DIGITAL
INTERPASSIVITY
The delegation of mental tasks in a digital guided
and algorithmic driven age
Author: Anne van Egmond|10254692 MASTER THESIS
Supervisor: Jan Simons June 26, 2015
Second reader: Sjoukje van der Meulen New Media and Digital Culture
Anne van Egmond |Haarlemmerstraat 104 II – 1013 EW Amsterdam
+31 6 22 63 06 88 | vanegmond.anne@gmail.com
TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION ... 1
RESEARCH QUESTIONS...3
OUTLINE
...3
1. INTERPASSIVITY
... 5
1.1. ROBERT PFALLER AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
...5
1.1.1 Outsourcing passivity ...6
1.1.2 The naive observer...7
1.1.3 Mixed pleasures ...8
1.1.4 Emotional substitution ...9
1.1.5 Detachment and resistance...10
1.2 GIJS VAN OENEN: THE INTERPASSIVE SOCIETY
...11
1.2.1 Emancipation ...12
2. INTERPASSIVITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE
... 14
2.1 THE SILICON VALLEY IDEOLOGY...14
2.2 INTERPASSIVITY: THE IDEAL OF THE DIGITAL AGE
...16
2.3 THE TIME PRESSURE PARADOX
...17
2.4 THE AUTOMATION OF MENTAL TASKS
...18
2.5 THE NATURE OF ALGORITHMS
...21
2.6 THE AGENCY OF OBJECTS
...23
2.7 THE INTENSIFICATION OF SELBSTVERGESSENHEIT AND DETACHMENT...24
2.8 SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITIES
...27
2.9 BOREDOMNESS
...28
3. COGNITIVE APPROPRIATION
... 31
3.1 INDIRECT EXPERIENCES AND THE DEGENERATION EFFECT
...31
3.2 COGNITIVE HYBRIDIZATION AND THE UPGRADE OF MINDWARE...32
3.3 The passive mind...34
3.4 THE RIGHT INFORMATION FOR YOU
...37
3.4.1 GOOGLE NOW
...38
3.5 MANAGERS OF THE SELF
...40
CONCLUSION
... 43
1
INTRODUCTION
There I was biking to a far off festival location armed with my headphones and a blind faith in the kind voice of my Google maps application, when my battery chose that very moment to die on me. So I find myself standing in the middle of nowhere not knowing where to go, and it’s suddenly back to basics: “Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to..?”. With the aim of saving my spare time and utilizing it as efficiently as possible I had been neatly following the pre-scripted route provided, assuming that it would be more operative than mine; it did not even occur to me to intervene in the navigational choices made. It was not me but my navigation system producing the knowledge on how to reach my destination point. I realized that I was just indirectly engaging with the action of ‘finding the way’. I still did it, but through my digital application and so my effort, my engagement, my input, was redundant.
But low and behold, with no access to my digital device I was forced to deeply engage with the task at hand, and consequently I will never ever forget that route. How is it possible that I did not put any effort into figuring it out myself, I wondered. How is it possible that I unconditionally, and in a unreflexive manner, trusted more upon the ability of my digital tool to calculate the most efficient route than in my own attainment in doing so. It is from this specific situation and the questions it raised that this thesis is born.
Our daily lives are becoming more and more intertwined with digital applications. “Let me help you! “ they seem to say; “Why waste precious time and effort when you can do it better and faster with my support?”. Google Maps that calculates the fastest route, Netflix that decides on the most relevant movies for you - these are just some of the many examples of applications that lead us through the world with the aim of providing us the least possible friction with our environment. They appear in a variety of forms, and where better to look than at smart home technology; garage door openers that sense when you are approaching and automatically open and close behind you, smart air conditioners that learn your habits and adjust themselves to save energy, and even 2-in-1 smoke/carbon monoxide detectors that actually speak to you once they have identified the problem, as well as giving text alerts and early warnings. For practically every daily activity there is now an digital application to support you in more effectively performing tasks, - including weather forecasts, traffic, news, social relationships, parking, and so on - making the concept of interacting with the world around us without digital guidance seem almost obsolete.
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The concept of interpassivity makes it possible to shed light on and to be critical about this current day phenomenon. Originating in the field of art, the concept encompasses the combination and intersection of the two words that are usually considered as opposites: interactivity and passivity. Interpassivity is the state wherein illusionary interactivity between an object and subject produces an unconscious state of passivity; the subject believes to be interactive while its real position is embodied as passive. The object suggests that the subject is needed in order to fulfill its meaning, while it provides for its own reception; it is (inter) active on the subjects behalf.Throughout this thesis the concept of interpassivity will be used as an instructive analogy for my definition of digital interpassivity. This will provide a comprehensive and compelling, alternative view to the considerable growth of literature that tends to depict digital technology and their creators as juggernauts. I have deliberately chosen to maintain a distance from debates around power and control, though I am fully aware of their importance. Instead I use the concept of interpassivity as a very focused lens to present the reader with a new way of understanding the relationship with our digital tools, accounting for important aspects in the interaction with our environment. An explanation will be sought from the effect of negotiations between cultural values and the primary principles of digital tools on the one hand, and our specific psychological appropriation of digital tools (the nature of the human psyche) on the other.
The specific coming together of these structures in the Digital Age as well as the specific characteristics and abilities of digital tools have reorganized human interdependencies. The relation between objects and subjects has changed significantly and continues to evolve, at the same time altering our presumptions. The fact that companies accordingly capitalize on this is a different story, and something of a side effect. Human thinking, behavior, and, interaction with the world are all gradually heading in the direction of digital interpassivity; this does not necessarily mean that the users of digital tools becomes sheer 'passive', but their activity mainly consists of feeding applications and algorithms with user data which is then processed for, or on behalf of, the user.
Most importantly it makes it possible to shed light on the unforeseen effects of the integration of digital technology with our daily lives, which has not only progressed to another level but also integrated itself into the fiber of our inner being. It is focused on how digital media are essential to the way we perceive information, interact with our environment, and experience the world.
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Our digital tools seem to be focused on mental cognitive workings of the brain and unconsciously change those structures. Meanwhile we are much too fixated on what we gain, but what is it we become possibly detached from? This thesis will therefore examine the way in which we outsource (mental) tasks to digital devices and applications. Not through the question; how are minds controlled by them, but by asking how our minds appropriate the faculties demonstrated by these devices? Thus by asking what digital tools do for us in the first place - instead of what they do to us - in order to be able to imply the possible consequences and changes taking place. Or better said, to be able to shed light on the way we psychologically appropriate and integrate the use (or guidance) of our digital applications to manage our daily lives. The research questions are therefore the following:Research Questions
• How has the rendition of the concept of interpassivity changed over time and what can it tell us about the deeper (latent) workings of and our relation with digital applications? • In what ways has the nature of digital applications changed the relation between object
and subject (device and human) through the increasing use of algorithms and non-discursive groundings? And what impact does this have on the subject’s perception of the object and its functions?
