Adam Swift Thesis

Mapping posthuman discourse and

the evolution of living information

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,

2006

Creative Industries Faculty,

Queensland University of Technology

Adam Glen Swift B.A. SCU, B.A. (Hons.) UniSA

Keywords

Posthuman, Discourse, Evolution, Evolution Theory, Evolution Literacy, Metaphor, Environmentalism, Network Theory, Systems Theory, Cybernetics, Autopoiesis, Evolutionary Psychology, Genetics, Code Structures, Technology, Technological Change, Technological Determinism, Social Shaping of Technology, Symbiosis, Cyborgs, Cyborg Theory, Hybrid Theory, Informatics, Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Agents, Bots.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics i Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics ii Abstract

The discourse that surrounds and constitutes the posthuman emerged as a response to earlier claims of an essential or universal human or human nature. These discussions claim that the human is a discursive construct that emerges from various configurations of nature, embodiment, technology, and culture, configurations that have also been variously shaped by the forces of social history. And in the absence of an essential human figure, posthuman discourses suggest that there are no restrictions or limitations on how the human can be reconfigured. This axiom has been extended in light of a plethora of technological reconfigurations and augmentations now potentially available to the human, and claims emerge from within this literature that these new technologies constitute a range of possibilities for future human biological evolution.

This thesis questions the assumption contained within these discourses that technological incursions or reconfigurations of the biological human necessarily constitute human biological or human social evolution by discussing the role the evolution theories plays in our understanding of the human, the social, and technology. In this thesis I show that, in a reciprocal process, evolution theory draws metaphors from social institutions and ideologies, while social institutions and ideologies simultaneously draw on metaphors from evolution theory. Through this discussion, I propose a form of evolution literacy; a tool, I argue, is warranted in developing a sophisticated response to changes in both human shape and form. I argue that, as a whole, our understanding of evolution constitutes a metanarrative, a metaphor through which we understand the place of the human within the world; it follows that historical shifts in social paradigms will result in new definitions of evolution. I show that contemporary evolution theory reflects parts of the world as codified informatic systems of associated computational network logic through which the behaviour of participants is predefined according to an evolved or programmed structure.

Working from within the discourse of contemporary evolution theory I develop a space through which a version of the posthuman figure emerges. I promote this version of the posthuman as an Artificial Intelligence computational programme or autonomous agent that, rather than seeking to replace, reduce or deny the human subject, is configured as an exosomatic supplement to and an extension of the biological human.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics iii Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Introduction: The discourse of the posthuman 1

The emergence of the posthuman in discourse 1

Biological, technological, and posthuman: Discourse analysis 5

Chapter Two

The reciprocal role of evolution metaphors 25

Evolution and metaphor 25

Three categories of evolution metaphors 28

Evolution theory and human social cognition 34

Pre-Darwinian evolution theories 35

Darwin and Darwinian evolution theory 46

Chapter Three

The role of metaphor in contemporary evolution theory 65

Evolution metaphors at the dawn of the twenty-first century 65

The environment, complexity, autopoiesis, and other network enterprises 68

Evolutionary psychology and the pre-programmed human mind 83

The gene, codified information, and the utility of data 89

Chapter Four

The employment of evolutionary metaphors within a technological 99 innovation framework

Human biological and technological evolution 99

Human-technology symbiosis 109

Developing an evolution literacy within a technological innovation framework 114

Evolution literacy and technological change 120

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics v Chapter Five

The cybernetic de- and re-construction of the human subject 143

The discursive posthuman as cyborg 143

The cybernetic prehistory of the cyborg 146

Clynes and Kline and the mechanised human cyborg 151

Contemporary cyborgs and the extension of the cyborg metaphor 155

Haraway’s hybrid creature and hybrid discourse 162

Command-control-communication-intelligence and posthuman agency 171

Chapter Six

Agent technology as the progeny of the informatic subject 177

A new direction for posthuman discourse 177

A technological construct, the informatic human 182

Evolution theory and computational intelligence 202

Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents 218

Conclusion 235

REFERENCES 241

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics vi FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1. Aristotles ‘Great Chain-of-Being’ 36

Table 1. Three categories of evolution metaphors 33

Table 2. Three categories of evolution metaphors in pre-Darwinian evolution theories 43

Table 3. Three categories of evolution metaphors in Darwinian evolution theories 54

Table 4. Worldwide production of original content, c1999 190

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics vii Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my Principal Supervisor, Dr Glen Thomas, for the support, encouragement, and advice offered throughout my research candidature at Queensland

University of Technology. I am grateful for the advice and guidance he gave in organising the thesis draft and in refining its content and structure.

