Networks and noise:
interrogating the linearity of redemption
and the looping stasis of feedback
This thesis will examine the way in which the indeterminate and enigmatic contours of network experience are flattened, fixed and rendered inanimate by the redemptive logic of purpose and the looping stasis of predictability. I will consider the Black Mirror episodes “The ‘Entire History’ of You” and “Nosedive”, Dave Eggers’ novel The Circle and the short film Sunspring written by a LSTM recurrent neural network created by Ross Goodwin and directed by Oscar Sharp, all of which explore what it means to inhabit network conditions and specifically interrogate a purpose-oriented understanding of networks.
Networks have been distorted by the disembodied and redemptive metaphysics of liberal humanism; that is, liberal humanism, which reinforces the enduring status of the ‘human’, has formed an uneasy alliance with the collaborative and participatory nature of the network. As self-regulating (and thus democratic) systems, they are perceived as a means to empower human subjects and achieve what I will describe as the impossible dream of liberal transcendence. I will argue, however, that the nonhuman agency (or network perception) inherent to the
self-regulating structure of the network, which includes the self-negating logic of prosthesis and the concept of the exploit, deconstructs the human category, presenting instead a malleable, forever incomplete, network/human assemblage. I will also discuss how networks are deformed by the emancipatory narrative of progress, a perception of (human) time and complexity which is inextricably linked to liberal humanism, and effectively imposes a linear logic on the nonlinear duration of networking.
Networks, as cybernetic feedback systems, function as recursive modes of capture which engenders what I call network normativity. Networks as closed feedback systems are driven toward optimisation and predictability, and as such, error is only tolerable so long as it serves the purpose of optimising the efficiency of the system. In such systems of capture, perpetual lack is goal-oriented and is therefore not fully recognised for its noisy and thus virtual properties. The aimlessly emergent properties of network duration and the network/human assemblage are thus flattened by a paradoxical union between a looping/linear logic which not only humanises the network but renders it static and knowable. I will argue that by turning to the intensities of uncaptured noise (as the absence of purpose), specifically the entropic force of positive feedback, it becomes possible to disrupt or queer the violence of normativity enacted by goal-oriented or redemptive networks. That is, by attending to the noisiness of networks I will
which acknowledges network materiality, nonhuman agencies, nonlinear emergence and the aimless insistence of the death drive.
Towards a definition of networks
While it would be impossible to entirely define what specifically characterises the network form, or indeed what it means to inhabit network conditions, I hope to outline, in brief, some
piecemeal elements which have contributed to the notion of the network as the logic of contemporary culture. Furthermore, this description will introduce some of the primary
theoretical influences which have contributed to my own understanding of what it means to live within network conditions. The etymological roots of the word ‘network’ date as far back as the Geneva bible of 1560. Here, network was used to describe a specific pattern: ‘And thou shalt make unto it a grate like networke of brass’. According to the OED, the word was later recorded in 1658 and functioned as a description of reticulate forms which appeared primarily in nature (such as those found in the veins of a leaf and that of a spider’s web). During the 19th century and the advent of the industrial revolution, the use of the word expanded to encompass
reticulate man-made systems such as canals, railways and the distribution of electrical cables; from the 20th century a network became more commonly associated with radio broadcasting and television (2004, Briggs).
But it wasn’t until computer networking that the word became much more than a way of describing a complex, interconnected, web-like system. The rise of the internet, born out of emerging field of cybernetics and war-time paranoia, registered a profound shift in the understanding of networks. ‘Network’ became much more than a formal description: it characterised a way of life, an experience specific to contemporary culture. This shift was famously termed ‘the network society’ by one of the best known network theoreticians, Manuel Castells in 1996, which then generated later derivatives such as the ‘network age’ (Sampson) and ‘network culture’ (Terranova). This understanding of living-within or inhabiting networks captured the logic of contemporary (Western) culture: a culture defined by a shift from analog to digital, the rise of the information economy, globalisation, and mass communication. Or as Tiziana Terranova notes in Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age, a shift
‘characterized by an unprecedented abundance of informational output and by an acceleration of informational dynamics’ (1). Ultimately, however, as Kai Eriksson argues in his essay,
“Foucault, Deleuze, and the Ontology of Networks”, ‘The concept of the network has become embedded in social thought and imagery, articulating what at root is inarticulable’ (595).
Thus since the advent of the internet, ‘network’ now refers to the indeterminable conditions and limitless contours of hyper-connectivity. As such, this thesis will primarily reference phenomena born out of internet culture. The internet is much more than the operational logic of hardware, grids and databases, links and nodes, satellites and fibre optics, which facilitate the passage of information, but can in fact be perceived as what Tiziana Terranova refers to as ‘the network of networks’ (41); the internet is ‘more than simply one medium among many, but a kind of general figure for the processes driving the globalization of culture and communication at large’ (42). Such a definition evokes a myriad connotations; it is impossible to talk about the internet as an isolated network because it is always in relation to other networks—networks always imply more networks. As Terranova notes, ‘To think of something like a ‘network culture’ at all, to dare to give one name to the heterogeneous assemblage that is contemporary global culture, is to try to think simultaneously the singular and the multiple, the common and the unique’ (1).
While the early definitions of the network as a reticulate pattern allude to the network as a specifically relational system, the internet (as the network of networks) amplifies network relationality for it always refers to a meshwork of interrelated networks. Networks are thus polydimensional, reticulated assemblages: attempting to define where a network begins or ends is difficult to conceive. As such, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between
boundaries as networks collapse (Cartesian) binaries such as those demarcated between the material and the immaterial (or abstract), the local and global, map/movement, control/chaos, closure/openness, order/entropy, human/machine, the organic and nonorganic—and the list goes on. Networks, therefore, at once articulate and exacerbate the antithetical and
irreconcilable inconsistencies inherent to relationality. For example, my understanding of the network centres on how they simultaneously function as an abstraction (such as the network utilised as a map), as well as denoting the act of networking itself (the lived movement of network duration).
Networks not only dissolve boundaries and reductive dualisms but are also suggestive of a society driven by the obsession with communicative control: the dream of noise-free communication and seamless connectivity. In Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures, Mark Nunes’ understanding of the network society is one which is governed by ‘a
cybernetic ideology driven by dreams of an error-free world of 100 percent efficiency, accuracy, and predictability’ (3). Nunes’ definition of network culture informs part of this thesis, specifically in the second chapter which discusses cybernetic feedback loops and how networks perform new modes of capture which fetishise outcome/purpose and exclude the emergent properties of (uncaptured) errors and noise.