• How can digital applications be defined as interpassive objects and in what ways do their specific characteristics and cultural values, considered dominant for the Digital Age as a whole, suggest a possible update of the concept?
• Since the mind is embedded in biological, social and cultural reality, how do digital technologies that have permeated almost all of social and cultural life shape the formation of the mind?
Outline
The overall structure of this thesis takes the form of three main parts in addition to this introductory chapter. The first chapter begins by laying out the theoretical dimension for the fundamental use of the concept of interpassivity. More specifically by this will be done by tracing its changing theoretical lineage from Lacan’s implicit description in relation to the chorus in Greek tragedy, to its articulation by Žižek and Pfaller in the ‘90s in relation to interactive art, and finally to Gijs van Oenen use of the concept as an instructive analogy for his recent plea on The
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Interpassive Society (2011), wherein it has become too much to act according to our own interactive standards.Correspondingly, the second chapter is concerned with the update of the concept in relation to the workings of our digital applications we use to manage our lives on a daily basis. Given the essential role of the Big Other (culture as a whole and its dominant cultural values( that is assigned to the concept of interpassivity - in Žižek ’s and Pfaller’s, as well as in van Oenen rendition - it is of importance to first discuss the values that have become dominant in the current Digital Age. The rise of digital devices has a vital part in this. They can be seen as an answer to these dominant values and in turn effectuate an interpassive attitude towards their use. As will be set out, we delegate mental tasks to devices to save time and be as efficient as possible, as desired by the Digital Age. Efficiency, or ‘being efficient’ is determined in our idea, our experience, and use of digital devices. By accordingly relating this to the specific characteristics and abilities of our digital tools - in terms of the their aim towards the hyper-simulation of the brain, the agency of objects and the nature of algorithms - it becomes possible to submit a proposal to adjust the concept of interpassivity, that will describe the current form it has today.
Our use of digital applications will appear as both a pragmatic outcome of the interpassive condition as described by van Oenen, as well as a causative agent for the current nature of interpassivity today, which I call digital interpassivity. Digital tools have become integral systems that, due to both the ubiquity and habituation to algorithms/code, the way our brains cognitively appropriate tools and the interaction between the two, have become part of daily life and indisputable for the framework through which we perceive the world. And their deeper workings are often not even noticed.
Thus the third chapter will analyze that very framework and draw its conclusions with regards to the evolving relationship between object and subject and its potential effects on human cognition. For the more we continue to outsource mental tasks and deep engagement to technological devices, the more we are merely indirectly experiencing our actions and the more deeply we succumb to digital interpassivity.
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1. INTERPASSIVITY
Although not yet articulated as such, Jacques Lacan was the first to describe what would become the illustrious notion of interpassivity in the nineties. In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis Lacan suggests that even our heartfelt emotions can assume an ‘external existence’ (Lacan 295), which he exemplifies through the function of the chorus in classical Greek tragedy. He comments on its role as ‘managers of enjoyment’ (Poulard 298) and the way the chorus seems to function to occlude and assume the emotions (or ‘passions’) for the audience, that would be otherwise too much to take (Bergande 200). “When you go to the theatre in the evening, you are preoccupied by the affairs of the day, by the pen that you lost, by the check that you will have to sign the next day. You should not give yourselves too much credit. Your emotions are taken charge of by the healthy order displayed on the stage. The chorus takes care of them. The emotional commentary is done for you. Therefore, you do not have to worry; even if you do not feel anything, the chorus will feel for you instead” (Lacan 310). The required affective responses for an audience watching theatre are imposed and performed by a ‘surrogate self’: “The chorus expressed the terror and compassion felt by the audience, who were apparently pleased to be relieved of such psychological stress” (Lacan 252). The chorus suggests what one should feel and accordingly frees the audience from the obligation to feel it. Despite it appearing as if the audience does what it ‘should’ do, they are effectively relinquished from their emotional investment. Each intervention by the chorus displaces subjectivity by otherwise bearing the emotions of the audience. This effectuates what Lacan calls ‘barred subjects’; subjects that are deprived from their innermost feelings, leaving them as ‘pure void with no positive substantial content’ (Poulard 299).
1.1. Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Žižek
The Slovenian art philosopher Robert Pfaller and the Austrian cultural critique Slavoj Žižek observed something similar regarding interactive art in the nineties and appointed it as the phenomenon of ‘interpassivity’ (Pfaller, 2000). Interactive art had come to a point ‘beyond interactivity’; the work no longer needed the participation of the visitor in order to realize its meaning (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 21). Even though it seems that the spectator gets assigned with the role of co-producer, it is not about being (inter) active at all. Instead, as both Pfaller and Žižek argue, it is needless to consume; it is not interactivity but passivity that shapes the relation
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between the artwork and the spectator. It appears like we are consuming but what we are really doing is ‘playing’ as if we are consuming (Pfaller, The Hilarious Vicarious n.p).The visitor is actively detached and disinterested; their contribution has become redundant (van Oenen, Interpassiviteit n.p.). The realization of the artwork has been taken over by the work itself. Within these interpassive arrangements, as noticed by both Pfaller and Žižek , the artwork (the machine) is active on the user's behalf, surrogating consummation and consequently the enjoyment arising there from (Muller 54). But does that not sound ironic? Is it not the case that we outsource as much as possible to machines so we have more free time to enjoy ourselves? Yes. But as Pfaller puts it, it is nevertheless the case that we use certain machines to consume (and accordingly enjoy) in our place. Not just in the field of art, but also to a much greater extent in our daily lives (Pfaller, The Hilarious Vicarious n.p).
1.1.1 Outsourcing passivity
Applied to (electronic) media Žižek concretized this through the example of our use of the VCR. As Žižek explains, the VCR is not only recording our favorite show. It is also watching the show ‘for’ us and accordingly enjoys it on our behalf. In this case, the VCR fulfills the role of the medium for symbolic registration (Žižek , The Interpassive Subject 5). We do not need to watch as long we are in the comforting knowledge that someone, or something else watched for us. Žižek calls this outsourcing passivity. Knowing that the VCR watches for us we can stay active, ‘doing’ more things at the same time. But this is not at all the case according to Žižek , we are dealing here with false activity: ’you think you are active, while your true position, as it is embodied is passive’ (10). Therefore interpassivity is defined by Žižek as contradictory to Hegel’s List der Vernunft, which contains the idea that one can be active through the other and accordingly can be passive themselves because the Other does it for me. With interpassivity it is the case that one acts through the Other by conceding the passive part to the Other, and so one can stay actively engaged with other activities. Therefore it seems - one thinks - to be active, doing two things at the same time while in reality his position is passive.