I would also like to thank my Associate Supervisor, Professor Greg Hearn, for the encouragement and advice he gave to me as a new PhD candidate at Queensland

University of Technology, and again in the final stages of my research candidature. I am also grateful to Professor Stuart Cunningham, Associate Professor Terry Flew and Dr Christina

Spurgeon for the input and advice offered during the final stages of my candidature.

Colleagues at Queensland University of Technology and elsewhere whose support during this candidature warrants special mention include: Geraldine Bloustien, Callum Gilmore,

Joshua Green, David McKenzie, John Pace, Jinna Tay, Jeremy Walker, Jason Wilson.

Thanks also to Roswitha Adldinger, Ben Cole, Hilary Crawford, Peter-Ralph Downs, Adrian

Waters, and Rohan Whiteman.

Thanks also to my family, especially Dr Naomi Runnegar.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics ix

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics x STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Adam Swift

21 November 2006

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics xi

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics xii Chapter One

Introduction: The discourse of the posthuman

Who is the third who walks beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you? T. S. Eliot ([1922] 2005) The waste land, lines 360-365.

We three, we’re not a crowd, we’re not even company — My echo, my shadow, and me. Frank Sinatra (1940) We three, lines 3-4.

The emergence of the posthuman in discourse This thesis is posited upon its positioning of the posthuman as a figurative and discursive figure that emerges from the literary and theoretical poststructuralist movement. My position in this thesis is not one that advocates the absolute end of the liberal human subject, or the outright rejection of humanism, but one that promotes the continuous disruption, radicalisation, and reconfiguration of the human. The proposition behind the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis is a denial that there is any such thing as an essential or universal human or human nature, and that both the human and the posthuman are, as discursive constructions, figures that emerge from various configurations of nature, embodiment, technology, and culture: configurations that have also been variously shaped by the forces of social history. Of interest to poststructuralist analysis of the human are those social and cultural discourses that represent the human as a construct of psychology, anthropology, social science, history, gender, and race. However, rather than discussing the construction of the posthuman in terms of such socio-cultural and political underpinnings, my discussion of the posthuman throughout this thesis is framed by the perspective of biological evolution discourse, technological development discourse, and the discourse of personal informatics. My task then is to show how such historical discourses participate in the construction of a particular version of the posthuman in contemporary culture. Nevertheless, in presenting the posthuman in this way, my discussion goes beyond the discourse of biology and evolution theory, and locates the posthuman within the context of media communications theory and analysis.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 1 My discussion of the posthuman must starts with an interpretation of Jacques Derrida, who remarked that the originary moment of modernism is postmodernism (1976). I read this, then, to suggest that the originary moment of humanism is posthumanism, concurring with Paula Rabinowitz who writes in her discussion of the posthuman that A simplistic reading of the posthuman might see it as beyond and before time and type, and outside the boundaries – chronological and spatial and generic – that have held humanity and humanism. While obviously the posthuman cannot claim for itself such a utopic space, still the question also fixes a certain stability onto the constructs of history and gender and sex – as if we know precisely what these highly fluid, contested and malleable forms actually are or have been before we ‘posted’ them. (Rabinowitz , 2000, p. 42) For these reasons, my use of the term posthuman in this thesis is as a periodising term, in that it is a response to the discourses and main tenets of humanism. I employ the ‘post‘ in the posthuman in a manner similar to how Jean-François Lyotard ([1986] 1992) describes the ‘post-‘ in his definition of the postmodern: The ‘post-‘ indicates something like a conversion: a new direction from the previous one. (p. 90)

