Amphiblestronic fragments

Eugueny Gorny
Amphiblestronic^* fragments

Technogenic Noosphere. There's a frequently used metaphor which is not mentioned in the brilliant article by Roman Leibov (Language Draws the Internet - http://www.inter.net.ru/4/9.html). It is the Net as an overhuman reason, a planetary mind, technogenic Noosphere. The globe cobwebbed by communications resembles to the brain with its neurons and synapses. Torrents of bites and bits become similar to nervous impulses.
Information kept on endless servers is by no means regarded as memory. And the Internet as a whole is a collective consciousness (dynamically connected with the collective unconsciousness). The Net is not located and is not a personal property. It's more likely an interpersonal phenomenon being not a 'place', not a 'structure', not a 'personality' though a particular energetic field; an abstract medium pregnant with senses; a metaphysical sphere (in ethimological sense of the word) with multiple conditions and pseudolocal structures welcoming an individum in and showing him out. This sphere, on the one hand, exists by itself while, on the other hand, is defined by that which is loaded. It is permanently developing and changing due to combined activity of the whole 'Net population' not taking into account whether they are 'content creators' or 'just users'. It's obvious that we jointly 'create the Net', and its future depends on us.

Projections. The Net is much more larger than any ideas about it. It can be hardly 'totally observed', moreover that the majority of users are not in need of that. (The Net aspires to become the image of infinity. Although, is it possible at all to perceive infinity? Or must this be referred to mystic experience? Perhaps, it's the death which might help to beat the target.) Everyone cuts out the Net 'to fit' him(her)self, his(her) needs, interests, desires. It's possible to say that there's no Net at all - just individual or collective projections. According to wide spread metaphor (detaily studied by Leibov), the Net is a mirror which reflects the person looking into it. As Andrei Levkin once wrote in an article typically titled as 'Tattoos on the Brain' (http://www.russ.ru/jounal/netcult/98-08-05/levkin.htm), the bookmarks a person made in his browser travelling in the Net could describe 'human subconsciousness more precise than any psychological tests, interviews or examinations'. The force of collective projections can be easily defined according to the traffic and results of various ratings.

Ego surfing. I can hardly give a Russian definition to this American pastime (the Russian sledge driving might match as an analogue) nevertheless I've found (http://www.thegrid.net/clueless/gloss_e.html) the following one: "Scanning the Net, data base, etc. in order to find references to a personal name."

Scanning is not a total wastetime as it might seem. In a while you discover that you're torn to pieces as one of Olympic gods, and your name (as incarnation of your essence) is spread here and there in the Net. Thus, ego surfing is a search of one's dismemberment, and home page creation (the practice as a rule entailed with ego surfing) is a sort of 'summoning one's self', the practice of (hyper)text self-integration. (See more in: Mirza Babayev. Home page apology. - http://inter.net.ru/14/30.html).
Searching for our 'selves' (both on- and off-line), we first of all look for evidence of self-existence. Motive of such a search must be hidden in a kind of a basical doubt (knowledge?) meaning that actually there's no ego or 'self' at all. Nevertheless, both the Net and the mirror as well as many other things give way to prove to ourselves again and again that the latter conclusion is wrong.

Persons bearing the same name. A Pole named Slavomir Gorny generated a page (http://www.ncac.torun.pl/~skg/gorny/Gorny.html) and listed there references on home pages of people bearing the same family name. (What for? What was his aim? - He gives no answer. Perhaps he believed the very idea was fun?) The page hasn't been renewed since 1997, and it still contains my old and non-existing Tartu home page. How could this phenomenon be designated? As a track or memory? Or perhaps as an evidence? What startles me most is that useless reference's independence of my own will. I can't delete it or at least correct it (I sent a message to Slavomir but there was no answer). I don't see any other alternative but either to ignore it or to wait until it vanishes somehow.

There's another thing that seems to be interesting. Beyond my will (i.e. objectively) I occurred to be included in a list (circle) of people totally unknown to me though the only things that unites me with them is the family name (on the face of it, at least).
This is not a unique example. For instance, there's a site containing references on home pages of people bearing the name of Stephen King. And there're plenty of such since this is quite an ordinary name. Take the site 'Serguei Melnikovs of Russia' (http://www.sinaps.ru/freeip/sml/namesake/). "As you've already guessed this page is dedicated to people bearing the same name, and they could make acquaintance through the FidoNet', writes the author whose name is easy to guess. 'Having noticed each other at different conferences we started mailing. As soon as we had found much in common we understood that we were not people just bearing the same name but nearly doubles. We've never seen each other nor heard each other's voices nevertheless we exist, we are not virtual. Except the name, we coincide in the number one hobby which is the PC. Each of us is more or less engaged in programming, and four of us are students whose future profession will be directly connected with computers." Touch of irony which decorates Serguei Melnikov's project seems to be trying to disguise the feeling of essentiality and non-randomness of 'simple coincidence of names'.