For Žižek interpassivity is an illusion that sustains our false, modern self-image of an active being by outsourcing passivity to another person, object or institution (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 57). One could speak of a strategy as Žižek explains; where one is frantically active in ‘order to prevent the real thing from happening’. He effectively illustrates this by the universally recognizable situation where you are together with a group and there are obviously tensions in
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the air. People start to talk obsessively so there will not be that uncomfortable silence that will bring the latent tensions to light (Žižek , The Interpassive Subject 10).Also Pfaller recognizes this illusionary image of our so-called active beings, in his disquisition about the act of play as an apparatus for culture. He uses the behavior of intellectuals in libraries to provide decisive evidence for the way we merely ‘play’ consummation, to substantiate his interpassivity thesis. More specifically, he describes the case in which you see how people who have found an interesting book immediately run to the copy machine to copy from numerous pages. Once that is done they place the book back on the shelf and walk away from the library, content with their copied loot. It seems that the machine has already read or studied the copied pages in their place. In Pfaller words: “while copying, ‘reading’ is literally played” (Pfaller, The Hilarious Vicarious n.p), - by the acts needed for reading (opening the book, flipping the pages etc.). The question then is: for whom and why are we playing to effectuate full conviction that we are active?
1.1.2 The naive observer
In order to answer this question it is of importance to consider first what is at the root of Pfaller’s observation. The influence of Lacan and Freud’s notion of the Uber Ich will become evident. Pfaller is primarily focused on the ambiguity and the paradoxical behavior that humans deal with when it comes to interpassivity, which are in line with Freud’s view on human passions as essentially ambivalent and the Platonic subject matter on ‘mixed pleasures’ (Bergande 199). To explain the latter, Pfaller takes the example of canned laughter (as described by Žižek ) and adds an alternative view. He explains that the spectator is not just forced to naively and passively enjoy the show but is also allowed to meet with ‘additional pleasure’ (Bergande 200). The canned laughter gives room to the spectator to be ambivalent by concealing his feeling of contempt. The spectator is allowed to feel comfortable with watching something he may (or should) label as trash. Because it is the canned laughter that laughs about it - not you! - you are able to undergo a mixture of pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings: “he can enjoy pleasure and pain, comic relief and self-contempt, at the same time” (Bergande 201).
Pfaller also explains the paradoxical nature of interpassive behavior in terms of ‘double delegation’ (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 45). He explains that the major incentive for interpassive behavior is that enjoyment emanates from the process of delegations on two levels. On the one hand through the delegation of 1) passivity i.e. consumption onto another, and on the other
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hand, 2) through the belief it is actually possible to enjoy through the other: “enjoyment is delegated to the object and the belief in the illusion is placed onto a (fictional) naïve observer” (Pfaller, Ästhetik der Interpassivität 15). In Pfaller’s example about the implications of our use of the copy machine he assumes a mental authority that he defines as the naive observer. Consistently with the mental authorities as postulated in the Freudian psychoanalytical thought (the Ich and the Uber-Ich), this naive observer is part of the psychic apparatus of an acting person. But different than the Freudian mental authorities, the naive observer is not omniscient or able to recognize intimate intention and thoughts. Rather, it naively believes even the most perfunctory observation (Pfaller, The Hilarious Vicarious n.p). This playing for or ‘dissembling of consumption’ against the naive perception of the observer, effectuates a real satisfaction: a reality (for the interpassive intellectual)’’. (Pfaller, The Hilarious Vicarious n.p). Or in Freudian terms: "a symbol takes over the full significance of the symbolized". And while using symbolic representations, real results and feelings are achieved. Pfaller calls this ‘Diebische Freude’: “the thievish joy of having escaped the task implied in the activity as well as the belief that such a delegation is possible” (Walz et al. 57).1.1.3 Mixed pleasures
It is helpful to explain this in more detail by coming back to Žižek’s example of the VCR. Even though we are not watching the program directly ourselves, we derive a certain form of satisfaction by delegating consumption to an object, in this case the VCR. We utilize someone or something else as prosthesis to indirectly experience a plight. On first instance it seems a purely pragmatic phenomenon; we cannot do it now, so we will do it later. Yet reality sends out a different message: we do not come to do it after all. Pfaller states we keep on doing it anyway. Even when one is fully aware of the illusionary nature of this behavior, we still act like we can outsource tasks to objects. “This fetishist attitude permits us, despite our knowledge to the contrary, to behave as if we hold the illusory belief” (Walz et al. 59). Pfaller calls this the ‘objective character of the illusion’ (Walz et. al 60). We keep on recording programs, copying books, but these activities become Ersatz-activities; they replace the original intended activity (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 40). They are symbolic registrations that take over the original symbol and seek ‘vicarious’ substitute pleasure rather than deep engagement (Bergande 195) so we can free ourselves from the cultural obligation to enjoy. Žižek ’s ‘commodity fetishism’ is related in the sense that: in our social activities we act like we are not aware. We keep on following the fetishist illusion ( Žižek , The Interpassive Subject 2).
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1.1.4 Emotional substitution
This means that we are nevertheless able to enjoy while we are playing consummation. What Žižek and Pfaller add to the Lacanian analysis is that we do experience enjoyment, even though we do not experience emotion directly but through a secondary activity. Žižek elucidates this point of emotional substitution through the Lacanian notion of decentred subjects, which entails that even the deepest feelings can be radically externalized. Although the true Self does not deeply experience emotion, one is able to feel it through the belief that someone else can do it for us. Žižek states that even if we had our doubts, people would still believe they enjoy because they assume that there is someone (or a symbolic figure) who does/can (Žižek , The Interpassive Subject 3).
Consequently, our belief in our own ability to enjoy is fundamental for us to be able to (indirectly) enjoy something we outsource. Or as Pfaller would state through his notion of the naive observer: we do not recognize that we merely play activities while delegating tasks. Nor do we recognize that we experience surrogate pleasure, and (naively) feel convinced that we can still enjoy through secondary activities because ‘someone’ else enjoys for us. It is that persuasive faith that is fundamental to our enjoyment, while in reality we experience surrogate pleasure rather than the ‘real thing’ (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 46). Coming from the Freudian premise that we are unable to purely enjoy either way, Žižek suggests that we are not able enjoy without a feeling of obligation (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 47): “to be able to enjoy through the Other is to accept that enjoyment is not an immediate, spontaneous state, but is sustained by a superego-imperative. As Lacan emphasized again and again, the ultimate content of the superego-injunction is: ENJOY!” (Žižek , The Interpassive Subject 9). When one enjoys through the Other one can potentially liberate oneself from this duty. As paradoxical as it sounds, we enjoy by outsourcing enjoyment.