Ironically, the difficulty of defining boundaries within the age of networks has not only lead to a desire for communicative control, but also contributed to a new topology of social control. Gilles Deleuze argues that network conditions have produced what he terms the ‘control society’. In this model of society, control has developed from being physically enforced and centralised into a more abstract manifestation which has been diffused, distributed and digitalised (that is, networked). Deleuze discusses the shift from Michel Foucault’s notion of disciplinary society (Panopticon) into a society of modulation: ‘[c]onfinements are molds, different moldings, while controls are a modulation, like a self-transmuting molding continually changing from one moment to the next, or like a sieve whose mesh varies from one point to another’ (178-179). Media theorists Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, whose definition of the network will also inform this thesis, develop a more nuanced understanding of network control in their book The Exploit: A Theory of Networks. They register an inconsistency within network control for networks demonstrate a peculiar alliance between sovereignty and decentralised control: ‘The quandary is this: no one controls networks, but networks are controlled’ (39). Networks, as self-regulating, decentralised systems have not replaced sovereign power, but have merely changed its topology into a fluid and more flexible (faceless) form of control (an idea developed in my analysis of the The Circle and “Nosedive”). In Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive, Jodi Dean’s understanding of network control similarly registers the Orwellian implications of participatory entrapment inherent to what she calls ‘communicative capitalism’. Ultimately, however, Galloway and Thacker suggest that total, monolithic power cannot be sustained indefinitely in the age of networks, for the asymmetrical imminence of the exploit provides a means of disrupting all-encompassing control.
Despite the obsession with control in the network age, hyper-connectivity produces the conditions for things to go awry. Networks provide the perfect conditions for the spread of contagions and exploitative unknown agents; memes, viruses and affective intensities proliferate within networks. The autonomy of self-propagating agents, the self-regulating and
emergent properties of the network produce a nonhuman agency which threatens the very integrity of what it means to be ‘human’. Despite the drive toward communicative control, errors, accidents, risks and noise not only persist but are amplified by network conditions. As such, the age of networks is synonymous with what Greg Hainge describes as the ‘age of noise’ in Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise (1). As a theory which has emerged as a result of network conditions, Hainge’s concept of noise will therefore be another key theory which will inform this thesis. Noise, as the absence of purpose and the sound of the virtual, not only disrupts the congealments of normativity within networks, but, as the (asignifying) remainder during any relational exchange, reveals how things come into being (emergence).
A messy and indeterminate understanding of network conditions is registered by Anna Munster in An Aesthesia of Networks: Conjunctive Experience in Art and Technology, one of the primary network/media theoreticians that has influenced this thesis. Munster questions ‘How do
networks experience? What operations do networks perform and undergo to change and produce new forms of experience?’ She argues for a new perspective of what it means to inhabit networks, what she terms ‘network aesthesia’: ‘By inverting the relations between networks, experience, and human being, I am proposing that we also rethink what we mean by ‘experience’ in contemporary culture’ (6). Munster’s perspective has informed what I will
describe as the human/network assemblage and network duration. Likewise, Terranova, who is interested in scoping out a non-linear account of moments and events which have lead us to the network culture of the present, also informs my understanding of the emergent, enigmatic properties of network duration.
I will connect these specific network analyses to theories that are yet to be fully explored in relation to the study of networks, such as J.F. Lyotard’s solar fables discussed by Ashley Woodward in “The End of Time” and Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Both theorists register the generative properties of the purposeless insistence of perpetual lack, which, I will argue, can be linked to the concept of noise and are integral concepts that help to glimpse network experience. Therefore, my contribution to network studies, such as the theories presented by Terranova and Munster, will draw a link between networks, noise and queer theory. This theoretical association provides a new line of inquiry that challenges the (redemptive) humanist metaphysics which flattens, dulls and humanises network experience. By aligning noise - as the absence of meaning - with the void opened up by the aimless compulsion of perpetual lack and the death drive, I will present a distinctively materialist
understanding of networks, illustrating a nonlinear perspective of relationality and emergence, as well as emphasising the virtual properties of purposelessness.
1. Interrogating networked liberal humanism: human/network assemblages
and network experience
This chapter will explore the way in which the internet (as the ‘network of networks’) at once preserves and deconstructs liberal humanism. I will firstly explore the Cartesian roots of
Cyberspace with reference to John Perry Barlow’s ‘Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace’ and William Gibson’s Neuromancer. During the early days of computer networking, when the internet was more commonly referred to as Cyberspace, global networks had utopian
connotations which promised the subject more empowerment and autonomy through virtual disembodiment. I will outline the uneasy alliance between cybernetic thought and liberal humanism, both of which preserve a disembodied metaphysics that impose problematic separations between human/network and mind/body.
I will then discuss, through J. F. Lyotard’s solar fable, how thought is not only always materially instantiated but also operates within a paradigm of incompleteness. I will connect my
understanding of liberal humanism with Lyotard’s notion of the metanarrative, a redemptive story which preserves a fixed, enduring and disembodied perception of the human, who, as the hero of all metanarratives, overcomes the affliction of lack and returns to a state of wholeness. I will argue that, on the contrary, perpetual lack (unthought) generates complexity and life as we know it, and is thus a fundamental property of the network/human assemblage as a materially emergent topology. The nonhuman agencies inherent to networking produce a new kind of informatic/networked subject which undermines human exceptionalism and the singularity of liberal subjectivity. The internet of today no longer promises utopian virtual disembodiment but more accurately resembles the logic of prosthesis, a logic which suggests that the ‘human’ category is always incomplete and thus endlessly malleable (that is, materially contingent). I will discuss this idea with reference to Sunspring, a short science fiction film produced by Artificial Intelligence, which portrays a machinic perception of the human as part of a prosthetic
assemblage forever afflicted by lack.
A redemptive and thus anti-material metaphysics of liberal humanism persists within present network conditions, specifically the concept/practise of collaboration and transparency. I will use Dave Egger’s dystopian novel The Circle to focus my examination of the disturbing implications of the network as a means to achieve liberal transcendence. The novel explores the uneasy relationship between networks and liberal humanism and how this reconciliation of the
nonhuman, collective agency of networks and the presumed fixity of the ‘human’ spirit results in total homogeneity, effectively distorting the human/network assemblage. The network, warped by the redemptive promises associated with liberal humanism, becomes an all-encompassing form of participatory control that is not unlike Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a global community. Yet this perception of decentralised network control as total homogeneity (the
network as a seamless extension of liberal values), offers a limited account of networking for it is blind to network emergence. To glimpse network experience I will discuss the exploit as an emergent network event which not only threatens total network control but also disrupts the enduring fixity of the ‘human’ liberal subject.
The Cartesian roots of Cyberspace
During the late 1980s and into the mid-1990s, the internet was more commonly known as cyberspace. Despite its limited community when compared to today’s number of users, cyberspace was considered a global network with utopian connotations: subjects could leave their bodies and locations behind and enter a virtual non-place and connect together, freely, as equals. John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace” is emblematic of the net-utopian attitude associated with the early days of computer networking. Written in 1996, his declaration was a response to the growing commercialisation and hence increasingly
centralised control of cyberspace. Addressing ‘governments of the industrial world’, Barlow declares that sovereign powers have no place within this new ‘home of the Mind’. Cyberspace was to be a world ‘without privilege or prejudice’; individuals could enter unhindered by ‘legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement’. To Barlow and other net-libertarians at the time, centralised powers could only rule in the material world and the virtual self would be ‘immune to sovereignty’. Barlow’s “Declaration” in its perception of the encroaching claims of sovereign powers on cyberspace registers a profound shift in the perception of the internet: cyberspace promised a truly democratic terrain where subjects would be liberated through virtual disembodiment. Cyberspace therefore bolstered the liberal narrative of human autonomy within the age of networks, liberal ideals which derive from the humanist assumption that human beings possess a universal essence which transcends materiality. Consequently, this notion enacts a problematic binary between mind/body, a duality that the network form fundamentally interrogates.
