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CULTURE AND
TECHNOLOGY 2 |
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From The Technology of the Loom/The Loom of Technology
"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall- soon- it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing."- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
" ...we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end, to which all history points - the realization of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity, the result and product of those very national and antagonistic qualities.
The distances which separated the different nations... are rapidly vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible ease; the languages of all nations are known..., thought is communicated with the rapidity, even by the power of lightning. On the other hand, the great principle of division of labour, which may be called the moving power of civilisation, is being extended to all branches of science, industry and art...
... the publicity of the present day causes that no sooner is a discovery or invention made than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts. The products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our disposal and we have only to choose which is the best and cheapest for our purposes, and the powers of production are entrusted to the stimulus of competition and capital.
Gentlemen, the Exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting-point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions."- Prince Albert at opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851
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In the chiasmus opened up by the technology of the loom/the loom of technology, there would be a potential to weave together a discourse on the development of the technology of the mechanical loom with the looming presence of technology that we've traced out in the paintings and photographs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such a woven fabric could be constructed through the warp and filling threads of my thematic yarn so far: the visible and the invisible, narcosis, worlds in miniature, language and technology, language as technology, frames of technology and the technology of the frame, and the bridge. While we could put together these thematic threads, we must also understand how they come together through weaving. Weaving only creates a veil, a mask, a cover that hides as much as it reveals. There is a larger question, however, that looms over and within this discourse of the loom and this is a question concerning both the loom of technology and the technology of the loom.
Such a question requires us to hear the word loom differently, to hear in the word loom at least two ideas at once, to hear the notion of emerging as looming coming out of the work of weaving, of using a loom, and to weave into the verb loom a sense of interlacing that is tied to the process of coming into view. However, I am already anticipating and imitating the process of thought that looms within Heidegger's own woven text- but that is where I want to head- to hear the technology of the loom, but within the technology of the loom to hear its chiasmatic counterpart, the loom of technology. Of course, a chiasma is also a crossing, perhaps a bridge, but also an X, a mark of stitching, of the crossings created through weaving.
To think technology today, we are going to have to be very un-technological, in a sense, to think without technology, to think the without of technology, in order to access, hack our way inside the technological, to understand how this hacking takes place, how such hacking has already taken place, how we are always already displaced and already inside the technological, in the midst of the technological, within the loom of the technological, within the loom of the question concerning technology.
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The key is not to think of technology as being neutral, but at the same time to not think that one can take a simple stance, or make a simple stance if one is to think through technology, to think with technology, to think about technology, in its proximity, in its midst, within its loom. For Heidegger, the idea that we can master technology also falls into a particular short-sightedness.
Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology. (Martin Heidegger)
For Heidegger, there is a notion of uncovering, revealing, which ties into so many of the themes about making visible that we have been discussing. Revealing is a letting happen, the 'to be discovered' of something that already exists, a process of making visible, and, as Heidegger suggests, technology is a way of revealing.
The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging forth. That challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off into the indeterminate. The revealing reveals to itself its own manifoldly interlocking paths, through regulating their course. (Martin Heidegger)
Technology reveals the world as different, subjugating nature to the rules of technology within the process of en-framing. En-framing provides the rules to which nature plays, making everything seem natural and that is quite unnatural. Indeed, we need to find a way to experience the world as unnatural, but to experience it as unnatural through a way that is not technological and yet bears an intimate relationship with technology-art.
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The world is turned into a technical problem. This is not so much the question. The world has always been a technical problem, a problem of technology. The question is how is the world transformed, or how is the technical problem of the world transformed by the technologies of the modern age. The world is a problem to be solved by order, by ordering, by the gaze that uses a certain technological ordering. The gaze becomes technological.
Our drive to create technology lies in the hope, perhaps, that technology will tell us who we are, but we are afraid we won't like the answer. This is, in a sense, for Heidegger, what each epoch does. It sets up a system for revelation, but due to the fear of what this revelation will have to say about humanity, humanity remains blind to this revelation until the moment has passed, until we only recognize the revelation after the fact, when it is too late.
Technology needs us. It needs us to experience the technological. It needs us in order to experience itself. It needs us to teach it to become human, just as it trains us to be technological. Artificial Intelligence is only one aspect of this, as is voice recognition technology, tracking technology, Big Blue, technology that becomes more human, that learns who we are, what we like, that says 'goodbye' to us, that let's us know that we have mail, that asks if we want to write a letter. It is learning how to be us, and it reflects back to us who we are, what our identity is. Technology experiences itself in our experiencing of it. Humankind becomes more technological in the technological age as technology becomes more human. Technology puts us in a place to make revelation. We are the ones who recognize technology.
"It's thinking," says the seductive technological voice at the end of a commercial for Sega's Dreamcast. This may be chance, but we need to think this through. What is it thinking? What is my stereo telling me when it says, "Goodbye"? What does my answering machine say when it says, "You have 3 messages"? What does my ISP say when it says, "You've got mail"? It is not saying "Goodbye." It is saying "Hello, here I am. I am thinking, but I am not thinking of you. I am not thinking even for you. I am thinking you, just as you thought me." Technology is experiencing itself through me. It is learning how to be human, as it teaches me what it means to be human in a technological age. This is, in a sense, what technology has always done. From the bow and arrow and beyond, technology tells us what it means to be human.
Enframing needs and uses humans. The ordering of the world through technology needs humans to construct the world, to live in the world, to experience the world, to witness its revelation, the revelation of the technological. Indeed, the threat of technological ordering is the very basis for human achievement within the technological. It looms.
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If technology has always taught us what it means to be human, there is another realm which has provided the same function- art.
There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techne. Once that revealing that brings forth truth into the splendor of radiant appearing also was called techne.
Once there was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was called techne. And the poiesis of the fine arts also was called techne. (Martin Heidegger)
Art, technology, all techne serves as a means to teach us what it means to be human as they learn to be more human. In this age where technology continues to learn how to be human, can art learn to be human within this technological age, can it concern itself with thinking what is near, what looms over our age, both hovering and covering with its web of links?
Art is now dwelling at the heart of the greatest danger and yet technology offers to save art in several senses. At one level, literally technology helps to advance the art of preservation, a preservation that is not just limited to restoration, but an expansion of art to new audiences. While mechanical reproduction is the ruination of aura for Benjamin, it is also the means of spreading art to new multitudes. Two, technology offers new mediums, transforming the notion of art, leading to video, installation, and digital art, to name just a few of the new mediums.
Art must entrench itself within the loom of technology and the technology of the loom, providing a realm where we come to a confrontation with technology. This is, in part, the reason for the emergence in our age of the inter-relation, the renewed inter-relation between art and technology. Just as during the late eighteenth century, the type of thinking that orders the world in technological terms, that weaves together a world of technology reigns in the world today, infectiously persistent in its infiltration into every facet of our lives. However, just as during the late eighteenth century, art again emerges and engages the technological, to unweave what the world of technology tries to weave together, to take the world of technology and make technology just another strand within the tapestry of art, to use technology not as a crass tool to bridge the gap, but to use it as a means to cross over and back, between self and other, to open up to community, to communication, to the openness of revelation, to undo the frameworks that negate the other through knowing the other, through knowing/no-ing the world, allowing a space, a frontier, where the other looms, where the other emerges. Today, as in the late eighteenth century, the weaving together of art and technology can offer through techne that which saves and salvages us from the savaging the human endures for the sake of technology. For art, too, endures the technological. Art is the other of technology.
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