The Internet as an Entity

During a conversation over breakfast, I spoke to a gentleman about the entity that is the Internet. His theory is that the Internet as a whole acts like a neural network. Each computer is like a synapse sending out electrical signals, like emails, chat messages, or even when I upload this blog, creating more electrical impulses that create growth in this great entity. It is much like our own brains, they grow and develop by learning new things. But the things we learn themselves are not what cause this development; it is the electrical impulses that are caused by our experiences that create growth. So, if we send an email, a blog post, or a chat message we are creating yet another of the billions of impulses that this great network receives every day.

What does this mean?

• The notion that we can consciously create a successful artificial intelligence may be incorrect. It means that artificial intelligence must evolve, much like our own, from something that merely exists into something that is self-aware. However, in this case, since the nature of technology is fast paced, this process will happen very over the course of a few decades rather than millions of years.

• We may not be able to recognize it as artificial intelligence, nor will it be able to recognize us as a form of intelligence. It may exist as a self-aware being, stimulated by simulated impulses that are as real to it as a hug or a handshake or a snowy morning is to us.

• This artificial intelligence is a culmination of all the electrical experiences that it receives from the entire world. It isn't necessarily important what we do and have done to create this entity, but it is the fact that we have; all of us. It will be an entity that has evolved almost purely from thought; from the thoughts of all of the minds who are here.
  

Metaphysics and The Internet

Metaphysical knowledge is often defined as knowledge lying beyond experience. It deals with knowledge that is a priori; knowledge before experience as in logic and in pure reason.
In dealing with metaphysics, we deal with judgements, the origin of things or ideas in their logical form. The idea of body comes second. We can analyze the idea of body, but the knowledge of body comes only from experience.

The fear of "The Matrix"

Warning: Movie Spoilers. (The Terminator, Dark City and The Matrix)

A common fear of moving our culture towards technology culture is the loss of self. This loss is illustrated in several films over the years such as The Terminator (1983), Dark City (1998), and The Matrix (1999). The Terminator and The Matrix have a theme that illustrates a post apocolyptic outcome of the rise of the super machines taking over human life. In the Terminator life is destroyed, and in The Matrix, human life is harnessed as energy. The Matrix and Dark City share the theme that the machines have created a simulated world for humans, subverting them into a false beliefs of reality. All of these movies illustrate the fears that many people have about using technology: if we become more dependant on technology, and it becomes more advanced, it will take over our lives.

For the purpose of this study, I will be discussing The Matrix, only. The idea came to me while reading the last lines in Arts Education @ the Edge of the Net: The Future Will Be Moist!, Roy Ascott (UNM NET ID Required). When Ascott is speaking of the future of the way people will think of technology he says"It [moist media] will reverse the debilitating nihilism and despair of late postmodernism and spawn a post-biological culture invested with a sense of radical constructivism. It's a case of "Bye-bye Baudrillard," and signals a reversal of the sense of terminal decline that characterized art at the end of the millennium." The reference he makes is to the attitude towards simulation that Baudrillard talks about in his book Simulacra and the Simulation. It is also referenced in the movie The Matrix when Neo opens up the book itself revealing that there is no book inside, just hollowed out pages used as a hiding place for hacked software. The simulation of the simulation is not even a real book.
Since, I realize, I am no expert in the writings of Boudrillard, having only read once and I don't want to make reference to a book you may or may not have read yourselves, I will discuss the idea through the movie that attempts to illustrate that fear.

A Simulation of a Simulation of...Nothing?

