imomus | The slime of spime

The slime of spime

Thanks to Orlac for telling me about a fascinating video of a lecture Bruce Sterling gave on December 13th at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. As he boasts at the beginning of the lecture, Sterling is not just a sci-fi writer. He was recently appointed Provocateur in Residence ('that's my official title') at the Arts Center College of Design, California.

The Munich lecture is called 'Shaping Things To Come'. It's quite long, around an hour plus Q&A, but I promise it will change the way you think about objects forever. Sterling talks about six technical trends which are converging to change the way we think about objects: 'six sides of a black box, inside which is the Christmas surprise'. These trends are:

1. Barcodes and interactive chips (RFID, or radio frequency identity, chips) which can label objects with unique identities.
2. Local and global space-time positioning technologies like GPS tracking systems.
3. Powerful search engines.
4. 3D Virtual models and computer rendering.
5. Rapid prototyping of objects.
6. Recycling, design for disassembly, a new kind of death for objects.

Sterling introduces his concept of the spime: an archive of data about the space-time co-ordinates of objects. 'In the future there will be millions of small histories for billions of small objects.' This is the central metaphor of his way of looking at objects, and I think you could say that a spime (the narrative accumulated by technologies 1-6, as well as others that Sterling doesn't talk about, like cell phones, peer-to-peer and bluetooth) is like a novel; it's an inventory, a narrative of all the events which happen to an object, and it also produces the object. If the object is the protagonist, the hero, of this 'novel', it follows that, as in literature, the novel itself is real, even although its fictional hero is an invention.

So, according to Sterling, the object is the hero of a sort of novel made up of all the tracking information about it. This 'novel' is the data trace of the object's trajectory through various situations. The data is more valuable than the object itself, says Sterling. And of course he would say that; the hero of a novel is fiction, but the novel itself is real. The character exists in a fictional world, but the novel exists in the real world. So a novel is more important and more real than the fictional protagonist which it 'produces'. In the beginning is the word. 'The objects themselves are just a hard copy.'

This immediately sets off my built-in 'Platonism detector', which triggers a small but noisy siren in a chip built into my neck. I think this is misguided because incarnation changes everything. Can a description 'create' a human face? Is a map 'more important' than the territory it outlines?

And what about the problem of interpretation? No matter how 'objective' the data created by an object, it requires interpretation by humans. Selection, editing, construing, parsing, concluding... these are interpretative activities. When an archeologist raises this point in the Q&A session, Sterling scoffs 'I see Jacques Derrida has not lived in vain'. But it's a valid point. Which interpretation of the data produced by objects will we choose as 'more important than the object itself'? Who gets to choose that interpretation?

Of course, as someone who lives by creating 'data traces' of various sorts, I appreciate their importance. I hope my words and my music, or digital representations thereof, survive my body. And I find myself approving Sterling's semi-Marxist statement that objects are merely an incarnation of social relations, which are more important than objects. Meanwhile, the Existentialist in me is not amused. 'Existence precedes essence,' he reminds me; Sterling seems to be saying the opposite. I think my main objection, though, is that I believe that, whether we're talking about the Christian story or just someone making an object, incarnation changes everything. There is something about having sensual evidence of something tangible that goes way beyond plans, blueprints, data traces. I won't get all shinto-animistic on you and say that there's a spirit living inside every object, and that although I have the power to create objects, I don't have any power over the spirits that will inhabit them. But I will tell you that as a musician I need to hear a note before I commit it to a composition. I need to hear and feel what Eno calls 'the vertical colour of sound'. There's no notation system for that, just as there's no notation system for perfume. Experience goes beyond specification... even when specification entirely determines experience. The particular is so much more interesting than the general, and so much better embodied. Christ is a more interesting character than God because he is all wrapped up with contingencies, because he is incarnated. Error and particularity and embodiment and surprise and even death are crucial to the human story just as the cross is crucial to Christ's story. The experience of embodiment exceeds the specifications of embodiment.