Coming back to interactive art, Žižek explains that in the same sense ‘enjoyment’ is determined in our idea and our experience of art and is accordingly followed by a feeling of obligation. Therefore outsourcing passivity in interpassive arrangements essentially means; “relieving me from my superego duty to enjoy myself ”(Žižek, The Interpassive Subject 7). It is exactly that obligation to enjoy which we outsource to the artwork that is an important contribution to our feeling of satisfaction through indirect experiences (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 49). As we can see in the case of the chorus, where the experience of fear or pity is outsourced. Because an object/thing substitutes, one is able to enjoy, “for they harbor a momentous liberating potential”
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(5). They are mechanical rituals that function as the Other and effectively decenter the subject from within by performing (accomplishing) the act for him (Žižek 5).It is Žižek who connects the passage in Lacanian psychoanalysis, as described above, – which has for a long time passed unnoticed – in concrete terms to contemporary culture (Pfaller, Why Žižek ? 37). He uses the Lacanian interpretation of the chorus in Greek tragedy as a theoretical substantiation to elaborate on his definition of interpassivity, which he expounds as: ‘believing or enjoying through the other’ (Žižek 8). Through his example of canned laughter, Žižek explains that emotions can be moved from subject to object. In this case the TV laughs for us; agency (the act of laughing) is mediated through the television as a strategy that promotes the ocular centric regime of television (Wilson 2); as a stand in through which emotions are extracted as an adequate reaction to a scenario. This reaction is beyond our control and we do not have to actually laugh ourselves to experience the emotion of laughing: one can indirectly experience it through the television (Žižek , The interpassive subjects 4): “ […] the Other – embodied in the television set […] – is laughing instead of us. So even if, tired from a hard day’s stupid work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the television screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the medium of the other, we had a really good time” (Žižek , The sublime object of ideology 35). Although the viewer ‘self’ does not have to invest in nor feel the (direct) emotion of laughing, it is nonetheless a true feeling. Žižek substantiates his statement by stating that: “when the Other laughs for me, I am free to take a rest; when the other is sacrificed instead of me, I am free to go on living with the awareness that I did pay for my guilt” (Žižek 5).
1.1.5 Detachment and resistance
Both Pfaller and Žižek see interpassivity in art as a pragmatic outcome of a broader human condition; a universal phenomenon that forms the basis for human self-understanding (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 24) and hence for Western self-deception. Interpassivity can therefore be seen as a form of resistance or a refusal to conform to cultural codes (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 50). As Pfaller explains through the principle of the ‘dromenon’; (mechanisms that run autonomously and do not necessarily need our participation, like the mechanisms of the VCR described above) while the dromenon runs one is supposedly able to perform and take pleasure in other activities contemporarily, yet this is undeniably accompanied by a necessary element of detachment (van Oenen, Interpassiviteit n.p.) and consequently the inability to enjoy completely either way. It is not necessarily the particular content they produce, but the idea that the
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dromenon runs ‘for us’ that is fascinating. It is the sensation of the idea that we can outsource our actions to it without deeply engaging and still experience satisfaction.Interpassive resistance, as Pfaller describes, is a move towards ‘Selbstvergessenheit’: a psychological state of absorption that leads to detachment (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 51), which Pfaller exemplifies with the principle of a dromenon. Selbstvergessenheit means that we no longer address our own capability to evaluate and negotiate. We fully trust upon the medium to do it for us and therefore submerge in a psychological state of absorption in an object or medium that leads to the detachment with our own thinking facility. It is ‘the sensation of a permanent and aimless running medium that works for us that effectuates satisfaction or even obsession (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 51). We forget that we “are compensating for our lack of real participation by fetishistically identifying with the dromenon. This is what Selbstvergessenheit means: to forget one’s self by temporarily replacing it, in this case by the dromenon” (Minus the Shooting 2010). The dromenon gives us a feeling of protection from what is ‘really’ happening and functions as a temporary escape from reality, contributing to the continuation of our self-image as active beings. Pfaller describes the situation wherein people that watch a soccer game on television seem to be irritated when you interrupt. It is not the fear of missing a part of the game but the interruption in an oblivious state of protection that the TV gives as a dromenon (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 51).
1.2 Gijs van Oenen: the Interpassive Society
Van Oenen uses the notion of interpassivity in the field of art, as observed by Žižek and Pfaller, as an instructive analogy for his theory of the interpassive society (2001). Despite the concept originating in the field of aesthetics, he expands the notion of interpassivity as an explanatory framework for social phenomena wherein we more and more outsource our wishes, emotions and responsibilities to devices, institutions, and more in general to media (van Oenen, Interpassiviteit, n.p). He elaborates this framework on a psychological level as; the state in which we can no longer cope with interactivity and agency, and on a historical level as a recent outcome of the longer existing process of the Enlightenment (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 45). In contradiction with Žižek and Pfaller, van Oenen appropriates interpassivity 1) as a consequence of the omnipresence of interactivity - not as opposed to - and 2) as a recent phenomenon and ‘timely’ (van Oenen, Interactive fatique 5) - not as universal - that has come into being in the last twenty years or so (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 59). Whereas Pfaller and Žižek suggest that interpassivity is a timeless character of Western humanity (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 53), van Oenen associates interpassivity with a specific ‘Zeitgeist’; occurred at a specific and identifiable time (55),
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elucidating interpassivity as a result of what he discusses as the dialectic of the Enlightenment and more specifically as an post-emancipatory condition (van Oenen, The Agency of Objects 9). According to van Oenen the phenomenon of interpassivity came into existence just a few years before Žižek and Pfaller articulated/discovered it as such.Also when it comes to interpassivity as a modus of resistance, both recognized by Pfaller and Žižek , van Oenen has a highly diverging vision. In his appropriation of interpassivity, Van Oenen identifies the emergence of interpassivity not as protest or resistance towards cultural standards (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 51), but as the consequence of the overwhelming vigor of interactivity and agency. Despite our ever-growing agency - both in a political and individual sense - it is a great achievement to see how this lust is nevertheless changing. Because it is an achievement which has to be maintained by constant effort, it has become a burden or what Bergande calls an ‘enforced enjoyment’ (7). Or in other words, something that once was a pleasure and now has become an unpleasant requirement that imposes itself upon us (193). It has simply become too heavy to bear (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 65). We are suffering from ‘interactive fatigue’ (66). We want to do it, but the overload of interactions forces us to partly relinquish our interactions; we have to externalize agency in order to maintain our own prepared norms that we do not want to give up (55).