This thesis, then, does not promote or support a theory based on the technologically induced end of the biological genus Homo sapiens. Instead, I argue that the term posthuman is an expansive one in which a ‘new direction’ for the human can be considered. Again, this new direction is, in a Derridian fashion, an additional or surplus direction for the human. To this end, this thesis is not a simple deconstruction of the human as it has been historically represented in biological discourse or technological discourse. It is, rather, a recontextualisation of such discourses through which a particular version of the posthuman emerges as a broadly structured hybrid – a disembodied amalgam of biology, technology, and informatic discourse. Thus, my concern does not lie with any particular embodied shape or form, but with the thematic content of the posthuman – defined that is, by the aspect, perspective or point-of-view with which posthuman discourse is involved (Halliday, 1993, p. 2).

The posthuman as it is presented in this thesis, then, is initially premised on the idea that, in the absence of an essentialist and universal human figure, there are no restrictions or limitations on how the posthuman can be configured. In recent history this axiom has been extended in the light of a plethora of technological reconfigurations and augmentations now potentially available to the human. This follows the assertion that the ‘self’ of Modern times, the subject as the forger of the subject’s own destiny, or as a unit of action under the control and ownership of its own self has been thoroughly displaced through its relationship with the technological. The material figure of the cyborg, for example, incorporates technology into,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 2 onto, and around the human body, thereby overcoming the historical limitations of the biological human. Such accounts of the cyborg have been predominately concerned with prosthetic and implanted mechanised technologies and homeostatic systems that are employed in an attempt to overcome perceived ‘technical problems’ in the human organism. In this thesis I critique this version of the cyborg as one in which a decidedly humanistic metanarrative recurs, albeit in a reconfigured and technologically enhanced manner. Rather than merge the technological or the cybernetic with the biological or the organic, the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis is founded on the abstract technological system of a discursive or informatic structure. That is, rather than depict an embodied, technologically enhanced or enabled, biological, and objective posthuman figure, I represent an abstract entity ‘embodied’, as such, in the form of an Artificial Intelligence computational agent.

Following the assortment of poststructuralist representations of the fractured and multifaceted self, I argue that the disparate forms of human-centred information could together represent a digitised representation of a ‘multiple’ self. Thus, while many of the constructs of interest to poststructuralist representations of the human (psychology, anthropology, social science, history, gender representations, colonialism, discourse) can by no means be effectively and accurately represented in digitised symbolic form, I argue that various forms of human-centred information could be collated to render a fairly accurate linguistic or symbolic construction of the human subject. Much like the narrative self Daniel Dennet (1991) discusses, the informatic self is “yet another abstraction, not a thing in the brain, but still a remarkably robust and almost tangible attractor of properties, the ‘owner of record’” (p. 418). I argue that, when rendered as an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent, this posthuman entity would serve not as a as a replacement or substitute for the human, but as an additional and exosomatic supplement to the human. Thus, it is a posthuman figure that is, despite being divorced from its biological ancestry, able to participate in, with, and alongside the discourses that surround and constitute the human figure. That is, rather than being enmeshed with the embodied human and object technology, the posthuman as it is represented here is imbricated in the discourse of contemporary evolution theory and the discourse of technology and technique.

This thesis is by no means the first discussion to recognise the disembodying and reconfiguring potential inherent in computational technologies in terms of the posthuman. Developments in various fields of computer science and robotics such as Artificial Intelligence, neural networks, Artificial Life, and network communications, for example have spawned a number of posthuman visionaries including Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, Raymond Kurzweil, Kevin Kelly, and Max More. While the decisive lack of female representation on this list must be noted, it should also be evident that there are strong masculine desires represented in such discourse: the desire to replace the parent via the self-generation of an autonomous techno-social body that is immortal and quintessentially

