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KENNETH LIM @ ART PAGES
CHAPTER 1
ATTENTION FOR SALE:
CAPITALISM AND INTERACTIVE COMPUTERS
Interactive and integrated1 digital computer technologies such as Multimedia2 and Virtual Reality3 are marketed as ultimate tools in audio-visual presentation-based activities. Functionally, these technologies have a broad footprint, covering commerce, arts, entertainment and education, and are moving towards future networking utility as a part of a Global Village (McLuhan & Powers, 1989) with humans socializing within their virtual environments (Krueger, 1993) without crossing physical boundaries Virtual Reality is promised as the next phase of digital evolution.
These new technologies are identified (McLuhan & Powers, 1989, p. 8), as potent social machines as they have causal effects on all elements related to their utility. The social function of digital computer technology is rooted in the mechanism of capitalism, where consumption of material artefacts has peaked, resulting in a reassessment of market demands for technology. Bruce Sterling defined current "information economy" to be the mechanism of producing information4 as commodities. The subsequent glut in the data market, forced a capital move from traditional knowledge-based information systems to that of attention seeking systems, where the market value of information is evaluated along human needs (Sterling, 1992). Sterling's observation accurately marks the current trend of interactive computer systems being attention-seeking tools, to maximize sensory stimulation within a competitive environment. Interactive systems are only as potent as the degree of (usually time-charged) user participation.
Digitization of information "predigest(s) culture, tradition and structure, reducing it to a form more palatable to capital" (McCarthy, 1992). It can be argued that digital technologies are progressively revolutionizing our culture by cultivating a greed for "individualized" stimulation - made possible by the reduction of production to the 1/0 binary system - which is proving to be extremely efficient, economical and infinitely versatile. Production efficiency and high competition have brought the production costs to a domestic level, so domestic consumers can now generally afford to own their own personal computer systems, and in the immediate future, their own interactive multimedia systems. Networking technologies are changing the economies of many industrialized countries by ensuring that geographical boundaries are not limiting the circulation of information in the global village (McLuhan and Powers, 1989).
It should be seen that digital computer technologies benefit their users at the expense of others without access to the technology. Globally, social and economic hierarchies are drawn according to the availability and accessibility of information technologies. Sterling's "information economy" (1992) utilizes technology for monetary gains, seeking to exploit maximum dollar for every pixel or bit produced for consumption. Sterling hints at a future whereby products of digital computer technology contain strands of human values only if they offer value-adding to the commodity. Capitalism, in this context, seems to be synonymous with digital technology. Digital technology promotes the particalization of desire and production; digitizing and webbing around human culture (McCarthy, 1992), and will gradually be small enough to penetrate our biological bodies, intervening the fundamental genetic5 structure of biological systems, representing and replacing the redundant cells with artificial ones. The abstraction of material reality "floated" desire into a wave of particles that actively seeks for the right assemblage as stimulation. Digital technologies attract capital by offering flexible means of perceiving (often visualising) concepts, continuously feeding the rationalistic Scientific traditions that form the underlying rationale of capitalism. Postmodern theories support such atomization of capital and culture, identifying the schizophrenic marriage and coexistence of these conflicting elements. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).
Ethical questions rose against the marriage of biology and technology should influence future digital technology research. What drives technologically innovative countries to pour billions of dollars into research and developments are the economic rewards technology promises. Ethics are not potent challengers to capitalism, technological research and development progress must eventually compliment the world as it exits, without the necessary violence associated with the process of colonization or cancerous mutation of capitalism. The intervention of technology by art may redirect the humanitarian concerns into the ethos of technological development.
"Bionomics" defined Capitalism as a naturally occurring phenomenon that is a part of natural evolution, where competition, specialization, co-operation, exploitation, learning and growth are integral to both Capitalist economies and biological evolution. (Rothschild, 1992, p. xi). Cultural change is driven by the evolution of technological information and not evolution of genetic information (Rothschild, 1992, p. xiii), hence Rothschild's suggestion that Culture is a dynamic process dependent on its social environments, where practical developments of human endeavours cause continual re-negotiation and re-organization within that cultural space. Cultural change is not dependent on human genetic evolution and biological predisposition because technology has compensated in great detail on our shortcomings.
Richard Dawkins identified the evolution of cultural transmission as "Meme...(which) propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation" (1976, p. 143). Information technology aims to control the propagation of memes, by privileging owners of the most attractive meme with capital rewards. Interactive computer technologies aim to individualize the supply of memes, by a process of user-selection and navigation to maximize satisfaction, ensuring the capital lifespand of memes in their sustained usage. "Selection favours memes which exploit their cultural environment to their own advantage" (Dawkins, 1976, p. 143), but the process of selection is capitalistic, and the fundamental measure of advantage will be capital.
Capitalism is developing our desire for information by promising to meet our fundamental needs and desires with more information. Such circularity quickens with technological advancement. Information production for capital exists both on micro and macro levels but has capital value only when new. The value of information evaporates almost immediately when shared after production. Ownership of "new" uncirculated information is the foundation of monetary wealth. McCarthy (1992) identified this "new" information to be reassembled particles, where meaning and signification occurs at the "collisions" or "flow" of those particles. On the other hand, the only way to ensure an information rich resource, it is essential to have an informed society in which information is readily circulated.
