Virtual Worlds: The Emperor´s New Bodies


'Peter Weibel Peter Weibel

Perception here,
and there the Object.

G. W. F. Hegel

MACHINE SIMULATING MAN – AND MAN SIMULATING MACHINE

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MACHINE

Concerning the Spirit of machines,
and machines of the mind

NEURAL DARWINISM

DARWINISM IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING

MENTAL MACHINES AND NEURAL NETWORKS

I think that the computer is a spiritual machine.

Umberto Eco

HYPERMATONS AND POST BIOLOGICAL LIFE

THE MACHINES REBEL

FORMAL LIMITATIONS FOR MENTAL MACHINES?

SURVIVAL BY SIMULATION

"The mysterious qualities inherent in goods lies simply in the fact that the objectified characteristics of the products of man's work are a reflection of the social characteristics of human labour thrown back at man in the socially natural properties of these goods." Marx continues about man-made products in a commodified world: "Here the products of the human mind seem imbued with a life of their own, independent figures relating to each other and to mankind. This is what I call fetishism which the products of labour acquire as soon as they become a marketable commodity; this fetishism is thus inseparable from production." (10)

According to Hegel the simulation of simulation in a kind of recursive cycle where man simulates those products that simulate himself provides a model for the creation of reality. It is thus primarily simulation which questions Darwin's theory of evolution in its tautological essence contained in the dictum of survival of the fittest. This term is determined by survival in an Aristotelian sense, art obscure entelechsis. However, it is not fact that arises from fact in evolution, it is rather models that transform into facts which then become simulated models providing once more the source for facts. In truth evolution consists of a full interactive network of mutual simulations, representing an existence perforated by simulation. Ideological qualities are already part of nature, and mimicry as an instance of adjustment to a dynamically changing environment would be clear evidence for such a state. The meaning of the term mimicry has to be reconsidered irk this context. A plant producing yellow dots on its leaves to repel insects who have been taught by experience and genetic information that such dots would contain a poisonous substance represents a successful instance of simulation helping to survive. If these insects detect such simulation after a while and readapt (obtaining new genetic information) to nevertheless sit on that plant (now perhaps themselves acquiring yellow dots as protection from other insects), then the plant will again be compelled to change. This would describe a chain of adaptations to a series of dynamic simulations. Survival of the fittest therefore amounts to survival of the fittest simulation.

This in essence is the gist of our initial parable. The evolution of man and machine represents a new evolutionary phase, where the existing model is being restructured through a re-accentuation and redefinition of its preeminent elements. Such mutual evolution of man and machine through simulation will, of course, result in the formation of a totally artificial, simulated world. (Viz. also Jean Baudrillard, the "Penseur" of simulation.) Survival of the fittest simulation also entails survival of the simulation of the fittest, man designing reading, interpreting, machines, capable of acquiring learning, from whom he in turn will learn. This structure can counteract the digital dreamers' (in a Hegelian sense) numerical fetishism that is comparable to consumer fetishism. Even in nature the fabric of reality is perforated by the spirit of alienation where mere animals create tools of de-expression and thus their own truth. The machine revolution only renders obvious the fact that reality has always depended on artificial, virtual construction.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF MACHINES

One much ridiculed thinker in the Hegelian tradition, Gotthard Günther, published his first revolutionary work The Consciousness of Machines (1957) which has assumed new relevance for our discussion. (13) (This followed his exposé on the "Basics of a new Theory of Thought in Hegel's Logic" in his dissertation in 1933.) Dismissing naive linear Pythagorean principles ("All is number") he developed a keno-grammar (kenos, Greek 'empty') based on the premise of the void as the basic structural component in mathematics and logic which can be taken up by any random coefficient. The Arabic "sifr" (German Ziffer, English digit) means empty or zero. From this he derived a complex non-linear Pythagorism, an arithmetic theory where numbers do not progress in linear fashion but may rather verge off the line randomly. In his theory of polycontextuality he also had to give up the logic of the power of two. Such a third option of a multifarious kind of logic of course rejects the whole concept of alternate thought in terms of true or false. The ambivalent logic of existence is given up in favour of a value-added logic that guarantees open options in formalism catering for a constant extension in complexity. Thus multifarious, non-linear logic, together with the structural context of the theory of polytexturality where ambivalent logic may still be valid, serve to explain the infinite variety of material qualities in this world. Quantity transformed into quality denies a model for the universe that consisted of a closed unified contexture. Thus Günther is anticipating the ideas of eternity in parallel universes in quantum mechanics that were to appear later (viz. David Deutsch) in 1957. It is this polyvalent logic of reflection pitted against the purely linear and ambivalently formalised and mechanised digital computer that anticipated the development of parallel computers and neural networks. Günther's polycontextual, polylinear and polyvalent logic could be of benefit in the organisation and conceptualisation of further such networks.

