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--- towards_technosophy:towards_technosophy [2023/01/29 23:24] – steffi_winkler
+++ towards_technosophy:towards_technosophy [2023/01/31 22:38] (current) – steffi_winkler
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 Digital data is infinitesimal, but not without size, time or place. Every bit of data must “live” on a physical memory surface somewhere. And digital data communicates extremely fast, close to the speed of light, but not immediately. These distinctions, the materiality, situatedness and temporality of digital data is important for us to be able to criticise the technical images we use to attempt to grapple with our technological condition.  URLs and any computer data exists on a level of experience alien to human empirical experience and must be translated, transformed, upscaled and slowed down for it to be rendered humanly perceptible, interpretable and for it to perform its social and cultural intended function. The 1s and 0s, and the charges on computer memory they represent, could just as easily be displayed as pictures or colours or even played back as tiny sounds or videos.
-In his video interview at Osnabrück with Miklós Peternak, Flusser suggested that “technical images”,  rather than merely rational analyses in text,  might help the citizens of the electronic age better grapple with their world. Certainly when it comes to understanding the world of speed of light digital data there are radical epistemic challenges. We do not have the words to accurately address what is going on at the nano-scale level of computer operations. We attempt to bridge the epistemic gaps using words which we use to refer to meso-scale phenomena of conventional human perception. Computation, a process which is fundamental to our understanding of the world, is a process we can only refer to through metaphors. This, Flusser warns, begins to undermine the legitimacy of language as a means of personal or social self-realisation, as essential to democratic politics, to maintain human agency and avoid being overdetermined by automated processes and potentially lead to a new technological “barbarism”.
+In his video interview at Osnabrück with Miklós Peternak((Vilém Flusser, //[[:writing_complexity_technical_revolutions|On writing, complexity and the technical revolutions]]. Interview by Miklós Peternák in Osnabrück, European Media Art Festival, September 1988//. In: //We shall survive in the memory of others//, ed. Miklós Peternák (Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König), 10min30s.)), Flusser suggested that “technical images”,  rather than merely rational analyses in text,  might help the citizens of the electronic age better grapple with their world. Certainly when it comes to understanding the world of speed of light digital data there are radical epistemic challenges. We do not have the words to accurately address what is going on at the nano-scale level of computer operations. We attempt to bridge the epistemic gaps using words which we use to refer to meso-scale phenomena of conventional human perception. Computation, a process which is fundamental to our understanding of the world, is a process we can only refer to through metaphors. This, Flusser warns, begins to undermine the legitimacy of language as a means of personal or social self-realisation, as essential to democratic politics, to maintain human agency and avoid being overdetermined by automated processes and potentially lead to a new technological “barbarism”.
-In his essay, Orders of Magnitude and Humanism, Flusser precisely identifies two realms of human activity which are availed by technical means, the infinitesimal and the astronomical. Conventional human epistemology and its institutions take place between the two extreme realms made accessible by technical instruments. Flusser warns that we must develop “new humanisms” for these alien realms of knowledge or risk being barbarized by them.  This may appear ironic for the philosopher of “post-history”, but it is clear that “post-history” is not a goal but a condition of thinking which was built on historical processes running at light speed within electronic devices, in other words: most-history.  But how do we actually develop these “new humanisms” which will provide us with the thinking practices which can help us effectively grapple with our technological condition, to be projects rather than subjects?
+In his essay, Orders of Magnitude and Humanism, Flusser precisely identifies two realms of human activity which are availed by technical means, the infinitesimal and the astronomical((Vilém Flusser, ed. Andreas Ströhl, //[[:writings|Writings]]. Electronic Mediations//, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002)). Conventional human epistemology and its institutions take place between the two extreme realms made accessible by technical instruments. Flusser warns that we must develop “new humanisms” for these alien realms of knowledge or risk being barbarized by them.  This may appear ironic for the philosopher of “post-history”, but it is clear that “post-history” is not a goal but a condition of thinking which was built on historical processes running at light speed within electronic devices, in other words: most-history.  But how do we actually develop these “new humanisms” which will provide us with the thinking practices which can help us effectively grapple with our technological condition, to be projects rather than subjects?