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 3 masculine. In outlining a form of supplemental posthumanism I avoid subscribing or succumbing to those discourses that attempt to replace, reduce, or deny the biological human. Instead, throughout my discussion, I draw upon Katherine Hayles (1999), who targets the disembodiment promoted in such ideology, noting that in many ways these discourses disregard the initial themes and motives of posthumanism and replace rather than reject the humanist metanarrative of the embodied and essential human with the metanarrative of the disembodied, augmented and virtual posthuman (1999a, p. 22). Hayles sees this as being, in many ways, a “grafting of the posthuman onto a liberal humanist view of the self,” and argues that when Moravec imagines being downloaded into a computer he is by no means abandoning the autonomous liberal subject but is “expanding its prerogatives into the realm of the posthuman” (1999a, p. 286-287). However, where Hayles reclaims the physical human body as central locus of a subjective humanness, I remain committed to a version of the posthuman in which Artificial Intelligence computational programmes or autonomous agents emerge, in a process of autopoiesis, as a supplement to and an extension of the biological human.

My approach in this thesis has been to avoid particular biological or technological objects, artefacts or instances and concentrate instead on developing a broader theoretical framework for the version of the posthuman I advocate. To this end, I argue that a conceptual space within contemporary evolution theory can be exploited in order to promote a model based on networked, codified structures. When developing the evolution literacy I argue is necessary for this to occur, I do not claim any expertise within the field of evolutionary biology. Likewise, I do not claim expertise within the field of Artificial Intelligence or software development in my discussion of the codified structures I argue are needed to carry the version of the posthuman I present. Rather, my entry point to this discussion has been to approach these discourses as discourse, and I engage with these discourses through the perspective of cultural studies and media communications theory in which I have been schooled. Nevertheless, I argue that the value of this thesis lies in the application of the theory I develop and present in this thesis, as it has been developed from concepts derived from media communications theory. At one level, this meta-theory could be applied in a range of object based approaches and inquiries to biological or technological artefacts or instances. At another level, in terms of the posthuman the Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents I present through this discussion could be further developed in a model form. I argue in this thesis that such agents, through their manipulation of digitised information, could have an impact on the object based real-world in which human action occurs. This, I argue, would encourage and foster new behavioural patterns and new collaborative relationships between human-users and other human and non-human entities, at individual, familial, social, cultural, national, and global levels, enabling the relationship that exists between the human and the technological to go beyond gadgetry towards a global approach to the management of technologised networks and systems, both human and non-human. Across the entire social

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 4 spectrum, from biological reproduction, through education, governance, and work, from buying, brokering, bidding and selling, and right through to the management of aged and invalid care, agent technology could facilitate all manner of load balancing, logistics support, process and traffic control, failure anticipation and recovery, surveillance and monitoring, communication, information synthesis, interest matching, customisation, and deep personalisation (Odell, 2000, p. 20).

My early research into autonomous agents began with a study into the Artificial Intelligence systems that supply the operational rules and variables behind their logic. To this end, I undertook the unit ITB742, ‘Principles of Artificial Intelligence’ through the Faculty of Information Technology – School of Software Engineering and Data Communications at Queensland University of Technology. This unit was originally developed for students of the Faculty of Education School of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, and was designed to provide a broad introduction to the various fields of Artificial Intelligence. Topics covered included the meaning of intelligence in the context of computer control systems, the fundamental concepts of rule based expert systems, fuzzy control, neural networks, and evolutionary programming. I found that the structured approach of coursework study was a convenient way to enter the discourse of Artificial Intelligence successfully, and provided me with a stronger understanding of the aims and limits of intelligent systems. Nevertheless, as a branch of computer science Artificial Intelligence is in itself an extraordinarily large field of study that contains within its scope numerous sub-branches beyond those addressed in the unit ITB742. Artificial Intelligence has been seen variously as a way of helping us understand human psychology; as an approach to a theory of general multiple intelligence; or as a logical program that simply performs some sort of useful problem solving activity (Boden, 1985, p. 95). An adequate taxonomy of the entire field of Artificial Intelligence is, therefore, truly beyond the scope of this thesis. And I instead frame my discussion of Artificial Intelligence in Chapter Six within the scope of this thesis by limiting my discussion towards the philosophies and ideas that underly the discourses of Artificial Intelligence, particularly those discourses that fit within my understanding of posthuman evolution and the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis, rather than the particular instances, structures, rules, and variables that operate these agents. In the following section, I define and delimit the key terms that continue to inform this discussion throughout the thesis.

