After reading Heidegger (several times) and looking at all of the available secondary sources that attempt to simplify the dense style that he writes in, I began to appreciate the approach he takes to the concept of truth. Different objects create different truths to different people, and we as a society often limit truth to only what we understand at the time. As technology develops, it enhances our understanding of the world and what we believe to be true. This is especially true for non-renewable resources and how we have approached them as tools we can use in every day life.
The first resource that came to my mind that has certainly changed in our society is gasoline. When car companies discovered the effects that lead had as an additive in gasoline, everyone began to use it. Adding lead to gasoline boosts the octane rating in gas significantly, and also reduces knocking in older motors and allows them to run at much higher compression without overheating. This creates a much more efficient engine that produces more power from less space.
All of the car companies began to build their motors with the intent of running on leaded gasoline, and refineries began to add the lead compound into the gas before it was even delivered to consumers. It took until 1974 for the United States to acknowledge how much pollution and damage the lead was causing, and began a lead phase out program that ended in the late 1980s.
While technology only saw lead and the environment as a resource and focused on boosting efficiency, it took the human component to recognize the danger behind it. Lead is the most inexpensive way to make efficient gasoline engines, but there would probably be a hole in our o-zone right now if we had continued to use it. Our constructed truth of lead has changed completely since the early century.
I think this is very similar to the message that Sherry Turkle wanted to convey in her book Alone Together. We shouldn't limit technology or be afraid of it, but we do need to understand the effects that it can have on us. Used properly, we can benefit from technology and make our lives easier, but we need to evaluate all possible scenarios that could arise from the use of whatever we create.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Heidegger, Modern Technology and the Standing Reserve
In Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology," he takes a look at the ways that we understand technology and its essence. He describes technology as something that achieves an unconcealing, an ordering, a bringing about. Technology, in its essence as enframing, "orders revealing" that is done by man. Heidegger really has a way with his words when he talks about concealing, revealing, ordering, enframing, etc. but the way I understood it is that the common conception of technology and its function in revealing and ordering is that man acts upon technology as an instrument of causality, in the bringing about of knowledge or the unconcealing of the concealed. Heidegger challenges that understanding, particularly in the context of modern technology. While "technology" in general is a way of revealing (as instrument, from the traditional understanding of causality,) Heidegger sees modern technology as a challenging in the process of revealing. It is a "challenging revealing," a "setting upon," which becomes a way of oppression.
The way of helping us to understand this oppression is by talking about the "real as standing-reserve." The idea is that, under enframing, the real reveals itself (through technology?) only as standing-reserve, and nothing else. Everything comes to being, becomes unconcealed only as a form of energy, or as having the potential for that energy. Heidegger talks about the plane on the runway only being revealed as standing-reserve. It is only real in the sense that it has the potential for some utility. The idea of real as standing-reserve and this sort of revealing is dangerous according to Heidegger, because man himself becomes ordered as standing-reserve and not as subject; just as nature/things become ordered as standing-reserve and not object. In this type of an ordering, man sees himself as "lord of the earth," even while viewing/ordering himself and mankind as standing-reserve. When we look at not only things and nature and technology, but ourselves and others, exclusively in terms of their productive potential (or capacity to give energy, resources, etc.) this is a dangerous world indeed, and this point of view can perhaps help us understand many of the crises that currently take hold under modern technology.
For instance, various economic problems, poverty, etc. can be understood in a way when we see that man as lord-of-earth has viewed himself, money, resources, economies, industries as standing-reserve. In viewing things as such, they are only useful in their ability to produce or to give- but in ordering as standing-reserve, this oppressive act leads to exploitation, to the abuse of natural resources, to the wealth of some at the empoverishment of others. The issue of pollution can be understood when we see that mankind has oppressively demanded production out of both nature and industry. Slavery, to bring up an older topic, is a great example of ordering as standing-reserve, and the dangers of viewing man as such a resource. Perhaps that example best of all could demonstrate to us the dangers of this form of ordering in modern society. Nature, industry, etc. are all enslaved to mankind as resources, but mankind himself is also under this form of slavery. Looking at things like this makes one realize just how often we do tend to order things in their capacity to give- and ignore any other form of ordering, revealing, etc. As Heidegger says, this is the greatest danger, that we have given ourselves over to a form of ordering and revealing that disables us from any other form. We can no longer think of things themselves, we can no longer understand ourselves as humans (or what the essence of the thing or the human is) because we are given over to the Enframing which demands a revealing and ordering as standing-reserve. This paints a stark picture of modern society, but it also helps us understand why things are the way they are. With understanding, perhaps we can then see other options or explore other ways of thinking, other ways of revealing. I think this is the hope that Heidegger leaves us with at the end, and he mentions art as revealing as one potential way. This is a start, and I believe that the exploration of other ways of ordering/revealing are key to solving the problems to modern society, which is why I think this work by Heidegger is so important.
The way of helping us to understand this oppression is by talking about the "real as standing-reserve." The idea is that, under enframing, the real reveals itself (through technology?) only as standing-reserve, and nothing else. Everything comes to being, becomes unconcealed only as a form of energy, or as having the potential for that energy. Heidegger talks about the plane on the runway only being revealed as standing-reserve. It is only real in the sense that it has the potential for some utility. The idea of real as standing-reserve and this sort of revealing is dangerous according to Heidegger, because man himself becomes ordered as standing-reserve and not as subject; just as nature/things become ordered as standing-reserve and not object. In this type of an ordering, man sees himself as "lord of the earth," even while viewing/ordering himself and mankind as standing-reserve. When we look at not only things and nature and technology, but ourselves and others, exclusively in terms of their productive potential (or capacity to give energy, resources, etc.) this is a dangerous world indeed, and this point of view can perhaps help us understand many of the crises that currently take hold under modern technology.
For instance, various economic problems, poverty, etc. can be understood in a way when we see that man as lord-of-earth has viewed himself, money, resources, economies, industries as standing-reserve. In viewing things as such, they are only useful in their ability to produce or to give- but in ordering as standing-reserve, this oppressive act leads to exploitation, to the abuse of natural resources, to the wealth of some at the empoverishment of others. The issue of pollution can be understood when we see that mankind has oppressively demanded production out of both nature and industry. Slavery, to bring up an older topic, is a great example of ordering as standing-reserve, and the dangers of viewing man as such a resource. Perhaps that example best of all could demonstrate to us the dangers of this form of ordering in modern society. Nature, industry, etc. are all enslaved to mankind as resources, but mankind himself is also under this form of slavery. Looking at things like this makes one realize just how often we do tend to order things in their capacity to give- and ignore any other form of ordering, revealing, etc. As Heidegger says, this is the greatest danger, that we have given ourselves over to a form of ordering and revealing that disables us from any other form. We can no longer think of things themselves, we can no longer understand ourselves as humans (or what the essence of the thing or the human is) because we are given over to the Enframing which demands a revealing and ordering as standing-reserve. This paints a stark picture of modern society, but it also helps us understand why things are the way they are. With understanding, perhaps we can then see other options or explore other ways of thinking, other ways of revealing. I think this is the hope that Heidegger leaves us with at the end, and he mentions art as revealing as one potential way. This is a start, and I believe that the exploration of other ways of ordering/revealing are key to solving the problems to modern society, which is why I think this work by Heidegger is so important.
Revealing and the Punctum: Man’s Call to Action
In "The Question Concerning Technology," aside from the main argument Heidegger is making on the essence of technology and our relation to it, I noticed several times that he mentions that humans are called upon by the revealing he introduces. For example, he says “the unconcealment of the unconcealed has already come to pass whenever it calls man forth into the modes of revealing allotted to him” (19). Also, “man in the technological age is, in a particularly striking way, called forth into revealing” (21). In addition to these statements, throughout the piece Heidegger implies that man is not actively seeking out the act of revealing, but instead responding to its call. Therefore we are kind of hailed but it and prompted to do this act.
Also, Heidegger examines the essence of technology and humanity’s role of being with it. He argues that it is our understanding of technology prevents us from understanding more fully our relationship with technology. We are informed by our "instrumental conception" of what technology is and concerned with mastery of it. Therefore, in order to grasp a fuller understanding of humanity’s relation to technology, we need to consider this. He also mentions that enframing endangers man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is. He says “In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence” (27). Therefore man can never encounter only himself. By examining ourselves in relation to technology, we can get a better sense of our relationship to everything.
Heidegger’s illustration of this response to a call reminds me of a part of Gregory Ulmer’s book Electronic Monuments. Within it, Ulmer explains to the reader something he calls a “punctum.” The punctum is closely related to Lacan’s gaze. Both the gaze and the punctum encourage the viewer to look back at him or herself into interrogating what is seen (103). This punctum challenges a viewer to make sense of what is seen because they feel as if they are under scrutiny (102). The punctum can be related to a sting, or something that is bothersome. It can be irritating or troubling, yet ultimately memorable (118). It is often triggered by abject issues in society that the viewer feels compelled to address and call attention to. One does not seek out the punctum, but it instead calls out to them, hailing and interpellating them. However, once received, Ulmer encourages the viewer to use this punctum to construct a MEmorial in order to better understand one’s role in this issue and relation/contribution to it.