Günther also has an answer to the problem posed by our parable. Following Hegel, man and machine may always be differentiated because the subject changes with the evolution of the machine, in its expression in the machine it is split in two, losing its former identity. Depositing a mere mechanised, formalised form of its consciousness in the artifact the subject advances into hitherto unattained depths or heights of awareness. The human spirit will always remain superior to the machine (viz. also Gödel), as the simulating machine compels man to increased reflection in this evolutionary game of simulation. Here from ensues the self-regulatory and self-reflective progress in the development of matter towards higher plains of complexity, liberating human consciousness from imprisonment in its own subjectivity, so aptly lamented in 1904 by Karl Heim and again by G. Günther in his Global Image for the Future – Weltbild mit Zukunft. Such a reformed subject will be possessed of a sovereignty unconstrained by biology or problems of locating identity between flesh and spirit – a subject close to the observer of quantum mechanics, a phantom if seen in relation to history, of course.

THE SURROGATE BODY

Moravec quite rightly accepts humans improved by genetic engineering only as second-class robots, instead he is looking for a subject possessing the advantages of the machine without correspondingly losing its sense of personal identity. Already a large number of people survive with the aid of artificial organs and limbs, machines that support the body, and one day such surrogates, or simulations, will be better suited for survival than the original. Moravec then asks why not replace the lot and simply transplant the brain into a specialised robot. Such an instance is illustrated in Piet Hoenderos' film "Victim of the Brain," where the protagonist's brain is removed, stored outside the body and a cloned version of it implanted into a computer. The subject can now switch between his two exterior brains. This would, however, not free the brain from the constraints of its limited intelligence. The question is thus no longer whether machines can think, or, put differently, can we transplant the brain into the computer much like a kidney; it must rather be as to the extent of the spirit's independence from its physical basis, the brain. Could we extract the spirit from our brain?

An initial step lies, of course, in giving up the idea of subjective identification with the physical basis of the body, transgressing the old conflict between spirit, flesh, mind and the body. Moravec proposes "pattern-identity" as the essence of the patterns and processes taking place in both mind and body, equating it to software and not to hardware, the machine which merely supports and contains these processes.
Nor does the body-in-prosthesis, the surrogate body provide an answer to the real problem about the phenomenon of consciousness, namely that the spirit of life is a dynamic system arriving at more than just the collective sum of its components. Such a state of virtuality will have to be examined further on.

QUANTUM MECHANICS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

One of the key problems lies, of course, in the physical nature of consciousness. This can best be illuminated through quantum mechanics that enable us to reconsider problems of the body-spiritual, of human identity and awareness, and also think about theories limiting formal systems and the capacity of the mind. It is quantum mechanics that threaten most acutely that premise in the digital dream that wants to express and calculate everything in numbers. G. Günther, by extending the theory of numbers, has tried to ban such danger, however, at the same time preformulating quantum-mechanical conditions albeit expressed in a traditional dialectic.

Should quantum theory really be a universal physical theory, then the spirit and brain are undoubtedly quantum-mechanical phenomena. A leading advocate of this opinion is the eminent physician and mathematician Roger Penrose, who, together with Stephen Hawking invented substantial parts of such a new cosmology. Starting out in opposition to the thesis that "everything is a digital computer," "everything can be modeled exactly through digital calculations," he felt the illegitimacy of the underlying argument declaring the human brain and spirit to be nothing but a digital computer. He also had to contest the notion traditionally arising from the above about the insignificance of hardware in mental phenomena.