1.2.1 Emancipation
In the sixties and seventies, interactivity does not only become visible as an art related phenomenon but as a wider social phenomenon that stands for new relationships towards authority. Societal norms and values are critically questioned. People do not unreservedly accept societal norms, values and established authority (van Oenen, Nu even niet! 80). Institutions are starting to incorporate the public opinion in decision-making and relinquish some of the responsibility on this matter. This emancipated ideal finds its expression in interactivity, which stands in this case for agency.
Interactivity has become a new paradigm. Participation has become a requirement, self-realization, self-determination, and self-development, where essential ideals, debate, discussion, and obviously "human autonomy” are the ultimate goal. Everyone had to develop into a mature and independent individual, and everyone did. We less and less have to meet with traditional standards. Emancipation and democratization have ensured that we are increasingly (co-) determining those new interactive standards. In various fields there is the possibility of
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participation and consultation, where one’s own opinion is usually highly valued or at least respected. Modern citizens have successfully integrated ‘the interactive ideals of modernity’: ‘emancipation, participation, deliberation, assertiveness’ (van Oenen, Interactive metal fatigue 4).This successful outcome of the process of emancipation has its roots in the Enlightenment, and has been a crucial phase for modernity and the way people interpret and experience the world today. With the realization that human thinking is not dependent on any external authority: “man can and must go alone at your own compass” (68), the thought that the world is a product of our own slowly sinks in. We have become rational beings that are constantly constructing our Self and the world around us. But what van Oenen emphasizes is the downside he calls the ‘tragedy of successful emancipation’ (75), the consequences of which are reflected both on a psychological level as well as on a behavioral level. Regarding the former, it is the tiring or even sick making hegemony of interactivity (earlier referred to as interactive fatigue). The latter is what van Oenen considers as interpassivity: our inability to act according to our own standards. The intensity of interactive engagement is slowly becoming too much, for “we increasingly, consciously or unconsciously, commit resistance to the emancipatory self-restraint and refuse to act [accordingly]. We are getting interpassive” (92). Although van Oenen explores and gives example of interpassivity in a great variety of cases, they all have one thing in common: “People seem to give themselves a certificate of Kantian incapacitation: they declare or show themselves unable to act on norms they themselves have subscribed to as emancipated, enlightened subjects, letting themselves slide from interactivity to interpassivity” (van Oenen, Interactive metal fatigue 6).
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2. INTERPASSIVITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE
This interpassive attitude where it seems better to outsource than not living up to our own standards is, according to philosopher Oswald Spengler, typifying for what he calls the Faustian soul of the West wherein it is not an option to accept limits. It seems better to outsource what has become too much, than not doing it at all. Schnitzler inextricably links this to the digital era as a manifestation of this Faustian thought. The ideals of the (Western) Enlightenment - wherein tradition is considered as oppressive and deteriorating - and the urge of its continuations seems to be fully reflected in the Digital Revolution as an ‘inherently progressive force’ (Bowers 169). The omnipresence and use of laptops, tablets and smart phones are the appearance of this digital Zeitgeist; in the same way factories and steam engines were in the industrial era (Schnitzler 15). “The ideal of agency is one of the last bastions of humanism, and has become the epitome of technological correctness” (David Rokeby 1996 cited by Wilson 2).
In this fashion I understand the digital tools through which we manage our daily lives - and more specifically its adherent applications - as an answer to interactive fatigue, as described by van Oenen, and our desire to outsource the agency that has become a burden. The ideology surrounding digital tools inherently postulates that they can support us and relieve the burden of doing it all yourself, and that they can contribute to the person you want to be: an (interactive) modern and emancipated being. The digital revolution marks and promises the definite farewell of all analogue limitations that make our modern lives complicated (Schnitzler 39) so that we can live up to those gained standards that we so desperately want to retain.
2.1 The Silicon Valley Ideology
A concretization of this promise can be found in The Silicon Valley ideology – or obsession as Carr calls it – and the continuous flood of digital renewal that serves to nourish the narrative of the improvement of life via technology; a society driven by technology and keened on using software to remove the ‘friction’ that we experience in our daily lives (Carr, The glass cage 173). Defined by Morozov as ‘technological solutionism’ (2013), poured into an ideology of efficiency, this is at the heart of the Silicon Valley ideology. And as Žižek notices, ideology is at its strongest when it is complemented with what he calls ironic detachment: “when we feel (either consciously or not)
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absolutely sure that, like Neo in The Matrix, we have been unplugged from whatever prison we were previously in” (Dormehl 240).This axiom is fundamental for The Silicon Valley Ideology that was once the conviction of a small group and which now has seeped into the cultural standards and a demand of contemporary digital culture - internalized and implicitly required. Through this it seems that the interpassive condition as discussed by van Oenen is implicitly and constantly repeated (and internalized) by digital technology/ applications as time savers, conflated with the ideology of efficiency, and strengthened by the entrenched assumption that we can delegate tasks to our digital devices to do it ‘better’. "The hypermodern individual today lives in a dimension where the friction between himself and his environment can (and is) abolished by digital tools" (Schnitzler 30). The opening sentence in the Tegenlicht episode Cybertopia on the worldview of Silicon Valley speaks volumes in that respect: “Welcome to your streamlined future” (Tegenlicht, Cybertopia). ‘Move fast’ (save time) and as comfortably and efficiently as possible is the credo (Schnitzler, 11 March 2015) and promise of digital tools brought about.
The trust in technology to fix our problems is not new and firmly rooted in our DNA (Schnitzler 64), but never before were our lives so filled and intertwined with technology. The World’s Fair New York in 1964 is usually cited as a transition point for the specific trust in computers and their problem solving abilities, where computers were at the time exhibited as the symbol for modernity and representation of the future (Barbrook 23). The exhibition strongly emphasized on how computers in the future would become able to solve problems in the same way a human can. A future where the ideology of cybernetics and the ideal of computers as ‘thinking machines’ (25) almost indistinguishable from humans would be commonplace. During that time this promise was in stark contrast to the way computers were actually used (within military context in the Cold War). Barbrook discusses the tension between constructed and material reality; how the euphoric claims about computers functioned as an ideology but back then were independent of how they were used in reality.