This relates to Heidegger for me because while he argues that we will better understand the essence of technology if we consider our role to it, Ulmer says we will better understand the ignored or abject issues in society if we consider our roles in them. Even further, we can get a better idea of our essence. Additionally, Heidegger describes revealing as something we are called out to do, not something we actively seek out to do. This is similar to how Ulmer describes the punctum. We do not seek out the punctum, but it calls out to us, urging us to act. Both the revealing and the punctum call us to act and help us better understand our place in the world in relation to other things.
Fourfold Technology
As I read this week's essays, Heidegger's writing style made the concept of the fourfold a bit confusing to me (e.g., "the thing things world"). The final essay by Jennifer Bay and Thomas Rickert, however, related Heidegger's fourfold to New Media. The authors use the fourfold (earth, sky, divinities, and mortals) to understand Heidegger's idea of dwelling as a way of "staying with things" (216). This concept is important because Heidegger is concerned with the complexity of our relationship to technological things. The end of such as relationship, dwelling, cannot exist through mere mastery (217).
The author's description of Heidegger's "dwelling" is then applied to both iLife and Facebook. Both of these examples, while perhaps not what Heidegger originally had in mind, show how our relationship with technology constitutes our modern existence and blurs the lines between "real" and "virtual" life. Our "responsive attunement" to these things brings about the fourfold and, by extension, our home (220).
This essay made me consider the role certain technological things play in my own life. Over Christmas break I am flying to MN to visit my parents for an extended weekend and will be traveling with a number of devices (Kindle, smartphone, laptop) to make my layovers easier (or, perhaps, more "home"-like). My dwelling within the place created by these things is its own reality where networks of relations are affected by the interaction and creation of technology.
In occupying this place, my relationship with these things reflect various components of the fourfold. I look to my things for finding information about flight times, traffic, news (earth); relaxing with music, movies, books (sky); prioritizing e-mails, itineraries, projects (divinities); and connecting through social networks, text messages, calls (mortals). The technological devices that I take with me "brings [me] into communication and relation, affords tremendous creative opportunities, spurs new forms of community, connects other technologies, manifests values and concern for the future, and places [me] in ways that secure a home" (227). Thus, although I will be occupying a no-man's land within Chicago Midway airport for three hours, I am able to negotiate new forms of being within the dwelling place of technology.
By extending our sense of dwelling to things, we form a complex relationship with the things that "open up and disclose" our world (237). This opportunity has vast and unexplored possibilities for networking, growth, and creation. However, this deepened relationship with things possesses potential dangers, as any relationship does. Hence, we must continue to rethink the ways we interact with and through new media as it continues to shape our modern existence.
If Heidigger had a Facebook...
In Heidigger's The Thing, he says on page 163,
I was transported back to earlier this semester as I was writing my Socratic Dialogue on Facebook as a false cure for loneliness. Heidigger pretty much sums up what I wish I could have been eloquent enough to express in my paper. He goes on to discuss the thingness of things and what constitutes this thingness. However, I was thinking of the above quote in reference to relationships and friendships.
The distance between you and a friend does not necessarily mean you are far removed from each other. You can keep in contact, perhaps using Facebook or other technology, and remain "un-remote" to each other. For "nearness [to a person] does not consist in shortness of distance." Nearness is more about your actual relationship to the person and a relationship can persist despite distance. However, I would not argue that Facebook, or any other form of communication over a distance, is ideal for remaining "near" to your friends. I was just intrigued by the idea that even though you might be far from something, it is not necessarily inaccessible, or remote, to you. And contrarily, something that is shown to you in a picture or in a video is not necessarily accessible to you; it can remain remote.
"Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is the least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on the radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness."
The distance between you and a friend does not necessarily mean you are far removed from each other. You can keep in contact, perhaps using Facebook or other technology, and remain "un-remote" to each other. For "nearness [to a person] does not consist in shortness of distance." Nearness is more about your actual relationship to the person and a relationship can persist despite distance. However, I would not argue that Facebook, or any other form of communication over a distance, is ideal for remaining "near" to your friends. I was just intrigued by the idea that even though you might be far from something, it is not necessarily inaccessible, or remote, to you. And contrarily, something that is shown to you in a picture or in a video is not necessarily accessible to you; it can remain remote.
The thingness of the thing
In his article, "The Thing", Heidegger discusses how science conceals the "thingness of the thing" and essentially "annihilates" the thing, so that "they have never yet at all been able to appear to [be] thinking as things" (168). Science only manages to provide a representation of a thing, failing to reach the "reality of the thing" (168). Heidegger makes the point that if things are viewed not in terms of science, but instead, as tools embedded in nature and as fundamental parts of our lifestyles, then it can be shown how nature participates in the human process of making things.
He applies the example of the ceramic jug as a thing constituted not by its form or function, but by the void inside it and the gift that it offers in serving as a container. The void shapes the jug, just as the jug shapes the void. "The vessel's thingness [lies] in the void that holds," Heidegger claims (167). When one creates a jug and uses it, man and the divine forces of nature are being united. At this point, the jug's "thingness" is revealed through the interaction of what he calls the "fourfold", or four dimensions - "earth and sky, divinities and mortals" - that make up the contextual network of meaning in the world. Heidegger's fourfold brings together the thing and the world, so that its Being - its meaningful presence in the world - is apparent.
I've been trying to think of an example of what Heidegger would not consider a "thing". Instead, my mind keeps returning to the location-based social networking website, Foursquare, as a way to extend Bay and Rickert's discussion of how new technologies are "recompos[ing] our way of being in the world" (210) .
Users with a GPS device on their smartphone "check-in" when they enter specific venues or locations. This in turn can create a message on one's Twitter account, informing followers where you are. Each time a person "checks-in" he/she is awarded points, and can also become the "mayor" of the venue if that person has the most number of "check-ins" over the previous 60 days.
Users can also create venues, but from Heidegger's perspective, this form of technology limits "dwelling in the world" because people are less "mindful of the fourfold elements" (219). For instance, if an individual goes to a location simply to "check-in" on one's mobile device for the purpose of gaining points, he/she is attuning less to the folding-together of "thing" and world. It's not simply that the social app. distracts the user from experiencing a sense of place, but rather from experiencing the "interconnected" network of meaning of "thing" and world (222).
He applies the example of the ceramic jug as a thing constituted not by its form or function, but by the void inside it and the gift that it offers in serving as a container. The void shapes the jug, just as the jug shapes the void. "The vessel's thingness [lies] in the void that holds," Heidegger claims (167). When one creates a jug and uses it, man and the divine forces of nature are being united. At this point, the jug's "thingness" is revealed through the interaction of what he calls the "fourfold", or four dimensions - "earth and sky, divinities and mortals" - that make up the contextual network of meaning in the world. Heidegger's fourfold brings together the thing and the world, so that its Being - its meaningful presence in the world - is apparent.
I've been trying to think of an example of what Heidegger would not consider a "thing". Instead, my mind keeps returning to the location-based social networking website, Foursquare, as a way to extend Bay and Rickert's discussion of how new technologies are "recompos[ing] our way of being in the world" (210) .
Users with a GPS device on their smartphone "check-in" when they enter specific venues or locations. This in turn can create a message on one's Twitter account, informing followers where you are. Each time a person "checks-in" he/she is awarded points, and can also become the "mayor" of the venue if that person has the most number of "check-ins" over the previous 60 days.
Users can also create venues, but from Heidegger's perspective, this form of technology limits "dwelling in the world" because people are less "mindful of the fourfold elements" (219). For instance, if an individual goes to a location simply to "check-in" on one's mobile device for the purpose of gaining points, he/she is attuning less to the folding-together of "thing" and world. It's not simply that the social app. distracts the user from experiencing a sense of place, but rather from experiencing the "interconnected" network of meaning of "thing" and world (222).
Object Lesson VII: The Fourfold One
Heidegger’s fourfold, to me, encapsulates a concept towards which much of the rhetorical scholarship I’ve read this semester seems to be headings: the breaking down of distinctions and divisions; the acceptance of a holistic worldview. Jennifer Bay and Thomas Rickert also assert that “Seeing the world as a deep and interconnected stitchwork of things that lays claims on us…stands to recompose our way of being in the world,” going on to suggest that such a way of seeing will reshape humans’ relationship with the “things” they live with in an age of mass-technology. Despite the fourfold’s quadruplicity it is still referred to as a “one,” recognizing, as humans always have, the differences between “things” while simultaneously accepting their inextricability. This calls to mind Jenny Edbauer’s notion of an ecology of rhetoric; she formulates a notion of the rhetorical situation as “a mixture of processes and encounters,” which decentralizes human subjects by recognizing the interplay between they and the objects (or, more appropriately, “quasi-objects” ala Latour) which Heidegger designates as “things.” Edbauer goes on to prescribe a model for discussing this interplay; one such model, perhaps, is the Gaia hypothesis.
