Re: LIFESCIENCE: loss

[Eugene Thacker <maldoror@eden.rutgers.edu>]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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> sometimes i think in my borgian symbiotic relationship with my
> system it
> can sense my stress and reacts back.. i have seen postings on lists
> where
> people speak about feeling the energy of the net when they
> loggin

I can completely identify w/ Melinda's comments here, and though the
number of computer and web users is certainly in the minority, the
gradual pervasiveness of computer-related jobs and ubiquity of email may
mean that for many people their human-computer relationship will have to
become something more than the good old "Man-tool" motif.

I always think of McLuhan + Virilio in regards to the web. Your nervous
system changes when online - not in any Cronenberg-bioport sense (not
yet at least) - but through the interface and by networking oneself into
it, the computer user accomodates a certain change. But this is not just
serving the machine, since the the applications used are designed
(ideally) to accomodate human communicative/media interactions. What
goes unsaid often is how this interface also modifies the sense of the
subject's body and embodiedness.

The nervous system shifts into Web-speed, a network dromology, sometimes
manifested as the "world wide wait" and othertimes over T1 lines. The
question  of course, is similar to the one Virilio brings up - that is,
with increasing speed one either has to radicaly shift paradigms (based
no longer on fixed objects that move but on a foundation of movement
itself), or one has to face the implication that "things" will disappear
because they are always moving and never where they were.

This seems important because it has to do, for instance, w/ something
like an online ethics, or rather an online bioethics - for example, how
is an ethical standard set up in something like CU-SeeMe or video chat?
Traditions of ethical theory in the West is usually based on the
presence of embodied subjects - but how does this translate into online
interaction? When I have students participate in CU-SeeMe or IRC chat in
class, there is always this kind of video game approach, where they
don't immediately relate to the other people online as real, embodied
subjects - so we're talking about speed but also distance...

Eugene

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