The political boundaries imposed by the State is becoming increasingly arbitrary as the pressure for globalization increases in this information age. The social dynamics that were once contained by the State have taken a multiplicity of dimensions that are no longer within the firm grasp of the State but are instead, dictated by market demands. Asian countries such as Singapore, are sensitive to the new order. The role of the State has undergone significant restructuring and redefining into one that is moulded towards the Corporate State.
The State as Management and trading bodies of "culture industries," fully participating in global commercial activities without perceiving any contradiction to their role. The new Asian States are quick to ensure their people are information rich, with the common goal of increase their stakes in information technology. Such a move can be found with the development of the National Industrial Plan (NIP) in Singapore, aimed at ensuring a sustained economic future through technology (Appendix 6).
The postmodern State, as outlined by Lyotard (1984), is being undermined by multinationals and seemingly transglobal flowing of information, causing a problem of State legislation and control. Lyotard(1984) sees that "society exists and progresses only if the messages circulating within it are rich in information and easy to decode," asserting that the role of the State as the "mind" or central processor of society is undermined. This will only happen, if the State is trapped within its old order resisting reorganization.
Singapore reacted to this new order, by opening up through relaxed censorship and accelerated maturation of its population by assessing of alien cultures in the mass media, to prepare for the introduction of satellite television in Singapore. With the deconstruction of geographical or physical boundaries in this spread of information, the society with the most cohesive and strongest cultural identity will benefit, both politically (by retaining its political identity) and economically (through the recycling and regeneration of its own culture for consumption). This assumes that the cultural identity is sufficiently novel for consumption. Interactive computers serve this function within the capitalistic environment, by selling contact time with the most attractive culture. Although globally, most countries are linked by electronic networks such as INTERNET and FIDONET, the focal point of most networking activities are aimed at the USA.
Herein lies the paradox of the postmodern society: as the global market becomes consistently uniformed, the consumption of knowledge and information is based on differences. Digital computer technologies thrive on this paradox via reductionism, purifying all information and functions into the 1/0 binary and yet again translating the system into forms of (generally graphical) representations. The adoption of digital information technology has enabled Singapore, Hong Kong and China to become state-multinationals. The boundaries of State ideologies dissolve into demand and supply dynamics and are packaged for consumption internationally, through cultural activities spawned by the global interactivity of computer users. Diplomatic relations between countries are now public relations exercise, with the ultimate end being economic advantages, fulfilling the prophecy of the Frankfurt School theory of the culture industry having "logically emerged to perform a highly manipulative role in advanced capitalist societies, serving to contain and subvert forms of opposition or critical consciousness on behalf of the dominant capitalist class." (O'Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, Fiske, 1983, pp. 93). The linkage of the Most Favoured Nation status offered by the United States with China's Human Rights legislation is one such example, whilst the Superpowers have no interest in the plight of East Timor because of its lack of commercial potential. Postmodern countries are judged not according to their political ideology but from their economic qualities -- cultural novelty, product innovation, quality, value-for-money.
A gloomy forecast for humankind, but care must be taken not to overlook the potential of the technologies.
Representing our worlds on multiple levels, digital computers have infinite potential to simulate and create artificial worlds and environments that will enrich the human experience unique to its kind. The artificial environments created by computer technologies are interpreted differently by a number of its proponents, ranging from the exploration of Cyberspace6 (Benedikt, 1991) to the externalization of Cyberspatial activity in Artificial Reality ( Krueger 1993), to the simulation of our physical world through Virtual Reality systems. The form and content of the artificial worlds have infinite possibilities due to the digital computer's immense processing and representational potential as we move from the limitations of text-based and static composition of desktop publishing to a more integrated and dynamic information system that involves the overall experience of its human users.
NOTES
1. Interface: The part of the software (and hardware) that the user interfaces to communicate with and control the program. 'Pull down menus', a mouse, a data glove and 'buttons' are examples of user interfaces. (Krueger, 1993, p36).
2. April 1992 of The Florida SunFlash, a magazine dedicated to the technologies of the Sun workstations, edited by John Mclaughlin, (flash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM), defines Multimedia as the integration of "audio, video, text, graphics, fax and telephony. The benefit is more powerful communication. The combination of several media often provides richer, more effective communication of information or ideas than a single media such as traditional test-based communication can accomplish" Archives of The Florida SunFlash can be found on solar.nova.edu, paris.cs.miami.edu, uunet.uu.net, src.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.adelaide.edu.au.
3. Virtual Reality (VR): the label commonly given to new interactive electronic media that give the illusion of being immersed in an artificial world which exists inside the data-space of the computer: often associated with the terms 'artificial reality' and 'cyberspace'. (McCormack, 1993, p. 14).