I first encountered the Gaia hypothesis in the book of the recently dearly-departed biologist Lynn Margulis (former wife of Carl Sagan), titled Dazzle Gradually. In one chapter she describes the Earth as an organism onto itself, one simultaneously sustained by and sustaining all the organisms and non-organic processes which constitute the world as we know it. The water and weather cycle is Earth’s circulatory system, ensuring that the water required by life is delivered where it is needed; the atmosphere is a skin, one which protects from numerous external hazards while ensuring the homeostasis of our internal environment; living creatures function just like the microscopic organisms and organelles which perform various tasks in the human body, each having a certain effect upon the ecosystem as a whole. Life evolved in response to the conditions on Earth, but Earth has also evolved in response to life.
James Lovelock used the model of Daisyworld to explain the Gaia hypothesis. The following videos give a good overview of the hypothesis—a description of Daisyworld can be found starting at about 5:00 on the second video and continuing into the third.
Essentially, this idea argues that Earth is the way it is because we are the way we are-- when the hypothetical planet achieves conditions conducive to growing daisies they begin to spread. Because the black daisies reflect energy from the Sun the planet itself begins to warm until the white daisies are able to thrive, causing the entire planet to be overtaken by white daisies-- then the temperature drops again until conditions are ideal for black daisies to begin thriving, and thus the organisms influence the planet and vice-versa.
This hypothesis may not seem directly related to rhetoric, but the whole idea of a holistic notion of mutual influence between all things ultimately comes down to elementary physics-- things governed by forces bounce around together in spheres, causing chains of reactions that can only be understood if all elements in the equation are accounted for. This is how I understand Heidegger's fourfold.
Fourfolds and Captain Planet
Heidegger argues that in order for an object to have "thinginess," it must exist with the fourfold. The fourfold creates a dwelling rather than a place, in which an thing creates meaning and relationship.
I have to admit that I don't understand the fourfold. As Bay and Rickert address, why earth, sky, human, and gods? How do these four create a meaning? Why not reduce the fourfold to a twofold? Is not human encompassed by earth and gods by sky? While I may not understand why Heidegger choose the four traits that he did, I believe I understand what he's trying to get at.
The fourfold reminded me of the four elements: earth, fire, wind, and water. It is believed that these elements make up all material objects. But the problem with this comparison is that while the four elements may make an object, they don't make that object have thinginess.
Take a nicknack. It's made out of clay (earth), molded using water, set out to dry (air), and fired. For one person, this nicknack may have sentimental value but to another it may be nothing more than a paper weight. When an object exists in the fourfold, meaning is created. This is what Heidegger is getting at with the fourfold.
I have to thank Abby for bringing up the Captain Planet reference. The teens use the four elements to summon captain planet, but the fifth "element" they use is heart. And that's what separates the four elements from the fourfold. Earth, fire, wind, and water simply create an object. The fourfold creates heart which give an object thinginess.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
12.6.11 Object Lesson
Never did I think that I'd make a connection between Heidegger's fourfold discussed in "The Thing" and a lesson from my time in Catholic grade school, but here it goes. With the exception of the number involved, I found that the fourfold seems very similar to the idea of the Holy Trinity. Often explained as a mystery, the Trinity is the idea that God is made up of three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Despite being three persons, God is not three different gods but one God. Try wrapping your mind around that in 2nd grade! A description of the Trinity from a Catholic perspective is at this link: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm. If, however, you'd prefer something more secular Wikipedia's description of the Trinity is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity. Three Gods in one seemed to mirror Heidegger's idea of how earth, sky, mortals, and divinities create a single fourfold. Each is "In the gift of the outpouring earth and sky, divinities and mortals dwell together all at once. These four, at one because of what they themselves are, belong together. Preceding everything that is present, they are enfolded into a single fourfold" (171).
Earth, sky, divinities, and mortals are all individual entities; however, Heidegger continually notes that the gathering of the four components is necessary to constitute a thing. In "New Media and the Fourfold" Bay and Rickert use Heidegger's example of a bridge to demonstrates this. "It is a thing 'as the gathering of the fourfold,' which is to say, 'the bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals'" (218). Take one of the fourfold's components away and you won't have a thing. In the same way, if you take away a third of the Trinity, you lose the conception of the Trinity that is promoted by Christian faiths. "The thing stays--gathers and unites--the fourfold. The thing things world. Each thing stays the fourfold into a happening of the simple onehood of the world" (178).
To further compare Heidegger's fourfold to the Trinity, I want to look at one specific part of "The Thing." Heidegger notes:
Then again, the Trinity is considered to be a mystery of the Christian religion. Faith is one of the necessary aspects of grasping three beings in one. So for me I guess this also begs the question, can this idea of faith be carried over to Heidegger's fourfold? How would Heidegger respond to this comparison?
Earth, sky, divinities, and mortals are all individual entities; however, Heidegger continually notes that the gathering of the four components is necessary to constitute a thing. In "New Media and the Fourfold" Bay and Rickert use Heidegger's example of a bridge to demonstrates this. "It is a thing 'as the gathering of the fourfold,' which is to say, 'the bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals'" (218). Take one of the fourfold's components away and you won't have a thing. In the same way, if you take away a third of the Trinity, you lose the conception of the Trinity that is promoted by Christian faiths. "The thing stays--gathers and unites--the fourfold. The thing things world. Each thing stays the fourfold into a happening of the simple onehood of the world" (178).
To further compare Heidegger's fourfold to the Trinity, I want to look at one specific part of "The Thing." Heidegger notes:
Earth and sky, divinities and mortals--being at one with one another of their own accord--belong together by way of the simpleness of the united fourfold. Each of the four mirrors in its own way the presence of the others. Each therewith reflects itself in its own way into its own, within the simpleness of the four. This mirroring does not portray a likeness. The mirroring, lightening each of the four, appropriates their own presencing into simple belonging to one another. Mirroring int his appropriate-lightening way, each of the four plays to each of the others. The appropriative mirroring sets each of the four free into its own, but it binds these free ones into the simplicity of their essential being toward one another (177).If God the Father has the attribute of x, God the Spirit mirrors God the Father in demonstrating this same component. They're one in the same God and thus mirror the attributes of the other. The presence of God the Son is reliant upon the presence of the other two thirds of the Trinity. This creates the belonging among the Father, Son, and Spirit. In the same way, each part of the fourfold mirrors the other parts. They belong together much as the Father, Son, and Spirit do in Christian faith.
Then again, the Trinity is considered to be a mystery of the Christian religion. Faith is one of the necessary aspects of grasping three beings in one. So for me I guess this also begs the question, can this idea of faith be carried over to Heidegger's fourfold? How would Heidegger respond to this comparison?
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Latour Through the Eyes of a Child
Latour's ideas concerning the delegation to humans and nonhumans sent my mind racing backward, to an earlier time in my life when I encountered these elements of delegation and agency all at once. The way all these ideas converge on top of each other is important to understand the impact of shared agency in terms of these types of situations. In this case, it involves a revolving door--much the same as Latour's example.
At my childhood doctor's office, there were three entrances. One was a wide door built specifically to enable wheelchair access. Another was a manual door designed for foot traffic. The third door was an automatic revolving door with four panels through which a person could walk without touching (or contaminating) a doorknob or lever. I chose the third one most often, simply because I thought it was cool.
One unique feature of the revolving door was that while it was turning, it could also be forced to turn because there was a bar on each glass panel that could be grasped and pushed in case of emergency. My younger siblings and I would often use this to speed up the process of moving through to the other side. This is an example of shared agency that is totally dependent on situation. It gives the user ownership through an option, and it also gives the machine ownership through an opposite option.
By the same token, at some point in my youth, the doctor's office felt the need to put a sign outside the door urging people not to put their hands on the glass. While done mostly for appearance's sake, this sign also provides an example of shared delegation. On one hand, the sign's message causes a reaction from the user, giving it agency in this scenario. On the other hand, doesn't the creator of the sign--who crafted the message in a specific way--have some share in the agency because of the reaction the message elicits? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the whole concept, but it seems to me that following the trail of any nonhuman entity back in its existence will reveal the existence of a creator that conceived of the idea and gave it life. If that assumption is true, then all functions of the nonhuman entity can ultimately be traced back to him or her, giving some agency to the creative being.
This idea seems to go around and around like a merry-go-round in my mind, with very little chance of a definitive answer. I just thought about those early experiences and how each piece of the revolving door shares a little of the credit when discussing the idea of agency.
