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* Active Worlds chat session: Sat Feb 26, 2000 1:19 PM *

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CyberForum with Katherine Hayles, Saturday Feb. 26th at 1:30 PM PST.

mjson: hi nomad!

ommm: hey nemo

nemo: hi ommm!

ommm: mjson, nomad

mjson: hi ommm!

ommm: sally hi and Kate

nomad: Hi ommm, nemo

ommm: are the images coming through on the right frame for you folks?

gaga: yes

mjson: yep

"skejs": yes

ommm: heck, mine aren't loading...will try a refresh..

ommm: is Kate's typeface working in bold?

KateH: Yes, my talk seems to be in bold--and I'm so shy, too!

gaga: no way! I've heard you speak before...

ommm: your avatar may be in bold, while you remain shy ;-)

gaga: lol

gaga: hi skejs

"skejs": hi gaga

nomad: Hi skejs

"skejs": great to be back

mjson: hej skejs

"skejs": hi nomad - hi everyone

ommm: hi skejs, welcome back!

KateH: Gaga, Thanks for not stepping on my toes!

"bjorn": Hi!

mjson: hi bjorn, or hej?

ommm: to begin our discussion of the Posthuman

ommm: we are pleased to have a Posthuman Thinker here with us today in the form of an avatar

ommm: who represents Katherine Hayles, the author of a bold book: How We Became Posthuman

ommm: thanks very much, Kate, for joining us today in the CyberForum

ommm: let's begin our meditation on the posthuman

nemo: *cheers*

KateH: You are welcome.  My pleasure.

gaga: applause

sally: more applause

queenbee: flaps

nomad: Rapt attention

KateH: shall I begin by saying something about the posthuman?

ommm: we can go first to the Memory Chamber

"skejs": why don't we walk?

ommm: or use the Teleport "To" box (upper part of your browser under Teleport

nemo: or join us

"bjorn": help! how do i get there?

ommm: or you can follow skejs who is going to walk

"skejs": I'm not quite sure how to get there

ommm: or you can join me, as i'm going to Teleport

KateH: In "Posthuman," I tried to tell three interrelated stories.

KateH: First was the story of how information lost its body

KateH: that is, how information got defined in information theoretic terms as a disembodied entity.

KateH: There were good reasons to define information this way, but as time went on. . .

KateH: it began to be conceptualized as a kind of disembodied fluid that would flow effortlessly between one substrate and another.

KateH: Hence Hans Moravec's fantasy in "Mind Children" of downloading human consciousness in a computer. . .

KateH: but this ignores the fact that information never exists by itself.  To be present in the world, it must be embodied.  In fact,

KateH: the distinction between information and substrate is itself a construction that has no reality in the world.  In the world,

KateH: information and materiality are never separated.

"bjorn": aha

KateH: From this beginning, it began possible to think about the deconstruction of body boundaries, as they were conceptualized as information systems.

KateH: This led to the second story, the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg.

"bjorn": ja!

KateH: The third story was the transformation of the human into the posthuman.

"bjorn": thank you

KateH: From fields like Artificial life, Artificial Intelligence, and cognitive science, came a way of looking at humans that was so different

KateH: from the Enlightenment version that I thought it was appropriate to call it the posthuman.

KateH: I wrote the book because I myself felt intense ambivalence toward this change, and it was my attempt to come to terms with it.

KateH: Would you like to pick up on any of these threads for discussion, or start new ones?

ommm: is the Moravec fantasy the same as the posthuman change?

KateH: The Moravec fantasy picks up on some of the ideas that I call the "posthuman," but one doesn't have to be so far out to nevertheless participate in the posthuman.

nemo: is the posthuman embodied in the same was as what came before? (the "human"?)

ommm: is Moravec the Prime Mover or main speaker of posthumanism?

KateH: Let me enumerate some of the attributes I gave the posthuman:  distributed cognition; complex and distributed agency

KateH: cyborg interpellation into circuits with intelligent machines; thought that is not primarily conscious.

sally: thought that is not primarily conscious is that like animal thought?

KateH: I don't see Moravec as the "main speaker," there are lots of people working on these ideas:  Ed Fredkin, tom Ray, Chris Langton, Mike Dyer. . .

"skejs": well, distributed cognition and agency has always existed, we (or they) just didn't think of cognition that way, complexity in new light.

