiced specious circumambulation and general backpedalling.

The goal of thought is to understand and organize our consciousness of the material world, and by doing so, seek to improve it. Philosophers and theorists are working at it, and anyone can take a look at the world around them and see the need is dire. However, this doesn't make the work of thought any less difficult and time-consuming. Luckily, we've developed some good tools over the years. Philosophers have a pretty decent "means of production" at their disposal, and some of the best "thought designers" in history have contributed to our material work on thought and theory.

But this fellow ignores all of that. Rather than implementing a single feature of responsible "thought design" in his notions, the twenty "deliverables" mentioned are antithetical to any sort of critical thinking, most simply because they reject the actual "critical" element of thought and replace it with jargon, slogans, icons, and hype. This is the philosophy of capitalism at its best/worst--rather than use any means of thought, he has done an end-run around theory and formed himself twenty easily identifiable products, i.e. deliverables. He hasn't built these ideas in the time-tested practice of thought--he's simply gone out to the streets and picked some ideas that sounded like they would be popular. What part of design is designing popularity? Isn't the goal to design new things and improve upon old ones, thereby improving user experience? What in design theory says it is a good idea to take a product and repackage it into another product? The art of USB dongles? It's surplus-value at its least productive. These "deliverables" are the branding of thought into a product. Thought (TM): in easily consumable packages, ready to be bought and thrown away. And naturally, the folks in his comments section eat it up.

It would be one thing if he created these "deliverables" from nothing. But he committed the worst fallacy of ethical philosophy in designing these products, making them actually harmful, rather than benignly un-caloric. He starts with assumptions, and works backwards. (Milk is white/this milk is not white enough/let's add melamine.) It's worse than a fallacy actually, because after his flawed premise that "anything the use will buy is good design", he doesn't even work backward with logic. (Milk is white/this milk is not white enough/let's add lead.) These concepts don't rely so much on flawed logic, so much as no logic at all. They are, in a way, deductive paralogisms: he takes particular examples, which may or may not be true, and then falsely derrives inferences from them. Not so much an error as a complete lack of method entirely. They're not sound; they're not logical; all they seem to be is his particular view of the world--a world in which thought only exists in its ability to be sold to a consumer.

This could very well be a new stage of capitalism, rearing its head. Surplus-value, classically an abstraction of material circumstances used to siphon material production, has now leeched its way into the super-super-structure: our thought itself. It is wrecking the material logic of thought! It's siphoning off intellectual production! It is a contradiction of the material fundamentals of reason itself! And unlike some other materialists, I have no confidence that such contradictions will subsume themselves.

But enough of this abstraction. Let's look at the "deliverables" themselves, and try to figure out how he thought this might be a good way to think.

1. Stories. "A good story about a user's experience can help people to see the problem (or opportunity), motivate people to take action, and stick in people's memories long after we're gone." And a good joke can make you hungry. What the hell is this supposed to mean? Narratives are important to people, sure. But narratives sell wars! Narratives put people in camps! How about rather than tell people a story about how good a product is, we ask them to tell us a story about their ideal product? Then we can analyze the story, and see what their stories tell us about their needs and goals. Oh, but that might mean I have to listen, rather than just speak.

2. Proverbs. " High-concept pitches, generative analogies, and experience strategies invoke existing schemas to put the world in a wardrobe." Oh yes, for example: Arbeit Macht Frei. That was a brilliant proverb. Just take a look at his own sentence: it can mean whatever the hell you want. "We're all in this together", or "we need more lebensraum". What was it Bush said? "Fool me once..." yeah, exactly. Proverbs--the unequivocable enemies of logical thought.

3. Personas. "Portraits and profiles of user types (and their goals and behaviors) remind us all that "you are not the user" and serve as an invaluable compass for design and development." I think we normally call these stereotypes. Remember, the customer doesn't think like you--he is stupid, likes small form factors, and eats babies.

4. Scenarios. "Positioning personas in natural contexts gets us thinking about how a system fits the lives of real people." Because this obviously makes more sense than asking real people about their lives. I do most of my sociology through reality television now. Have you heard? Most of them are real people!