Biological, technological, and posthuman: Discourse analysis Since antiquity one of the most pressing philosophical concerns has been the quest for a satisfactory definition of the human and the human self as it is positioned in the world and as it experiences itself within its world. Jeremy Rifkin (1998) has argued that, throughout history, humankind has sought to identify and position itself in relation to its place within the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 5 natural environment. Each generation, he argues, justifies its place with a new definitive metanarrative of the surrounding world. In this thesis I argue that the development of an acceptable theory of evolution is a persuasive influence over individual and social understanding and acceptance of our place in the world. Yet acceptable theories of evolution, I argue, only reflect the views of their historical authors, and are subsequently reflected in dominant social ideologies. In Chapter Two I argue that this is evident in the role various state and Church institutions have had in shaping and reflecting ideologies based on a ‘state of nature‘, and in the role Darwinian ideals enjoyed in guiding and reflecting the gestalt of the twentieth century socio-cultural, economical, and political ideologies. I argue that the re-organisation of culture, society, technology, and nature in the twenty-first century is likewise justified by, and reflected in, contemporary accounts of evolution. Yet this time around, nature is cast in the image of the computer, and in the language of abstract code. Through its participation in the contemporary story of natural evolution, this thesis creates a discursive space within evolution theory from which to hypothesise both a satisfactory definition of the human and the human self, and the possible shape and trajectory of posthuman evolution and the posthuman.

In Chapter Two I outline the historical accounts of human evolution prior to the nineteenth century, showing how this discourse carried a legacy inherited from ancient philosophy in which humanness was seen as an essential, eternal, rational, stable, coherent, thinking, natural, and authentic consciousness from which everything else for the human proceeded. Throughout history, various instances of philosophy, natural science, anthropology, and literature devoted to this philosophical belief contributed to a form of humanism based on the centrality of the human as both origin and destiny of reason. This has been variously expressed in the ascension of the human over and above nature and history, the eventual displacement of religion and religiosity by an empirical and pragmatic science born of religion, the expropriation of nature and natural resources for industry and productivity, and the subjection of each of these contingencies to various forms of institutionalised governance and regulation. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ([1845] 1976) take this form of humanism to task, arguing that such a form of essential human consciousness could not exist outside of or independent of history, politics, and social relations. Marx and Engels argue that the human subject is not the cause but the effect of an individual’s material conditions of existence. The fact that these conditions so radically differed accounted for subjectivities constructed from seemingly incompatible histories, politics, and social relationships. In outlining their ideas concerning social formation, productive forces, relations of production, superstructure, and economic determination, Marx and Engels show that any definitive claim to humanity or human subjectivity is itself an ideology (Althusser, 1970, pp. 219-241). From this point in history, humanity and human subjectivity are understood to be the mere effect of forces that are always peripherally located, be they economic, linguistic, social, sexual, historical, racial, psychological, scientific in nature, or based on rationalist ideologies like

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 6 truth, liberty, and progress. Through the work of Marx and Engels idealism is replaced by materialism, giving the human subject a history and a contingency denied by essentialist humanism.

The idea of an essential human nature was further attacked by those who believed that the human subject is an effect of linguistic and discursive structures that are always already in place. Structuralists such as Ferdinand de Saussure argued that language is not an instrument for reflecting a pre-existent reality, but a system that is always contaminated, interleaved, and opaquely coloured by layers of meaning that are the result of an endless process of human social and cultural interactions (Selden & Widdowson, 1993, p. 127). Some years later, in their critique of the structuralist insistence that language is an impersonal and disconnected sign system, poststructuralist theorists asserted that language is always articulated within other linguistic and non-linguistic systems. This broader conception of ‘language-in-use’ is summed up in the term 'discourse': the product of social, historical, and institutional formations through which further meaning is produced.