The term ‘cyberspace’ was coined by William Gibson in his science fiction novel Neuromancer, written in 1984. Neuromancer (and other cyberpunk novels dealing with a fictional cyberspace such as the ‘metaverse’ in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash) also contributed to the humanist perception that through virtual disembodiment, the individual would become ever more
autonomous and empowered. Cyberspace (also referred to as ‘the matrix’) in Neuromancer is described as ‘a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in
every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts … A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable
complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…’ (59). Within the novel, you ‘jack in’, apply ‘trodes’ and use a ‘deck’ to navigate cyberspace, yet the matrix is never clearly defined; cyberspace is only described as an ‘infinite neuroelectronic void’ made up of ‘cool geometric’ intricacies, rendering it a non-place that is never limited to any concrete/fixed description (127). Notably, cyberspace in the novel frees the protagonist from the ‘prison of his own flesh’ in much the same way that Barlow describes cyberspace as unhindered by the world of matter (6).
The net-utopian cyberspace dream of virtual disembodiment both performs and re-enacts the humanist/Cartesian dualism between mind and body, which provides the philosophical
foundation for the political principle of liberal subjectivity: a consciousness which is free from the contingency of materiality or embodiment. In How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Katherine Hayles interrogates the ‘teleology of
disembodiment’ endorsed by cybernetic thought (22). Hayles discusses historical moments of cybernetics and traces ‘how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms in which it is thought to be embedded’ (2). She attributes the separation between information and matter, what she describes as the condition of virtuality, to Claude Shannon’s contribution to cybernetics, whose abstract mathematical theorems generalised information into infinitely transposable patterns, ‘free-floating’ from their material context:
Shannon's theory defines information as a probability function with no dimensions, no materiality, and no necessary connection with meaning. It is a pattern, not a presence […] In information theoretic terms, no message is ever sent. What is sent is a signal. Only when the message is encoded in a Signal for transmission through a medium-for example, when ink is printed on paper or when electrical pulses are sent racing along telegraph wires-does it assume material form. The very definition of "information," then, encodes the distinction between materiality and information. (18)
Shannon’s findings on information profoundly informed cybernetics, specifically the concept of the feedback loop, which, as an informational process, became a pattern that was applicable across a variety of contexts, from machinic processes to organic life. I will explore the feedback
loop in more detail in the next section of this thesis, specifically how it functions as a recursive system of capture which suppresses heterogeneity and emergence. For the purposes of this argument, however, it is important to note how the informatic feedback loop provided a new way of perceiving human beings. As Hayles puts it, ‘humans were to be seen primarily as
information-processing entities who are essentially similar to intelligent machines’ (7). Thus, the ‘human’ in terms information reinforced Cartesian disembodiment in a new way: the universal human essence could be defined by a pattern of encoded information which had no bearing on the contextual implications of bodily presence.
Notably, Hayles discusses the uneasy relationship between the cybernetic tradition and liberal humanism. On the one hand, cybernetic logic deconstructs the liberal subject by converting the exceptional status of the human ‘essence’ into information that is equally applicable to other life forms and machines, thus challenging humanist anthropocentrism. Yet, on the other hand, both cybernetic thought and liberal humanism share a commonality in that they both dismiss the importance of embodiment. As Hayles puts it,
the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman. Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but was not usually represented as being a body. Only because the body is not identified with the self is it possible to claim for the liberal subject its notorious
universality, a claim that depends on erasing markers of bodily difference, including sex, race, and ethnicity (4-5).
The utopic vision of cyberspace that dominated the perception of the early days of computer networking was not only a continuation of the cybernetic and humanist emphasis of
disembodiment, but was also arguably an attempt to resolve the inherent tension between the liberal and informatic/cybernetic/networked subject. This tension, I will argue, persists within current network conditions, and specifically manifests in the practice/concept of network
collaboration/participation, which at once maintains and deconstructs the liberal ideal of human autonomy.
By emphasising disembodiment, both liberal humanism and cybernetics/cyberspace demarcate a fixed distinction between mind and body. As such, to perceive the mind as separable from the body implicitly denies the material prerequisite of thought. The implications of this denial of the material are considered by J.F Lyotard in the solar fable “Can thought go on without a body?” In this particular fable he speculates on the possibility of thought surviving beyond the death of the sun, which, according to Lyotard, ‘is the prerequisite for thinking of the death of all bodies, solar or terrestrial, and of the death of thoughts that are inseparable from those bodies’ (133). In the Solar Fable he tells the story of life as ‘negentropy’ or the progressive evolution of complexity as the resisting force of the more probable state of entropy and chaos. He names stages of
complexity throughout time, from ‘scissiparity’ to ‘liberal democracy’, which are more commonly referred to as stages of ‘human’ progress (Woodward, 3). According to Lyotard, this sequential perception of the evolution of life produces the metanarrative, a grand story characterised by the redemptive logic of liberal humanism: ‘Grand narratives are built around a metaphysics of the subject: they tell of a subject alienated from an originary, utopian wholeness, afflicted with a lack, and they present a telos, a denouement of the narrative in which the subject’s lack is overcome and the originary wholeness restored’ (Woodward, 4).
In these grand stories the human subject is the ultimate hero. They presume that one day, the condition of perpetual lack will be satiated and the human will be restored to a state of ‘originary’ completeness. Metanarratives are stories about the emancipation of the human subject and therefore imply a constant and unyielding universal truth about the human which transcends materiality or embodiment. This singular but universal human essence is the metaphysical origin of liberal humanism. Redemptive narratives reinforce an anti-materialist perception of the human/time/life because they do not account for the compulsive necessity of perpetual lack, which is always materially instantiated (and thus contingent), and drives and generates the current conditions of life as we know it. The solar catastrophe, for Lyotard, represents the most definite threat to the ‘progressive’ continuation of complexity—and it is the knowledge of this fact which currently drives technological development – or complexity. This narrative, Lyotard argues, is not a metanarrative for it disrupts the pervasion of redemptive humanism. The solar catastrophe, for Lyotard, is a materialist narrative which offers no redemption, as it promises only distant, but certain, heat death. Instead, this alternative narrative registers the threat of perpetual lack as a fundamental prerequisite for complexity/negentropy.
