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Previous Page Next Page / 13 Sections not available Zoom Out Zoom In Fullscreen Exit Fullscreen Select View Mode View Mode SlideshowScroll Readcast Add a Comment Embed & Share Readcast Reading should be social! Post a message on your social networks to let others k now what you're reading. Select the sites below and start sharing. Check_27x27Transparent Check_27x27TransparentLink account Check_27x27TransparentLink account Readcast this DocumentTransparent Readcast Complete! Click 'send' to Readcast! edit preferences Set your preferences for next time...Choose 'auto' to readcast without being pro mpted. fawkes2002 Link account Link account AdvancedCancel Share & Embed Add to Collections Download Auto-hide: on 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 DownloadPrintMobileCollectionsReport Document

Report this document? Please tell us reason(s) for reporting this document Spam or junk Porn adult content Hateful or offensive If you are the copyright owner of this document and want to report it, please fo llow these directions to submit a copyright infringement notice. Report Cancel This is a private document. Question_small Info and Rating Reads: 820 Uploaded: 01/01/2009 Category: Research>Internet & Technology Rated: Copyright: Attribution Non-commercial Attribution_noncommercial 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 (fewer) oxynthes Share & Embed Related Documents PreviousNext 1. p. p. p. 2. p. p.

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