diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'ch2.otx')
| -rw-r--r-- | ch2.otx | 123 |
1 files changed, 123 insertions, 0 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,123 @@ +% 2 +\chapter{} + +How did this development come to be? Surely more forces were at work than \enquote{Progress?} This +essay is not a history of the information revolution, but some mention must be made in passing. At +some point during the Second World War, a series of decisions to computerize were reached. The +overriding concerns were military and intelligence applications. It should be noted that private +industry would never have invested in this, or any other development. Without government investment, +bankers are paragons of timidity. + +The founders of the information, or cybernetic age, were Alan Turing, John Von Neuman, Norbert +Wiener, Claude Shannon and later, Noam Chomsky. Hordes of electrical engineers---whether they +understood what they were doing or not---reworked almost every philosophical problem known to +humans in terms of circuitry and programming languages. These problems began, of course, centuries +ago. For instance the epistimological question: what is knowledge, how do we know, how do we know we +know, how does it relate to the world outside, who controls knowledge, who has it and who does not, +what is it worth, how do we talk about it (which is the question of what language we shall use and +how shall we talk), and what instrumentalities we perceive through. + +Questions of the technology of knowing must be interwoven with political and economic considerations +(within the confines of what is scientifically and technologically possible), which is to say +knowledge systems are structured like intelligence and counter-intelligence systems. There is to be +written a whole history of secret and coded knowledges\ldots\ priestly systems, rites, hierarchies and +ceremonies of learning and passage, memory systems, networks of initiates\ldots\ In addition, one should +ask: why did one set of systems triumph---that is to say, why were they preserved, and +remembered---and others fail? There is room for a history of the politics of the promotion, funding +and triumph of intellectual knowledge systems and this includes the rememberance of the major +streams of philosophy. Philosophy is one of the atmospheric backgrounds which provides for a general +and unified state of perception against which day to day knowledge is learned. + +The original choices for computers, binary, Boolean (Leibnizian, as Wiener would have it) logic, +reflected a dialectical, even a Manichean approach and was an unfortunate decision. Why these +choices? It was easier to design electrical circuits that could carry out the logic operations. + +The system began slowly, went on line massively with mainframes and minis in the fifties, mostly in +defense and intelligence applications, followed closely by banking and business. + +In the seventies, a massive campaign was mounted to \enquote{democratize} the computer. The micro +was developed by small, innovative businessmen-technicians. Sales propaganda was disseminated in the +name of enlightenment, efficiency, transcendance and power. Every possible sales technique known to +public relations, advertising and mythology was employed to sell the computer. Not only were ancient +and modern symbols deployed, but also fear. It became possible, we were told, to have a computer in +the home that was once as large as a building\ldots\ and did the same work. + +One notes the parallel developments and \enquote{needs}: The committment to the Great Theater of +perpetual war as the pressure system out of which innovation and invention and progress came. This +generated a need for a vast corps of mind-workers. Cheap education produced intellectuals. This led +not only to the further proliferation of mindworkers, but of mediators and mediational systems. +Intelligence and police (and their surveillance systems); psychologists and their theories; many +schools of psychotherapy; sociologists; anthropologists; analysts; coders and decoders; +cryptographers and decryption experts; disinformation-propagating operatives; advertisers; +public-relations flacks; consultants; historians in fifty modes; economists, both practical and +theoretical; financial manipulators, and the buyers of their services (bankers, securities dealers, +brokers, currency dialecticians); new critics; hermeneuticists; structuralists; semioticians; +deconstructionists; quantifiers; metricians; statisticians; propagandists; accountants and auditors; +lawyers and proliferators of law; interactivists (and their connecting machineries); cosmic and +microcosmic theoreticians; agronomists; doctors; philosophical logicians and inventors of yet newer +and newer mathematics; salesmen; priests and ministers and inventors of yet-new religions; logical +and scientific astrologers\ldots\ And now, in the present age, all this to be machined. + +They sought both unity and fragmentation. Now one must admit that there is a propensity in some +humans to