For Lyotard, thought is just one of the many developments of complexity which has emerged contingently. For example, Lyotard describes the body as ‘the hardware of the complex technical device that is human thought.’ (133). Perceiving thought as a ‘technical device’
dependent on the body as hardware acknowledges the necessity of materiality as the conditions for thought to emerge. Or in other words, without the material body, thought, as an emergent phenomenon, would not exist. This is because, as Lyotard puts it,
technology wasn’t invented by us humans. Rather the other way around. As
anthropologists and biologists admit, even the simplest life forms, infusoria (tiny algae synthesised by light at the edges of tidepools a few million years ago) are already technical devices. Any material system is technological if it filters information useful to its survival, if it memorises and processes that information and makes inferences based on the regulating effect of behaviour, that is, it is intervenes on and impacts its environment so as to assure its perpetuation at least. (132)
The idea that technology predates the human species, and that thought is just one of many technical processes which has emerged contingently through the development of complexity (negentropy), not only inverts human exceptionalism (the idea that humans alone create technology), but also the humanist assumption that mind and body exist as a binary relation. Not only is the body a material prerequisite for thought, they also exist as a reflexive or mutually informing relationship. As Lyotard argues, thought is reflective not determinate (135). For example, thought cannot be simulated in computing because ‘human thought doesn’t think in binary mode. It doesn’t work with units of information (bits), but with intuitive, hypothetical configurations. It accepts imprecise, ambiguous data that don’t seem to be selected according to pre-established codes or readability’ (134). Instead, thought/body interact analogously, not logically, effectively deconstructing the Cartesian binary between mind and body.
To presume that thought could be extracted (or indeed downloaded) from its contingent
materiality would be to presume that thought could be predetermined and fully contained. Such an assumption would eliminate incompleteness, perpetual lack, as the necessary prerequisite for emergence and complexity. In other words, thinking and thought can only be defined by their incompleteness or lack (a lack imposed by the looming threat of solar heat death). That is, while we already ‘think in a world of inscriptions already there’ (i.e. language/culture), thought is only possible because there is always room for what has not yet been thought (138). Indeed, what
would be the point of thinking at all if everything had already been thought? As such, in order to imagine how thought could survive without the body is also to account for the conditions of incompleteness which allows new thoughts to emerge. The concept of perpetual lack and the (impossible) redemptive promise of overcoming this lack will be a recurring theme throughout the thesis. Ultimately the constant state of incompleteness, I will argue, is essential to the properties of network emergence, which must always be materially instantiated and thus contingent.
Prosthetic networks: the incomplete human/network assemblage
The current perception of the internet no longer revolves around the utopian promise of virtual disembodiment. The internet in today’s terms functions as an embedded and embodied feature of everyday life. Networked technologies prosthetically augment ordinary bodily and social experience, such as how digital storage and search engines appear to expand the capacity of memory, and the way in which social media platforms globally extend the reach of
communication. The app, for example, by no means offers virtual disembodiment, but on the contrary, is specifically designed with the body in mind; apps are tiny programs designed for small devices such as phones or tablets that perform very specific functions which help manage users’ time, health, food consumption, sleep, teeth brushing techniques, relationships and more. Likewise, the technological predictions made in the Black Mirror episodes that I will later discuss also feature devices which are integrated into embodied experience. Thus when considering present (or even future predictions of) network conditions it is impossible to ignore the body’s role in the human/machine/network relationship. The logic of prosthesis therefore provides a more productive line of inquiry into the materiality of network relationality as an indefinite and emergent assemblage.
Not only does the notion of prosthetic networked media denote an addition to the body and brain, it also signals a deficiency or lack, in much the same way that thought is defined by what has not yet been thought. The short science fiction film Sunspring, written by Benjamin, an LSTM recurrent neural network created by Ross Goodwin and directed by Oscar Sharp, explores the ambiguities of the human/machine prosthetic relationship. Benjamin was fed dozens of sci fi scripts from the 80s and 90s and over time, learned how to produce a screenplay which included stage directions and properly formatted character dialogue.
often used to deal with text recognition, allowing it to learn and then predict the patterns of what letters, words, phrases tend to proceed from others. This particular neural network AI is also able to create original sentences and predict entire paragraphs, unlike other text recognition AIs, which often cut and paste whole sentences and can only predict a few words at a time. The result was an often nonsensical yet strangely compelling short screenplay, depicting three characters on a spaceship, possibly a future of ‘mass unemployment’ where young people are ‘forced to sell blood’.
Amid the absurd scene directions where one of the character’s ‘picks up a light screen and fights the security force of the particles of a transmission on his face’ and is ‘standing in the stars and sitting on the floor’, Benjamin learnt a general pattern within sci-fi scripts, presenting a machinic perception of the human; the ‘human’, according to Benjamin, is depicted as an unstable category constantly ‘afflicted’ by perpetual lack. In the script, much of the dialogue revolves around statements and questions about not knowing/understanding, portraying an image of the human in a constant state of existential crisis (for example, ‘What do you mean?’, ‘I don't know what you’re talking about’, ‘I’m not sure’). Benjamin’s ‘perception’ of the ‘human’—or, at least, an estimation of the human within the limited scope of 80s-90s sci fi scripts—is a being that frequently expresses a lack in knowledge. Benjamin’s image of the human makes a
compelling statement about the malleable nature of the human category, extending the argument that the human has always been prosthetically enhanced and thus logically never whole.
The prosthetic, networked ‘human’ becomes a (materially contingent) reticulated assemblage whereby the supplementary nature of prosthesis (as at once extension and amputation) dissolves any clear distinction between where the body begins and where networked media ends. Sunspring evokes the question of what it means to be ‘human’ in relation to networked machines. It makes more logical sense to say the ‘human’ is in fact always part of a reticulated assemblage, for it can only be defined by what it is not, or what it lacks, that is, the ‘human’ is defined by the myriad of relationships it enters into. Not only this, the creators of Benjamin struggled to articulate their relationship to the AI, as for them, Benjamin was not quite a tool but a kind of co-author (Newitz, 2016). The authors’ perception of their ambiguous relationship to Benjamin also emphasises the nonhuman agency inherent to the logic of prosthesis. Not only does this logic confuse the boundaries of the ‘human’ subject, but also suggests the nonhuman
agentic forces that exist within network conditions, which also work to deconstruct a liberal humanist understanding of human autonomy.
Sunspring alludes to the instability of the liberal subject in the context of network conditions through the self-negating logic and nonhuman agency of prosthesis, subverting humanist dualisms that demarcate boundaries between mind/body, subject/object, individual/network, artificial/organic. The ‘human’, according to Benjamin and in terms of the logic of prosthesis, becomes an inherently inconsistent category defined by a constant tension between its extension and lack. This tension presents the human/network as an ambiguous
milieu/assemblage which resists any clear definition. It must be noted, however, that networked media as prosthetic extension is far from a seamless relationship because, as I will discuss in the second part of this thesis, the disturbance of noise always threatens any given relational system. The prosthetically enhanced, permanently incomplete, and therefore always embodied ‘human’, disrupts the rigid confines of liberal subjectivity. Instead, the networked prosthetic ‘human’ is always contingent: a reticulated, fluid category which is open, emergent and thus endlessly malleable.