KateH: Of course, Posthuman has this double temporal valence; it came into existence as a more or less coherent research front in the 1980s; but

KateH: once in existence, it claims to describe not only humans now, but the way humans have always been.

KateH: I think there is a relativistic aspect to the posthuman, because it obviously is a mode of description that makes it easy to suture humans together with intelligent machines.

"skejs": so they have - in our view - always been posthuman?

ommm: isn't "post" a temporal term

KateH: If you accept the posthuman view, humans have always been posthuman.  The "post" here then refers to the recognition that they are such.

queenbee: so when you talk about distributed cognition you are referring to a group consciousness?

KateH: By distributed cognition, I don't mean group consciousness as Freud and others wrote about it in the 1920s.

ommm: sounds like a Platonic essence, but somehow congratulating the 1990s in a special way...!

KateH: Rather, it refers to the idea that we operate in cognitively rich, information rich environments (like this one)

gaga: I was reading this morning in Technology Review about a new technology, which is a brain-computer interface for the handicapped...I could see that being used in virtual worlds too...

gaga: how is this 3D environment for you?

KateH: in which the cognition that makes it possible to move in this space is embodied partly in intelligence machines, partly in human agents, partly in distributed networks

KateH: The brain-computer interface is part of the continuing story of the construction of the cyborg

KateH: Bound to continue and accelerate in the 21st century, in my opinion.

ommm: now that we are talking about the human/non-human, let's go walk among the brides...coords #2

ommm: the brides are vanishing avatars

nomad: If we are shaped by the complexity and variety of information, then the construction of cyborgs and communication with other species (whether terrestrial or not) will fundamentally change us?

KateH: Well, communication will certainly shape us--how fundamentally remains to be seen.

ommm: okay, here, i've found the brides thanks to sally

ommm: please join me

"Lij": how do i join you?

KateH: Now that we are here with these semi-embodied brides, maybe it's a good time to talk about embodiment

KateH: I think one of the challenges for contemporary cultural theory is to accurately describe how embodiment works in information technologies

KateH: For example, we heard in the early days of VR a lot about it being a "disembodied" state--John Perry Barlow:  "My everything has been amputated."

ommm: hehe

nemo: ouch!

mjson: 

gaga: dear

KateH: To me, this is just so much mystification.  It's important do understand how the technology actually works, the interfaces, etc.

sally: and their historical circumstances

KateH: for example, in my own field of literary studies, it's apparent that electronic text needs a whole different mode of description and analysis than print.

"papad": amputated interfaces?

KateH: It's now becoming apparent literary studies and critical theory are shot through with assumptions specific to print, although not recognized as such until now.

queenbee: could you give an example, please?

nemo: could you give an example?

KateH: Well, for Saussure, the signifier was defined as a concept.  He was so uninterested in its materiality that he devoted only a tiny space to it.

KateH: But in electronic text, the materiality of the signifier becomes very important.  Instead of being a flat durable mark, it is a chain of codes correlated precisely through

KateH: correspondence rules.  What difference this makes to theories of signification is only beginning to be explored.

KateH: Also, since the 18th century, there has been a legal and cultural tradition to think of the "text" as an immaterial concept.

nomad: Is there something to the ephemeral nature of it?

KateH: But with electronic text, the materiality of production becomes very important.

KateH: Similarly, there has been a division between the craftwork of making the book and the "author," who wrote the book in a conceptual sense

queenbee: k I'm in trouble now. Define signifier? Please.

KateH: but rarely was involved with its production.

KateH: Compare that with electronic texts (like this world), where the craftwork of making the material means of production

KateH: requires aesthetic considerations, conceptual ideas, and of course megatons of time.

nemo: no kidding!

nomad: In “The Demolished Man", Alfred Bester played with fonts and arrangement of text to convey telepathy beyond the mere writing of it

KateH: All that is part of authoring an electronic text.  Critics of these texts can't afford any longer to ignore this aspect of the world.

KateH: And then there is the fusion of text and image, which occurs in new ways in electronic environments. . .

nomad: Like Bester

nemo: what do you think, "electronic language?"

KateH: Diana Slattery has a lovely piece up on the web called "Glide," where she tries to imagine a visual language that is realized in the body, articulated through kinesthesia and not with the mouth.

queenbee: Right, it is not a situation of a graphic artist imposing his/her will. It is the nature of the medium. This has been a recurring threat in electronic media

ommm: sounds like the Magic Egg might help us meditate further on image and text (visibility of text in chat)

ommm: let's move to the Egg above, can you see it?