Instead the evolution of the brain is seen as exploitation of quantum-mechanical effects, and consciousness itself as a quantum-mechanical phenomenon. (14) Although indeed conceding the algorithmic nature of some of the brain's activities, he finds himself unable to imagine the complex algorithms of the human brain as simply the result of a "natural selection" of algorithms. Penrose deduces that even quantum mechanics are insufficient to describe the activities and structure of the human spirit, which would in fact require laws more fundamental than quantum mechanics. Therefore there seem to be facets of the human spirit that can never be simulated by a machine. (15)

If the brain is not a digital computer, could it be a quantum computer? Let us try to transfer the game of survival by simulation onto the computer, as David Deutsch did in 1985. (16) The concept of a quantum computer is based on principles of the Turing machine. No one has as yet managed to build a quantum computer, nor do we know if this could be possible, but there are some remarkable preconditions.

As the Turing machine is a serial computer not only limited by the halting problem but also by the complexity theory, we could hope that such limitations would be remedied by the addition of a few parallel computers, which indeed they might be. However, a quantum computer with its own complexity theory differing from that of the Turing machine could of course avoid such limitations. The question arising in the simulation of a universal quantum computer through a universal Turing machine is whether the quantum computer can actually calculate functions that the Turing machine cannot do, which would invalidate the above mentioned Church-Turing theorem. Deutsch has nevertheless demonstrated that the number of functions calculable on a quantum computer amounts to exactly the number of Church's recursive functions that can be done on the Turing machine. Yet, there are tasks beyond the mere calculation of functions. In quantum parallelism, for example, the number of tasks that can be performed at the same time is no longer limited, the advantage being that whilst any classic computer or Turing machine programme could run on the quantum computer, by no means could any quantum programme operate on a Turing machine.

Deutsch does believe that quantum computers will be constructed one day, and their existence will provide powerful proof for the interpretation of quantum mechanics as an infinity of parallel universes. A quantum computer's behaviour can be expressed in terms of its delegation of sub-operations to copies of himself in other universes.


The Oxford philosopher Michael Lockwood has advanced Penrose's ideas, that quantum correlations occurring over wide distances could be responsible for the unity and globality of the states of awareness in the human brain (as highly coherent quantum states). In his book Mind, Brain and the Quantum he defines "the compound I," (17) using the physician H. Fröhlich's 1968 discovery that the quantum mechanical phenomenon of the Bose condensation can be applied to biological systems. Condensed Bose states can be seen as responsible for the coherence of biological systems, and useful for the amplification of weak signals, and the codification of information in minute space.

I. N. Marshall in 1989 espoused the thesis that Bose condensed states provided the physical basis for mental states such as the unity of Consciousness. (18) Lockwood then deduces that the singularity of the human mind derives from precisely such Bose condensed states, should the brain really operate as a quantum computer.

UNDETERMINATE THOUGHT

The real threat to the digital dream emanates from the role of the observer in quantum mechanics and in its indeterminate principle. What happens when we observe a physical system? The contention offered in conventional interpretations of the "problem of measurement" is that the actual observation influences the observed system at the moment of contemplation, that there is an interactive relationship between observer and the object. Another interpretation tells us that we invariably lose something in observation. Yet unobserved events pass all the time, and the principle of indeterminability quite clearly causes loss of realisation in observation, there is no certainty which possibility the next successive moment will chose, as the paradoxical mental experiment of "Schrödinger's Cat" will illustrate.

Lockwood has elaborated on this indeterminism to ask if the "ghost" is to be found in "the machine" of the body, or if it in fact needs no machine, body, or any specific machine or body. Or is the spirit perhaps pure software, pure mathematical abstraction, whether with or without optional hardware. Neither question could be answered positively, instead Lockwood concentrated on setting up a new interdependence, based in quantum mechanics, between spirit and brain, and consciousness and the physical world. At the heart of the quantum mechanical "observation and measurement problem" lies the question of "how consciousness (specifically the consciousness of the observer) fits into, or maps onto, the physical world."