Gamer buys $26,500 virtual land, the BBC reported yesterday. I have no doubt that we're heading into more and more belief in the reality and value of disembodied worlds. Once the virtual world of money maps to the virtual world of... virtual worlds, there's no stopping this rush to disembodiment. But that doesn't mean it's sane or sensible. Count me with the counter-revolution. I think I'm going to have to get more and more interested in the real world, and my real body, if only to counterbalance this new Platonism with which, of course, I have more than a sneaking sympathy.

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Thinking more about that BBC 'virtual land sale' story, I think I resist the development not only because it's a statement that disembodied things are in some way 'real' (because if something's saleable it must be real in our culture), but also because it whittles away one of the virtues of the virtual: where things are unreal, they're inconsequential, and that's a great attribute. I can do anything in art / cyberspace, I can 'crash the plane and walk away'. It's an ideal testing ground, a place to run amok and kill 'people' and do the things I can't do in reality. But the BBC story tells us that the Australian who bought this land will sell it in lots and make money from it. The commodification of this cyberland means that it's no longer a place which is 'inconsequential'. I could be 'ruined' by the things I do there, because real money is involved. It's rather like playing Doom with real live ammo.

like playing Doom with real live ammo.
like the Gulf War? (from the US perspective, at least.)

as I recall, a few folks got very upset and called for the death of free spirit and imagination when commerce and advertising came to this electronic medium. these seem to me to be merely an extension of that. rather than money making virtual things "real," the virtual world has made money (and all the power it implies) less "real". it's not just fluid; it's becoming actual aetherial. we're so far from the Gold Standard now.

as far as confusing the virtual world with the real one, I imagine they will reach a state of equilibrium. I hope so. we do need to be stewards of the real world, but more and more that real world includes the representations and models and predictions we make of it.

The < ahref="http://web.stream57.com/nylaw/103004_cultureofplay0001.htm">State of Play II conference panel discussed issues related to this: the fuzzy boundaries where the real world and virtual world intersect and what happens when elements of one starts invading the other.

Of course this also touches on the sticky wicket of commoditization of the intangible, be it commercial intellectual property, art, or in this case, virtual property: does assigning a cost to an idea make it less "pure" or "vital," however you interpret that?

I should add another PS: I don't think Plato would call Sterling a 'neo-Platonist'. He would see him as a delusional fool sitting in the cave and mistaking shadows projected on a screen (whether by fire or plasma electrons) for reality... whatever the fuck that is.

I remember going to a lecture in 96 by Richard Coyne (http://www.caad.ed.ac.uk/~richard/), an Ozzie architect/academic who teaches in Edinburgh (and who, years later, became the external examiner for my PhD), in which he dubbed this "digital neo-Platonism." I forget the specifics, but the lecture was Heidegger heavy, and was about the relationship between the "ding an sich" and its representation in the virtual world. I'm sure it was something from his 1995 book (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/external-search?tag=fufurasuorg-21&keyword=%22Richard%20Coyne%22&mode=books-uk).

I suspect you'll like this. (http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/18/art_if_i_want.html)

that's old hat. kenny schater did that for Zing Magazine - plus it had a quasi-antropological element to it that would make alotta these fucking momus readers drivel. like that word, quasi, dont ya!!!!

I prefer the words Zing Magazine, personally.

I think you're starting to tread perilously close to ingraining a false dichotomy. At base, even the "physical" world is nothing but surface entropy. Information. The arbitrary separation we put between our ideas/perceptions of a thing and the "thing" itself (oh how vain we are to make such supposedly objective pronouncements about what is Real) is completely self-imposed.

I think if you make the determination to wall off the "virtual" world from the "real" world at the onset here, you will find confirmation of your theory through simple observation as a matter of course. I think you're creating a vernacular now which will limit the way you are able to perceive just how related the virtual world of information is to the phsyical world of information, later.