"Lij": But the fusion of text and image and the materiality of the text aren't impossible in print - there are many examples of print literature playing with these things?

gaga: seems like this is where embodiment becomes important

KateH: LIJ, thanks for bringing this up!  There is indeed a fascinating tradition of this in print, especially, in the 20th c., in artists' book.

KateH: It's probably no accident the artist’s books have also been an exception to seeing the "text" as disembodied; the materiality of the book here becomes inextricably joined to the concept.

queenbee: the baobab is still here!111

"Lij": but is there no pre-existing lit. theory to deal with these issues? since they already (can) exist in print?

"skejs": To me, what we are engaged in right now is very much inspired of the "written culture" - discussing, having abstract thoughts etc. When we get really into the culture of VR we might be able to communicate more with motions, pictures, constructions...

nemo: or gestures

KateH: Well, there is a tradition of criticism in print, but it has focused on a few fi8gures like Blake.  And even with Blake,

KateH: for many years his poems were anthologized out of their original context, as worlds bereft of images.

"Lij": *nods*

KateH: Seems to me that some kind of collaboration between folks oriented to words and those who are versed in images will be needed .. .

ommm: and it is happening in virtual worlds -- just beginning...

KateH: Also, even when images HAVE been considered, they have not normally been considered in material terms . . . at least in literary culture

queenbee: can you comment on the fact that everything we see here can be reduced to text and is during its transmission and rendering?

KateH: I find it interesting that most artist’s books also employ some kind of nonlinear narrative;

"Lij": do you mean that images have only been considered as symbols/metaphors?

KateH: This is part of what I meant about needing to come up with accurate descriptions of the materiality of the technology.

KateH: Espen Aarseth in "Cybertext" has come up with some useful terminology:  textons and scription.s

KateH: Textons are the part of the coding structure that produce the text as such--for example, compiler languages, machine code, or programming languages

KateH: scriptons are what appears on screen, like these images in the egg.

KateH: It's interesting that the same terminology can also apply to print.  for example

KateH: in stipple engraving, textons are the dots (and spaces), while the scriptons are the (perceived) images generated from the dots.

KateH: There's a great artist book by Tom Philips, "A Humumnet," that also shows how this can work in print.  He took an obscure

KateH: victorian novel, "A Human Document" by William Mallock, and "treated" it by covering over most of the words with images,

KateH: leaving only a few words connected through the "rivers" of spaces that run between the worlds.

nemo: so, like litho dots as well

gaga: very pomo

KateH: So here the textons become Mallocks' underlying text, which on some pages is still (barely) visible through a semitransparent) image,

KateH: and the scriptons are the new surfaces that Phillips creates through his treatment.

"papad": the investigation into materiality and textuality is like the 'gravity into cyberspace' discussion?

sally: ann hamilton did an installation at the dia in which a woman took a wood engraving tool and erased line after line of text in a book, the curls of smoke were what was left of the words

queenbee: nice

"Lij": that's an interesting way of thinking of that book, Kate

KateH: To see that print can be layered in its signifying structure is one of the ways that these works and installations cause us to think more deeply about the text's materiality

KateH: And isn't it interesting that in both the dia installation and Philip's text the point is to erase words]

KateH: maybe this is an idea that comes into its own when we are drowning in information

KateH: much of it debased, superficial, irrelevant,

queenbee: the log of this discussion is layered in a grey scale

ommm: sounds like we might move on now to the Labyrinth...?

ommm: okay, from Magic Egg > Labyrinth

KateH: It's interesting that the labyrinth is such a prominent trope in both print and electronic hypertexts

queenbee: Mike, I suspect there are a series of metaphors underlying our cycle of movement?

queenbee: what shocks me is that people are still claiming to be discovering this labyrinthine nature in electronic media.

KateH: Where navigation becomes a highly nontrivial event (like finding our ways here)

KateH: and this can be true for print texts too, as well as electronic spaces

KateH: Susan King has an exquisite artist book called "Treading the Maze," for example

KateH: that is bound on both sides, right and left, with translucent pages with images on the left side

KateH: and opaque pages with text on the right.  Then you can interleave right and left side, image and text, in a large number of ways

KateH: to give different readings.  In the prose narrative, she speaks about her experience with breast cancer

KateH: where her relation to her body was radically changed, and her life ruptured.