The physical state of the observing brain is undergoing a stream of observant experiences, i.e. a stream of consciousness designated by and emanating from the brain, that yet at the same time has to participate in the properties of the set of observables selected. Only shared properties between the brain and the chosen set of observables may be designated as conscious observation. Lockwood's Theorem can be taken to mean that something in the physical quantum mechanical state of the observed entity has to correspond to the quantum mechanical state in some part of the brain of the observer, in order to be registered consciously. Very simply then, something approaching the spirit or a state of consciousness has to be already inherent in objects or machines. Consciousness, observable and observer simulate each other and transfer properties onto each other. Thus the quantum mechanical formulation of the measuring problem in terms of the observer's participation in the system under observation must be a question of conscious projection, looking for those components of human consciousness inherent in the "consciousness" of the very objects themselves. Human interference in the world cannot go against the will of the objects therein, and as the world is only the one we can recognise, we only select objects from it which we can detect with our senses. Objects that are in fact detected by certain properties in our senses and that therefore must be corresponding reciprocally to any such properties. Goethe described that "the eye is of a sunny disposition," and it is this what we term as anthropomorphous, as "theory of naturalised cognition" to use W. v. O. Quine's words.

COMPENETRATION OF MATTERAND SPIRIT

I am indebted to the great chaos scientist Otto E. Rössler for pointing out to me that as early as 1763 Roger Joseph Boscovich formulated such a theorem in all its consequences in his Theoria philosophiae naturalis. (19) Boscovich defines his law of a sole driving force as a common principle of co-variance, according to which the universe has to be described in relation to the observer, and that even motions within the observer contribute to its transformation.

The Boscovich curve illustrating his thesis depicts an asymptotic branch, according to which our universe would be a self-contained, closed, cosmic system. This would mean that no point outside that universe could come into contact with us, which opens up the possibility of infinite space filled with cosmic systems that cannot interfere with each other. Not even a ghost wandering around such a system could recognise any universe other than the one in which he exists. This actually amounts to a premonition of the quantum mechanical "many worlds" interpretation, where space is infinite, but can only be recognised as finite. Thus writes Boscovich in his supplement # II "Of Time and Space, as we know them": We cannot obtain an absolute knowledge of local modes of existence; nor yet of absolute distances of magnitudes." (20)

Should the universe commence to revolve in another direction or contract or expand, we would be unaware of it. His early theory of relativity also already encompasses the "measurement problem," "what has been said with regard to measurement of space, without difficulty can be applied to time; in this also we have no definite constant measurement. (21)

Consciousness cannot simply be subtracted from the world of matter; even Kant's absolute terminology – a priori, beyond our experience of time and space – is being put into perspective, "as we know it." Consciousness itself is no absolute category a priori. Boscovich defines this mutual relationship between awareness and the physical world with the complicated idea of "compenetration" and the coexistence of points of matter in time. Consciousness derives from the compenetration of matter and spirit, as their designated process. His doctrine of impenetrability has acquired somewhat infamous renown. "Matter is composed of perfectly indivisible, nonextended, discrete points," which he axiomatically qualifies in that "two points of matter cannot be at the same point in space at the same point in time." His critics tend to overlook what he says later: "To the infinite number of possible points of matter there will correspond an infinite number of possible modes of existence. But also to any one point of matter there will correspond the infinite possible modes of existing, which are all the possible positions of that point." Thus "any point of matter has its own imaginary space, immovable, infinite and continuous."

"Every point of matter is possessed of the whole of imaginary space and time; the nature of compenetration." (22)

VIRTUAL SPACE AS PSYCHOTIC SPACE

This imaginary space is virtual space, virtual reality takes place in Boscovich space. If indeed two bodies cannot be perceived sensually in the same point in space at the same point in time in the real world, this may nevertheless be achieved in virtual space. With the aid of data gloves and data visors we can superimpose imaginary space onto real space, a computer-generated sphere could occupy the same space as other objects. Virtual reality is a journey into imaginary Boscovich space, where real and possible are contrived in coexistence, in compenetration. Their fascination lies in the simulated defiance of all classical laws of nature, of the tyranny of here and now, space and time conquered. Traditional spatial concepts disintegrate when I can see my own hand in simulated space, when I can observe real and imaginary objects react to my actions. This kind of space where the present and the absent may exist equally is pictorial space which, for the first time, I can actually penetrate. I have entered the picture through closed circuit television installations, Jackson Pollock had claimed to have entered his own pictorial space with subjectivity. Here, however, visual spectrum of the spectator and pictorial space of the image intermingle, collaborate, as anything the spectator does in pictorial space he does his real environment. The virtual environment is not the real world, not reality, but a representation of the real as artificial reality, where wish fulfillment still corresponds to reality, where interior and exterior, imagination and reality, I and other are all bridged. Myron W. Krüger defined "artificial reality" as an environment controlled by computers who register our needs and react to them. (23) Virtual worlds embody the pure essence of omnipotent experience and the pleasure principle. This is the space of the psychotic that stage-manages reality in hallucinatory wish-fulfillment, uttering the battle cry "VR everywhere." Freud, describing the aims of technology in his Civilisation and Its Discontents as being the creation of substitute organs and limbs that make of man the God of prosthesis, is actually illustrating the sorts of fantasies of omnipotence that simulation technology makes possible: fantasies that we can forget the trouble in life, the opposition of the object. Cyberspace is the name for such a psychotic environment, where the boundaries between wish and reality are blurred. In its worst expression the VR movement will remain an infantile toy, at its best a tool in space travel technology where teleportation beaming people from one star to another could be rendered from mere S/F via concepts of VR into reality. (24)