The 'family name' mode of gathering into an on-line community is not worse than any other. People believe in magic and mystery of names for ages, and every belief has its own ground. A common name unites its bearers taking out the random in their personal histories and revealing their architypical essence. Formal coincidence turns out into an essential identity and creates the ground for reduction to the unity.

Unions based on name principal can be found not merely in the Internet. Not long ago one of biggest Russian TV channels (NTV) reported on 'The Smirnovs Party' welcoming people bearing the appropriate family name. The party charter says that 20% of members may have a different family name though one of their closest relatives must bear the name of Smirnov. The interviewed party chairman told that there were many people of intellectual professions among Smirnovs (writers, journalists, teachers). He emphasized that all of them, as a rule, shared the same qualities such as peacefulness, discretion, mildness and humbleness (the route of the name Smirnov stands for the Russian word 'humble').

The Gemini. It might seem, on the face of it, that the twins have nothing to do with the Internet. And that is not quite right. According to statistics (CDC Monthly Vital Statistics Report, June 30, 1998), there're 125 mln. of twins all over the world (the general number of people making pairs, triplets, quadruplets, etc.). Twins are rather active users of the Internet. You can find a bunch of sites created by twins, for them and/or about them. Here are some examples: Twins Magazine (http://www.twinsmagazine.com), Twins Life (http://www.twinslife.com), Twinspace (http://www.twinspace.com), Twins of the Net (http://www.mindspring.com/~wpk/twinlnks.html). The annual Twins Day is held in Twinsburg, Ohio (USA) gathering together twins, triplets, etc. from the America and abroad. The site of this feast (http://www.twinsdays.org) created by twin brothers contains reports on annual celebrations and serves as a registration list of participants. There's also a web-ring uniting 'twin' Net resources (http://www.webringorg/cgi-bin/webring?index&ring=twins) which counts more than one hundred sites.

The twin Net communication phenomenon makes us face the mystery of identity and self-knowledge. What does it mean for a person to genetically identify to another person? How does this influence his feelings? What is a personality? How unique is each of us? Isn't our feeling of self-inimitableness just an illusion? Might it happen that, at some level, the mankind could be defined as multiple-faced twins.

"The symbol of the Gemini is a rabbit with gilded ears which jumps out through the full Moon's hoop and runs along a mirrored labyrinth. According to Egyptian tradition, a mirrored passage is the place to be crossed in order to get rid of delusions. Only he who quits seeking to fruits of his actions for his own sake is able to find the way out. Be ready to sacrifice. The only way to get what you don't have is to quit what you have." (Julia Harrimort)

On definition of the Net culture. Cultural, or spiritual aspect of the Net is in communication of minds. Technologies mediating this communication-message are formal (they do not generate (self)content) and are transient (they become obsolete, or improve and change each other). And the pivot winding on cultural content is formed by the values. Thus, the Net culture is existence of the values in global electronic medium (their interaction, contradiction, devaluation, etc.).

Two views on 'data society': Toffler and Gibbson. E.Toffler in 'The Third Wave' (1980) writes that the basis of the new (postindustrial) civilization is the computer revolution and expansion of electronic communications. According to Toffler, the new technosphere ('electronic cottages' first of all, turning your home into the center of society, and 'distributed offices' that give chance to work at home) revolutionizes the infosphere which, in its turn, leads to restructuring of social life that is to creation of the new sociosphere. The lion's share of the book is dedicated to detailed description of future changes (by the way, some of them were predicted very precisely).

Simultaneously with futurological research of Toffler, W.Gibbson made a revolution in science fiction starting to depict the world socially based on electronic technologies. Developing of the Mars, star-planes, aliens and robots moved from the future into the past, changing from symbols of new reality into signs of obsolete literature.

Information as the prime value, artificial extension of opportunities of a human body and psychosis, realization of virtuality and virtualization of reality, corporate war for new technology, concentration on methods of data security and access, marginal tech-communities and lonely hakers, posthumous life of the intellect in the Net do not make a complete list of cyberpank standard motives.

In contrast to Toffler who constructs a normal society which is able to rationally solve its problems, Gibbson emphasizes deviation. Indeed, cyberpank means ignoring norms and laws of the 'data society' which is abnormal in the essence. Breaking laws of such a society (or outside dictated norms) is naturally considered as feat and virtue. And no 'social agreement' is possible here - it's only the war.

On the prognoses. Difference between a prognosis and a realized prognosis is only in the extent of contrast towards the actual reality (comprehension of it, to out it more precise). Any prognosis is fantastic since it describes the unreal as real. A realized prognosis is tautological since it describes the real as something not yet described. The former bewilders, the latter irritates or makes you laugh.

Difference between a prognoses and a prophecy is nearly the same as difference between a business plan and a manifest. In the first case they appeal to the mind, in the other one to the heart. Prognosis needs pragmatism, prophecy needs semantics. The true prophecy is never realized; and that is not it's purpose. It's function is to give some vision and to show the way, and not to describe something. It is a symbol, not a sign.