It will be increasingly important in the next hundred years for philosophers to retain the awareness that even the phenomenal world is ultimately comprised of nothing more than bits and bytes.

This is not to say a given map of a territory is "more correct" than another. I think the major point of confusion in many approaches to information theory is that we still carry with us this notion that there is some... "right" answer to observing an event. It seems the simplest errors are repeated endlessly. Relativism means precisely that there is so absolute position which does not encompass entirety; which of course would be impossible for a finite creature to perceive.

I think Truth itself is your Platonic sin, writ large.

It will be increasingly important in the next hundred years for philosophers to retain the awareness that even the phenomenal world is ultimately comprised of nothing more than bits and bytes.

I think I allowed for this with my statement that 'experience goes beyond specification... even when specification entirely determines experience.' In other words, sure, we may find that trees and water and all other observable things have a code, a specification not unlike the numerical ones we use to create virtual trees, water, etc. But our experience of them is something that could never be pre-specified. A composer can write the notes of a symphony, but he can never program the emotions it elicits on its reception in his listeners. This is why 'existence precedes essence', as Sartre put it. It's so much more complex than essence, just as the mass of real tables out there are so much more complex (precisely because of their imperfections) than the 'ideal table' Plato sets so much store by.

But our experience of them is something that could never be pre-specified. A composer can write the notes of a symphony, but he can never program the emotions it elicits on its reception in his listeners.

What will prevent this from coming to pass?

having recently begun formally studying composition, i've been shocked by how little emphasis is put on notation and how to communicate your ideas graphically. yes, it's important to develop ideas and be able understand various compositional devices and techniques, but at some point you need to be able to represent your sonic ideas, usually in a graphic form which the performer can decipher and reproduce. "classial" music works pretty well because there is 400 years of a musical visual language which has been codified and accepted more or less internationally. but your questioning of the map vs. the territory is similar to my trains of thought lately. for example, i've been thinking about how to notate other physical phenomenon in life. like, how could you notate oral sex? i imagine you could do so by adapting the musical notation system, since it represents a series of gestures across a given linear representation of time. i think it would be possible. however, with something like painting, how could you notate a process which someone could decipher and reproduce what you have in mind? why are certain things more easily adapted to graphical notation?

A tuned musical instrument, designed for a specific purpose, will have relatively few points of control.

I can't quite see how a similar correspondence could be built between the infinite variables of tongue-lips-teeth-cheeks and musical notation; any attempt to notate a blowjob is going to limit the artist's repertoire. You also seem to ignore the fact that a blowjob is an impromptu improvisational duet, with both players reacting to one another's sexual ideas, and how do you notate that?

You could certainly orchestrate a blowjob with some form of notation, but not an enjoyable one.

"why are certain things more easily adapted to graphical notation?"

Producing a specific note in a specific scale at a specific time is an extremely simple goal, simply represented.

i disagree, there are untold amounts of information which are not described in musical notation, yet the performer can more or less perform the piece in a close approximation of the author's intent. the notation for the persian tombak drum is essentially a series of skeletal points of reference within which there is much improvisation, yet you can still recognize the piece set against others.

the idea of oral sex being an improvisational duet is totally accurate, but i don't see why that can't be based on a notated process of varying degrees of communication. a jazz chart gives only the melody and the harmonic foundation, yet you can produce an infinate amount of variations based on this very simple notation.

producing a specific note in a specific scale at a specific time in relatively simple if you limit it to something like a baroque harpsichord piece. however if you're dealing with something like traditional chinese music of south indian vocal music, the focus of the performer is on the ornament and intonation, and the notated score is little more than a contour.

But producing a specific note in a specific scale at a specific time for a specific duration, is exactly the simplicity and the shortcoming of western musical notation; it was devised for the purpose of conveying that harpsichord piece across time and space, beyond the reach of its composer.