DIGITAL DATA-ISM

"In the beginning there was the number" (25) must, so to speak, initiate any digital dream. The first digital thinker was, of course, Pythagoras, who first set up the philosophical circumspection according to which numbers are the omnipresence behind all structures for any phenomena, and that numerical relations are the benefactors of harmony. Plato similarly preached digital harmony, leaving an indelible mark on western civilisation. Our yearning for perfect harmony led us to the golden rule, the divine measure of proportion in the arts and architecture of antiquity, and in its renaissance that bore in Leonardo da Vinci yet another digital dreamer. It was the French philosopher Descartes who first formulated the digital dream as science in his pretensions at elevating mathematical method onto the plain of becoming the universal scientific methodology: mathesis universalis. The digital dream lies in the claim of Pythagorean/Platonic metaphysics that the entire world can be depicted in numbers and numerical relations. It is interesting to think that a simulated Descartes could just as logically deduce his existence as could the real Descartes. Simulation threatening the digital dream is in itself a manifestation of that dream.

The end of the digital dream is the fully comprehensive enumerability of the world into mathematics, in fact a "mathematisation" of the world. The astronomer Johannes Kepler, who lived and worked in Linz, and who is the subject of this year's Ars Electronica 90, he too was such a digital dreamer when he published his Harmonices Mundi in 1619, a key exponent of digital harmony, the harmony of the world based in number.

The philosopher and mathematician Leibniz succeeded at a decisive breakthrough a century later when he developed the theory of binary numbers, the binary code, the depiction of all numbers in just two digits, zero and one, void and material presence, to be or not to be. What seemed at the time a mere curiosity became the central basis for modem computer technology. In fact, by setting up the facility for the depiction of all numbers in just the two digits 0 and 1, Leibniz formed the basis for the technological realisation of the digital dream. He had tried to replace logical deduction through calculation, i.e. logic through mathematics, amounting to the displacement of thought by a machine that would automatically provide proof with the aid of those two digits. Two centuries later Leibniz' discovery has been transformed into an algebraic switchboard, a logical network based on networks of electric currents, technical machines where the digits "0" or "1" are indicators for the absence or presence of a flow of electrical current: in short, digital technology, electronic calculating machines, digital computers. The calculator has always been the companion of digital dreamers, and is was a close associate of Kepler, Wilhelm Schickard of Tübingen who invented the first known computer. Thus the computer represents the current peak in the embodiment of the digital dream which would like to seethe world as a cosmos of numbers, to be simulated and reconstructed from the laws of number.

Digital harmonies, calculators, virtual machinery all emanate from one and the same human dream, to transform nature into a humane environment that can be controlled by man with the aid of number and its law – to tame the terror of the elements, to be able to predict and contain the forces of nature. Here lies the base for the gradual creation of a new world by man alone, an artificial reality seemingly more favourable than (hostile) nature. Attempts at anticipating such artificial realities in computer-controlled machine worlds that react intelligently to our needs will provide the focus for the 1990 Ars Electronica.

Data glove, datasuit, data visor, data banks are all an indication for a new world. Data-ism for Dada-ism. Digital credo beginning with Pythagoras, for the time being has doubtless reached its height of perfection in today's computer technology.