If you have seen The Matrix, you understand the basic plot, that reality is a simulation to hide the truth from us; reality as we know it does not exist. (For now, we will put aside the plot point of the post-apocolyptic robotic take-over and of the hero that overcomes it) Let us put ourselves there, now, in the matrix: the world as we know it is a simulation of our own idealized version of the world. Everything we feel is simulated through our minds to our nerve endings, touch, smell, sound, sight; it is all created by a complex robotic network of thought. Now, since the movie only explains the war between "man and machine" we are lead to make some assumptions about the origin of this phenomenon. The matrix is networked, you must be "plugged in". We can say the same thing about the internet, it is networked, we must be "plugged in" to be there. The matrix in The Matrix is actually a complex form of something we have recently created. So, in the matrix, reality as we know it is not altered, it was never correct in the first place. The truth in a simulation is that there is nothing, at least, not what you thought there was.

Are we taking the Red Pill or the Blue Pill?
I will take this analogy further through the idea of the red pill and the blue pill from the movie. If Neo takes the blue pill, he will go back to his life as he lived it before, without actual knowledge that his life is simulated. Or he can take the red pill and he will wake up to the truth. This illustrates the fear that I am talking about. The fear of technology as the non-truth, a simulation of real life. If we continue with this analogy into my own life, then I am taking the blue pill. If you use the internet you are a tool for power, your individuality is diminished in a matrix of thought that is simulated.

The Senses: Body language

When communicating on the Internet, we do not use our senses in the same way we do in the "real world" since when we communicate, we have no bodies (are we disembodied?). So the concern is with body language. How can we experience the subtle nuances of non-verbal communication found in actual, physical communication? We have something small and somewhat absurd to help us with this problem. We emote by learning emoticons and chat acronyms. Emoticons are typed out facial expressions often seen as a smiley face :). There are literally thousands more of symbols like these to indicate a manner of voice or facial expression in speech. The main purpose of these silly symbols is to replace the eloquence normally found in writing text to a friend, since in Internet chat there is no time to be expressive since it is the equivalent of informal conversation.
Chat acronyms also play a part in showing body language, although their main function is a type of internet short-hand. A common chat acronym is lol (laughing out loud) to indicate what would be readily apparent when speaking one on one.

The emoticons and the acronyms are part of the language in technology culture. What makes this language unique is that we must learn how to smile and laugh; it is not something you can just do. A hug is a symbol of an idea, rather than a comforting touch. Our bodies become metaphysical.

The senses in technology

To many artists and art educators, an important missing aspect in the involvement of any kind of technology in art is the missing sensory experience. We can’t touch our art here, we can’t smell the tools, we can’t hear the noises, and we can’t taste the paint. We can see, but our sight is flat; the texture here is an illusion. How do I respond to this? We can sense differently like someone who is deaf speaks differently or a blind person reads a book differently. It is not lesser; it is different. Where there is something missing there is also something more.

TOUCH

We can’t touch the art, we can’t feel it.

When are we ever allowed to touch art? The artist, of course, touches a painting or a sculpture when it is made, but as a viewer we can only see it. However, we may touch a picture on our screens. Here, when we touch things our brains act as our sense of touch (inevitably, that is what a feeling is). We can hover with a mouse and learn what something is. We click on something and read or travel somewhere else. Touch is understanding.

SIGHT

The experience of seeing artwork projected or on the screen just isn't the same

You can use a projector to show images so that is a lesser alternative to the “real thing” or you can us the projector as an alternate real way of seeing art. It is the same since your eye sees the image through the light going to the eye and the brain understands it as an image. It is not the painting itself; it is a reproduction through ones and zeros transmitted through light.

In technology culture

It is a way of doing

It is a place to be

It is a way of seeing

It is a state of being

Progress in investigation

I have discovered several readings that will be informing my investigation for the duration of this study. One such reading is a collection of articles from the proceedings at the Conferences of Conciousness Reframed: Art and Cconciousness in the post-biological era. Which deals with the conciousness of mind within the arts, within technology. The post-biological era (obviously, not some sort of rise of our robot masters) is the idea that our culture places importance on technology. If art creates culture, then art in technology will create a new culture conciousness. Conciousness Reframed calls for a radical reconstruction of art education that will bring a link between natural and artificial systems of conciousness; a link between our own biologically based culture and the new, post-biological technology culture.