This promise is still applicable today and has grown to become the blind faith we have in our mobile miniature computers today; we trustfully delegate our daily tasks to computers in the form of our digital devices. From individual tools to large technological systems, our daily lives are modeled by computers (Wajcman 5). The specific form of this trust in, and use of, computers today is the particular amalgamation of our trust in technology and the maturation of the Internet, and the attendant belief in information technology as emancipatory (8).
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Once these ideas were the ideology of a specific group of people and a product of a specific time and place. Barbrook calls this ‘the Californian Ideology’ which was ” developed by a group of people who live in a specific country with a particular mix of socio-economic and technological choices '' (Barbrook and Cameron, the Californian Ideology n.p.). The Californian Ideology is a specific mix of ideology hippies (the New Left) together with the emergence tech industry (the New Right). The information sphere could only get the shape it has today thanks to major investments from the government, and also through innovative inventions of computer amateurs within the hippie culture. Today it is maintained confirmed and reaffirmed through the Silicon Ideology, poured into an ideology of efficiency, lived through their continuous flood of the digital renewal we have happily integrated into our daily lives. It should be mentioned that Barbrook and Cameron are not endorsed to this supposed freeing promise of information technology. Instead, information technologies to freedom achieved the opposite, they just created a new form of inequality; the dichotomy between the rich and information-poor (Barbrook and Cameron, n.p.). But that is a whole other discussion than is set out in this thesis.2.2 Interpassivity: the ideal of the Digital Age
Therefore I approach interpassivity not as an outcome of our use of digital applications, but as their primary principle: “designed to release us from the necessity of being deeply engaged” (Carr 167). But, as will be explained later on, this comes with a paradox and is fundamental for our interpassive attitude towards digital technology. Our use of digital applications are both a pragmatic outcome of the interpassive condition as described by van Oenen, as well as a causative agent for a next stage of interpassivity, which I call digital interpassivity .
Interpassivity, then, is a condition with different phases and has a changing character in relation to our use of digital applications. To frame a conversation about interpassivity as explored in the previous section, and supplement and convert it in relation to digital applications we can look to a variety of lenses: 1) ubiquity, 2) the agency of objects and 3) trust. It will become evident that interpassivity in relation to digital applications is intensified on a cognitive level; it’s ubiquitous and less reflexive with the consequence that we can only oversee the impact partially.
Our interpassive use of digital tools (applications) has a twofold, somewhat ambiguous effect. On first instance the Silicon Valley ideology, which has become cultural property, shouts
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interpassivity from its base: outsource the engagement that has become a burden to digital tools and you will save your dwindling, scarce time. Your life will become easier and more efficient. One would expect that we would feel like we have more time than before and live under less pressure. We allow ourselves to delegate what has become too much: the necessity of being deeply engaged. In terms of interpassivity efficiency, or being efficient, has become both a part of as well as a demand by the Big Other (contemporary culture in general). Digital applications are a pragmatic outcome of and answer to this desire and a way to outsource this obligation. Efficiency and speed are “sexy and digital devices constantly sold to us as efficient, time-saving tools that promote an exciting, action-packed lifestyle“ (Wajcman 13).Our age is obsessed with speed and efficiency, and digital tools are answering to our obsession by doing more at the same time (14). The idea of efficiency through digital technology has also become highly valorized in contemporary culture, as well as the strong belief that our digital tools are able to take over the obligation of being an efficient and time saving being (and therefore taking matters in our own hands). Interpassivity then is the ideal of the Digital Age and the aggregator for digital interpassivity. But that efficiency can simply be brought about via the digital applications that we use on a daily basis, and will appear as both illusory and naive in the long term. At the same time digital interpassivity befits the ideal as a “template for how the world’s people think and behave toward others and the environment” (Bowers 171).
2.3 The Time Pressure Paradox
The rhythm of our life is being reconfigured by digitalization (61) and instead of feeling freed from increasing pressure we feel we are busier than ever. Although Wajcman agrees to the Silicon Valley ideology in the sense that digital technologies can support us in the coordination of our daily lives, she also points to its performative character. She explains this in terms of the Time Pressure Paradox (2014). On the one hand digital tools/devices are designed to advance human efficiency and are part of a broader discourse where innovation is conflated with efficiency, lauded and praised as ever wanted savers of time, yet at the same time people feel ever more harried (62). We both ‘blame’ technology to cause the speeding up everyday life and yet we turn to digital devices for the solution; to free us from the increasing time pressure we experience in everyday life (1, 65). While that moment merely truly comes: “these sophisticated new digital devices leave the users mystified by the paradox of having more and better technologies and still feeling harried” (5).
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One could say that Wajcman implicitly makes a link between digital devices and the concept of interpassivity, as discussed earlier, through the notion that we nowadays delegate tasks to devices to save time and be as efficient as possible, as desired by the Digital Age (2). Efficiency, or ‘being efficient’ is determined in our idea and our experience and use of digital devices. Ironically enough, the more we outsource, the more tasks we delegate to digital technology, and the more we will do so; the expected moment of feeling satisfied with a ‘dull’ moment of doing nothing rarely comes. We keep on searching for ever-faster technologies.It is a known phenomenon that automation in general not per se has brought the freedom it initially promised. Through the restructuration of work (tasks) more work becomes generated. As mentioned by Wajcman, among others, the introduction of the washing machine can function as a good example here; we now wash clothes every day instead of once a week (58). In the same vein, digital technology has effectuated the intertwining of work and leisure time. One is never truly ‘off’: “Leisure time itself may be subject to intensification because of the increasing habit of multitasking with digital devices” (8). Being efficient in the Digital Age does not only mean reducing the amount of time required to complete a task, it also means ‘saving’ time by undertaking more tasks simultaneously, which ironically enough makes us busier. Speed is built into the design, in this ‘tools for time’ (3), but as Wajcman notices:“ Temporal demands are not inherent to technology. They are built into our devices by all-too- human schemes and desires” (41).
2.4 The automation of mental tasks
Whereas in times of the industrialization physical action became outsourced to - or automated by - machines in order to save time and stimulate efficiency, software (digital applications) seems to be keened on taking over mental task. Although the automation of physical actions was also accompanied with the consequences of the loss of interest and knowhow of the workers. The product became more and more realized by the demands of the production system and less depending on the considerations and judgments of the workers (Schnitzler 21). This automation of brainwork is not a consequence but a point of departure when it comes to digital applications, or in Schnitzler’s words: “ The overwhelming expansion of the information sphere is directed on the hyper-simulation of the brain” (66), as already predicted and hoped for in terms of thinking machines at the World’s fair New York in 1964 (Barbrook, Imaginary Futures 25). More and more computers are inoculated onto backing up and alleviating mental task and likewise we more and more exploit digital applications as a way to outsource tasks normally done by the brain.