5. Content Inventories. "Reviewing and describing documents and objects is a prerequisite to effective structure and organization. The artifact (often a spreadsheet) is a sign of due diligence." Ask anybody in production how useful they find inventories to be. It wastes time to collect, wastes time to correct, and it even if its right, it tells you what is sitting right in front of you. And due diligence? I would think if this Year of Our Finacial Apocalypse taught us anything, it is that due diligence doesn't mean shit if you don't know how to count.

6. Analytics. "We learn by wallowing in interaction, search, and navigation data. And, we teach by uncovering and charting the most pivotal landmarks, portals, paths, and patterns." Isn't the proverb: 'we learn by doing'? Remember: economists don't make the economy, they just try to understand it six months later. Now, analysis would be something: critical investigation of method and process. If you don't use the right metric, data is nothing. (See above comment about due diligence).

7. User Surveys. "Asking the same questions of many users across multiple audiences can reveal existing gaps and common needs, and show how they map to customer satisfaction." This is a deliverable? Really? A Survey? Well, it worked great for No Child Left Behind. Bring on the standardization!

8. Concept Maps. "In the territory of concepts, a good map can help us see where we are and decide what to do by establishing landmarks, clarifying relationships, and identifying true north." This makes me want to vomit. While its not overt fascism, the marketing-consultant schmaltz of it is still killing me inside. How about instead, "what is a good map?" That would be an actual, interesting concept. This guy's amazing theoretical mind is telling me what a map is for. Is he getting paid for this?

9. System Maps. "A visual representation of objects and relationships within a system can aid understanding and finding for both stakeholders and users. Shift gears from "as-is" to "to-be" and you have a blueprint for structural redesign." Wait a minute, he just copied #8! But seriously: one of the biggest swindles of the last Bush administration was the re-designed concept maps of DHS after Katrina. Look it up. They gutted the organization with a rusty, bureaucratic sword. You couldn't even find an email address, a PO box, or a web page by the time they were done with their system maps. This is a literally recipe for disaster.

10. Process Flows. "How do users move through a system? How can we improve these flows? A symbolic depiction can enlighten desire lines and show the benefits of (less) chosen paths." Three deliverables in a row have told me to draw a picture. Next he'll be telling me to make a Powerpoint. First Chekoslovakia, then Poland!

11. Wireframes. "Sketches of pages and screens can focus us on structure, organization, navigation, and interaction before investing time and attention in color, typography, and image."
Is this a sketch, a flow, a diagram, or a map? What's the difference? Those would be actually thought-provoking questions.

12. Storyboards. "A series of sketches with narrative displayed in sequence can tell a story and paint a picture by showing interaction between users and systems in context over time." See what he did here? He combined "stories" with "pictures"! Next stop, rhyming lyrics, and cats in hats!

13. Concept Designs. "Interface designs and composite art invoke an emotional response and capture people's attention by presenting a high-fidelity image of how the product could look." He seems to have made good use of this one with his own "receivables". Too bad most concepts never make it to production. I wonder why?

14. Prototypes. "From paper prototypes to pre-alpha software and hardware, working models drive rapid iteration and emotional engagement by showing how a product will look and feel."
Doesn't this refute the previous? What good is a concept if you can't get it to work? Also: it seems that he stopped short of a prototype for his own receivables. I can tell from the concept that it wouldn't work.

15. Narrative Reports. "Writing is a great tool for thinking and organizing. And, it's hard to beat a written report for presenting detailed results and analysis or formal recommendations. Reports can serve as a container for most other deliverables." Well said. Too bad he didn't follow his own advice. But wait: he never specified that the writing be good, or make sense! All style, no substance. No wonder they call it "Intelligent Design"!

16. Presentations. "As the lingua franca of business, slideshows (and videos) can be great for telling a story or painting a picture. They can also be dead boring, unless you present in person, hit the highlights, and beware the bullets. Presentations can serve as a container for most other deliverables." Thank goodness! I thought we'd miss Powerpoint! Powerpoint: your most boring ideas, presented in a font and color of your choice. Now, with Clip Art!