4. INFORMATION AS RESOURCE. Harlan Cleveland (1986, pp 5) wrote about Information as the new resource of production. As a resource, Information differs from other material resource in a number of ways specified by Cleveland:
Information is expandable.
As an expandable resource, Information grows as it is being utilized or processed through the collective contribution of it's users. The modification and upgrading of computer software is a strong industry that outgrew the hardware industry in the United States of America, as a result of this expansion. Globalisation provided the basis for creating an exceptionally large pool of information workers throughout the world, operating at an intensity unimaginable ten years ago. The demand for speedy, efficient and effective upgrading of information is ever increasing.
Information is not resource hungry.
Before the advent of modern computers, Information could only be transmitted through more labour, resource and capital intensive means. The efficiency of resources like the silicon chips and superconductors have made the information economy much more efficient.
Information is substitutable.
Mechanization and automation. The key to cost efficient production and a popular means of replacing labour. Moreover, access through information networks allow for centralization of business organizations. The growth of Contract and freelance servicing is readily available on call. The burden of sustaining Project Consultants for an organization such as Woodside on permanent payroll is a cost burden. It is best that project services should be contracted, aided by heavy computerized capital investments. Computers seemed to have replaced labour as priority resource in this instance.
Information is transportable.
In fact, Information Technology can be found even in the most remote areas of the world. Global networking is now an everyday reality. Time and distance have no effect on the transfer of information from one place to another. A computer program such as Netlib allows users to access information from libraries all over the world.
Information is diffusive.
"...the leakage of information is wholesale, pervasive, and continuous" (Cleveland, 1986, pp 6). This concept is true generally. It is difficult to hide information, for as long as they are stored, information can be retrieved, unless it is lost through time. One tact that is used by institutions such as the military to store sensitive information is to form physical and legal barriers to restrict accessibility. This works theoretically, but in reality, classified information are often found in the hands of the media. Another way of minimizing information leakage is to segment information. To assign small bits of information to separate departments, giving only personnel at the top of the hierarchy the holistic view of the information at hand.
5. "Humans have been shaped by nature, by the forces of natural selection. Our genes determine how we respond to the daily challenge of living. The process can be described by a deceptively simple equation that says, in essence that we are the sum total of the interactions between our genes and our environment." Graham O'Neil (1990, p. 43) writing for 21C, a magazine dedicated to the future published by the Commission for the future in association with ABC-TV's Quantum programme. In the same issue, 21C issued the following definitions:
Chromosomes: found within the nucleus of cells in all plants and animals, chromosomes contain genes, arranged in order along their length. Cells contain two sets of chromosomes, one set from the mother and one from the father. Each species has a fixed number of sets that make up its genome.
Genes: the basic units of inheritance which determine the characteristics of the individual. Genes are bits of information within the DNA molecule. Capable of mutation.
DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA is the main carrier of genetic information in living organisms. Most of the DNA of a cell occurs in the nucleus as part of the chromosomes. DNA molecules are double stranded helixes, consisting of two chains wound around each other. DNA is present as a single thread-like molecule in each chromosome.
Genome: the genetic map or code of a living species.
Protein: proteins play a fundamental role in the processes of life. They form hair, skin, muscle and cartilage. All enzymes are protein in nature and many hormones are proteins. Proteins consist of amino acids.
6. Michael Benedikt's introduction to Cyberspace: First Steps (1991), proposed Karl Popper's 1972 framework of the world. Popper sees the world as made up of 3 interconnected worlds. World 1 being the objective material world, with it's own physical properties. World 2 is the world made up of subjective consciousness. It is the world of the human mind. World 3 is made up of the objective products made by living organisms within a public sphere through their interaction with each other and the environment (Benedikt, 1991). The products of world three may be abstract, made up of pure information or social contracts. Benedikt asserts that it is within the sphere of World 3 that Cyberspace, within the domain of Artificial Intelligence, will be most influential in the future. Cyberspace is a formal interactive space created within a computer. There, anything which can be re-presented formally by the computer can be interacted, including multidimensional objects. Within cyberspace, all materiality is displaced, as only representations are needed. Hence, Cyberspace is the world of the interpreted, the new postmodern language, which, through its displacement of materiality, calls for a re-definition of the physical, material world as objects that were created for interaction, exchange and representation may be rendered obsolete. The functional aspects of materiality has to be re-considered. Binaries will be interacting without cancelling each other out. The real sharing the same space with the unreal, finite with the infinite, physical with the spiritual, real with the abstract. Artificial Intelligence is expanding rapidly within World 3. It's displacement of objects is seen as an emancipation from the pressures of resource exploitation, whilst it's threat to displace the subjective, through Intelligence Engineering, is raising much moral concerns.
Chapter 1: Attention for Sale: Capitalism and Interactive Computers Chapter 2: Defining Human-Computer Interaction Chapter 3: Representing our Worlds: Digital Translation Chapter 4: Digital Intelligence: Parallel flow of Multiples? Chapter 5: Japanese Philosophy & Artificial Intelligence Research Soundwaves Conclusion Appendix A, B, C, D, E, F, G Bibliography
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