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Ben Hammersley, editor in chief of WIRED, describes this as the ‘offloading of mental tasks’ (Schnitzler 34) to our digital tools in an episode of Tegenlicht (2013). Taking his phone as an example, Hammersley exemplifies the way he outsources his ‘memory’ to digital tools. This is “not really a failure of memory as offloading a mental task into a digital tool”, he said. “Now that we keep our phones with us at all times, we are becoming so dependent on them that they have actually become a part of us. I call it my robot-brain”. Meaning we are carrying with us a sort of external hard drive, one that not only stores our memory but ‘thinks’ for us, performing mental tasks that we cannot be bothered with anymore.
In light of what we gain through our use of digital applications (technology), Hammersley labeled the idea that we could possibly lose certain skills - such as remembering phone numbers on our own - as ludicrous. Hammersley, in a more and more irritated tone, kept insisting that we merely outsource ‘the boring bits of brain power’. It is unnecessary to spent time on consuming mental tasks for the networked multi tasking human (Schnitzler 25). Ben Hammersley believes that the more that is taken over by digital tools, the more time we can hold on to doing great things. “We lose nothing!” There is only a bright sight to digital tools that do more and more of the ‘dumb’ things for us, so that we have enough time for the smart, fun stuff (Tegenlicht).
Through this statement he implicitly refers to the envision ideal of Douglas Engelbart’s argument on augmented intellect (1963), in the sense that he does not think our use of computers will significantly decrease our own abilities. In favor of the use of computers, Engelbart’s argument takes the side of the spectrum where technology is seen as ideally designed in such a way that human abilities will enhance due its use. As an extension of human abilities so to speak. By collaborating with computers in such a way, it has the potential to support humans in their everlasting quest to deal with their restrictions by using tools. Engelbart’s invention of the mouse is a comprehensive example of such augmented technology, for the purpose of extending human capabilities through technological innovation. As beautifully summarized by Thierry Bardini:
“It extends, or augments, a very basic human ability, two-dimensional hand movement, into the ability to manipulate digital media. It makes the interface an extension of human action rather than a mediator between the human and the machine. The result is not merely people who have less to do thanks to the machine (automation) but people who have abilities to do more with the machine (augmentation) (n.p)”.
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But back in sixties the computer, which defines Engelbart as nothing more than a glorified calculator, has significantly evolved; in size, speed and through the Internet, and more specifically through the capacities of algorithms. As befits the idea of interpassivity, computers are deployed to take over human tasks so they can exercise the more important stuff. The computer (our digital devices), not only provides a means of cooperation but also a means of tools able to carry out work on our behalf. Therefore it has an whole different function and use compared to that in Engelbart’s view; technologies of today have moved away from the human centered approach and inherently to the automation approach to technology. And fitting to the idea of interpassivity, at this side of the spectrum, technology functions as a tool to substitute human effort so that the user is able to focus on things that really matter. Not on first instance to strengthen human capabilities, but to free the user from time consuming tasks that are just a waste of time (Bardini n.p.).Today, the potential of automation has reached impressive new levels, permeating into every facet of our lives, and has moved beyond the idea of merely taking routine tasks. “The automated systems of today are not so much keened on routine tasks, but increasingly take over intellectual work” (Carr, The glass cage 92), which is more than ever the case with the digital tools we use on a daily basis. The critique at this side of the spectrum is less rosy than Engelbart imagined and prevails that we are becoming cognitively impoverished and effectively passive by using computers/software. This is the side which Nicholas Carr is undoubtedly part of. In his book The Shallows (2010), Carr sets out how the automation of thinking, through the workings of software and the internet, makes us shallow thinking beings and less proficient in our ability to think deeply: “the brighter the software, the dimmer the user” (168). The more time we spend behind our computers the more likely it is that we ineffectively appropriate information (in the sense of not engaging deeply with it, but scanning instead of reading and constantly shifting focus between different screens).
Coming back to van Oenen, we outsource agency. In this case the agency and engagement that is normally involved with such mental tasks, so we can do more activities simultaneously and therefore spend time as efficiently as possible. The automation of mental tasks seems to be for the better. For me, there is more to it. I will explain this by looking at the inner workings of our digital applications so it will become clear what they do for us - what they essentially take over - and how the concept of interpassivity should be updated to digital interpassivity and the implications it may have. As befits the concept of interpassivity, it is the case with digital
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interpassivity that our use of digital applications feels freeing at first instance. But as we shall see, something rather different is happening behind the coulisses. Digital interpassivity effectuates the opposite to, or is illusory in, what the Silicon Valley ideology of efficiency promised us.2.5 The nature of algorithms
Although algorithms can straightforwardly be considered ‘an executable pattern of instructions (Kitchin and Dodge 24), the theoretical tendency nowadays has moved more and more towards the idea that there is more at their roots. They ‘shape our world’ (Slavin 2005), they manifest some of the components of `being alive' (Thrift and French 310). “Western Societies are advancing toward a situation in which code is routinely employed to undertake tasks and solve problems across all aspects of everyday life” (Kitchin and Dodge 215).
Hidden from view, the work algorithms do for us (Kitchin and Dodge 9) is structured in such a way that we are rarely aware that we are less and less challenged to truly evaluate and decide on relevant information ourselves. For the most of us, for example, it has been a long time since we had to fully trust in our own capability of finding the way (Carr 167) - order the possible routes, evaluate which route would be the fastest and then accordingly decide on the one. We follow preconceived actions/output without deeply engaging with the pre- over thinking needed for those actions. There are numerous examples of digital applications that figure stuff out for us on a daily basis: Netflix sorts out which series it is you would like to watch, Google maps calculates your route, Google’s search engine decides what is the most relevant information, and Facebook reminds you of your friends birthdays.
A new calculative background that has recently come into existence, that now counts as the framework through which we perceive the world and guides our thinking (Thrift 582). It provides us with another point from where we ‘start’ to think, so to speak. Through the omnipresent use and application of computer power in the form of software, most of the actions in our daily lives are backed up, or in Thrift’s words ‘shadowed by’ calculations. Done by algorithms, “calculations are becoming a ubiquitous element of human life’ (586). Thrift emphasizes that on first instance a quantitative background of numbers and calculations does not seem to touch upon human life as experienced qualitatively, but rather the opposite is true.