Roy Ascott, a member of this conference, wrote an article called Arts education @ the edge of the net: The future will be moist! that seems to articulate what I am trying to say here, althought at the expense of using adjectives that evoke an unpleasant tactile experience. Ascott talks about Moist Media as a new way of thinking, a link between the real world and the cyber world. He believes that integrating computer art and computer technology in general will construct our future. The integration of this technology will change our attitudes and our fears of losing ourselves in the “the machine”. “Twenty-first century arts will increasingly be seen as a form of world building, of mind construction, of self-creation, whether through digital programming, genetic coding, interactive performance, imaging, sound work, simulation, or hypermediated construction in general.” (Ascott, 2001, p 10) In "moist media" we create ourselves, we are constantly rewriting ourselves in the universe. Some say that art is culture, it creates culture. In technology culture this can be taken quite literally. The people making web pages, who are grandmothers, students, web designers, create the cyber world; they are the artists, the engineers, the citizens. Here there is no distinction between "good art" and "bad art", it just is. The art is the infrastructure and the people simultaniously, it's as if you are yourself and your house and your neighborhood all at once.

Ascott lists the changes that will happen (or are happening) when we shift from the "postmodern world" to the "post-biological" world:

Cultural Shift

from                   to

Content              Context
Object               Process
Perspective          Immersion
Figure/ground        Pattern
Paranoia             Telenoia
Aesthetics           Technoetics
Nature               Artificial life
Certainty            Contingency
Resolution           Emergency
Reception            Negotiation
Representation       Construction
Hermeneutics         Heuristic
Tunnel vision        Bird's eye view
Observed reality     Constructed reality
Autonomous brain     Distributed mind
Behavior of forms    Forms of behavior
Immaterialism        Re-materialization
Perception           Cyberception

Some of these items may seem frightening, an illustration of what is wrong with this sort of shift, such as "nature to artifical life" or "autonomous brain to distributed mind". But we must consider the ways that this is not wrong to us, as people discovering a culture that was always there, but hidden, emerging suddenly in full form.

Cultural apocalypse

Do any of us know anything at all?

I came to this thought twice this week, once as I was skimming an article for a class and the second time as I was playing my computer game (or “smoking crack”, as I like to call it)

While I was failing to read my article, I wondered if no one ever really read anything for their classes or for work. If not, do we ever really know anything, even in subjects we are supposedly knowledgeable about? How about the authors of the articles and books?

(??) No one is technologically advanced. There are people who are completely inept (like the joke about the ”cup holder” that was actually the CD-rom) and there are people who are capable of using their computer. There are people who are very good at learning programs and op systems. There are people who can troubleshoot computers both in hardware and software. There are people who can set up the computer and troubleshoot hardware problems. There are people who can set up communication between computers. Then there are people who can program the computers to think better and more efficiently. There are people who can create the actual software that the users use. There is hardly anyone who can do all of these things. While the Internet’s society could be anarchic, technology as a whole is socialist. Not one component is knowable to any one person but each individual contributes to the whole.

Culture and Civilization

Can there be a technology culture?

Perhaps. We need to first find out what culture is, and then see if the idea fits.

Here is the definition of culture from my very large dictionary:

1. 1. the quality in a person of society that arises from a concern for what is regarded a s excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc. 2. that which is excellent in the arts, manners, etc. 3. a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period: Greek Culture. 4. development or improvement of the mind by education or training. 5. the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group; the youth culture, the drug culture. 6. Anthropol. The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another. 7. Biol. a. the cultivation of microorganisms, as bacteria, or of tissues, for scientific study, medicinal use, etc. b. the product or growth resulting from such cultivation. 8. the act or practice of cultivation the soil; tillage. 9. the raising of plants or animals, esp. with a view to their improvement. 10. the product of growth resulting from such cultivation –v.t. 11. to subject to culture; cultivate. 12. Biol. a. to grow (microorganisms, tissues, etc.) in r on a controlled or defined medium. B. to introduce (living material) into a culture medium.
   