Actor-network theory
In Latour's The Sociology of a Few Mundane Objects, he brings up many interesting points that are relevant more today than they have ever been. When he discusses "Delegation to Nonhumans (231)," appointing a non-human to replace a human in a mundane task is something that can be practical. He cites an automatic groom that closes the door behind patrons. The non-human spring that has been given a human task can be more efficient but less personal than the person politely closing the door behind someone.
The Actor-network theory is an interesting way to approach the formation of a network. Not only are the humans involved forming relationships with each other, but it also contains the physical, non-human objects that create the network as a whole. This approach made me think of the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks. The movie only had one "human" character, but the network was an entire island. He also assigned human traits and responsibilities to a non-human. He painted a face on a volleyball and named it Wilson, and this object served as his social outlet through the movie while he was attempting to escape from the island.
I liked the inter-dependence Latour refers to regarding a relationship between a human and non-human object. Non-humans can take human roles, humans can take non-human roles, and they can both perform the duties of each other in certain situations. He refers to the term "actor" for this, and says that actors are able to interchange roles and duties regardless of their origin. We have drawn very similar ideas and concepts from our Social Media class. Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together and Greg Ulmer's book Electronic Monuments both bring up the exact same arguments and question our relationship and dependency on technology.
In Cast Away, Tom Hanks relied on Wilson for companionship, much like many of the people studied in Turkle's book when they were given robots to interact with. The same can be said with video games and the interactions they create. In World of Warcraft, people are using something non-human to create a human relationship and many treat this as real, with everyone in the relationship becoming actors rather than humans or non-humans.
The Actor-network theory is an interesting way to approach the formation of a network. Not only are the humans involved forming relationships with each other, but it also contains the physical, non-human objects that create the network as a whole. This approach made me think of the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks. The movie only had one "human" character, but the network was an entire island. He also assigned human traits and responsibilities to a non-human. He painted a face on a volleyball and named it Wilson, and this object served as his social outlet through the movie while he was attempting to escape from the island.I liked the inter-dependence Latour refers to regarding a relationship between a human and non-human object. Non-humans can take human roles, humans can take non-human roles, and they can both perform the duties of each other in certain situations. He refers to the term "actor" for this, and says that actors are able to interchange roles and duties regardless of their origin. We have drawn very similar ideas and concepts from our Social Media class. Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together and Greg Ulmer's book Electronic Monuments both bring up the exact same arguments and question our relationship and dependency on technology.
In Cast Away, Tom Hanks relied on Wilson for companionship, much like many of the people studied in Turkle's book when they were given robots to interact with. The same can be said with video games and the interactions they create. In World of Warcraft, people are using something non-human to create a human relationship and many treat this as real, with everyone in the relationship becoming actors rather than humans or non-humans.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Kairos as Environment
In his article, "Invention in the Wild," Thomas Rickert investigates the varying meanings and descriptions of "kairos" over time. He points out that the original use of kairos had a spatial connotation, as Homer used it to refer to the "deadliest spot" on the body at which an arrow may strike. While this went with later interpretations of kairos as a sort of window of opportunity, it also informs a certain importance on place. Kairos exists not just as an opportunity, but as a specific opportunity in a specific place brought forth by a specific situation. Rickert proceeds to trace the varying meanings of kairos through the ages, from spatial to temporal to contextual. The main idea that he seems to be countering is the idea of kairos as it relates to an autonomous human subject: that kairos isn't simply an opportunity that the rhetor seizes. Rickert moves more toward the dispersion of the subject by painting kairos as not just as a contextual opportunity with an autonomous subject/rhetor attaining agency through acting; but rather he describes the "kairotic experience" as "one that encompasses all elements composting the situation." From this stance, he goes on to emphasize how all the elements of a given situation (not just speaker and audience and opportunity) intermingle to call forth a response. The rhetor (or actor) is not independent of the situation, but acts/speaks as a result of the kairotic web of relations which compel him (or enable him) to do so. "(O)ur words and actions emerge as willed by kairos," as Rickert says.
Rickert uses the example of air traffic controllers to show how an environment produces kairos, and how the lines are blurred between subject/object in the response to the "kairotic moment." The controllers do not simply act as a response to the environment (the common conception of kairos- acting in response to an opportune situation,) however they are not simply controlled by the environment either. Subjectivity is dispersed into a web of interrelations which shape a moment that may be considered kairotic. I found one particular line from Rickert helpful in capturing the general thrust of his argument:
When I consider kairos as a situation, an environ of interacting elements, it changes the way I view many things involving a "subject" or an actor. Take the stage of improvisational comedy, for example. One such show of "improv" comedy is "Whose Line is it Anyway?" Actors get on stage and perform improvisation given a set of rules or situations. The traditionally, "seizing an opportunity" mode of looking at kairos would say the kairos of the moment is the improvisational prompt, which the actors seize in an attempt to derive the desired response from their audience (here, laughter.) However, when we look at kairos the way Rickert does, he would argue that the actors, the stage,the show, the audience (local and television,) the prompts, the television network, the host, the cultural context... all blend together to form kairos, which produces or calls forth a particular response/action from the actor. In the scene below, the traditional (subjective or Platonic) way of looking at kairos would attribute all power and agency to the actor for his lines and the humor found there. However, in looking at kairos the way Rickert does, we would understand that the situation itself, and all the elements involved, play a role in eliciting the humor that comes from the actor. Not to say the actor does not himself choose to say the words he says, rather his choice is but one factor in a web of relations that form the kairotic moment. In looking at things this way, Rickert seemingly takes a great deal of agency away from the actor and attributes it to kairos itself. Perhaps it is not surprising then that we humans would rather look at things such as stage-comedy from a subjective standpoint and applaud the actor for his creativity and ability to respond to what we view as an opportune moment. However, Rickert has a good point that we might understand kairos itself better if we were to look at it in terms of place, as well as context, situation, actors, audience, etc.
Rickert uses the example of air traffic controllers to show how an environment produces kairos, and how the lines are blurred between subject/object in the response to the "kairotic moment." The controllers do not simply act as a response to the environment (the common conception of kairos- acting in response to an opportune situation,) however they are not simply controlled by the environment either. Subjectivity is dispersed into a web of interrelations which shape a moment that may be considered kairotic. I found one particular line from Rickert helpful in capturing the general thrust of his argument:
The air traffic control center is a series of events in a specific environs of kairotic moments in a generative place, which form an ambient whole... the environs here are not just a material reality to which we adapt or which somehow "determine" us. Instead, the environs are what enable us, but they enable inclusively of human beings, insofar as human beings are part of the environs. Thus the emplacement of the controllers is essential to their activity, for the context makes all that occurs possible.... their choices are already immersed in the context in which they get played out.
When I consider kairos as a situation, an environ of interacting elements, it changes the way I view many things involving a "subject" or an actor. Take the stage of improvisational comedy, for example. One such show of "improv" comedy is "Whose Line is it Anyway?" Actors get on stage and perform improvisation given a set of rules or situations. The traditionally, "seizing an opportunity" mode of looking at kairos would say the kairos of the moment is the improvisational prompt, which the actors seize in an attempt to derive the desired response from their audience (here, laughter.) However, when we look at kairos the way Rickert does, he would argue that the actors, the stage,the show, the audience (local and television,) the prompts, the television network, the host, the cultural context... all blend together to form kairos, which produces or calls forth a particular response/action from the actor. In the scene below, the traditional (subjective or Platonic) way of looking at kairos would attribute all power and agency to the actor for his lines and the humor found there. However, in looking at kairos the way Rickert does, we would understand that the situation itself, and all the elements involved, play a role in eliciting the humor that comes from the actor. Not to say the actor does not himself choose to say the words he says, rather his choice is but one factor in a web of relations that form the kairotic moment. In looking at things this way, Rickert seemingly takes a great deal of agency away from the actor and attributes it to kairos itself. Perhaps it is not surprising then that we humans would rather look at things such as stage-comedy from a subjective standpoint and applaud the actor for his creativity and ability to respond to what we view as an opportune moment. However, Rickert has a good point that we might understand kairos itself better if we were to look at it in terms of place, as well as context, situation, actors, audience, etc.
Part Human, Part Non-human
In "The Sociology of a Few Mundane Objects," Bruno Latour uses a number of examples to discuss the complexity and intertwined nature of networks. Instead of visualizing these networks as a simple hybrid occupying the space between humans and non-humans, Latour describes how social theories need to take into account the inter-dependence and negotiation of humans, non-humans, parts of humans, parts of non-humans, humans that perform non-human roles, and non-humans that perform human roles. He writes that "students of technology are never faced with people on the one hand and things on the other, they are faced with programs of action, sections of which are endowed to parts of humans, while other sections are entrusted to parts of non-humans."
