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Remarks on 'Memesis'
The following is a response to the document: "Memesis : the Future of
Evolution" and to some of the responses which predate mine.
***
I'm afraid I must respond to the "Memesis the Future of Evolution"
document as a text, prior to discussing the ideas within it. The
document is a more or less unconnected set of propositions of
questionable validity. It clearly is not an argument, it must be
regarded as a set of provocative notions intended to generate
discussion. Therefore, leaving aside the pop cyber-biological
catchphrases, I would like to take issue with several underlying ideas
in the paper.
Pathetically mono-lingual as I am, I have deep respect for anyone who is
brave enough to attempt professional discussion in a second or third
language. I assume the text was prepared by someone for whom English is
not their first language, I'm therefore rather forgiving of the language
in it. I'm also very grateful to those of you who will read and/or
contribute to this symposium in something other than your native tongue.
The language issue does however, remind us again of the very large
holes in universalist net-rhetoric.
It doesn't take a genius to observe that fairly radical things have
happened to human communication and socialisation for those of us
privileged enough to be on the net. This symposium is itself a clear
demonstration of that. It is also true that net-life will change (is
changing) the functions of cities, commercial and public spaces. It
ought to be observed however, that the transformations of global
economics and military intelligence generated by the same technology
(the net, more or less) effects all people, pre-dates the social issues,
and remains of greater substance and greater concern.
***
Notes on the Text
In the second paragraph we read:
"Human evolution is fundamentally intertwined with technological development".
I would have thought this was demonstrably _not_ the case, almost every
aspect of human physiology has remained stable over thousands of years,
let alone during the pitifully few generations of industrialisation.
Humanity has _not_ co-evolved with its artifacts in any biological
sense. This is precisely the argument _for_ the obsolescence of
evolution as argued by Stelarc et al. Survival into the next millenium
depends not on whether genes will 'co-evolve with... artifacts' but
whether they can survive the effects of those artifacts. The 'future of
evolution' qua biological evolution is only brought into question by the
cancerous proliferation of one particular species, homo sapiens.
Later in that paragraph, we read: "...genes that are not able to cope
with this reality will not survive the next millenium." That's a bleak
prediction! And it has an unpleasant taste of arguments for the
justification of the extermination of indigenous peoples in Africa,
Australia and the Americas during colonialism: they weren't genetically
equipped for the modern world.
In the third we read: "...global networks as the ultimate habitat for
the human mind".
If your mind is thinking of moving out to take up residence on the net,
I recommend you make sure it gives you three months notice.
Seriously though, it baffles me that this rhetoric of 'transcendence via
the net' did not die a quick death a decade ago. Doesn't anybody realise
just how corny and retrograde the notion is? Its Plato's Ur-world of
Ideals and Christian Heaven all wrapped up together with Cybernetic
Mumbo-Jumbo.
It is just one facet of a general argument against the body, which has
been an ongoing characteristic of western philosophy and christian
theology. As I noted in a previous essay (1992) : "William Gibson's
Cyberpunks procalimed "the body is meat" but they did not pause to note
how similar their position was to that of St Augustine".
The belief that evolution is rendered obsolete by technology has been
announced by my countryman Stelarc, my colleague Hans Moravec, and many
others. I'm afraid I attribute this notion to an unhealthily large dose
of post war science fiction at an impressionable age.
***
Two key ideas which insuinuate themselves through the linguistic
undergrowth of the document seem to be:
- what is the nature of this new social (quasi-) space?
- is the net the progenitor of a 'world-mind' or super-consciousness?
If the former question is in line with inquiry based in marxist
analysis, the latter introduces the spectre of a fascism veiled in
mystico-techno-biological jargon. In this analysis, the document
presents itself as another reiteration of the historical tension between
the exaltation of technological progress as a thing it itself and
technology as a tool created by and used by people for some human
purpose.
Just what might this super-consciousness transpire to be? I offer
several possibilities:
1. It might be intentionally built (cf " Evolutionary Systems for Brain
Communications: Towards an Artificial Brain" Katsunori Shimohara,
Artificial Life 4 conference, MIT June 1994).
1.1 if it were built, it might do the bidding of its designers (which
would be ok if you were on their side), or
1.2 it might go feral.
2.It might arise spontaneously. Readers are probably familiar with
speculations that the net might be getting complex enough for some kind
of consciousness to arise according to the principle of stigmurgy.
If 1.2 or 2 its unlikely that it would have human interests at heart. It
might render the net useless for human purposes, or worse, see humans as
competitors, and attempt to wipe them out. Our only recourse would be to
close the net down entirely.
3. More than one might arise. Colusion or warfare, neither would be
particularly useful to people.
I note that the document is unsigned. Perhaps we are being addressed by
that "protozoan" of the "post biological cyberorganic line"!
***
Although I may be accused of being overly simplistic, my observation is
that electronic media artists (and more generally, cyberworld types)
divide into utopian and dystopian strains. The utopian group first
emerged in the late sixties and early sevenites, the various Experiments
in Art and Technology manifestations are prime examples of this mode.
The eighties brought a new generation of artists, born after Hiroshima,
schooled in critial theory and cultural studies, who had a far more
savvy overview of artistic practice in the context of commodity
capitalism and post-industrial realities.
More recently there has been evidence of a return to techno-utopianism
and questionable scientisms, the latter most clearly in evidence in the
way that certain artifical life researchers have utilised a somewhat
dated and very narrow notion of 'evolution'. As has been resoundingly
argued by Richard Barbrook, the technological re-validation of such
ideas paves the way for new waves of social darwinism and other
retrogressive ideas.
A pitfall of techno-utopianism is that it encourages one to imagine that
a particular technological moment is so new and so different that one
cannot learn from historical precedents. I have observed in the past
that sucessive waves of technologies, particularly media technologies,
have been heralded into the world with utopian rhetorics, all of which
proved to be more or less in opposition to the later applications and
outcomes of the technology.
Many scientifically validated notions, such as "evolution",
'relativity', 'entropy' and more recently 'chaos' have been applied to
humanistic discourses over the last century, generally to questionable
result, as Herbert Hrachovec has suggested.
Most recently, biological evolution has been applied as a model to the
production of digital simulations which manifest some of the
characteristics of the living. (some Alifers would argue that such
phenomena _are_ life, but I don't intend to engage that assertion
here).In the document, biological models are brought to bear on new
social and cultural questions, where once physical ideas might have been
applied. This must be seen as part of a trend common to artificial life
discourses, to which the document owes a great deal.
It is worth asking why this trend is occuring: is it because biology is
recently validated in terms of hard science by the 'human genome'
project on the one hand, and the sucessful modelling of genetic behavior
on the other? Is it more generally because the lines between technology
and biology are becoming blurred? Or has biology always been, since its
inception, the rationalised 'screen' through which we have been trained
to view our existence.
***
As a final aside: The punning proximity (at least in English) of
'memesis' to 'mimesis', reminds me of the traditional goal of 'art'
since the story of Parrhasius and Zeuxis, which is itself rather like
the notion of simulation.
Curiously, the discipline of 'artificial life' as it has emerged in the
late 80s and early 90s, follows the very same goals that Paul Cezzane
proposed when he said ~Art is harmony parallel to nature'. This makes
Alife researchers ~artists~ in Cezzanes terms. The discussion of mimesis
is complexified by the intrusion of this goal of a parallel order. If
the Alife researcher seeks a condition parallel to nature, then this is
very like the goals of the modernist artists following on from Cezzane,
whose goals (in the words of Paul Klee) were not to represent the world,
but to 'render visible'.
Simon Penny, Pittsburgh USA, april 27 1996