In the land of hypermedia and hypermata virtual machines represent a new generation of automaton. Human interaction with three-dimensional cybermodels in a near-world (virtual world) is probably an improved form of man-machine interaction and simulation, so far the most perfect simulation. The anthropomorphisation of the object has attained new perfection, as has their in- and self-dependence as intelligent virtual machines. Heidegger would, of course, see his worst fears of technology displacing nature and the body corporal confirmed in VR

The body doubled and part-imagined in Virtual Reality (VR) as the most recent possibility in its technological transformation may indeed represent its deposition, yet entrailing also its improvement; I may now comport myself without danger to limb and body in zones perilous to the natural body. The I, the state of conscious awareness, will need less of the physical body, VR will drain the conscious mind "I" of limb and nature. Through its technological deterritorialisation in VR the subjective has been raised into a new category of res extensa, of points in space and time, now im-materialising in the virtual infinite.

Consciousness, in the course of evolution through survival of the fittest, has created simulation, and through the simulation of survival ever more complex models and media, the legendary ghost in the machine creating ever improved machines for itself. Consciousness as the diving force behind evolution also creates the simulation of consciousness. Reality is perforated with simulation, with strategies of semblance and deceit, founded precisely in those mechanisms of selection I have described when I cited mimicry as an instance of adaptoral strategy. It is in such simulations that the "ghost in the machine" of Lockwood's Bose condensations is to be located.

DIGITAL MACHINES – THE END OF THE DIGITAL DREAM?

This argument would actually be corroborated by Ch. G. Langton's definition of virtuality in the book Artificial Life that appeared under his editorship. To him "virtual particles" are the real molecules of life as their characteristics would appear neither in the system, nor in the particles themselves, but only in mutual interaction. A system becomes virtual when its part-components and its entity display their marked characteristics not in isolation, but only at the moment of their mating (compenetration – as Boscovich would say). Such virtual systems are non-linear and dynamic, alive. The spirit is a virtual system in the machine of the physical body, body operating inspirit, and spirit in body. Now we may understand what the attempt to surgically remove the spirit from the body would entail, it is impossible – according to Boscovich (every point of matter is possessed of the whole of imaginary space"), according to quantum theory and virtuality. At this point it would perhaps be fitting to qualify my stipulations to say that simulation would correspond more closely to mechanical systems whereas virtuality would seem to be corresponding to dynamic, non-linear systems. In actual fact we were talking about virtuality when we discussed simulation in the context of evolutionary theory, the essence of simulation is virtuality. Thus a clock is basically a mechanical system, that nevertheless displays hints of virtual characteristics. In its functional essence a clock will only exist in the action of its movement powered by some external source of energy, but a hand remains a hand no matter whether the clock lies "dead" of "lives." Equally the body in prosthesis in its classic function would represent such a mechanical system in its essentially unchanging nature, it and its component parts do not lose their identity in a split expression, remaining forever the base sum of its parts.

The computer would display a number of virtual characteristics. As digital automaton it embodies nature translated into a different language which then gradually introduces us into the state of virtuality. This machine is a-changing, its hardware, his body has changed, and will continue to change. Nevertheless, its defining essence, the binary code, will remain fixed. Other than for the clock, however, it is the programme that is more important in the computer, its language the algorithm, more important than the messenger, the body, the machine itself. The computer would evidently contain more of a "spirit" than the clock. The body may become its own clone to the extent of its binary self-codation and decodation, de-coding distance. Perhaps the body is the quantum computer in whose construction we have so far failed. After all, the body, just like the quantum computer which sends copies of itself into other universes, now sends copies of itself into other, virtual, worlds. The computer is in fact a simulative prosthetic body hinting at potential virtuality in the coexistence of limb and spirit. However, as long as it remains just a body in prosthesis, a mechanical body, it will lack true life force, lacking in virtuality.

We have thus reached a situation with computers on the one hand that simulate in essence the "spirit" of the brain, and robots that simulate the "life" of the body. Will it be possible to mix the two, unite body and spirit? Well, yes, albeit only through virtuality.