The main example he uses to illustrate his point is the automatic groom. This program of action involves a complex network of relationships and roles--the usefulness of the door itself, the apparent inability of humans to close the door properly, the problems/difficulties of various door-closing technologies, the possibility of a groom malfunction, the anthropomorphic qualities ascribed to the groom, and the range of humans and non-humans that direct user to the door or museum. Obviously, the groom does not fit neatly into the human/non-human binary. In addition to these complexities, issues of morality and motivation also come into play. Could the groom be considered more moral than a human because it will always remember and be available to close the door? What about the groom's apparent "discrimination" against those who walk slowly or are carrying large packages?
In the film Moon, astronaut Sam Bell is nearing the end of his three-year assignment at a lunar space station owned by Lunar Industries. Sam's only companion on the station is a computer named Gerty. Throughout the course of the film, however, Sam discovers that he is actually one of a series of clones used to man the station--the real Sam Bell is actually still on Earth. With Gerty's help, two of the Sam clones work together to return to Earth and reveal the human cloning activities of Lunar Industries.
Moon Trailer
The network of relationships between the Sam clones and Gerty is incredibly complex. Gerty functions as Sam's assistant, carrying out traditionally "human" tasks. However, his functionality also relies on the cooperation of Sam and the communication Gerty has with Lunar Industries. Gerty's morality is complicated by his knowledge of the clones and the assistance he gives the Sam clones in rebelling against Lunar Industries. Throughout the film, Sam speaks to Gerty by name, as a human. Gerty's anthropomorphic qualities include his name, his voice (Kevin Spacey), and the smiley face that expresses his emotions on screen.
The network is made more complex by the presence of human clones, which have been delegated to perform the lunar tasks that humans are unable or unwilling to accomplish. The ways in which Lunar Industries creates these clones and embeds memories into their consciousness affects the way they interact with Gerty and the rest of the station. These clones think and behave like humans, but their humanity is ultimately called into question.
The main example he uses to illustrate his point is the automatic groom. This program of action involves a complex network of relationships and roles--the usefulness of the door itself, the apparent inability of humans to close the door properly, the problems/difficulties of various door-closing technologies, the possibility of a groom malfunction, the anthropomorphic qualities ascribed to the groom, and the range of humans and non-humans that direct user to the door or museum. Obviously, the groom does not fit neatly into the human/non-human binary. In addition to these complexities, issues of morality and motivation also come into play. Could the groom be considered more moral than a human because it will always remember and be available to close the door? What about the groom's apparent "discrimination" against those who walk slowly or are carrying large packages?
In the film Moon, astronaut Sam Bell is nearing the end of his three-year assignment at a lunar space station owned by Lunar Industries. Sam's only companion on the station is a computer named Gerty. Throughout the course of the film, however, Sam discovers that he is actually one of a series of clones used to man the station--the real Sam Bell is actually still on Earth. With Gerty's help, two of the Sam clones work together to return to Earth and reveal the human cloning activities of Lunar Industries.
Moon Trailer
The network of relationships between the Sam clones and Gerty is incredibly complex. Gerty functions as Sam's assistant, carrying out traditionally "human" tasks. However, his functionality also relies on the cooperation of Sam and the communication Gerty has with Lunar Industries. Gerty's morality is complicated by his knowledge of the clones and the assistance he gives the Sam clones in rebelling against Lunar Industries. Throughout the film, Sam speaks to Gerty by name, as a human. Gerty's anthropomorphic qualities include his name, his voice (Kevin Spacey), and the smiley face that expresses his emotions on screen.
The network is made more complex by the presence of human clones, which have been delegated to perform the lunar tasks that humans are unable or unwilling to accomplish. The ways in which Lunar Industries creates these clones and embeds memories into their consciousness affects the way they interact with Gerty and the rest of the station. These clones think and behave like humans, but their humanity is ultimately called into question.
Nonhuman Substitution: Are we really filling any gaps?
Latour attempts to convince the reader that material artifacts play an important role in creating and reaching the level of morality that we employ. He turns down the idea that individual humans are the base of all responsibility and instead makes the point that what is morally desirable depends on the interaction between humans and technologies. He says “To balance our accounts of society, we simply have to turn our exclusive attention away from humans and look also at nonhumans” (227). He also points out that here are the social masses that make up our morality. “The distance between morality and force is not as wide as moralists expect; or more exactly, clever engineers have made it smaller” (253). However, “The paradox of technology is that it is thought to be at one of the extremes” (244).
Nonhuman artifacts are part of the negotiations between people, institutions, and organizations that help to develop sociotechnical systems. “The beauty of artifacts is that they take on themselves the contradictory wishes or needs of humans and nonhumans” (247). For example, Latour illustrates his argument by using the example of a door groom that automatically closes a door after people pass through it. This then replaces the need for individuals to act responsibly and shut it behind them. This and Latour’s other examples demonstrate that the task of maintaining duties, values, and ethics can be delegated to a non-human entity. This is done with technological design and the replacing, compelling, and circumventing of human action through it.
These nonhumans don’t think like people do or decide how they will act, but their nature can play a comparable role. Artifacts can be deliberately designed to replace, constrain, and shape human action. They can appear to determine or compel certain actions. They are able to shape the decisions we make, the effects of our actions, and even the way we work in the world. “When humans are displaced and deskilled, nonhumans have to be upgraded and reskilled” (232). The behavior imposed back onto a human by a nonhuman delegates prescription, which is the “moral and ethical dimension of mechanisms” (232). Therefore, these non-humans are important in mediating human relationships.
Latour points out that we are not only able to delegate force to nonhumans, but also values, duties, and ethics. It is due to this morality that we behave so ethically, thus, “the sum of morality does not only remains stable but increases enormously with the population of nonhumans” (232).
Latour claims that he does not hold a bias or discriminate between the human and inhuman, but instead sees only actors that exchange their properties (236). He proposes that this attribution of roles and action is also a choice. “The label ‘inhuman’ applied to techniques simply overlooks translation mechanisms and the many choices that exist for figuring or defiguring, personifying or abstracting, embodying or disembodying actors” (241).
In the end of the article, Latour says that “It is that society itself is to be rethought from top to bottom once we add to it the facts and the artifacts that makeup large sections of our social ties” and what appears in place is not the extremes of society and technology, nor a hybrid, but a “sui generis object: the collective thing” (254). He points out that what we are missing is not in the supposedly cold, efficient and inhuman technologies, but instead in our traditional social theories (254). I think what Latour’s getting at is that we can’t really understand how society works without looking at and understanding the influences that non-humans and technology has on our daily lives.
Latour asks if humans have been replaced by nonhumans, stating that this depends on the kind of action that has been translated or delegated to them (232). The discussion of this replacement in Latour’s article served as another connection to Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together. He points out that nonhumans serve as a solution in certain instances because they substitute the unreliable human with a delegated nonhuman character (231). These nonhumans are able to make up for where we as humans are lacking. Similarly, in her discussion of robots, Turkle describes technology as seductive because it offers what meets our human vulnerabilities (1). According to her, we are drawn by the illusion of companionship with convenience and without the demands of intimacy. However, this presents risks of emotional dislocation. Turkle points out that since we already filter companionship through machines we now look to accept machines as companions. Robots have the power to dramatically alter our social lives by offering contact. However, they pose psychological risks by making us vulnerable to simplicities that may diminish us. In her discussion of AIBO, a robotic dog, Turkle points out that it is not the practice for the real, but a possible alternative that is not necessarily second best. There is a possibility that after robots serve as a better-than-nothing substitute; they might become equal or even preferable, to a pet or person (64).
Turkle asks what are we sacrificing when we look to robots as electronic companions? With this in comparison to Latour’s piece, I ask, is the nonhuman substitution of small things, such as a door groom, going to lead us to substitutions of a larger scale, such as nonhuman childcare? While the nonhuman artifacts may work better in some situations, are they best for all? Is it more efficient to replace humans with nonhumans? When is this true or not true? How would our relationships with each other change with increasing substitution? Even further, how would our ideas of morality change if we were to replace humans in various aspects of life? Surely our outlook would change in many ways altering this. So with the substitution of nonhumans for humans, are we really filling any gaps? These are many questions that come to my mind when reading both pieces. Additionally, both authors advocate that in order to understand our society, we must consider the role of technologies and their effects on our lives.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books.
11.29.11 Object Lesson
Byron Hawk's discussion of post-techne and ecologies was reminiscent of Jenny Edbauer's "Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies." In this same sense, the idea of post-techne and how it functions in ecologies (or perhaps Latourian networks?) reminded me of the Japanese concept of kaizen or "continual improvement." I would argue that kaizen should be applied to curriculum and teaching more often than it is, but that could get long-winded and wouldn't explain how it helps understand Hawk. Instead, I'll explore how the idea of kaizen itself may align with what Hawk is arguing for in terms of pedagogy.