Through his plea about his notion of ‘qualculation’ (2004) Thrift sets out that our algorithmic backgrounds promote cognitive assistance in the form of calculations, not outputted as dry
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numbers but as qualitatively experiences (586). Algorithms (code) do the actual work of ‘creating, ordering and giving meaning to digital artifacts’ (Cheney-Lippold 166) and decide on what is ‘relevant’. A process of considering results in a ready-made experience, wherein the complex process of calculation does not become visible. In light of digital interpassivity I am not focusing on the calculations per se, but more on which human mental tasks they essentially take over. We outsource the weighing and balancing of information to make choices and accordingly act upon those choices. What algorithms - as the non-discursive groundings of the digital applications we use on a daily basis - essentially do for us is what I define as the ‘process of figuring out’ (van Egmond 2015); a process that has faded into the background and rarely asks for our attention or our cognitive input. It is especially this ubiquitous character and the habitation to the workings of algorithms that - as I shall explain later in terms of the ‘intensification of the state of Selbstvergessenheit’ - has implications for the necessary update of interpassivity to digital interpassivity.In his book The Formula (2014), Luke Dormehl does not mince his words when it comes to the way algorithms affect our entire lives (‘the algorithmization of life’) and the cultural idea that no matter what the problem is, it can be solved by algorithms. The basis of the performance of the Silicon Valley ideology is considered as the specific workings of algorithms, which I also take into scrutiny in order to give a detailed delineation of digital interpassivity (more specifically the interpassive actions performed by/through the digital applications we use to manage our daily lives). We have reached ‘the age of the Formula’ (Dormehl 224), where calculations are no longer abstract incidents that never touch upon real life, but rather intervenes in everything we do: “.. nothing, it seems, is safe from a few well-designed algorithms offering speed, efficiency ..” (229), which now have become embedded as a requirement of the Digital Big Other. We outsource the obligation of being an efficient, time saving being by delegating the time consuming process of ‘creating, ordering and ultimately giving meaning to digital artifacts’ (166).
The non-discursive algorithmic groundings of digital applications and their ability to combine calculate and increasingly decide what is relevant, can be seen as a next phase in automation. We have moved from the automation of physical actions, to the automation of mental tasks, and in our use of digital applications in our daily lives to the automation of ‘observing, detecting, analyzing, evaluating and even making decisions’, a skill that until recently was regarded as a human right (Carr 92). Algorithms are able to guide and form our actions and decisions because
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we assume their ‘superior’ knowledge and data to be infallible, making our own interactivity and process of figuring out more redundant.2.6 The agency of objects
This new calculative background reorganization of the relation between human and objects has direct influence on the human habitus. The changes in external structures have altered the relationship between objects and subjects, therefore effectuating changes in our psychological assumptions and structures. Our digital applications are closely tied to the principle of the dromenon, mechanisms that run on their own and do not necessarily need our participation. Slightly different is that, to calculate (order, create and give meaning), such algorithms do need our input in the sense of user data, but our attention (cognitive input) has become unnecessary. The principle of the dromenon is more than ever applicable when it comes to digital tools, but also needs an update. Significantly different is - and maybe most significant for software/code/algorithms - is that they are able to work autonomously: “it can receive and analyze information, evaluate situations, make decisions and can act without human oversight or authorization” (Kitchin and Dodge 5). Nevertheless, they do need our input in the sense of user data, just not our attention, perfectly corresponding with the values that have become dominant in the Digital Age.
In other words: our digital tools gain a certain level of agency, which has been described in a variety of terms. Mackenzie for example, points to this as ‘secondary agency’ (2006). In the same vein Kitchin and Dodge state that software is ‘automagical’ in nature, our digital tools/objects are becoming ‘addressable, aware and active (48) This is also emphasized by Wolfgang Ernst. He poses the term Media Archaeography to emphasize that media itself gains a level of agency, and to move beyond McLuhan’s mantra that media are ‘the extension of man’ (1964) : their use and outcome are not only human products but are also partly a result of a mediatic logic (58). Ernst therefore calls for the awareness of the technical, non-discursive infrastructures of media; not just the cultural dimension of media should be analyzed, so much as the technical (non discursive) infrastructures that made that outcome possible. His idea that media are no longer merely savers of knowledge, but have become active producers of knowledge is a basis for the idea of digital interpassivity; we no longer outsource our memory but also the production of knowledge through the delegation of the process of figuring out. Our digital applications “have acquired an agency that nowadays guides and directs the actions of our lives” (Pantazi 2), not the other way around. Van Oenen calls this ‘the emancipation of objects’ (Nu even niet! 203): objects,
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digital applications in this case, are less and less employed by us and increasingly determining the structures of our lives (van Oenen, A Machine that would go off itself n.p.).2.7 The intensification of Selbstvergessenheit and detachment
I would like to focus on what Pfaller discusses as the state of Selbstvergessenheit; a psychological condition in which we are so possessed by a medium that constantly runs for us, that we submerge in a state of absorption and get detached from our own thinking facility. In relation to the nature of digital applications and their algorithmic groundings (as set out in the previous paragraph) this needs an update and is intensified on several levels.
Firstly, the detachment from our thinking facility can be more specifically defined in relation to the algorithmic groundings of digital applications and what they do for us: they essentially order, evaluate and decide on relevance (in a variety of forms). Selbstvergessenheit in relation to digital interpassivity then, encompasses the state where we no longer (or less likely) appeal to our own capability to evaluate, negotiate and decide on the relevance of information. Detachment is intensified, not only because we do not have to explicitly instruct algorithms, but at the same time they work in ways that are indecipherable; the complexity of their calculative processes towards their outcome are not easy to grasp. We relate to those outcomes but become detached from the process of figuring out because we do not know how they figure out. Not being able to fully understand how exactly they operate makes it difficult to truly be aware of what we are delegating to them, so detachment is intensified.
Second, the state of Selbstvergessenheit is intensified by the ubiquitous nature of and the habitation to algorithms. As noticed by Thrift: “All human activity depends on a imputed background whose content is rarely questioned: it is there because it is there“ (Thrift 584). This background has drastically changed over time through waves of artificiality. From once being established with natural ordered entities, our imputed backgrounds are now filled with artificial components that occur as second nature to us; entities, which we have ‘forgotten’, were created through human intervention. The presence of our interpassive actions is faded into the background and works without our conscious instructions. Algorithmic groundings are so latent and ‘natural’ that we do not notice their presence and the things they do for us and the way they do it never becomes clear or visible (Kitchin and Dodge 5). “The artificial environment is senses and has the strength of a set of natural forces blowing this what” (Thrift 591).