KateH: To begin to heal, she felt she had to find new ways to connect things together, as if in a labyrinth

KateH: and finding not just the way out, but the patterns that would make her life make sense again.

"papad": is there sense in breast cancer?

KateH: Probably not--that's why the motivation to find sense in the face of it was so obsessional for her.\\

nemo: so that is a thread between the embodiment of text and our experience of the body

KateH: Yes, exactly--the long-standing and traditional metaphoric connections between body of text and human body are being

KateH: reconfigured in new ways.

"papad": so, our experiments are for the exceptional and extraordinary then? What about "normal" life?

KateH: One of things I see is a sense that the world has become perceived as a world of chaotic multiplicity,

KateH: not just for "extraordinary" events like cancer but for everyday normal life as well.

KateH: A sea of information, and so many ways to traverse them, to put them together, but no way certain or hegemonic.

"papad": I would guess that all men in all times have perceived the world as larger-than-life

queenbee: Corporate trainers now focus on learning to accept constant change. That's different from 40 yrs ago.

KateH: Right, I think so.  The historical specificity of this period seems to be bound up with ideas about information, intelligent machines, cyborg subjectivity

ommm: and avatars ;-)

KateH: Maybe the world has in many times been seen as chaotic multiplicity (think of Heraclitus)--but not as infinite networks of information

queenbee: Even if you learn to embrace chaos and find beauty in it, way finding is hard.

KateH: Wayfinding--what a lovely word to express this!

"papad": how is information, intelligent machines and so on different from finding shelter, hunting for food and left the human race live on? It's only the framework that shifts

KateH: I think things really are different.  One of the big differences in the ways in which what we might call the friction

KateH: of materiality has diminished for us.  Distances that used to take days or months to traverse, we do in minutes and hours

KateH: Hunting that used to take days or months now is replaced by a trip to the store

KateH: and so on. 

"bjorn": but breakdowns commonly occur

"papad": I do not know whether my ancestors where any less caught up in the struggles to find out about their environments and their meaning than we are today in this cyberworld

queenbee: And you can change your mind with less consequence at least apparently

KateH: Because the friction of materiality has diminished, it makes it easier to believe that information is disembodied.

gaga: or perhaps there is a greater yearning also for the mystical aspect which this points up

KateH: Breakdowns are a condition of technology; breakdowns reveal to us our assumptions as Heidegger pointed out

"bjorn": i sometimes get frustrated when i can't talk in person to my chat friends -- it seems so... unnecessary

"Lij": why don't you ring them, bjorn?

KateH: Well, seems to me that face-to-face always carries a lot more information than even this enriched world, no?

"bjorn": ;-) another example:

"Lij": certainly different information - there are things here that we might not see ftf

acroon: I agree Lij

mjson: yes bjorn, distance is forgotten

queenbee: You can use HearMe, but the flow is different. There is something special about the dynamics of this environment.

gaga: well, if it becomes true that we can introduce a much more 'natural' interface things might get quite interesting

"bjorn": the road i drive to work doesn't contain many...happenings

gaga: that is why I mentioned the new handicapped technology earlier

"bjorn": it seems to me in a virtual sense it's no more than 100 yards

"bjorn": but in real life it's several miles

"papad": bjorn, I don't know about your road. Mine is full with the oddest. Every day!

"bjorn": why do i need to drive them? i don't see anything new

KateH: We in LA think of the automobile as our exoskeleton

ommm: not when you’re doing Tai Chi!  ;-)

nemo: too true

"papad": the issue is 'seeing,' not the road

queenbee: he

gaga: if we are indeed at a point where brain waves will soon enable more sophisticated embodiment in cyberspace, not ala Moravec, but just as a neurophysical fact, then it is a different ballpark

"bjorn": well, sometimes i am beginning to expect a "beam" button to get me to work

KateH: Gaga, I agree.  I think the melding of intelligence machines and biological organism is bound to accelerate and increase, with nanotechnology, biotechnology, etc.

queenbee: I can imagine that it would take a huge amount of mental energy to imagine a world into digital space for others to view.

"Lij": *laughs*

KateH: Not only with people has digital components implanted, but digital machines with have organic parts for specialized functions.