If you're unfamiliar with kaizen, Wikipeidia provides a good overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen. Kaizen's goal is continuous improvement and its process has been applied to multiple sectors in the business world. Kaizen looks to improve efficiency and reduce waste throughout the entire business process, from manufacturing to management, from technology to human capital. Even once improvements have been made, kaizen doesn't allow for complacency. It looks to improve on those improvements, creating the idea of continuous improvement.
It's the continual evaluation part of kaizen that made me think of ecologies. Kaizen never stops when implemented successfully. It continues to improve on improvements; it doesn't matter if those improvements concern human or technological components of the process. Hawk's use of Harmon seems to illustrates this well. "...all things show up only as something specific to a particular constellation or to a particular encounter. Readiness-to-hand, then, is not about technology's usefulness for dasein but the immediate relation of one thing to another thing. It does not subsume the world under dasein but puts dasein on an equal plane as a body in relation to all other bodies" (375). In looking to improve processes, kaizen doesn't care if it's improving on a technological or human component. It is evaluating the relation of one part of the process to another. Human components are on an equal plane with technological components."The key, as Harmon notes, is not that there are different things that operate differently in different contexts but that bodies, technologies, and texts are their context. There is no separation...There is only relationality--techne emerges only through enacting relationships" (378).
Hawk proposes to turn the idea of enacting relationships to pedagogy. I propose applying kaizen to pedagogy more often, in fact making it a norm. The article's abstract notes that "ecological and posthuman perspectives" have been applied to interface design (371). To me it seems that kaizen has been embraced by interface design more so than by pedagogy, tying into my argument for implementing it. Hawk explains that "A posthuman understanding of techne would mean teachers accept the ecological and ambient nature of rhetorical situations and begin to develop techniques for simultaneously enacting and operating in these complex, evolving contexts" (379). To me this sounds like implementing kaizen. Enact and put an improvement into operation after considering the ecologies at play. Reevaluate it in operation. Improve on the improvement. Repeat continuously to account for evolving contexts. "If techne is a technology...as well as a technique that operates through both conscious and unconscious means, then it becomes crucial to think about how techniques situate students within particular contexts with any and all objects" (379). So in using kaizen with respect to pedagogy, students are considered. They're part of the academic ecology. Hawk's use of Jim Henry as an example considers this well. Hawk notes that Henry planned to "remake, or rearticulate the discourses, the subjectivities, and the lines of power that emerge from them" (385). Henry took the constellation he was working with rearticulated how to approach it. He considered every component affecting and making up that constellation. Based on what we know about him, I sense he'll continually improve his process based on changes within that constellation. And I would argue that this parallels continuous improvement in the kaizen cycle.
Just as Hawk uses Tabeaux's argument in support of his position, it supports advocating for applying kaizen to pedagogy. "...the best advantage teachers can give their students is the ability to learn and adapt to new and changing contexts" (388). Applying Hawk's posthuman approach to pedagogy would do well to also consider kaizen.
If you're unfamiliar with kaizen, Wikipeidia provides a good overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen. Kaizen's goal is continuous improvement and its process has been applied to multiple sectors in the business world. Kaizen looks to improve efficiency and reduce waste throughout the entire business process, from manufacturing to management, from technology to human capital. Even once improvements have been made, kaizen doesn't allow for complacency. It looks to improve on those improvements, creating the idea of continuous improvement.
It's the continual evaluation part of kaizen that made me think of ecologies. Kaizen never stops when implemented successfully. It continues to improve on improvements; it doesn't matter if those improvements concern human or technological components of the process. Hawk's use of Harmon seems to illustrates this well. "...all things show up only as something specific to a particular constellation or to a particular encounter. Readiness-to-hand, then, is not about technology's usefulness for dasein but the immediate relation of one thing to another thing. It does not subsume the world under dasein but puts dasein on an equal plane as a body in relation to all other bodies" (375). In looking to improve processes, kaizen doesn't care if it's improving on a technological or human component. It is evaluating the relation of one part of the process to another. Human components are on an equal plane with technological components."The key, as Harmon notes, is not that there are different things that operate differently in different contexts but that bodies, technologies, and texts are their context. There is no separation...There is only relationality--techne emerges only through enacting relationships" (378).
Hawk proposes to turn the idea of enacting relationships to pedagogy. I propose applying kaizen to pedagogy more often, in fact making it a norm. The article's abstract notes that "ecological and posthuman perspectives" have been applied to interface design (371). To me it seems that kaizen has been embraced by interface design more so than by pedagogy, tying into my argument for implementing it. Hawk explains that "A posthuman understanding of techne would mean teachers accept the ecological and ambient nature of rhetorical situations and begin to develop techniques for simultaneously enacting and operating in these complex, evolving contexts" (379). To me this sounds like implementing kaizen. Enact and put an improvement into operation after considering the ecologies at play. Reevaluate it in operation. Improve on the improvement. Repeat continuously to account for evolving contexts. "If techne is a technology...as well as a technique that operates through both conscious and unconscious means, then it becomes crucial to think about how techniques situate students within particular contexts with any and all objects" (379). So in using kaizen with respect to pedagogy, students are considered. They're part of the academic ecology. Hawk's use of Jim Henry as an example considers this well. Hawk notes that Henry planned to "remake, or rearticulate the discourses, the subjectivities, and the lines of power that emerge from them" (385). Henry took the constellation he was working with rearticulated how to approach it. He considered every component affecting and making up that constellation. Based on what we know about him, I sense he'll continually improve his process based on changes within that constellation. And I would argue that this parallels continuous improvement in the kaizen cycle.
Just as Hawk uses Tabeaux's argument in support of his position, it supports advocating for applying kaizen to pedagogy. "...the best advantage teachers can give their students is the ability to learn and adapt to new and changing contexts" (388). Applying Hawk's posthuman approach to pedagogy would do well to also consider kaizen.
Humans vs Nonhumans and missing mass
Latour opens his article by explaining that sociologists are looking for a missing mass: "moral laws that would be inflexible enough to make us behave properly." Latour argues that the missing mass can be found in nonhumans. When humans don't act properly the nonhuman can, and vise versa.
The example Latour uses is that of a door. To go through a wall, humans would have to break the wall down, walk through the hole, and then build the wall up again. A hinge (nonhuman) fixes this. But then humans must be relied upon to open and close the door, which Latour demonstrates we aren't good at doing. A hydraulic door can then be substituted to open and close for us. The trade off is that hydraulic doors my "discriminate" against smaller people who don't weigh enough to operate the door or older people who don't move fast enough through the door before it closes.
Throughout the article is a question of morality, with the idea that machines can be "relentlessly" moral and humans cannot. But it seems to me as nonhumans grow more advanced the concept of morality grows less solid, especially when we get into "discrimination." Latour states there are ways around this, such as jarring the door with your foot to keep it from shutting in your face. And programmers can work to create a "smarter" door.
At this point, it seems the concept for morality is shifting. First, humans were unreliable, so a hinge was introduced. Humans proved unreliable again, so hydraulics stepped in. But then the nonhuman proved unreliable and so humans must act. This, I think, is what Latour is talking about regarding the social "missing mass." The moral laws find themselves in balance between humans and nonhumans.
All of this brought to mind the movie I, Robot. Jump the following clip to 1:10 and go to 5:10.
What interested me most about the clip is Spooner's story about Sarah. He insists that a human would have known to save Sarah over him, pointing out unreliability in nonhumans even though the robots are built specifically for morality:
Robots are built with three laws:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
According to Spooner's story, however, even with these laws, robots are without a moral compass. He believes humans should reduce their dependence on robots. As Latour would probably put it, Spooner believes humans need to balance out the missing mass or the morality factor.
What is interesting is that Sonny, the main robot in the film, is built so that he can choose to ignore the three laws. This perhaps demonstrates an effort on the part of his creator to balance out the missing mass by creating a robot that can make choices for itself that goes beyond logical processes.
Object Lesson VI: Actors
This week’s reading from Latour helps to clarify his understanding of the role “nonhumans” play in our lives. He, like Carolyn Miller, attributes agency to mechanized systems (such as the humble hinged door) and suggests that the rhetorical capacity these automata possess arises from our anthromorphization of their functions, pointing to the hydraulic door closer which, he observes, takes the place of a human groom or butler and can be spoken of in the same way. This example, for me, draws attention to the various other ways we, as humans, engage with objects on the same level as we would other humans—or, to use Latour’s terminology, how we participate as “actors” alongside nonhumans in “programs of action.”