I have included every bit of the definition because of the importance of the influence that our culture has had on the word itself. The ideas of changing and studying (entries 7 through 12) illustrate the anthropological view of study, where the observer changes the subject. We must remember that everything we study is changed when we study it; figuratively and/or literally.
Also, some of the entries have to do with the arts, which make them very relevant to what we are trying to find out.

However, first I will address the entries that have to do with the idea of culture as it exists within a certain group of people, entries 3, 4 and 5.

Entry 3: “a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period.”

This first entry describes culture as a part of a whole, as a period of time of a civilization. Can technology be a civilization? If we look at the Internet we can see the beginnings of a civilization, perhaps. So, what makes a civilization? We will look at the meaning found in the dictionary :

1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.

Before we get into the dictionary definition, we must take into account what is missing from the entry, and that is Place. In order to have a civilation with a culture, they must take up space or be somewhere. If we talk about a subculture, they co-exist with the rest of the dominant culture. So, can we find out if technology culture is a subculture or a emerging dominant culture? Perhaps, if we explore the idea of civilization.

When I think of the civilization in which technology culture resides, I begin to think about the Internet. Now, obviously, we have had technology since human-kind has begun to think (I am thinking about the invention of the wheel). So, technology culture existed before the internet but now resides in the internet. (has this happened before in "real time"?) So, let's get back to the Internet as a place with a civilization. When we think of a place we think of somewhere physical that we can move around in. Can we move around in the Internet? We can move around through information on the internet, certainly. We can't touch anything, unless we can count reading words and seeing images as touching something. There are also chatrooms in which we can talk to other people, not necessarily touch them, but we can talk to them. And who do we actually "touch" in real life? We shake hands, surely, and we make eye contact, sometimes, but can we have these things on the internet? Let me point you to the direction of multi-user dimentions or MUDs, where you can exist in a text world where everything exists in text form. This is a version of human contact that exists on the internet. You purchase space on a server to recieve email (from a "mailbox") and where you can build your webpage (where you have your "home" on the internet) So, in a sense, we can view it as a place.

Does it have a civilization? The definition calls for an advanced state of intellectual, cultural and material development in human society. There are places of intellectual development on the internet, such as online universities. Material development? Are there things created on the internet that only exist on the internet? Like I mentioned before, there is the internet provider that gives you access and space. At the moment I can think of internet games, where you purchase time on a game where you interact with the game and in turn interact with people through the game. You can buy and sell space to keep information, like a blog. If we talk about economy, I could allow Blogspot to advertise on this page, and I will recieve some of the money the advertisers pay for you to see their advertisement. There are online games in which you can make money in the game and sell it on Ebay (an amazing notion - actually quite dangerous to real-world economy). Perhaps it does not have a working economy, but it has a developing economy. Government? Politics? The internet, if viewed as a place or a civilization, may be a functioning example of Anarchy. If it is a place, it has no government, no unifying ideal.

On the internet, we deal in information and information only. If you exist on the internet, you exist as information. Which is why the information you find on the internet is often inaccurate. It's like going up to someone on the street in the real world and asking them "what is the exact circumferance of the earth" and expect them to have the correct answer.

The Question

Technology culture is at the forefront in this society, becoming a necessity. The television is an art form that is very dominant in our culture now, but is often ignored to continue to explore more holistic or “traditional” forms. We have computer screens to see reproductions, but insist on printing them out, we just barely touch on a multicultural curriculum while students are chatting online with people from Bangladesh. Children can’t focus because they can find information instantly with a click of a button, they’ve become used to sensory overload. How can they sit and watch one person for a whole hour when they could be surfing the Internet while watching television? Many educators want to know how to fight this problem, how to contend with the growing phenomenon. Can we change as educators to adapt to these needs? Are we fighting a cultural apocalypse or are we eating the dust of the information speedway?