KateH: What in your opinion will be lost, if anything, in these developments?

gaga: Also worth asking what will be gained? I imagine conducting an opera while dancing in space

mjson: friction?

ommm: will some humans not want to "fight back" against the machine?

KateH: Is it important to maintain a sense of the human as an autonomous, independent agent?

nemo: but isn't humanity connected with the substrate of the body?

KateH: Of course humanity is connected with the body, or rather, cannot exist without embodiment.

queenbee: A healthy baby will still be born unencumbered so there must be a trade off that comes with each enhancement. I would want to be able to take them off if I didn't need them and to die without them.

KateH: I do think Moravec et al greatly underestimate the importance of embodiment to cognition

gaga: But philosophically and otherwise, such separation of the single heroic individual is already seriously up for grabs

acroon: Gaga, what do you mean?

gaga: I was referring to the group cognition options

acroon: aha, thanks :-)

KateH: but still, that embodiment is now subject to change in ways that have never before been possible.

"foyle": I think it will be a great challenge to develop adequate mental patterns

"papad": all technology relies on embodiment,  too - just the properties of this embodiments are different

KateH: Yes, papad, I agree that all technology relies on embodiment; there always have to be interfaces with embodied humans.

KateH: But never before have machines been so intelligent, so flexible, not to mention capable of self-evolution.

nomad: Is a disembodied intellect possible? Is this a stage of evolution for species that was embodied, or the rise of something without a physical construct?

"papad": well, there are tech-to-tech interfaces also. The ones that give us most real-life trouble today

nomad: Pure energy as opposed to matter/energy interface?

KateH: How could a disembodied intellect be possible?  wouldn't there always have to be a material form, substrate, embodiment?

KateH: Even light has a "physical construct"--as do all things that exist in the world.

"papad": there is another level of intelligence I have never found in machines. We call that intuition or emotional intelligence

sally: even antimatter?

queenbee: quantumness

KateH: These qualities of thought we call intuition, emotion, creativity, all are being simulated (less or more successfully) by evolvable software

ommm: idealists like Moravec might say we were never really physical but holograms of info patterns

queenbee: fuzzy logic

KateH: holograms are physical!

ommm: but are they projections of an intellect w/o body?

KateH: patterns can exist only in the material world, even though they are often seen as conceptual entitles only

gaga: human emulation of that degree  seems hard to imagine...can you clarify?

nomad: I think we are dealing with energy versus matter rather than immaterial versus material

"skejs": I think it is the wrong track to think of matter or non-matter. If we do that, we have to think of what is 'behind' our experience - I think it is time to start believing in what we experience - what we see

KateH: Well, OK, then let's forget about the immaterial. 

"papad": leaves the chemistry of my body where (I can smell that by times)

ommm: hehe

"skejs": this is to me an important distinction between VR and written text

KateH: The changing shapes of energy in relation to matter are surely important:  witness nanotechnology and terabyte chips

KateH: faster and smaller, taken to extremes, probably becomes a qualitative difference.

nomad: People find it hard to conceive of creative machines - creativity has such a mystical connotation to it - is it merely our "programs" for cognitive/associative leaps are more hidden/subtle?

"papad": Hinduism thinks of all life as energy. The embodiment is incidental and transient, only the energy is true and persistent.

ommm: okay, our time is running out now, and we are, after all, in the Labyrinth

nomad: I forgot my string

nomad: And I hear the Minotaur coming

ommm: thank you so much for taking us into this intricate road of discussion, Katherine Hayles

ommm: as always, you have provoked, taught, and inspired us...

gaga: Thanks!

queenbee: Flaps!

KateH: Thanks, Mike, to you and to everyone for this exchange.  Much fun!

nemo: thanks, kh!

acroon: Thanks!

nomad: Thanks, Katherine!

"foyle": thanx!

"Lisbeth": Thanks :)

nemo: huzzah!

KateH: Thanks to all of you for coming and for such good comments

mjson: thanks

sally: thanks, kate

"foyle": yeah, but don’t tell it anybody

"skejs": I'm impressed how this cyberforum develops. It's revealing more and more interesting points of cyberspace - thoughts and experiences. Thank you for your contribution, Katherine.

ommm: now i suggest anyone who has time can wander further down this particular Labyrinth

"papad": even if we get off from here, we'll remain in the labyrinth - no escape!