17. Plans. "Project plans, roadmaps, and schedules guide design and development activity by clarifying roles and responsibilities." Could have used one of these for the Iraq Occupation. Note to self: come up with one for the Economic Bailout. Point: even bad plans are plans. Furthermore: even terribly destructive plans are plans.

18. Specifications. "An explicit set of requirements describing the behavior or function of a system is often a necessary element in the transition from design to development." Fuck! Enough of these sorts of "deliverables", and I'll drive my car off a bridge! Sure, this one is meaningless jargon, but it's also the exactly backwards to how design should work! Should you be developing function FIRST? Great product! Now: what should we make it do? WHO THINKS THIS WAY?

19. Style Guides. "A manual that defines a set of standards for identity, design, and writing can promote clarity and consistency." Yeah, it was the consistent font and margins that really pulled this set of deliverables together. Maybe what it needs next is a good logo, or a symbol. Maybe on a flag? Then we can have people salute that flag! If they don't we'll shoot them! Clear, and consistent!

20. Design Patterns. "A pattern library that shows repeatable solutions to common problems can describe best practices, encourage sharing and reuse, and promote consistency." Much of these ideas, in the most generous of terms, seem loosely organized by the principle of designing a product for a particular situation and audience. Now, he's telling us to to the reverse. he told us to use stereotypes, then he told us to do surveys. He told us to sell the idea, then he told us to listen to the customer. This is the idiotic championing of the contradictory schemas, which you may remember from such wonderful methodologies as State Communism and Conservatism. Give them a couple of ideas, and don't worry if they contradict each other. Just yell them over and over, and the whole crowd will yell with you. Repetition is the key--substance is meaningless.



Okay, so perhaps I was a little harsh: not every one of these ideas is fascist. But none of them are smart, well-described, or planned in any sort of theory that could be termed "progressive, useful, rational thought". And, well, some of them are sort fascist--particularly 1-4, and maybe 6 and 19. This is the point of the "little-Eichmann", you don't have to wave the flag, you just enable the people who do. If design, especially information design, doesn't think that enabling harmful thought processes is its problem, it has another thing coming. Even if your goal is to make money, which I totally understand, debilititating the customers, misunderstanding their needs, and designing useless crap as a result is hardly a sustainable way of doing it. Think about any time-tested champion of design. Now, think about how many of them focused on idiotic and illogical "receivables" like these. Maybe they used parts of these concepts, somewhere, somehow (with such broad, nebulously defined ideas it would be tough to avoid resembling some element of it), but the core of their design principles involved actual creative thought. Don't just take it from me, the materialist philosopher. Ask an actual designer.

There is a reason that philosophy is still around. It's in the business of designing ideas--and this is as self-referential a design process if ever there was. Philosophy knows that good thought is not going to please the customer all the time. But eventually, good results trumps any number of stories, presentation and stylesheets.

Wii are Railroads

Wow: Michael Bhaskar. Someone who finally gets the tech of literature. Well, perhaps this is a bit premature; it is hard to say that any of us literary minded folk really get the technology of literature, for if we did, we would not be suffering but blossoming. Nevertheless, Mr. Bhaskar hits far closer to the mark in his blog post on the "digital team" blog over at Pan MacMillan.

Being part of the digital team, it is likely that he sees literature more as a data or a technology than simple words and ink on paper. And he proves it with his juxtaposition between the US railway industry and Nintendo. (such a mix of infrastructural and fanboy tech is certainly a good start!)

"[...] there was no fundamental problem with the railways contrasting the States with Europe, where to this day railways are thriving. Rather there was a problem with the attitudes of the railway companies. They had always seen themselves to be in the railways business and focussed their efforts as such. According to Levitt this was their mistake- had they realised from the beginning that what they were in was the transportation business they would have been much better prepared to respond to and piggyback on innovations like the car, the lorry, the highway and the airplane.

[...]Nintendo originally produced hanafuda (Japanese card games). Throughout their history though they refused to define themselves as makers of card games- they saw themselves as facilitators of play, and so had a constantly evolving product set while maintaining a consistent purpose. It meant they were always ideally positioned to exploit new advances and could comfortably react to change. Moreover it has led to them being in the vanguard of innovation; just when their competitors Sony and Microsoft were beefing up their consoles for the hardcore gamer, spending mega bucks turning games machines into omnipotent media playing nodes, Nintendo re wrote the rule book.