Closing the circle: transparency, collaboration and liberal transcendence
I have argued that networked media—in terms of the logic of prosthesis—works to disrupt the disembodied humanism associated with the liberal subject. While the network no longer promises the cyberspace dream of virtual disembodiment, the anti-material and redemptive metaphysics of liberal humanism persists in present network forms. The disturbing implications of internet collaboration and transparency, two concepts which are informed by network liberal humanism are explored in Dave Eggers’ novel, The Circle. The novel examines how networked media work to facilitate and enhance liberal ideals, such as the practice/concept of participatory democracy and unrestricted access to all information, as well as how these collective network forces simultaneously deconstruct the liberal subject. In the novel, networked liberal humanism presents a tension: on the one hand, the network becomes a means in which liberal
transcendence is achieved (of finally overcoming lack); on the other, the ‘human’ as the
centrepiece of liberal agency (identity, selfhood, privacy, freedom etc), begins to dissolve within the totalitarian regime asserted by the nonhuman agency of the network. Yet, I will argue, the disturbing consequences of network dehumanisation do not derive from the nonhuman network agency which disrupts the presumed fixity of the human category, but instead from the
persistent fantasy of overcoming lack, a fantasy which is at the heart of liberal humanism. These disturbing effects are dramatized as a tyrannical regime in the novel, a regime which enacts recursive modes of normalisation and is driven by the redemptive promise of completion or perfection, consequently suppressing the material contingency of network relationality. This vision of the totalitarian/homogenous network achieved through collaborative transparency, while disrupting the liberal subject, effectively misrepresents the emergent topology of the (prosthetic) human/network assemblage.
The protagonist of the novel, Mae Holland, lands a highly sought-after job at the Circle, a powerful tech company with ambitious (and eventually disturbing) goals to redevelop the networked world. Mae begins her career in customer experience (CE), a role which involves answering customer inquiries/complaints and maintaining an acceptable rating (ideally a 97 and above) by following up these interactions by encouraging customer feedback. Early on in the novel, Mae receives a scolding from her superiors for her failure to participate within the Circle’s various social media feeds. As it turns out, one of the crucial requirements for working at the Circle includes regular status updates on the InnerCircle and OuterCircle community, joining online social groups, accepting and declining invitations to various events, and responding or commenting to a certain number of other statuses daily. Keeping on top of all community’s notifications and messages also translates into a Participation Rank (Partirank) that judges Circle employees’ overall success within the community. Mae quickly adjusts to her new environment of constant obligatory participation and increasingly casts aside the habits of her former self in favour of the Circle’s ideologies.
In the novel, network collaboration becomes the means toward the Circle’s end goal of total transparency, an ideal which is central to networked liberal humanism. The Circle develops a new technology called SeeChange, an inconspicuous solar powered camera which can be placed anywhere and records everything in real time. The recording can be streamed online and can be accessed by anyone. The SeeChange project begins with the vision of global
proliferation, placing cameras in as many places across the world so as to reduce crime and allow people to virtually travel to various continents. The next development of the SeeChange project involves the act of ‘going transparent’ which is initially introduced into politics in the hope of reducing governmental corruption. Politicians begin wearing SeeChange devices at all times, their daily activities instantly accessible to anyone online. One night, Mae decides to go
arriving, she realises the kayak rental is closed. Mae finds a kayak on the beach and decides to borrow it, believing that no one would ever know otherwise. SeeChange devices have been installed on the beach, however, so the Circle quickly learns about Mae’s criminal offence. One of the co-founders of the Circle, Eamon Bailey, asks to speak with her. During this conversation Bailey convinces Mae that her actions were criminal, not simply because she stole a kayak, but because she intended to keep all knowledge of her adventure a secret.
Bailey reveals his (and by extension the Circle’s) desire for total transparency. He argues that privacy is theft and that everyone should have a right to all information, and that secrets are lies, ‘enablers of antisocial, immoral and destructive behaviour’ (289). Bailey also reveals how collaborative transparency will contribute to the ultimate goal of closing the Circle, explaining that: ‘a circle is the strongest shape in the universe. Nothing can beat it, nothing can improve upon it, nothing can be more perfect. And that’s what we want to be: perfect. So any information that eludes us, anything that’s not accessible, prevents us from being perfect’ (287). The dream of closing the circle symbolises the redemptive promise of liberal humanism (or liberal
transcendence); liberal subjects, having overcome the affliction of lack, will become all-knowing and equally autonomous beings (because all information is freely available and everyone equally participates), occupying a truly unified state of absolute openness and closure.
Therefore, contrary to the self-negating and materially contingent logic of prosthesis (as part of the nonhuman, indeterminate contours of networking), the notion of total transparency enacts a logic of immediacy whereby networked technologies become the seamless extension of liberal metaphysics (merely the instigator of liberal transcendence). Yet again, the emergent
prerequisite of materiality goes unacknowledged in favour of purpose, producing another example of Cartesian disembodiment whereby networked technology becomes a means to an end (that is, the materiality of the machine is the less important component of relational
transmission). Ironically, however, achieving this liberal fantasy of completion (effectuated by collaborative transparency) also marks the loss of the ‘human’, specifically the liberal
preoccupation of human autonomy and identity.
After the kayak incident, Mae becomes another example of those going transparent. During her time of transparency, she gains a huge online following and fully adopts the Circle’s values of complete exposure, which instigates devastating consequences. Mae initiates the final steps of the Circle’s completion: during a board meeting Mae introduces the idea of fully integrating the Circle and government. What results is ‘Demoxie’, a new system which would make democratic
decisions mandatory and ensure 100 percent participation. While the practice/concept of mandatory collaboration stems from the liberal ideal of achieving true equality (and thus is emblematic of another major step toward liberal transcendence), it also results in the Circle becoming the most powerful entity in the world; no one will be exempt from the Circle’s totalitarian reach. Mae presents another Circle innovation, SoulSearch, a new collaborative vision which ubiquitous SeeChange devices and other technological resources developed by the Circle, any individual in the world can be located within minutes. She uses her ex-boyfriend Mercer—a resolute Circle dissident throughout the novel, and currently in hiding to avoid Mae and the Circle’s reach—as an example to demonstrate the power of collaborative transparency allowed by SoulSearch. Mercer is eventually tracked down in an isolated cabin in the
mountains, but instead of expressing awe and embracing the power of the Circle, he gets in his car and flees. Mae refuses to give up on him and releases drones to continue the chase. Through the drone’s audio capabilities, Mae attempts to reason with Mercer, asking him to stop the car and submit to the power of Circle. Other pursuers join in, jeering at the futility of Mercer’s flight. In the end, Mercer purposely drives himself off the edge of a cliff, realising he will never escape the all-encompassing tyranny of the Circle while he is alive.
