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* fawkes2002
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Interface and the Architecture of Self
I.
The End ofI
There is a story that sleeps deep within our minds, beneath the frantic currents
of higher consciousness. TheI-myth, the first and greatest of man s innumerable s
ocial lies; it has persisted for so long that the very shape of thought has been
recast in its explicit terms. Whatever nameless prophet or prehuman savant firs
t dreamed this mad projection that so changed us, the hallucination of selfhood
has forever marked our species; wrenching the natural order apart into the endur
ing tension between human and nonhuman.
It is in such a state that mankind has reached the modern age; driven by a visio
n of selfhood
that separates each individual from the rest of reality, projecting the strict b
ounds of ego upon
the boundless acting networks of causality. With this move, man sections himself
off from the
natural, and re-centers the universe about this newly defined self. This may be
madness, of
sorts; certainly it is flagrant misrepresentation, but it is anything but stupid
. The individual
crafted around the cognitive I gains much from this dreaming, and the human societ
y

constituted by these illusory selves has made bold use of its peculiar advantage
s in its
reshaping of the natural world.
Since the philosophic outburst of the Western Renaissance it has been firmly est
ablished that
such a self-defined actor gains a series of powerful advantages within a social
network of
similarly constructed selves. By projecting a holographic mental model of the wo
rld defined
exclusively from individual experience and memory, one is able to make a series
of extremely
efficient and highly practical assumptions about the other acting factors that e
xist that exist
outside the bounded self. Moreover, by willfully casting faith and fate behind t
he power of this
mode of action to accurately inform choices toward a desired state, one gains th
e courage to act
within an often seemingly absurd framework. With this talisman charm of the self
so excised
from the natural fundament, each individual becomes a functional prophet; procee
ding
diligently with action according to the oracular predictions of the self s bold si
mulation of
reality.
It is similarly easy to note the stark drawbacks that result from this societal
exercise in selfdefinition. Since a constructed individual can only access and utilize the modes
of action that
are collected in personal memory and synchronized by the acting computation of t
he self
projection, there is no way for an external factor to make a truly compelling ar
gument against
action. Because of this gap between the modeled decision tree developed by the s
elf and the
actual resonant consequence of reality, one is capable of (if not prone to) maki
ng decisions that
negatively impact the very natural orders one seeks to predict and utilize.
Ironically, even as this polarization of the self against the other serves to bu
ffer the actor from
the immeasurability of consequence, the resulting system of social motivations (
i.e. the rise of
human society) has significantly impacted and profoundly changed the natural world
from
which the self has been differentiated. Most of the issues that significantly im
pact human
society environmental, criminal, political, racial all fundamentally stem from the s
ame
system of human motivation; with the person nicely isolated within the bounds of sel
f, the
impulse toward self-benefit can very easily influence individual choice and acti
on. Since all
external factors must be referenced against the self at several points, to build
up the symbolic
toolset to analyze them and act accordingly, it becomes all too easy to execute
a decision that

imparts a small convenience to the self at the expense of some external status q
uo, whether that
external system be as large as the global environment or as bounded as another h
uman self .
As such, it is reasonable to posit that the Humanist individual is a functional
array of lies that
has allowed mankind to ignore consequence in favor of self-referenced progress.
In many
ways, it follows the model of a viral social meme that been firmly established i
n our cognitive
firmament, reinforced by every societal interaction undertaken. This has achieve
d much in
terms of the arbitrarily set terms for human progress , but poses profound risks to
the larger
natural system from which humanity has removed itself. In addition, this choreogra
phy of
thought requires that in order for the projected self to be sustained, each indi
vidual must be
kept unaware of the virtuality of this construct. Should the self realize the fu
ll extent to which
consequence is hidden and uninterpretable, the individual becomes caught up in t
he ironic
despair of Postmodernism, (as Latour so succinctly puts it); the more one becomes
aware of
consequence, the harder it becomes to act at all.
As the hybrid networks of the modern age proliferate around and through the huma
n species, it
becomes increasingly difficult for individuals to maintain the calculated self-d
eception that has
sustained their explosive growth. When, as such, one s projected psychological ide
ntitybarriers begin to break down abandoned for the promises of futurist connectivity,
perpetual
communication and free information the mind is left to grapple helplessly for ref
erence
amidst the terrifyingly immense, dynamic systems of the existent. Further compli
cating
matters, it is clear that if the human and nonhuman were to be effectively disso
lved back into
the natural from whence they came, the human could not survive unchanged. Where th
e
Humanist I is to be edited from the modern consciousness, the ex-individual is sud
denly
faced with the nauseating realization that any action has potential reverberatio
ns throughout
reality; consequence, which had been buffered from the psyche by the boundaries
of the self,
here comes crashing back upon the helpless networked actor.
How, then, to go on? It is clear that one must be cautious. Rushing headlong int
o the alien
aggregates of the posthuman would leave one paralyzed and incapable of action, a
terrified
slave to causality. For humankind to proceed in the age-old exploration of indiv
idual action
within the real, and yet still continue to act in the face of the universal inte
rconnectedness that

unfolds upon inspection, it is obvious that a new model and language for cogniti
on and
interaction must be developed. It is only after an appropriate analytic toolset
has been agreed
upon that our species can fully assume the network benefits that beckon us, stum
bling, toward
our own outlandish future.
II.
GUI Rising
The most straightforward way to begin formulating such an appropriate spectra of
analytic foci is with the detailed examination a specific instance of human/non
human interaction. Once the symbolic language of hybrid communication is establi
shed, it should be somewhat easier to determine how best to apply that toolset t
o the fullness of human hybridization efforts. A
particularly interesting, uniquely modern and easily deconstructed example of su
ch a
hybridization event is the virtualized computer graphical user interface (GUI),
wherein the
signs and modes of contact between the person and the computer are entirely abst
racted from
the realities of both the person s intent and the computer s mechanical functions.
The abrupt evolution and near-universal social integration of the GUI is a saga
in its own right.
The idea of a mechanical computation engine is hardly new, traceable to Babbage s
famous
difference engine (never realized in its time) of 1822. Here, though, the comput
ation was
maintained as a completely transparent mechanical system of gears, seen as a per
functory
extension of the human mind s computational ability. As this technology began to b
e realized
more explicitly, and especially during the explosive growth of electronic crypto
-intelligence
networks during the Second World War, these machines rapidly became far too comp
lex to
interact with in a casual manner. Researchers and enthusiasts despaired as compu
ters became
huge, incredibly fragile data powerhouses, inaccessible to all but the excruciat
ingly welltrained.
It was clear that this line of progression could not be sustained. As computers
began their
manifestation into the nigh-unknowable tangle of logistical detail typical of th
e modern day, it
was proposed that the technical elements be masked for practical reasons. If a p
roper,
straightforward interface could be developed, the procedural minutia could be ef
fectively
sidelined (i.e. blackboxed in the manner of Latour) from the individual knowledge
base
necessary for the individual to even consider engaging with the computer. The co
nceptual
Memex (a portmanteau of "memory extender") was developed by Vannevar Bush, one o
f the
Posthuman Manifesto
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Uploaded:
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academic essay outlining a philosophic system for self-reference and action in p
ost-humanist terms. Emphasis on the evolution of the graphical user... (More) ac
ademic essay outlining a philosophic system for self-reference and action in pos
t-humanist terms. Emphasis on the evolution of the graphical user interface as a
case study for human/nonhuman hybridization and cyborg actor consciousness. (Le
ss)
human
self
interface
gui
cyborg
posthuman
Technology-General
human
self
interface
gui
cyborg
posthuman
Technology-General
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oxynthes
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