Net as Utopia. In it's early days of the Internet, cyberculture was subjected as a subculture of the young and was defined through concepts of marginality and the 'way of life'. In Andy Hawk's 'Manifest of the Future Culture' ('Manifest of Here-and-Now Tech-cultural (R)evolution') of the beginning of the year 1993, cyberculture is comprehended as one of the 'bubbles' in dynamic mixture of subcultures that all together will make the Future Culture. What other components of this cocktail (psychodellic, virtual, industrial, street cultures, post-modernism, 'fringe science' of the new age) had in common with the cyberculture was the novelty, aspiration for future opposing them to the conventional culture of their 'fathers'.

This vision is strictly connected with demography of the Internet of the time which was more a playing garden for 'children' - students passionately experimented with their consciousness and paradigms of socialization, even totally targeting on creation of new forms of life. Unwitnessed technology which gave way to every mind's transmission, destroyed distance and borders, and was independent from centralized supervision, opened a new world where everything might be possible, which might be constructed 'ab ovo' with the help of imagination and wish, not reality and need.

Tracks of this vision are metaphors that were used for the Internet description, that are revolution, colonization, frontier. Their general sense is in rejection of the old, stagnant, reactionary, it is in creation of the new, vivid, progressive. The idea, not the matter, and the creative spirit, not a stagnant tradition were proclaimed grounds of the new world.

A typical example of an Utopian approach is 'Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace' (1996) by J.P.Barlow. It's teenager pathos - 'Leave us alone!' - is targeted against parents (and the state as an embodiment of a parent control) living in lie and trying in vain to make their children accept this lie as the truth sealed by historic experience. The Net is constituted as an independent (self)regulating system which doesn't need any wardship and stands up against any interference. Stylistically this 'Declaration' tracks back to Jefferson who proclaimed independence of the young United States from the old lady Britain, and even back to the Bible prophets that heralded a new era when people might live not under laws but in paradise.

How the habit works. Becoming habitual, the new stops to excite, attract, and even doesn't arise any emotions. Technology makes no exclusion here. Once, that is less then half a century, miracles - a fridge, a phone, a TV-set, a computer - turned into banal 'home electronic devices'. Could you imagine feelings of a 'pre-Internet person' who is told about E-mail or the ICQ! And what did we come to? We just use these technologies in our every-day life and regard them as something quite usual. It's obvious that the same destiny is stored for the virtuality, the home Internet, the inevitable cyborgization, as well as any other technological achievements.

Available for the moment technological innovations are regarded by majority rather as a fantastic chance then a real possibility. A very simple principle works here, that is "Since I don't deal with it, it doesn't exist for me". We're fantastically trained to ignore the present. Force of the habit automatically trashes out everything unknown. There're so many miracles around us, nevertheless we continue 'watching the screen' and 'waiting for news'.

Geriborgs. Din Dennis in the CTHEORY predicts that next century the power of the world will be conquered by 'geriatric cyborgs' ('geriborgs') that are elders-technocrats that have managed to prolong their lives and to extend their bodies due to prosthetic technologies and direct access to the global computer network. The main aim of this virtual gerontocracy , the new world elite, will be 'extension of it's body and data privileges covering the most possible time period'. Geriborgs will concentrate on self-monitoring and self-optimization, using as possible objects their own bodies, or efficiency of orthopaedic appliances, as well as defense of cybor-fortresses, closed and guarded micro-universals where they spend their solipsistic, self-absorbing existence. Interests of the society will be just ignored by them, or exploited for realization of their personal body or data-ritual needs. The social sphere will be considered a dangerous zone permanently threatening their existence. Naturally, problems of defense-security on all levels, personal, social and financial, will be of prime vitality.

To look at this picture, it might seem a dismal cyberpank fantasy. Though, it's worth taking into account that in the modern society information technology, money and power stand as synonyms more and more often. We could memorize Bill Gate's story, or the last Duma elections in Russia, to see that the winner is he who owns the technology, no matter whether he sells it or uses. Cybor-elite as any other elite seeks methods to preserve and strengthen its privileged position. It protects its own interests by exclusion or obsorption of competitors at the market, by establishing institutions enforcing its authority, charging all kinds of rivals. Getting older, representatives of the cybor-elite will naturally search for modes of fixing the established status quo and prolonging their privileges outside a normal human life. Cyborgization of body and virtualization of mind might be logical decision of this goal. Though this decision is comprehensive only within the frames of a value system oriented on support and conservation of an individual 'I'. Adherence to such a system is not rare nowadays.

Non-material electronic media. 'The world consists of atoms and emptiness', stated Democritus. From the point of view of physics there's no principal difference between stone plates the Pyramids were constructed of, and bites and bits used as constructing material for the Net. Both are only configuration of elementary particles.

*Amphiblestron (ancient Greek) - a net (fish-net, tenet, etc.) as well as everything which could be used for entangling, throwing on/over, etc.