Newmedia on Wed, 7 Jul 2010 18:45:08 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Notes on Tiqqun's 'The Cybernetic Hypothesis' |
Joss: Thanks for your comments and you are correct to notice that this is an important topic to which many have contributed -- some of which has even occurred on nettime. In particular, Norbert Wiener, the man credited with coining the term "cybernetics" (and my father's mentor), became very concerned early-on that his work was being used against humanity. In the introduction to his 1948 book "Cybernetics," he specifically identifies Margaret Mead (a leader in promoting Communications Science departments) and Gregory Bateson (the secretary of the proto-CIA-funded Macy Cybernetics Conferences mentioned in Chapter 3) along with Kurt Lewin (a founder of the field of Social Psychology) as people who had tried to recruit him for this purpose. In 1950, Wiener published "The Human Use of Human Beings" in which warned that cybernetics was being used to replace human moral agency with robot-like submission. He used his notoriety and went on a broad campaign to spread this warning, only to discover that his worst fears had already come true and that there were already few humans left with the capacity for moral judgement. So, he rewrote the book and covered his tracks. Marshall McLuhan underwent a similar experience of deep concern, followed by attempts to sound the alarm (i.e. his 1951 "The Mechanical Bride") and finally recognition that humanity -- specifically in its unique capacity for morality -- had already "disappeared." Like Wiener, he spent the rest of his life "probing" in the hopes that a glimmer of human moral capabilities could be re-awakened. He wasn't very successful. The problem, of course, with "modern" attempts to return to these subjects is that they are typically devoid of historic context. The authors often recapitulate earlier observations without understanding what came before them, as if they were the first to feel this way. History is only (mis-)used to make a point about the present. As is often the case, what appears as an immediate problem in your own life has in fact been a serious issue for a very long time and many people, some far better equipped than you, have failed to have any impact. Crucially, the "post-moderns" often seem to have no idea why this was such an important topic in the 1945-55 period and how the various actors at that time confronted the widely understood threat of humanity endangering itself to the point of extinction -- specifically through the expression of individual and collective evil. Moreover, given the general anti-religious attitude of "critical" analysis, there is no way out of the conundrum that it constructs. "Subjectivity" alone doesn't resolve anything -- socially or personally -- as most have discovered. Being "free" to be yourself doesn't mean that you aren't acting with evil consequences. "Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law" is evil incarnate -- as Crowley was happy to admit. The real problem is the lack of human morality. "Autonomy" doesn't help unless there is a personal examination of deep moral issues that are much older than cybernetics or the Internet. Deny a central role for human evil and you have denied the fundamental problem. Cybernetics makes us all cyborgs and androids do not dream of electric sheep because they don't have souls. Various people have solved this problem in various ways. Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), famous for his TAZ schema, is a carefully studied religious "occultist." So too are many others, for whom spirituality is a personal matter and the source of their moral convictions. What will be the morality in the ZOO? Pagan? Sufi? Perhaps someone on the Tiqqun collective had all this in mind when they penned "De l'economie consideree comme magie noire." After all, black magic precedes cybernetics in economics by 500+ years. As Max Weber concludes in his final lecture, "Science as a Vocation" (Munich, 1918), which has little to say about science and a lot to say about religion, "This, however, is plain and simple, if each finds and obeys the demon who holds the fibers of his very life." Mark Stahlman New York City # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org