 One clue towards how to develop “new humanisms” for extreme scales of knowledge is to examine what is happening at the frontiers between “human scale” and the scales beyond direct human perception, what Flusser calls “grey zones”. “The new humanism would have to criticise the grey zones between the orders of magnitude, that is, the zones in which dwell artificial intelligence, artificial life, and artificial immortality.”
-Borrowing the notion from Harun Farocki, I would call the knowledge of super- and infra-human scale phenomena “instrumental” knowledge. This means that, between the human thinker and the information from the alien scales they receive, there are instruments, apparatuses, which interact with the alien phenomena and provide human-scale perceptible information about these interactions. To understand this “instrumental” knowledge, it is necessary to understand the instrument which affords the knowledge, not necessarily in all its functioning parts but as a social, industrial product, as a record and result of social organisation. In other words, to “humanise” the images we get through the Large Hadron Collider, we need to look at the physical construction of the LHC and the social organisation which planned, constructed and runs it.
+Borrowing the notion from Harun Farocki, who explored what he called “operational images”((Trevor Paglen, //Operational Images//. In: e-flux journal 59, 2014, [[https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61130/operational-images]])), I would call the knowledge of super- and infra-human scale phenomena “instrumental” knowledge. This means that, between the human thinker and the information from the alien scales they receive, there are instruments, apparatuses, which interact with the alien phenomena and provide human-scale perceptible information about these interactions. To understand this “instrumental” knowledge, it is necessary to understand the instrument which affords the knowledge, not necessarily in all its functioning parts but as a social, industrial product, as a record and result of social organisation. In other words, to “humanise” the images we get through the Large Hadron Collider, we need to look at the physical construction of the LHC and the social organisation which planned, constructed and runs it.
 In a mode of Historical New Materialism, one can read the instrument or apparatus, which provides the access to the new information, as a record of the vast constellation of human-, and through these, non-human contributions, concretised in the form of the functioning apparatus and its aesthetic products. This provides a human scale correspondence intractable from the out-of-scale information as it appears to be grasped semantically. In other words, within all information consumed as information in media, there is in the media apparatus a legacy of inherent human activity and social organisation which can potentially help humanise that knowledge.
-Joler and Crawford’s 2018 “Anatomy of AI” follows this intuition. In a massive, and massively detailed cartographical survey of the various processes and concepts at work in AI, this project is as pertinent in what it displays as in what it leaves out, since no single depiction can overcome the limitations of rational description. Nevertheless, as an artistic invitation to socially convene around the problem of understanding AI, it can participate in the development of new social conventions adequate to the political challenges of our time.  Marshall McLuhan also insisted on the importance of attending to the work of artists, synthesising intuitions about their contemporary conditions into forms able to convene communities of concern across disparate disciplinary and cultural backgrounds.
+Joler and Crawford’s 2018 “Anatomy of AI” follows this intuition((Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler,
+//Anatomy of an AI System//, 2018, [[https://anatomyof.ai]])). In a massive, and massively detailed cartographical survey of the various processes and concepts at work in AI, this project is as pertinent in what it displays as in what it leaves out, since no single depiction can overcome the limitations of rational description. Nevertheless, as an artistic invitation to socially convene around the problem of understanding AI, it can participate in the development of new social conventions adequate to the political challenges of our time.  Marshall McLuhan also insisted on the importance of attending to the work of artists, synthesising intuitions about their contemporary conditions into forms able to convene communities of concern across disparate disciplinary and cultural backgrounds((Marshall McLuhan, //Man and Media// (York University Public Lecture, 1977),  [[https://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/lecture/1977-man-and-media/index.html|https://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/lecture/1977-man-and-media]] “The artist’s insights or perceptions
+seem to have been given to mankind as a providential means of bridging the gap between evolution and technology. The artist is able to program, or reprogram, the sensory life in a manner which gives us a navigational chart to
+get out of the maelstrom created by our own ingenuity. The role of the artist in regard to man and the media is simply survival.")).
 The artworks and photo-philosophical experiments produced in our summer school were very much of a provisional and dialogical character. They emerged from the participants in their grappling with intuitions and information of various scales of experience through experiments with drones and microscopes, smartphones and film, in the brilliant Provence sunlight and in the darkness of caves, and in the speculative exchanges which erupted, in dialogues with Flusser, our instruments and each other.