Mercer’s final autonomous act demonstrates how the collaborative network, as a means to facilitate liberal transcendence, quite literally destroys the liberal subject. That is, the uneasy reconciliation between the nonhuman agency of networking and liberal humanism exhibits a self-negating logic. The liberal desire for total participation and transparency, if achieved, also becomes the undoing of the liberal self. That which constitutes ‘human’ autonomy, identity and freedom of choice, dissolves as the collective agency of the network, as a means to facilitate redemption (overcoming lack once and for all), takes over, enacting a totalitarian regime of constant openness and closure. The implications of the Circle’s self-destructive ambition exposes the unattainable promise of redemption which underpins liberal humanism. If the affliction of lack is ever fulfilled, if the Circle ever closes and total transparency is achieved, the world teeters toward homogeneity and destructive normativity. The futility of truly overcoming the affliction of lack manifests as a physical pain for Mae a few times in the novel, although, ultimately, her bodily repulsion fails to hinder her direct role in ‘completing’ the Circle. Often, Mae becomes overwhelmed by an anxiety which stems from not-knowing or when unexpected events occur:
The tear was growing within her, opening quickly, a fathomless blackness spreading under her (333) ...the blackness swept through her. Her mouth tasted acidic. (375) ...There was a pain in her, a pain that was spreading its black wings inside her… the volume of information, of data, of judgments, of measurements, was too much, and there were too many people, and too many desires of too many people, and too many
opinions of too many people, and too much pain from too many people, and having all of it constantly collated, collected, added and aggregated, and presented to her as it that all made it tidier and more manageable - it was too much. (410)
Mae’s physical repulsion illustrates the damaging consequences of resisting the perpetual insistence of lack. As I have illustrated through the logic of prosthesis and the way in which thought is defined by unthought, lack is the prerequisite for emergence, a property inherent to the network/human assemblage. Mae’s bodily reaction not only reveals the futility of resisting incompleteness but also accentuates how lack is always materially instantiated and contingent —a reality that liberal transcendence fails to come to terms with. Despite having access to more information than was previously thought possible, despite coming closer to closure (the Circle’s completion), the void opened up by perpetual lack continues to insist within Mae.
Ultimately, however, the novel functions as an exploration of the tension between liberal fantasies of redemption, with networks acting as a means to fulfil them, and how this uneasy relationship effectively deforms and misrepresents the network/human assemblage. This uneasy relationship between liberal humanism and self-regulation predates the network era. As Hayles notes,
The parallel between self-regulating machinery and liberal humanism has a history that stretches back into the eighteenth century, as Otto Mayr demonstrates in Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modem Europe. Mayr argues that ideas about self-regulation were instrumental in effecting a shift from the centralized authoritarian control that characterized European political philosophy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (especially in England, France, and Germany) to the Enlightenment philosophies of democracy, decentralized control, and liberal self-regulation. Because systems were envisioned as self-regulating, they could be left to work on their own-from the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith's self-regulating market to the political philosophy of enlightened self-interest. These visions of self-regulating
economic and political systems produced a complementary notion of the liberal self as an autonomous, self-regulating subject. By the mid-twentieth century, liberal humanism, self-regulating machinery, and possessive individualism had come together in an uneasy alliance that at once helped to create the cyborg and also undermined the foundations of liberal subjectivity. (86)
While the nonhuman, collective agency of self-regulating entities which produces the networked subject (the network/human amalgam) indeed deconstructs the singularity, fixity and autonomy of the liberal subject, it is the redemptive promise associated with liberal humanism that
problematically ventures to resolve the indefinite contours of the network/human assemblage. In this way, the concept/practice of decentralised control and collaboration at once accentuates and negates liberal subjectivity. Ultimately, as the novel demonstrates, this uneasy
reconciliation can have damaging consequences, forming a totalitarian singularity that denies perpetual lack and thus rejects material contingency and emergence. When networks are employed as a means to an end, as a way of preserving the redemptive logic of liberal humanism, they enact recursive modes of normalisation which suppresses change and misrepresents the indeterminate topology of the human/network assemblage.
In the next section of this thesis I will discuss in more detail the way in which networks,
employed as systems of capture, that is, as purpose-oriented feedback systems (as the means to achieve redemption), can often stagnate and sustain sameness, effectively
deforming/flattening the network, as an emergent, disjunctive, ambiguous, durational, topology. I will argue that while self-regulating systems, as systems of capture, must include difference (perpetual lack) as a means to sustain equilibrium, which might seem at odds with the
redemptive promise of liberal transcendence, lack nearly always serves as a the drive toward purpose, an end goal such as closing the Circle and achieving liberal transcendence. Likewise, I will also discuss how networks are deformed by the redemptive promise of progress, a concept inextricably connected to liberal humanism, which imposes a limiting perception of linearity on the network form. This problematic perception of the network-as-purpose fails to acknowledge the purposeless insistence of noise/lack as a property of network emergence.
For the purposes of this section’s argument, however, it will suffice to say that the redemptive metaphysics of liberal humanism persists in the network age by the way in which networks (and networked media) function as a seamless extension of the liberal subject, preserving the
enduring spirit of the human, even as the human is deformed and complicated by the nonhuman agencies inherent to the self-regulating network entity. The perversion of liberal humanism thus misrepresents/obscures the network/human assemblage. Network collaboration, as goal-oriented and as a means to facilitate the transparency of liberal transcendence, fails to capture/glimpse the indeterminate and emergent properties of the materially contingent human/network assemblage.
Network control: Zuckerberg’s global community and collaborative entrapment
Eggers’ novel presents a dark parody of current network collaboration, which is often praised as the most effective democratic form and is a key aspect of the network liberal narrative.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is just one of many network liberals who believe that all-encompassing internet participation could achieve a more effective state of democratic equality. Zuckerberg’s idealisation of self-regulation through collaboration—where autonomous
individuals input feedback—is expressed in his recent manifesto. Entitled “Building global community”, Zuckerberg describes how Facebook will play a role in ‘building the world we all want’ by developing a better ‘social infrastructure’; he optimistically (and ostentatiously) claims that Facebook will help to provide a more ‘supportive’, ‘safe’, ‘informed’, ‘civically-engaged’ and ‘inclusive’ community. Zuckerberg’s claims are emblematic of the redemptive liberal humanism associated with collaborative self-regulating networks. This liberal dream poses a problem in that it not only places social media platforms such as Facebook as a neutral feedback system of human empowerment (seamless extensions of liberal values), but also claims that through more widespread (which is to say homogenous) network connectivity, a truer form of equality, and ultimately stability, can be achieved:
Our greatest opportunities are now global – like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding, lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest challenges also need global responses – like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.