Virtual machines may be seen as occupying a stop along the way from the "thinking" to the "living" machine. Not only would the living machine have to be virtual, but should there forever be a difference between man and machine, it also would be immune against simulation. But, if everything could be artificially calculated, depicted and reconstructed in binary code as stipulated in the digital dream, then everything could be simulated.
I have argued primarily in terms of quantum physics that the digital dream cannot hold universally true. My main argument must, however, be the theory of simulation itself. AIDS has demonstrated that the perfect virus is the one that is immune against simulation. Thesis # 1: The highest level of simulation lies in attaining immunity from simulation itself. (A copy without original, a clone without body.) This used to be expressed in principio individuationis. So, how could a "living" machine that would have to perfectly simulate man from a digital basis be effected, when we take it that man represents the end in a chain of evolution of survival of the fittest simulation? Applying thesis # 1 man would be immune from full simulation, he cannot be comprehensively simulated by a (digital) machine. Secondly, I put it that life is a condition of virtuality. Virtuality, however, is defined not as a property inherent in the very objects, machines, parts, or systems which themselves can be simulated, but rather as a property pertaining only in the act of correlation of all particles. Per definition precisely this correlation cannot be simulated. Because of virtuality not everything can be simulated, least of all simulated digitally. So far the virus is the best virtual machine, or as William S. Burroughs says, "language is a virus of outer space." Language would therefore provide an instance of a virtual system in our context. On the one hand it seems to function like a mechanical clockwork movement in a determined system consisting of 26 elements (letters), embedded in a determined algorithmical structure (grammar), which some are of the opinion is nothing more than a programmed succession of variants, combinations and permutations. No way could in this manner the literary output of mankind over the last 2000 years have been achieved, not even in eternity. The production of a mass of sensible text by means beyond the mechanical capacity of language as a combination of text elements invalidates the view of language as a kind of system of natural selection of algorithms. More than a mere mechanical system it manages to set up combinations of its elements more speedily and more sensibly than any mechanics. Is this the spiritual quality of the mind? This elusive spirit is not to be found in the machine, nor in the machinery of language, nor in grammar, but in that part of the brain where these predetermined and finite elements and algorithms are transformed into an infinite, undetermined succession of sensible sentences. Such an essence of virtuality originates only in the dynamic play of the elements of the mechanical system that is language, embedded in a nonmechanistic brain – it is then that language "lives."

VIRTUAL MACHINES

After Cybernetics, AI, and robotics virtual machines are the last expression of the digital dream, terminating it at the same time. A computer such as Terry Sejnowski's NETalk that teaches itself to read aloud a written text is cannily close to a talking person, the simulation (of neural networks) seems perfect, similarly the result. Will virtual machines become the main protagonists in a global process that reduces man to a mere spectator and parasite? A perfect technical mimesis or simulation so far advanced that it would replace the real world by an artificial creation where man would tend to self-abstraction as a mere observer. We have seen the consequences of such perfect simulation in our parable, man as simulator of the machine, as empty torso, easy prey to myth and other such power-crazed programmers of reality who hold forth the promise once more of totality and authenticity.

However these worlds controlled, calculated and designed worlds are called virtual worlds not because they imitate nature, but because they digitally simulate an image of delusion. They are simulations, computer or cybermodels for imaginary worlds which comply with the laws of logic and physics, and yet seemingly defy these laws in the creation of imaginary space where anything is possible. Virtual worlds are illusionary worlds, three dimensional nearworlds based on digital technology. Virtual artificial realities do represent alternative realities, information space containing imaginary objects in dimensions of space and time that can be manipulated directly or from a distance. Objects in virtual reality react to man, they can be manipulated by the spectator. At the flick of the spectator's head objects depicted in digital simulation may change their proportion or perspective, man, in fact integrating with the fiction of his imagination as conjured up digitally by the computer. It is this alternative reality that makes virtual worlds more than merely the simulations of artificial digital truths.

Because the spectator himself is an emphatic part of the image in such an artificial reality, empowered with the illusion of his own body acting as clone in front of his field of vision, and because he may yet simultaneously control the imaginary objects from outside the virtual world, he is putting into perspective the universality of the digital dream, as, naturally, the spectator as the creator of such virtual worlds cannot himself be digitalised. It would be pointless to employ a machine as manipulator in the virtual world as anything appearing in his data visor would be digital simulation, no matter whether the object existed externally in front of or would be generated internally through the visor. For the machine both real and generated object appear simultaneously in the visor.