My impression was that you were considering notation that would make a sexual performance reproducible in the same sense. If that is not to be the purpose of the annotation, then what would be the measure of a successful sexual annotation? What is it that we are trying to repeat?

It seems to me that, for sexual annotation to serve any purpose, we would first need a school of sexual techniques, or perhaps several competing schools, with an apprentice system. Someone who's not trained as a musician won't be abde to do much with sheet music.

You should check out http://www.viridiandesign.org/ (http://www.viridiandesign.org)

It seems to me that Sterling's way of looking at things elides social labor. It may be metaphorically true that the information that specifies an object "creates" that object, but somewhere along the way, human labor was required to transform possibility into reality (which is why as Marx observed the worst of architects works differently than the best of bees.)

I don't really have that much to add, but I do think that perhaps Sterling's whole statement would have been more reasonable/palatable if he had not said "The recorded histories of objects are more important... more useful... even more profitable than objects". I think he's right to point out that these spime histories will come to be important, even more important than the barely existent physical record of object's life cycles that we have now, but he's using phrases like more important and more useful, even when the thing that it is supposedly more important than is a prerequisite for the "more important" aspect. I made this same mistake when describing the idea of human spimes; I said that because the part that is most remarkable is no longer the physical creation or presence of the object but the pure design and modification of it's predicted trajectory, that was "more important". Upon further reflection, and exposure to the beautiful simple abstract of Sartre's perspective ("existence precedes essence"), I think I'm more inclined to say that Sterling was overstating his point. I still think there is something significantly different, and not Platonist, about human spimes, because their recorded histories do not form together to create any kind of detailed ideal or detailed guide for actions, although I suppose you could still end up in weird territory if you try to state their value as strongly as he did for inanimate spimes.

I think the point I was making above is best illustrated in an account of my initial failure to describe what the hell I was talking about to a third party. I roughly commented that one example of a person who valued their data traces more than themselves was an artist, and this got a reaction involving military honor, which immediately made me realize that what I had sounded like was "valuing data traces over life". What I had meant was something more like, "Holding all other things at acceptable levels, what aspect of your life do you feel most proud of?" Or some other sort of statement that took into account the idea of "all other things being acceptable". Without that it definitely is a very poorly defensible position if you're faced with someone who is not willing to demote importance of presuppositions, which is obviously a very logical reaction.

Anyway, as I asked in my last post to your previous blog post, what would you recommend I read if you were to try to show me that Marx was not a fool?

Well, actually I would recommend Marx for Beginners (http://www.equalized.org/scribbles/reviews/marx_for_beginners.php), as a lively overview. Amazon's page lets you search inside it (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679725121/103-9433285-4299069?v=glance).

Personally I think Marx is still incredibly relevant, and still the ultimate critic of capitalism -- which remains a terribly unstable, inadequate and (increasinly) unjust system of production and distribution of goods. You have to pick and choose between Marx's ideas. The scientific inevitability of socialism is not an idea I find useful, for instance. But ideas like reification, alienation, the division of labour, surplus value, the class-in-itself becoming the class-for-itself, these ideas are priceless, highly explanatory, some of the most powerful memes ever unleashed on the world.

The spime concept is intriguing, I have to admit, but it seems like a new kind of digital archaeology. Experiences, human experiences, seem too vast and infinitely complex for me to believe in a kind of super accurate space-time documentation system. Maybe because I put so much importance on the sensory properties of things....then again, I'm only human!

When you experience an object, the most important thing you get is a sense of 'now', the feeling that it is real and it is in the present; it physically existed both before and after you processed the data in your mind. Then again, once you realize that man is his own computer, that processing always takes time, that the speed of light is not infinite and therefore everything you see is in the past, it looks like we have always had a difficult time interpereting the present.

You can tell where in time an object is and it's trajectory, but it would take an incredible and almost absurd amount of information storage capabilities to describe the shadows as seen from every angle, all the tiny bumps and scratches and formal flaws, etc.