This ‘coming together’ will presumably be achieved through Facebook. Zuckerberg’s vision of expanding Facebook’s reach to every corner of the world (his idea of a ‘global infrastructure’) can be seen as a modern day colonial pursuit which conflates social equality and stability
through total homogeneity. As Wendy Chun puts it in Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics, ‘Those interested in ‘‘wiring the world’’ reproduced—and still reproduce—narratives of ‘‘darkest Africa’’ and civilizing missions. These benevolent missions, aimed at alleviating the disparity between connected and unconnected areas, covertly, if not overtly, conflate spreading the light with making a profit’ (2008, 51-2). Indeed, Zuckerberg’s letter does not mention how he will financially benefit from such a global
infrastructure afforded by Facebook. Needless to say, his manifesto is emblematic of the liberal idealisation of collaborative networks as a means to accelerate liberal redemption. This attempt to reconcile the practice of liberal ideals and network collaboration is suggestive of a society of obligatory participation not unlike the one dramatised in The Circle, whereby networks enact decentralised and thus dynamic modes of control, creating a totalitarian regime which excludes contingency and emergence. This perception of the network, as a means to preserve liberal, ‘human’ values, again misrepresents the nonhuman agencies of networking that can provide a more productive inquiry into the fluidity of the networked, prosthetic, cybernetic ‘human’ as part of the network assemblage.
In Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive, Jodi Dean outlines how the disjunctive relationship between liberalism and network participation enact new fluid/dynamic forms of control. Dean’s argument suggests that networks merely function as new and disturbing methods of social manipulation which again humanises the network and offers an unsatisfactory image of the network/human assemblage. According to Dean, network conditions capture users within a new dynamic forms of networked control (that is, she is interested in exposing network socio-economic inequality); she terms this entrapment communicative capitalism, an ‘economic-ideological form wherein reflexivity captures creativity and resistance so as to enrich the few as it placates and diverts the many’ (4). Dean argues that
communicative capitalism emerges through the convergence of democracy and capitalism: communication networks and entertainment media are on the one hand based on participation and inclusion, while on the other, they are increasingly commodified and privatised, further emphasising power/wealth disparity (4). Importantly, Dean recognises the centrality of
empowerment/autonomy of liberal subjects and collaboration/participation within this networked neoliberal regime of communicative capitalism. For her, the agency credited to human subjects and the constant feedback they provide is also a performance of their own entrapment: ‘under communicative capitalism ... Everyone not only has a right to express an opinion, but each is positively enjoined to – vote, text, comment, share, blog. Constant communication is an
obligation.’ (110). We, as users, are forever caught up in the continuous exchange of
communication; by participating in this endless exchange of information. Indeed, in the West it is almost impossible not to be datarised—we ‘stage and perform our own entrapment’ (111). Dean’s summation of the internet as collaborative entrapment is not unlike the dystopian image presented by The Circle. It also functions as a critique of Zuckerberg’s colonial-esque vision of a global/social infrastructure. For Dean, networks augment neoliberal values which enact new fluid or dynamic forms of totalitarian control: ‘individual empowerment, information sharing, and networked collaboration’ are compatible properties specific to network dynamics which merely trap or capture users within new, imperceptible, and therefore more insidious, regimes of control (21). While this may be true, Dean does not provide any insight into the ambiguities of the network assemblage and how this perception of nonhuman network agencies can become a means to deconstruct the liberal ‘human’ category and therefore resist totalitarian complicity. Dean's bleak outlook and The Circle's decidedly resolute ending (the network in terms of liberal transcendence, as a system of capture which enacts a monolithic, totalitarian regime) does not register the emergent properties of the network/human assemblage. While I have outlined how the logic of prosthesis illustrates the material prerequisite of perpetual incompleteness as a crucial aspect of network emergence, and as such deconstructs the 'human', the concept of the exploit, as a threat to monolithic-network powers, is another example that glimpses the indefinite contours of the nonhuman agency of networks (and thus again undermines the limiting definition of the liberal human and produces instead a network/human amalgam). The dissonant topology of network control provides a site for further critical investigation in order to better understand network experience.
Losing control: glimpsing network experience through exploitative agencies
In The Circle, Mae, who becomes one of the most influential members of the Circle community, is given the opportunity to play a role in dismantling the Circle, which would prevent it from becoming an all-encompassing tyrannical regime. At the end of the novel, one of the Circle’s elusive co-founders Ty Gospodinov, who has been masquerading as Kalden, an infrequent mysterious lover of Mae’s, attempts to convince her of the terrifying consequences of the Circle’s increasing monopolising and monolithic power. In this scene, it becomes clear that Mae’s powerful position, while an endorsement of the Circle’s hegemonic power, also becomes the very threat which could destroy it. This self-negating logic inherent to the topology of
network control is similar to what I have suggested with the redemptive promise of liberal transcendence—achieving the liberal emancipation also represents its undoing. Mae ultimately decides against sabotaging the Circle’s closure, but she briefly inhabits a moment of exploitative potentiality.
In The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker discuss how the distributed nature of networks are not an antithesis to centralised control. In fact, ‘networks create the conditions of existence for a new mode of sovereignty’ (20). The peculiar junction between sovereignty and the decentralised control which networks manifest indeed enact disturbing modes of control (such as the regime of totalitarian complicity), as outlined by Dean and The Circle. However, the exploit, Galloway and Thacker argue, as a structural phenomenon specific to network conditions, ‘a resonant flaw designed to resist, threaten, and ultimately desert the dominant political diagram’, functions as an effective means to destabilise homogenous/sovereign power within the age of increased connectivity (21). As they put it, ‘Connectivity is a threat. The network is a weapons system’ (16). In other words, networking itself creates the conditions for the exploit to emerge, meaning that the more homogenous or widespread sovereign control/power, the more vulnerable it becomes to the exploit, as a
structural property immanent to network conditions. The authors provide the following example: ‘The more the West continues to perfect itself as a monolith of pure, smooth power, the greater the chance of a single asymmetrical attack penetrating straight to its heart’ (17). For Galloway and Thacker terrorism functions as the ultimate example of how an asymmetrical disruption is immanent to network control (specifically the West): ‘the West ... created the conditions of possibility for terrorism to emerge’ (16).
The concept of the exploit, as a structural phenomenon specific to network conditions, can be described through a variety of network phenomena. For example, while the hacker figure as a mythologised hero character within the network age again reproduces the metaphysics of liberal humanism, if seen through the network-perception of the exploit, the hacker becomes
something inhuman, a peculiar nonhuman agency specific to network connectivity and control. The hacker functions as a threat to monolithic forms of network control and reveals how
sovereign power cannot be sustained indefinitely within network conditions. The network’s open, emergent properties pose a constant threat to itself. And, not only does the exploit pose as a threat to control, it also articulates the nonhuman agency inherent to network emergence. The hacker-as-exploit therefore presents another way in which the indefinite and emergent
properties of the network/human assemblage can be glimpsed. Instead of simply perceiving the network as an apparatus which asserts dynamic forms of monolithic control (via liberal
ideologies of collaborative transparency), the exploit demonstrates the nonhuman agency of network consciousness, undermining the perception of the network as totalitarian regime as well as the liberal subject. The exploit therefore provides a link between sovereign/homogeneous control with the enduring essence of the liberal subject While the logic of prosthesis suggests the forever incomplete, malleable category of the human, the exploit demonstrates an emergent event whereby the ‘human’ agent becomes an imminent structural property of the network topology.