Virtuality, where simulation, imagination and reality are mutually transgressive is psychotic space and yet residually non-digitalisable. The role of the spectator using the bridge across the real and simulated represents the quantum mechanical constraints on the digital dream, virtual worlds exist at the borderline between digital dream and quantum mechanics, evoking an environment controlled and created by computer, but reacting to human needs and ideas. Now, if all were calculable it would follow that all must be predetermined. Thus we arrive at the ensuing alternatives: the simulation of imagination by virtual machines can either mean its determination, or determination opened up to the imagination. Chaos theory and quantum physics seem to suggest an indeterminable spiritual cosmos. The digital arts emanating from the cosmology of number are also a link between digital finality and infinite imagination defending man in his impossibility to be simulated. They would serve not to denigrate, but to research and appropriate anything digital so that we may express ourselves of it. Artistic creativity supported by machine therefore would not represent a contradiction in terms, just as postbiological life wouldn't. Both are far removed from something like a quality of the spiritual. Digitalised artistic creativity in an expert system towards the creation of art will one day be possible and such an algorithm will produce works of art equal to "real" art, which in fact only reiterates the invalidity of art so far, mechanical and lacking in spiritual dimension. This calls for the remedy in the aesthetic of the virtual, mechanised creativity and the automaton will rid us of a lot of dirt. Technology as enlightenment of man researching himself?

Virtual machines provide the spirit with new bodies, packaging it in tele-bodies and tele-organs, setting the scene for what Moravec has called "ejecting the spirit from the body." The emperor, the spirit of the mind is now fitted out with new bodies, neither by transplant, nor by genetic engineering or robotics, but by equipping it with new artificial "organs-in-prosthesis," namely with virtual machines like data glove etc. These tele-organs make man into the Freudian god of prothesis, or tele-deity, a god of tele-presence instead of omnipresence. Virtual machines create the tele-body and thus represent the emperor's, the spirit's, new bodies.

Notes

(1)
In Jean Baudrillard, Das Ding und das Ich (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1974).back

(2)
Gerald M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).back

(3)
D. O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1949).back

(4)
Ralph Linsker, Self-Organization in a Perceptual Network (Mirz: Computer, 1988).back

(5)
See William F. [ ? ], ed., Menschliches Denken, Künstliche Intelligenz. Von der Gehirnforschung zur nächsten Computergeneration (Munich: Droemer Knaur, 1990).back

(6)
D. Rumelhart and J. McClelland, eds., Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, 3 vols. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986).back

(7)
Ch. G. Langton, ed., Artificial Life (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1989), p. 43.back

(8)
Hans P. Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).back

(9)
A. M. Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind, no. 236 (1959), 1950.back

(10)
Karl Marx, Das Kapital (Berlin: Dietz, 1926), pp. 86, 87.back

(11)
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenologie des Geistes (Tübingen: Suhrkamp, 1986), p. 363.back

(12)
Ibid., p. 365.back

(13)
Gotthard Günther, Das Bewusstsein der Maschinen (Baden-Baden: Agis, 1957).back

(14)
Roger Penrose, "Minds, Machines and Mathematics," in: C. Blackmore and S. Greenfield eds., Mindwaves (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987), pp. 259–276.back

(15)
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and Laws for Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).back

(16)
David Deutsch, "Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, A 400, pp. 97–117.back

(17)
Michael Lockwood, Mind, Brain and the Quantum (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1989).back

(18)
I. N. Marshall, "Consciousness and Bose-Einstein Condensates," New Ideas in Psychology, 7 (1989), pp. 73–83.back

(19)
R. J. Boscovich, A Theory of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966). See also Otto E. Rössler's paper "Boscovich Covariance."back

(20)
Boscovich, p. 203.back

(21)
Ibid., p. 204.back

(22)
Ibid., p. 199.back

(23)
Myron W. Krueger, Artificial Reality (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1983).back

(24)
Two anthologies, Bruce Sterling, ed., Mirrorshades (London: Paladin, 1988), and Rudy Rucker, P. L. Wilson, and R. A. Wilson, eds., Semiotext(e) SF (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989), offer prominent examples of the new science fiction movement of cyberspace and cyberpunk.back

(25)
Cited in Bernhard Mitterauer, Architektonik. Entwurf einer Metaphysik der Machbarkeit (Vienna: Brandstätter, 1989).back

(26)
See the important work "Machines virtuelles," Traverses 44–45 (September 1988), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.