Over Thanksgiving break I found myself back in my hometown of Greenville, SC, and wanted to take advantage of my time there by doing some Christmas shopping. Greenville has evolved a lot in the four-or-so years since I actually lived there, with new shopping centers sprouting up all along Pelham road (a road which, my dad likes to remind me, was made of dirt when he built his house there), so for navigation assistance I plotted my course on Google maps before leaving home. My dad, seeing this, remarked, “How did we ever find anything before online maps?” I responded that I wouldn’t know, old man, but the Latour reading made me recall this situation and consider the vast number of human actors replaced by instant online mapping. Although I don’t yet own one, GPS units are especially interesting to consider because of how they function rhetorically—they fill the role of the navigator, what my parents used to call the “co-pilot” on family trips, and manage to overcome all the difficulties human actors used to face in that role. As Latour notes, “when humans are displaced and deskilled, nonhumans have to be upgraded and reskilled”—these increasingly sophisticated GPS units have utterly displaced humans due to their their incredible accuracy (no human would be able to tell me to turn right in exactly 358 feet), and as a result have come to possess considerable ethos in peoples’ minds.
Here’s a situation from The Office:
Steve Carell’s fanatical insistence that “the machine knows!” as he follows its directions into a lake reveals his trust in the delegation of navigation to a nonhuman (despite the other human in the passenger seat trying to reason with him). As a rhetor, the GPS commands all the Aristotelian virtues of persuasion: ethos from its sophisticated programming and accuracy, logos for its confident instructions based on a clear map, pathos from its comforting voice-module (my friend’s GPS has a British accent so he named it Basil—I found that you can actually download celebrity voices for your GPS, although I don’t know if I could trust Flavor Flav’s directions even if they came from a computer), and of course kairos for the extremely timely delivery of instructions while a person is driving, with humans requiring immediate feedback yet still enough time to mentally plan for each turn. As an actor, however, the GPS lacks autonomy and requires some human input before it can function, and obviously must be updated frequently lest its maps go out of date. It is in this way that the “program of action” for moving from point A to B has increasingly shifted sections of itself to nonhumans. The sections which still rely on parts of humans mainly involve our sense of judgment, which the above clip shows is not necessarily good.
A Sense of Place
I was intrigued by Thomas Rickert's "Invention in the Wild" and the discussion of the place as well as the timing for kairos. I was trying to think of examples of a situation where you could seize an opportunity but didn't need to be in a specific place. I couldn't come up with any. You can only steer a boat on a boat, and more specifically, while you are out at sea with the sea tossing and turning around you, as Hawk refers to Atwill in his "Toward a Post-Techne" (381). However, thinking back to the discussion of President Obama's speech in Cooper's "Rhetorical Agency as Emergent and Enacted" I wondered if his speech, because of technology, would have had the same impact were it given from just anywhere.
Because of technology Obama could have given his speech from just about anywhere. His aides and speechwriters could construct a set to make it look like Obama was in the Oval Office, if they wanted. They could also just find a nice professional, presidential backdrop to film in front of. However, does his location in the world, not just the backdrop, matter? Let's say that Obama was in China at the time of giving the speech. He was there on a diplomatic trip and wanted to address the remarks made by Reverend Wright quickly and he did not want to leave for home early and risk offending the Chinese people. Would his speech have been so well received? Perhaps. I would guess that yes, the speech would have been well received by the American people even from across the globe. It was the (approximate) appropriate time to address the situation and comments that had been made. Obama was making the speech from far away for a reason Americans could rationalize.
Let's say instead that Obama had been on vacation with his family in the Caribbean. Would the speech have been well received then? I would guess perhaps not. If there was a crisis that needed addressing so badly that Obama had decided to address the whole nation, why would he be on vacation in the first place? Perhaps is was planned before the scandal? Then, he should have canceled it, right? So perhaps location can be just about anywhere, but the reason (exigence?) for being in that location is what matters now. It might be all right if Obama had been on a diplomatic trip, but a trip for pleasure would probably have been unacceptable.
Later in his article, Rickert discusses Dr. Blakesley's take on the film The Usual Suspects and says "that the ambient environs invent us in kairotic moments" (85). So how would the ability to be (almost) anywhere and broadcast a presidential speech affect the speech being given? How would being in China affect the speech versus being "at home" in the Oval Office? Or how would being in the Caribbean affect the speech?
Because of technology Obama could have given his speech from just about anywhere. His aides and speechwriters could construct a set to make it look like Obama was in the Oval Office, if they wanted. They could also just find a nice professional, presidential backdrop to film in front of. However, does his location in the world, not just the backdrop, matter? Let's say that Obama was in China at the time of giving the speech. He was there on a diplomatic trip and wanted to address the remarks made by Reverend Wright quickly and he did not want to leave for home early and risk offending the Chinese people. Would his speech have been so well received? Perhaps. I would guess that yes, the speech would have been well received by the American people even from across the globe. It was the (approximate) appropriate time to address the situation and comments that had been made. Obama was making the speech from far away for a reason Americans could rationalize.
Let's say instead that Obama had been on vacation with his family in the Caribbean. Would the speech have been well received then? I would guess perhaps not. If there was a crisis that needed addressing so badly that Obama had decided to address the whole nation, why would he be on vacation in the first place? Perhaps is was planned before the scandal? Then, he should have canceled it, right? So perhaps location can be just about anywhere, but the reason (exigence?) for being in that location is what matters now. It might be all right if Obama had been on a diplomatic trip, but a trip for pleasure would probably have been unacceptable.
Later in his article, Rickert discusses Dr. Blakesley's take on the film The Usual Suspects and says "that the ambient environs invent us in kairotic moments" (85). So how would the ability to be (almost) anywhere and broadcast a presidential speech affect the speech being given? How would being in China affect the speech versus being "at home" in the Oval Office? Or how would being in the Caribbean affect the speech?
Monday, November 21, 2011
Latour and Hybrids
Certain parts of Latour's book were very dense and difficult to read, but I did enjoy reading about his concept of "Hybrids" and how he explained them. He makes very interesting statements about the division of nature and culture, and uses very controversial topics as examples of hybrids that we have today. I think the first paragraph of the book is actually the most significant.
Reading this paragraph the second time after reading the rest of this book made me think about certain parts in Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together. The idea of people relating to different forms of artificial intelligence can certainly be viewed as a hybrid that has evolved in our society. After reading several of Turkle's studies, an artificial form of intelligence can certainly be a hybrid between nature and society. A robot is not created as a product from nature, yet we use materials from nature to form it. Many of the people studied then assigned personal value to it, giving it social significance. The case of Edna, a grandmother being exposed to a "My Real Baby" stood out the most to me.
Some of the concepts and ideas that Latour propose still don't quite make sense to me, but I did enjoy the separation he makes between nature and society. It is interesting to think about nature as a stand alone entity that exists regardless of what we as a society does, but that we have such a strong ability to assign significance to certain parts of it. I agree with his ideas of this separation, but I also see how they can never be completely separate from each other.
"On page four of my daily newspaper, I learn that the measurements taken above the Antarctic are not good this year: the hole in the ozone layer is growing ominously larger. Reading on, I turn from upper-atmosphere chemists to Chief Executive Officers of Atochem and Monsanto, companies that are modifying their assembly lines in order to replace the innocent chlorofluorocarbons, accused of crimes against the ecosphere. A few paragraphs later, I come across heads of state of major industrialized countries who are getting involved with chemistry, refrigerators, aerosols and inert gases. But at the end of the article, I discover that the meteorologists don’t agree with the chemists; their talking about cyclical fluctuations unrelated to human activity. So now the industrialists don’t know what to do. The heads of state are also holding back. Shouldn’t we wait? Is it already too late? Towards the bottom of the page, Third Would countries and ecologists add their grain of salt and talk about international treaties, moratoriums, the rights of future generations, and the right to development. (1)."
Reading this paragraph the second time after reading the rest of this book made me think about certain parts in Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together. The idea of people relating to different forms of artificial intelligence can certainly be viewed as a hybrid that has evolved in our society. After reading several of Turkle's studies, an artificial form of intelligence can certainly be a hybrid between nature and society. A robot is not created as a product from nature, yet we use materials from nature to form it. Many of the people studied then assigned personal value to it, giving it social significance. The case of Edna, a grandmother being exposed to a "My Real Baby" stood out the most to me.Turkle painted a very vivid picture and did a tremendous job explaining the emotions that were in the room during the interaction between Edna and Amy. The fact that a robot was able to overpower an actual child for an adult’s care and attention completely floored me. I know that people become increasingly lonely as they become older, and maybe the My Real Baby gave Edna a sense of ownership that she could not have with Amy since it was not her actual child. No one had ownership of the doll, and this allowed Edna to take it upon herself to care for it. As Turkle continued describing the situation, I could almost feel Edna snap out of it and return her attention back to the “real world.”
“Edna takes My Real Baby in her arms. When it starts to cry, Edna finds its bottle, smiles, and says she will feed it. Amy tries to get her great grandmother’s attention but is ignored…
Edna’s attention remains on My Real Baby. The atmosphere is quiet, even surreal: a great grandmother entranced by a robot baby, a neglected two-year-old, a shocked mother, and researchers nervously coughing in discomfort.” (p. 117)
Some of the concepts and ideas that Latour propose still don't quite make sense to me, but I did enjoy the separation he makes between nature and society. It is interesting to think about nature as a stand alone entity that exists regardless of what we as a society does, but that we have such a strong ability to assign significance to certain parts of it. I agree with his ideas of this separation, but I also see how they can never be completely separate from each other.
