Digital Parables.
One pivotal landmark of contemporary culture already in play by 2005 but by no means at its current scale or profundity was an all-absorbing involvement in and dependency on digital technologies. There was simply no way of anticipating the full degree to which cybernetic devices and ontology would n...
| Publicado en: | Filozofski Vestnik Vol. 37; no. 2; pp. 151 - 167 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Slovenian Academy of Sciences & Arts
2016
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | One pivotal landmark of contemporary culture already in play by 2005 but by no means at its current scale or profundity was an all-absorbing involvement in and dependency on digital technologies. There was simply no way of anticipating the full degree to which cybernetic devices and ontology would not only overwhelm communications and the synthesis, archiving, formatting, and recall of information but also dominate socio-economic relations and interactions, cognition, and even psycho-motor capability. It turns out, in the hindsight afforded by 2015, that the geeks who, already in the 1970's and 1980's discerned the lineaments and metaphysics of the cybernetic universe, were not so far removed along the academic corridor from those wild and invariably subversive critical theorists as we might think. For one, the Anthony Wilden, whose 1972 System and Structure established definitive benchmarks for the interaction between analog and digital organization, is the same critic whose translations, e.g, of Language of the Self, introduced the English-speaking audience to the thought of Jacques Lacan. Douglas R. Hofstadter, in composing a Computer Science textbook for the general public (Gödel, Escher Bach, 1979), synthesized a work as literarily playful as scientifically methodical. His characterization of the advances, above all by Kurt Gödel, that enabled complex strings of numbers to become operational (as in computer programs), demonstrates striking parallels to the "jumping" of theoretical levels made possible by Jacques Derrida's inaugural, profoundly influential deconstructions (whether of presence, propriety, or Being). The university itself, in 2015, is, by dint of its own systematic digitization, embroiled in seismic, open-ended transformation. Many of the university's operational fundaments as of 2005 are nothing if not up for grabs a decade later. It is in this sense that a "digital unconscious" entrenching and expanding itself at an inconceivable rate of acceleration presents cultural critics both with a daunting challenge and a creative opportunity. Neither high-mindedly distancing ourselves from these phenomena and their epiphenome-na nor unreservedly espousing the technologies will quite do. This paper unpacks several of the memorable parables through which the avatars of the digital age prepared the public both for the technology's creative leaps and its embedded double-binds. Eden izmed mejnikov sodobne kulture, prisotnih že od leta 2005 naprej, čeprav še zdaleč ne v današnjem obsegu in globini, je bila vseobsegajoča vključenost v digitalnih tehnolo-gij in odvisnost od njih. Nikakor nismo mogli pričakovati, da bodo kibernetične naprave in ontologija v tako veliki meri ne zgolj prevzele komunikacije in sinteze, arhiviranja, oblikovanja ter priklice informacij, temveč tudi prevladale nad družbenoekonomskimi razmerji in interakcijami, spoznanjem in celo psihično-motoričnimi zmožnostmi. Iz per-spektive leta 2015 lahko za nazaj vidimo, da »geeki«, ki so že v 70ih in 80ih letih prejšnje-ga stoletja zaznali razvoj in metafiziko kibernetičnega univerzuma, skupaj z akademsko sfero niso bili tako oddaljeni od tistih divjih in vselej subverzivnih kritičnih teoretikov, kot smo mislili. Tako je npr. Anthony Wilden, čigar delo System and Structure iz leta 1972 je začrtalo merila interakcije med analogno in digitalno organizacijo, isti kritik katerega prevod Language of the Self, je širšemu angleško govorečemu občinstvu predstavilo misel Jacquesa Lacana. Douglas R. Hofstadter je pri oblikovanju računalniškega znanstvenega učbenika, namenjenega širši javnosti (Gödel, Escher Bach, 1979), ustvaril tako literarno igrivo kot znanstveno metodično delo. Njegova opredelitev dosežkov, predvsem Kurta Gödela, ki je operacionaliziral kompleksne nize števil (kot v računalniških programih), nam prikažejo presenetljive vzporednice s »preskokovanjem« teoretičnih nivni, ki ga je omogočila prvotna, zelo vplivna dekonstrukcija (pa naj gre za prezenco, lastnost ali bit) Jacquesa Derridaja. Univerza se je leta 2015 pod vplivom lastne sistematične digitalizacije zapletla v seizmično tranformacijo brez konca. Desetletje pozneje nam je tako na voljo veliko univerzitetnih operativnih osnov iz leta 2005. »Digitalno nezavedno«, ki se utrjuje in širi ob neizmerno pospešeni hitrosti, predstavlja za kulturne kritike hkrati zastrašujoč izziv in kreativno priložnost. Vendar pa niti vzvišena distanca od omenjenih fenomenov in njihovih epifenomenov niti nekritično zagovarjanje tehnologije nista povsem ustre-zna. Pričujoči prispevek razgrne več nepozabnih parabol, s pomočjo katerih so avatarji digitalne dobe javnost pripravili tako na kreativne tehnološke skoke kot tudi na njim vgrajene double-binds. |
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