Anna Munster, in An Aesthesia of Networks: Conjunctive Experience in Art and Technology argues that the perception of the human/network relationship often centers on the how the human experiences networked media and networks, failing to consider how networks, including its nonhuman dimensions, experience the world, she argues,
We have assumed that the topology of the link-node network visualises a generalised experience of connectivity, which can become the ground for more systematically analysing our experience of networks. We proceed from this to ask the human question: What is our experience of such and such a network, given the general connectivity of link-node relations? How then do we relate to each other and collectively produce ourselves with others in and on the ground of the network? I suggest that we ask instead, How do networks experience? What operations do networks perform and undergo to change and produce new forms of experience? By inverting the relations between networks, experience, and human being, I am proposing that we also rethink what we mean by ‘experience’ in contemporary culture’ (6).
Munster prompts us to rethink network experience, to reconsider the relationship between humans and networks. Munster is critical of what she calls an ‘anesthesia’ of networks; that is, the idea of the network, such as the connectivity provided by the internet, as purely a means in which humans connect to one another through passive/neutral machines. Munster suggests we perceive network experience as being an enmeshment of both human and nonhuman (including machinic) elements, opposing the typical starting point of human-experience. In this way, Munster’s questioning suggests the need to find an alternative point of view that could expose humanist assumptions inherent to popular network perception. Both the logic of prosthesis,
which demonstrates the ‘human’ as part of the network assemblage, afflicted by perpetual lack and thus a fluid (materially contingent) category, as well as the exploit, a structural property which exposes the nonhuman agency of network emergence, provide a glimpse of network experience. As such, the emergent and prosthetic human/network assemblage disrupts the persistence of liberal humanism which misappropriates the network as a redemptive means to an ends.
It is important to note, however, there is also the possibility that the exploit becomes captured as feedback. The exploit as feedback can therefore help maintain and even improve hegemonic network control. Mae’s decision not to dismantle the Circle is emblematic of this. Likewise, hacking can also function as feedback. Cybersecurity expert Keren Elazari in her TED talk, “Hackers: The Internet's Immune System” argues for the acceptance of the benevolent hacker: those who believe in the practice of ‘full disclosure’, whereby a hacker identifies a vulnerability in a particular entity’s (corporate/state or otherwise) system but then reveals their method so that the system’s security can be improved accordingly. She further states that this practice within the hacker community should not be seen as breaking the law and should instead be rewarded —indeed, some platforms/companies already offer ‘bounties’ to any hacker who can find a flaw in their system. Hacking as feedback can thus improve cybersecurity for already-existing sovereign/distributed network entities and hence functions as another way in which the network is utilised as a mode of capture. I will go on to discuss in more detail how purpose-driven feedback systems enact recursive modes of normalisation which flattens the emergent and ambiguous topology of networking. Uncaptured noise and the purposeless insistence of lack, I will argue, offer the potential to break out of the looping stasis of feedback, as well as the linear promise of redemption, offering a material understanding of the virtual properties of relationality. Thus, by attending to the noisiness of networks, I will develop what I have described as the network/human assemblage in this chapter through an exploration of network duration, a perception which more accurately captures the nonlinear and emergent properties of networking.
2. Disrupting network normativity: feedback, redemption and the insistence of
noise in Black Mirror
Black Mirror is a speculative science fiction television series which reflects on modern society’s relationship to technology, and what it means, or could mean, to inhabit network conditions within this society. The stand-alone episodes often depict satirical and disturbing possible outcomes of technological development. For the purpose of this chapter, I will discuss the episodes “Nosedive” and “The ‘Entire History’ of You”, and argue how they function as critiques of the cybernetic paradigm, specifically the logic of capture, and the redemptive logic of
technological progress, both of which underpin and drive current network conditions. Ultimately, both cybernetic capture and the logic of progress effectively deny the virtual properties of uncaptured noise and the purposeless insistence of insatiable lack, flattening and linearising the rhythmic duration of networks. Building upon the theme of redemption (and overcoming the affliction of perpetual lack), I will connect the condition of incompleteness with noise (e.g. uncaptured error), as the absence of meaning/purpose (void), and as the asignifying residue of relationality and thus a fundamental property of network emergence. This chapter will therefore discuss a variety of network motions: from the looping stasis of negative feedback, the
redemptive linearity of progress, to the intensities of noise and propulsion of death drive. “Nosedive” explores the violence of normativity enacted by closed feedback systems that are driven toward optimisation and predictability. In such systems of capture, error is tolerable so long as it serves the purpose of optimising the efficiency of the system by acting as feedback, thus sustaining equilibrium. The momentum of perpetual lack which drives closed feedback systems is purpose-oriented and thus excludes/suppresses the virtuality of uncaptured
error/noise. As such, the perpetual lack which feeds the logic of capture is not fully recognised for its noisy/virtual properties (its purposelessness), and as a result lack merely becomes the momentum which sustains sameness (is goal-oriented). Purpose driven momentum, I argue, creates looping, repetitive (and hence homogenising) formations within the larger, emergent, (open) network structure. Ironically, however, the more homogenised a closed system becomes,
the more vulnerable it is to extreme manifestations of noise. In “Nosedive” we see how closed systems can quickly escalate into the entropic force of positive feedback; such a force threatens the very integrity of the system and carries with it the potential to disrupt
purpose/meaning/intent.
To further develop my analysis of the redemptive promise associated with liberal humanism, I will discuss the way in which “The ‘Entire History’ of You” functions as a critique of the
metanarrative of technological progress (for example, the idea that technology is becoming less noisy), a logic which presumes that noise can be eliminated and the affliction of lack can
eventually be overcome. The episode specifically explores the emptiness of confirmation which is only ever self-referential and cannot account for relationality, or the noisy process of how things come to exist. Yet confirmation, as a means to exclude noise, becomes the moment in which the purposeless insistence of noise becomes deafening. Thus the episode exposes the futility of technological progress which, by promising to satiate lack or eliminate noise,
misappropriates drive as goal-oriented—lack instead becomes the means to an end. Against this vision, I will argue that noise/lack is not only ever-present and thus inherently purposeless, but a necessary prerequisite that generates meaning, purpose and even life as we know it. Just as the metaphysics of liberal humanism deforms the exploitative, prosthetic network/human assemblage, both the logic of capture and progress metanarratives deny the virtuality of noise and the insistence of perpetual incompleteness (i.e. the way in which thought is defined by the unthought and the self-negating logic of prosthesis). The linearity of progress dreams of a return to utopian wholeness just as the closed feedback system, while reliant on the perpetual drive of lack as a constant process of correction, is driven toward efficiency and predictability, and hence a utopian equilibrium which favours normativity. Both motions –linear and looping– misrepresent the emergent topology of network duration. However both episodes explore the noisiness of network duration, specifically through the entropic force of positive feedback, which demands recognition of the (purposeless) insistence of ever-present lack—the death drive—and disrupts purpose-oriented logic which forms disturbing modes of normalisation. By turning to the intensities of noise within networks, it is possible to glimpse the network as an indeterminable rhythmic topology, which acknowledges network materiality, nonhuman agencies, nonlinear emergence and the aimless insistence of the death drive.