Smartphones as Quasi-Objects
Bruno Latour, in his book/essay "We Have Never Been Modern," argues that the Modernist Constitution is inherently self-contradictory. Modernists argue that all objects have been constructed by free and rational humans--"mere receptacles for human categories" (52). On the other hand, Modernists "debunk and ridicule [a] naive belief in the freedom of the human subject and society" (53). According to Latour, this way of "seeing double" makes it almost impossible for social scientists to agree on the nature of objects. They are regarded by Modernist thinking as simultaneously "too weak or too strong" (53). The result of this thinking is what Latour terms "quasi-objects," those things that are fabricated and constructed, yet real and objective. In attempting to retain their distinction between subjects and objects, Modernists have succeeded only in creating more "quasi-objects" that challenge that line of thinking.
Latour's explanation of quasi-objects and the contradictory thinking behind them is illustrated in the book Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything-Anytime-Anywhere Future--and Locked Us In by Brian Chen, a writer for Wired Magazine. (An excerpt from the book can be found on NPR.) From a Modernist standpoint, smartphones are objects of technology that humans have constructed for their own uses. Modernists would regard the smartphone as an amalgamation of circuits, lights, and batteries that has no inherent meaning or agency apart from that granted to it by its user. As this article points out, however, smartphones are playing an increasingly large role in controlling and changing their Modern subjects.
Although the book mainly focuses on the business and marketing implications of the iPhone, the author raises some interesting implications for the role of "quasi-objects" in contemporary life. Three of the specific examples discussed by the author are education, medicine, and law. In all three of these fields, smartphone applications are changing the ways humans interact with each other and with technology. Today's human subjects have embraced these new objects of technology to such an extent that the smartphone begins to take on a life of its own. How does the Modernist subject-object distinction hold up when faced with a society of humans that rely on their phones to tell them when to get up in the morning, what weather-appropriate outfit to wear, or what highly recommended restaurant to try? Latour would argue that it can't.
Like the "quasi-objects" Latour describes, smartphones are problematic to Modernist thinking. In one sense, the Modernist smartphone user views himself or herself as an "always-on, all-knowing being." Ironically, the subject role that the Modernist attributes to himself or herself is actually created by the smartphone (or object) itself. Smartphone users (consciously or unconsciously) acknowledge the agency of smartphones in their fears about how the phones impact the privacy of their digital lives or how they threaten the overall intelligence of society. By attributing this agency to the phone, the human subject views the smartphone as a "meaningless" object, all the while knowing the smartphone is actually more. Perhaps, a quasi-object?
Latour's explanation of quasi-objects and the contradictory thinking behind them is illustrated in the book Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything-Anytime-Anywhere Future--and Locked Us In by Brian Chen, a writer for Wired Magazine. (An excerpt from the book can be found on NPR.) From a Modernist standpoint, smartphones are objects of technology that humans have constructed for their own uses. Modernists would regard the smartphone as an amalgamation of circuits, lights, and batteries that has no inherent meaning or agency apart from that granted to it by its user. As this article points out, however, smartphones are playing an increasingly large role in controlling and changing their Modern subjects.
Although the book mainly focuses on the business and marketing implications of the iPhone, the author raises some interesting implications for the role of "quasi-objects" in contemporary life. Three of the specific examples discussed by the author are education, medicine, and law. In all three of these fields, smartphone applications are changing the ways humans interact with each other and with technology. Today's human subjects have embraced these new objects of technology to such an extent that the smartphone begins to take on a life of its own. How does the Modernist subject-object distinction hold up when faced with a society of humans that rely on their phones to tell them when to get up in the morning, what weather-appropriate outfit to wear, or what highly recommended restaurant to try? Latour would argue that it can't.
Like the "quasi-objects" Latour describes, smartphones are problematic to Modernist thinking. In one sense, the Modernist smartphone user views himself or herself as an "always-on, all-knowing being." Ironically, the subject role that the Modernist attributes to himself or herself is actually created by the smartphone (or object) itself. Smartphone users (consciously or unconsciously) acknowledge the agency of smartphones in their fears about how the phones impact the privacy of their digital lives or how they threaten the overall intelligence of society. By attributing this agency to the phone, the human subject views the smartphone as a "meaningless" object, all the while knowing the smartphone is actually more. Perhaps, a quasi-object?
Quasi-Object Lesson: Latour
In describing the modern situation Latour emphasizes a divide between Culture and Nature. This is the source of the main exigency in modernism—that these two spheres are irreconcilable becomes apparent by attending to just about any contemporary public debate, from global warming to abortion. Latour frequently describes these two camps in terms of their treatment of objects: of objects in culture he states, “They are just there to be used as the white screen on to which society projects its cinema,” while in science “they are so powerful that they shape the human society, while the social construction of sciences that have produced them remains invisible.” The issue of objects’ social construction brings to light the disparity which exists in our understanding of society itself; Latour is thus led to pose a crucial question:
These non-human resources are what Latour calls “quasi-objects,” and in my reading I struggled to understand this concept. I must have reread section 3.2, “What Is a Quasi-Object?”, a dozen times and stared at the charts on those pages until my head ached in seeking that answer, to no avail. After Wikipedia failed to supply an article on that subject I simply Googled “quasi object theory” and was pleased when “Theory of the Quasi-Object” by Michael Serres instantly popped up. This PDF offers the amazing example of soccer which I feel clarifies quasi-objects:
Here, the ball is given agency; good soccer players must adjust their behavior according to the non-human nature of the ball, not merely manipulating it but anticipating it. The ball therefore operates a role somewhere between object and subject by actively influencing us while we influence it—thus, “quasi-object.” I am not a sports person so I popped over to Youtube to see if I could recognize this phenomena in action, and indeed, one particularly impressive montage of clips emphasized the beauty and true synergy between player and ball inherent in good teamwork-- keep your eye on the ball:
The soccer ball is a quasi-object around which human activities take form; I think Latour is arguing for us to reexamine the sources of our understandings of human society, which almost certainly reside not entirely in humanity and not entirely in objective forces, but in the interplay between them.
If religion, arts or styles are necessary to ‘reflect’, ‘reify’, ‘materialize’, ‘embody’ society—to use some of the social theorists’ favorite verbs—then are objects not, in the end, its co-producers? Is not society built literally—not metaphorically—of gods, machines, sciences, arts and styles?... Maybe social scientists have simply forgotten that before projecting itself on to things society has to be made, built, constructed? And out of what material could it be built if not out of nonsocial, non-human resources? (Emphasis mine)
These non-human resources are what Latour calls “quasi-objects,” and in my reading I struggled to understand this concept. I must have reread section 3.2, “What Is a Quasi-Object?”, a dozen times and stared at the charts on those pages until my head ached in seeking that answer, to no avail. After Wikipedia failed to supply an article on that subject I simply Googled “quasi object theory” and was pleased when “Theory of the Quasi-Object” by Michael Serres instantly popped up. This PDF offers the amazing example of soccer which I feel clarifies quasi-objects:
A ball is not an ordinary object, for it is what it is only if a subject holds it. Over there, on the ground, it is nothing; it is stupid; it has no meaning, no function, and no value. Ball isn’t played alone. Those who do, those who hog the ball, are bad players and are soon excluded from the game…. Let us consider the one who holds it. If he makes it move around him, he is awkward, a bad player. The ball isn’t there for the body; the exact contrary is true: the body is the object of the ball; the subject moves around this sun. Skill with the ball is recognized in the player who follows the ball and serves it instead of making it follow him and using it…. Playing is nothing else but making oneself the attribute of the ball as a substance. The laws are written for it, defined relative to it, and we bend to these laws… IN most games, the man with the ball is on offense; the whole defense is organized relative to him and his position. The ball is the center of the referential, for the moving game. With few exceptions… the only one who can be tackled is the one who has the ball. This quasi-object designates him. He is marked with the sign of the ball.
Here, the ball is given agency; good soccer players must adjust their behavior according to the non-human nature of the ball, not merely manipulating it but anticipating it. The ball therefore operates a role somewhere between object and subject by actively influencing us while we influence it—thus, “quasi-object.” I am not a sports person so I popped over to Youtube to see if I could recognize this phenomena in action, and indeed, one particularly impressive montage of clips emphasized the beauty and true synergy between player and ball inherent in good teamwork-- keep your eye on the ball:
The soccer ball is a quasi-object around which human activities take form; I think Latour is arguing for us to reexamine the sources of our understandings of human society, which almost certainly reside not entirely in humanity and not entirely in objective forces, but in the interplay between them.
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