The DS and the Wii, with their intuitive gestural interfaces and ludic game design, perfectly fit what legendary Nintendo games designer Shigeru Miyamoto sees as the defining goal of Nintendo: to create products grandparents and grandchildren can play together. Both consoles were colossal risks for Nintendo; both paid off handsomely."

The idea that I hate hearing from publishing folk is that literature needs to find its iPod--this always follows or leads a mention of the apparent success of the Amazon Kindle. The eBook is not an iTune! This is a perfect example of false appreciation of technology. These publishers are looking to the success of the iPod, and wishing the same for their own business. They are not saying, let's make storage of books portable, easily accessible and storable, downloadable, and personal. They are saying this, but only in the context of the fact that it made Apple a shitload of money. The iPod was perfect for music, because it gave music fans the exact tools that they had been missing for years. The Walkman got them part way there, and the Discman got closer. But the iPod was perfect for the majority of consumers. And there you have it: a technological milestone was created, but only looking at it in the past, from the point of view of critical acceptance and profit.

Nobody wants these things for books. Well, okay: some people do. And all those people will buy a Kindle this year and maybe the next. But then the market will die off, for the simple fact that the Kindle does not do anything that a hardback will not do--it is only a gimmicky, electronic Norton's Anthology (albeit one with many pages). In fact, the hardback is still a better technology in some respects, the total lack of DRM being one major respect, but closely followed by exchangability and durability.

What I've been writing about is the changing face of the technology of literature, happening under our noses. Gaming has changed because the technology has developed--the idea of an asocial young man peering into a tiny screen in a basement is past. Americans may still be bowling alone, but now they are gaming together, both virtually and in person. Nintendo saw the potential in the technology, and made it happen. They did not look at another successful technology and attempt to ape their business to it. Wanna buy a hybrid-powered gaming system? I think not.

But Bhaskar is right in saying that while we shouldn't be railways, we can't really be Nintendos either. We are not 'media providers' any more than we are simply bookmakers:

"As much as we can say that we are curators of stories and information, people involved in the entertainment/education business pure and simple, we simply don’t have the scale, the expertise and the financial muscle to become full on web platforms, film studios, arts infrastructure bodies or whatever else moving beyond print matter might entail."

Yes: literature must remember what literature is. Not just books, not just entertainment, but _____. The blank there is where I did not say, "a complicated human mixture of thought and desire manifested in the semiotics of symbolic phenomenal experience." I did not say it because that sentence does not translate into literature any more than gaming translates into "a somatic expression of imagination that breaks down the boundaries between the psychological and the social realm". Literature has to find itself out, because--I will all but promise you--it will not be a philosopher that creates the literature of the digital age anymore than it will be a business person.

The End of an Epoch, the Beginning of... What?

It is 840am, and after staying up all-night in my typical fashion, I have completed my final graduate school paper, and perhaps the last academic paper I will ever write. My Master's degree is complete.

As the gray light of dawn was crawling its way to my window down our narrow alley here in Harlem, I was flipping through the last book of my last graduate school paper, trying to wrestle up a few pertinent quotes to support my argument. The paper was a critique of structuralist linguistics as relates to psychoanalysis and philosophy, which pretty much is the theme of all of the academic work I have done in the last year. The book was Anti-Oedipus, by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, which has been an pivotal inspiration to my academic work for the past three years at least. Needless to say, I know the book well, and as the paper was almost done and not entirely a new subject, I was just coasting through the last stretch.

Maybe it was looking at some of my older margin notes, or maybe it was the gray quality of the dawn light, or maybe it was just a general nostalgia upon reaching such a milestone as the last of the last, but I was recalling when I first picked up the book. Reading through the truly awe-inspiring first section, I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on that curious University of Minnesota typeface. It was in San Francisco, when a couple of friends and myself were on a road trip. I believe I had shoplifted that copy of the book; the one crime I've ever really committed in earnest is shoplifting books. As a college student a $40 philosophy book not required for a course is a pretty hefty detraction from the alcohol budget. Besides, it was from a large chain bookstore, the authors were dead and therefore not losing out on royalties, and I think my opinion on intellectual property have been reviewed before.