When i was a child and was first doubting the existence of God I would imagine a supercomputer that would emulate reality and at the same time create it. Would you have to model every individual raindrop, would you have to create a series of If...Then's for every perceivable way it will splash on a car's winshield? Or would it be more random, a series of variables run through cascading equations? The physical world has always seemed far to complex and intertwined to really be accurately described. This has a lot to do with why I believe so much in art.

Adam

This disembodiment phenomenon is indeed troubling. I enjoy the playful aspects of this medium, but I can easily see where such a practice becomes a cattle chute for the mind: the physical and societal ugliness of the modern world (I'm sorry but much of it is) pushing from the back, narcissism and escapism pulling from the front.

I've learned so much from the good folk I've met here in the aether (present company included), but I'm not sure we can trust the average game-addled dimbulb to use such a powerful tool wisely. Is that sucking sound a million heads going up a million arses, or is it the world going down the loo?

It is especially poignant after spending the past week cleaning birds caught in an oil spill.

W

"Once the virtual world of money maps to the virtual world of... virtual worlds, there's no stopping this rush to disembodiment."

It's a bit disappointing that you rush yourself to say there's no stopping to this "new platonism" thing; you imply the "counter-revolution" is luddite in the sense that since it's more interested in the real world and real bodies, it totally refuses to use virtual spaces as tools to resist, teach, run simulations to find solutions to real world problems etc. I prefer when you are more optimistic :-)

An example of a materialist use of virtual worlds: as a hobby, I'm looking for people interested to work on a design document (http://www.ihfsoft.com/articlesgamedesign.htm) to make an open source game to experiment with participatory economics (http://www.parecon.org/writings/faq.htm) ideas: like a massive multiplayer game having parecon as it's synthetic economic system (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Synthetic%20economy) instead of a market system.

People play games because they enjoy it. I'd play a game like that because I'd like to see how parecon would work in action--even if it's "just a game". It'd also help me understand parecon better, which would probably make me more effective at explaining the idea to others, especially those who don't play the game.

Think of the revolutionary potential of agent-based modeling for the rebels of social sciences, to create new behaviors and (hedonist materialist)culture:

"Agent-based modeling is an emerging computer technology that holds promise as a powerful tool for analyzing policy problems -- and experts in the field believe it has the potential to fundamentally change the way social scientists and economists test theories, examine data, and create new policies."

I had the good fortune to meet Bruce Sterling a few years ago through a mutual friend, Glenn Grant, an SF author/editor and the creator of "A Memetic Lexicon" -- google it. He was in Montreal for the ISEA conference: We met for dinner, had some great Thai food, then ended up at hipster joint Laika for coffee. Bruce takes photos of manhole covers and payphones because "they are different everywhere," and Tex-Mex restaurants because "every culture gets it slightly wrong, but uniquely so." We discussed his work, most notably Islands in The Net and Green Days In Brunei; he seemed to be the only person in the cyberpunk field not setting his stories in the US, Europe or Japan, but rather the Persian Gulf and Malaysia. "There are nearly 1 billion Muslims in the world, and most North Americans don't even know that," he pointed out, "and they have a future, too."

How prescient he was, I often think.

On Marxism -- well, it's a great critique, but of an industrialism that no longer exists. The so-called 'crisis of overproduction' barely exists anymore. A lot of the social critique is of course still valid, but I'd suggest checking out the works of my two favourite Canadian philosophers of the moment -- The Efficient Society by Joseph Heath, and The Rebel Sell, by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. As two avowedly leftist (even Marxist-to-a-degree) critics, their aim is to deflate and debunk a lot of the myths that have accumulated in the counterculture, to pave the way for productive, collective social action without the us-and-them baggage of the past 100 years.

AJ Kandy

kingmarketing.ca/weblogs/ajkandy

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The slime of spime

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Not sure if you've seen this...

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Digital Neo-Platonism

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"more valuable" than what?

Re: "more valuable" than what?

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Sterling + Marxism...