generate new unifying theories and technologies while at the same time inventing and +proliferating new explanatory systems and new subtheories\ldots\ all of which promise to explain +everything. This seems to be a function of the density of intellectuals, in terms of availability of +jobs and competition, both relative and absolute, to a general and non-theorizing population. This +insures that a fair percentage of those theories will be nonsensical, if not fraudulent\ldots\ which is +no impediment to their triumph. + +In addition, general systems theory took hold, and every aspect of the universe was designated a +sub-system of some larger system and the largest---and unknown---system of all was a function of +these bureaucratically minded spinners of holisms. + +The early cyberneticians thought that this development would add to---if not exponentially, then at +least incrementally---the sum of human knowledge. Accompanying this development was an ancient +agenda: the compulsion to impose order, predictability, to eliminate risk and uncertainty. But as +far as this ancient agenda was concerned, the commitment should be shared, paid for by some part of +the public. New processes would in turn create still newer knowledge. And, as all things happen in +this modern society, the \enquote{system,} with all of its attendant confusions, complexities and +corruptions, with its intense conflicts among the different programs, systems and equipment +manufacturers, with its political and business battles, has been laid on in the most haphazard, +ridiculous, expensive, inefficient and disorganized way (repeating our earlier history of canals, +railroads, highways, transit systems, communications and technology in general). We now have a +conflict of computer, communicating and language-conversion systems with many fundamental problems +still unsolved. + + +(And here, lest we forget that the problem is not merely \enquote{intellectual,} we must remember +concrete institutions with which intellectuals are connected, and who provide their funding. How, +and to whom, ideas are sold: we must think about AT\&T, Sperry-Rand, IT\&T, IBM, Citicorp and +Chase\ldots\ We must also not forget that there are unwritten and true histories to be done of the +Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the CIA, all intelligence agencies of the +world, and how the intellectual thought of these agencies permeates every aspect of everyday life. +We must think about the politics of international and national communications policy and how these +issues are fought out in corporations, legislative bodies and regulatory agencies. We must think of +pricing, advertising, marketing, promotion, generations of faulty computers, paper computers, +imbecilic competiton, suppression of innovation, influence-peddling, lobbying, bribes, kickbacks and +the rest of the common paraphenalia of business\ldots\ especially at a time when business becomes +ever-more \enquote{intellectualized.}) + +There was a nescessity to translate all living and non-living forms, to simulate events and natural +processes, to chart their interactions and simulate thse interrelations and to begin to fill the +memory and data banks. This growing assemblage gradually becomes the total environment\ldots\ at least +for a few. These developments are new but are also, at the same time, the fulfillment of an ancient +desire: to control the material world by the manipulation of secret know]ledge (secret, in modern +times, by being priced, being made into intellectual property, being classified). How does this +differ from the practices of ancient priests, shamans, magicians? + +Ancient magicians thought they could control the environment. How did information control the +material world in the past? By assuming a connection between the internal system of intellectual +order and the \emph{external} system of \emph{material} order. One controlled the cosmos by the uses +of resonances and dissonances, rhythms compatible with the true natural rhythm of the spheres, by +the use of a chant, an incantation, a dance, a ritual; or one could apply sacred geometry, +controlling shapes that were analogous to the shape of the worlds one wanted to dominate\ldots\ +magic. Magic embodies a primitive theory of electromagnetism and telecommunication. Magic desires to +achieve telepathy and teleportation. Voodoo, for instance, contains the notion of a communicating +medium and the communicants who believe in it. The Catholic Church is a communicating organism with +an apparatus of switches and relays and a communicating language for the input of prayers through a +churchly switchboard up to Heaven, and outputs returned to the supplicant. And above all, all +ancient and primitive systems implicitly propose the notion of an ordered, coherant universe, +expressible in a certain set of languages, the manipulation of which manipulates the universe. The +question is: do these systems manipulate the universe or a simulation of the universe? What certain +intellectuals in modern society propose is electromagic. + |