So I was sitting on a rock in Golden Gate National Recreation Area, overlooking the gray Pacific Ocean from what I imagine now was several hundred feet but was actually probably fifty or so, the friends were asleep in the tent near the car with Connecticut plates that was full of trash, and I had Anti-Oedipus on my lap under the gray morning sky. I knew nothing about to book except that it was supposed to be "good" and that I liked the title. After reading it for an hour and getting 15 pages in, I remember telling my friend what I thought "they were trying to say," and although I can't remember what it was that I thought I understood, I knew that sometime later I could tell that I still had absolutely no idea what was going on in those crazy sentences about kissing and shit machines and schizophrenics on walks and ancient paranoiac societies.

Here we are, me and the same copy of the book, four years later. The corners are bent, the spine broken, most of the pages written with notes that have been erased, written again, and still illegible/undecipherable. Since then I've read some Beckett and Artaud, looked up the references I didn't know, read a lot more Freud than 3 Essays on Sexuality and a lot more Marx than The Communist Manifesto, and am still mystified by why endnote #5 to Section 4 is completely blank. Now, I think that my dog-eared, crumbled, and eraser-mark ridden brain actually does understand what "they were trying to say." I really do. I've impressed at least one Deleuze scholar with my reading and analysis of it, and considering how many grad students I've seen struggle with this text, I feel that this is something of which I may legitimately be proud.

It's really a fantastic book. I think I've heard just about every criticism of it imaginable; or at least enough so that the criticisms I hear are the same over and again. But I find it remarkable that I can still pick it up now and get that goofy, nerdy feeling of being so intrigued and excited by a specific book that I would steal a copy of it from a store and then hold it in my hands just to enjoy that I was "going to read it".

If only this had happened for me with philosophy in general, maybe I would be signing on for the PhD right now rather than cutting and running with a terminal MA. But then again, my work for the MA has been largely based upon my inspiration from and my love for this book. I've read the authors' other works, read their influences and contemporaries, and written some of what I feel is fairly original work comparing, contrasting, critiquing, and explicating all different aspects of all. And that is what academic philosophy is, I suppose. It's not that I even lost interest after a while.

I think what it was is that I really wanted to convince other people, somebody, anybody, that this book really is as great as I think it is. Most people aren't interested, a bunch have tried and given up, and a few have engaged it. But even with them, in the end its only academic philosophy. They write, they read, they talk, and then they go on and do something else. For some reason, with this book (and granted, with a few others) I thought the authors were really on to something. I thought that this wouldn't just be another book to sit on the shelf. I always thought of this book as a manual; I thought of it as the kind of book that does get destroyed from use, because it is a tool and not just a reference. Not just a status symbol, and not just a conversation piece, I thought that this was a book that was really going to help philosophy do all that stuff that it says it can do for the world.

I don't know if that was a pipe dream, or I just didn't try hard enough, or I didn't find the right people, or what happened. But I do know that now I have a Master's degree in philosophy, a whole bunch of books, and I seem to be over- or under-qualified for just about every job out there. I'm pretty hard-pressed to find a downside of having an MA, (except for my world of debt, that is) but I really just feel like the whole thing has been a waste of time. I've definitely learned a lot, and I can write even better now than when I graduated from college. But as far as me "advancing my life," not in a professional sense, but in terms of things that I want to accomplish, the substance of this reflection is about where I'm at today.

Yes, life-lessons and such. Wonderful, thanks for your perspective. I guess in two more years it won't matter, and I'll be glad I did it. Maybe I'll even hate the real world so much that I'll be running back to the academy for the PhD.

But I can say that after these stressful, misdirected, and sometimes downright frustrating two years I'm still glad I can open this book and get that "read like I stole something" feeling all over again. Thanks, Gilles and Felix. Rest in peace; you've made my world a better place.