The more I use this lifestream, the more I love it. I have found it invaluable to store resources, and the weekly summary forces me to draw them all back in together again, like unpicking a tangled ball of wool!
I have been using Tumblr to store interesting quotes from the reading as I go through the articles, so that they are stored for me to reflect on later. This is a great method of ensuring that the quotes are easily accessible when I want to include them in a blog! It also allows me to take a leaf out of the ‘book’ of Socrates who was concerned that the seat of knowledge came from reflection, reflection, reflection! My lifestream allows me the time and the freedom to reflect.
This week I have been working my way through Hayles “from Cyborg to Cognisphere” which I really rather enjoyed.
Hayles has borrowed the term cognisphere from Thomas Whalen, who in 2000 presented a text on knowledge spaces in which he used the term cognisphere:
“The earth provides us with an atmosphere, a hydrosphere, and a biosphere. We have created, for ourselves, a knowledge sphere. Maybe, for aesthetic purposes, we should call it the cognisphere.” Whalen, Thomas (2000) ‘Data Navigation, Architectures of Knowledge
In Hayles, the cognisphere is a man made state where humans are almost part of the machine.
In highly developed and networked societies like the US, human awareness comprises the tip of a huge pyramid of data flows, most of which occur between machines. (…) Expanded to include not only the Internet but also networked and programmable systems that feed into it, including wired and wireless data flows across the electromagnetic spectrum, the cognisphere gives a name and shape to the globally interconnected cognitive systems in which humans are increasingly embedded (Hayles 2006:pg 161).
This cognisphere is a planet wide flow of information, with humans and cognitive machines interacting at every level. This is already taking place with the US National Security Agency using algorithms on a computer to search worldwide communications for ‘dangerous’ words and concepts. These searches can take place with no human interaction at a base level, with possible queries being flagged by the machine when human analysts intervene. There must be an issue here with what is considered ‘dangerous words and concepts’? For now it is the global threat of terrorism that drives these actions, but who is to say that we are not heading towards a dystopian vision of the future when words like ‘independent thought’, ‘freedom’ and ‘imagination’ are considered dangerous concepts. After all, it is often said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. If this is the case, and machines are able to make these decisions based on a set of rules set by humans, how will those humans in turn be ‘judged’ – will we all simply becomes cogs inside the machine, ‘matrix’like, serving the cognisphere? Or have I been watching too many youtube videos!
I have also been reading up on the ‘posthuman’ condition and trying to get my head around the concept. This week I have blogged on how to define a posthuman, as well as some reflection on the work of Muri about why we may not become posthuman! The overall feeling that I have taken from these is that we are posthuman in the sense that extremely complex systems can be integrated in our lives and be experienced as commonplace ingredients of everyday life. For example, GPS has become in recent years a necessity in our daily lives. It gets us around in our cars, helps the Ordinance Survey improve their mapping systems and can even make your mobile phone tell you where to find the nearest cafe. Everyone will have at least one piece of hi-tech equipment within arms reach at any one time. At this moment, sitting at my desk I can look around me and see that (apart from my laptop) I have 2 mobile phones (1 personal and 1 work Blackberry) a netbook, my SatNav, a DAB radio and my digital camera. All are items that I use almost daily to augment my life and I am lost without any one of them. If this makes me posthuman, it surely also connects me to the cognisphere through the data generated on all of these pieces of tech.
However I certainly am not posthuman in the sense that I wish to leave my corporeal body to float around in a virtual reality. Muri quotes Michale Heim in 1993 when he wrote:
“At the computer interface the spirit migrates from the body to a world of total representation. Information and images float through the Platonic mind without a grounding in bodily experience. You can lose your humanity at the throw of the dice”
This sounds horrific to me. How can imagery and data have context and meaning without embodiment? And surely a life without meaning strikes me as no life at all!