Through the work of Michel Foucault we are shown how various discursive or ‘knowledge’ formations which have enabled institutions to wield power and domination by defining, classifying, and positioning the sick, the criminal, the poor, the mad, and the deviant have historically arisen and been replaced (Foucault, [1961] 1967, [1965] 1975, [1966] 1970, [1976] 1979, 1977). For Foucault, discourse is the realm that determines at all times who is allowed to speak with authority, when such speech can be spoken, where such speech can take place, and the criteria by which such speech is accessed and judged. In other words, discourse determines and defines what it is possible to say. Foucault shows that discourses are the negotiated outcomes of power struggles in politics, science, literature, and art, and that this power is not constituted in any actual person or object, but is something that is produced and expressed in the relationship that exists between individual humans, and between human and non-human objects. The more dominant a discourse is, the greater is its claim to the power that further positions subjects and objects and delimits subjective agency. Yet while power penetrates and governs all relations, it can not be seen as complete and absolute, as any claim to absolute objectivity made within a specific discourse is always spurious and unreliable: there can be no 'true' discursive statement, only discourses that reflect and justify the ideologies of the dominant and prevailing intellectual and political authorities of the day. Here Foucault’s thought echoes Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that people first decide what they want and then fit the facts to their aim: Ultimately, man [sic.] finds in things nothing but what he himself has imported into them. (Nietzsche, 1967, n. 606)1

1 Much of the literature consulted in this thesis uses the masculine pronoun, and I can only assume that the intent of these authors is to use it in the generic sense of ‘human’, ‘human

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 7 This is particularly evident in historically based discourse, as history and historical periods are not discursive entities for which can be claimed a singular, uniformed, harmonious, and continuous unity, but discontinuous and contradictory stories proposed and propagated by the vested interests of certain power-knowledge discourses. Accepted accounts of history are, like any other discursive struggle, the ‘spoils’ claimed in the fleeting victory of a given ‘culture war’. Foucault argued that power relations are evident in all discourse, and that power within a given discourse is constructed as certain dichotomies are exposed within the field of interest, the values of which are subsequently imposed as definitive of all subjective existence within that discourse. For example, Foucault showed that discourses in which concepts of sickness, criminality, destituteness, madness, and deviancy are produced are defined through their dichotomous relationship to concepts of good health, lawfulness, solvency, sanity, and normality. Nevertheless, while power-knowledge within discursive formations may have no universal and essential validity, the historical domination of certain discourses determines and constrains the knowledge base and subject positions that prevail in particular periods. In real world relations, these discourses are operated and expressed so as to control and preserve dominant social relations in ways that have immediate and direct effects on individual and social organisation.

It is through this understanding and usage of the term discourse that I approach both historical and contemporary evolution theory. Discourse is a crucial term in contemporary cultural studies and communication theory, yet its diversity in usage often results in confusion or uncertainty around the specific meaning of its methodological deployment. In this thesis I draw on Foucault’s definition of discourse as a system of historically contingent rules that constitutes objects, subjects, and concepts alike. Foucault showed that these rules effectively govern the production of statements, including scientific statements, and the biologically-based evolution statements and ideas that I work with in this thesis are imbricated as such within the concept of discourse. Through the approach Foucault developed, the focus shifts from language, speaking, and writing to the organisational and institutional practices and material activities that are produced in and governed by particular discursive formations. Foucault showed the human as that which is born into a world already saturated with meaningful discourses and discursive practices and arrangements. And I argue that, since they are always-already located within discourse, material objects, human subjects, and knowledge-based concepts must themselves be considered as objects of discourse. Thus, while practitioners of biology-based evolution science may not imagine that they are conducting, constituting or working within a ‘discourse’, I argue that the organisational and institutional practices and arrangements that they both draw from and supply can be recognised and positioned as being discursive. Therefore, rather than

being’, ‘humankind’, ‘humanity’, and ‘humanness’. Henceforth, without wishing to cause the reader confusion (or offence), any quoted reference to ‘man’, ‘men’, ‘his’, or other masculine pronouns should be read in light of the original author’s use of exclusive language, and not mine.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 8 approaching evolution theory through the lens of biological science, I approach evolution theory as being a power-knowledge discourse that constitutes a particular discursive arrangement, and I position the broader implied and accepted meanings of evolution theory as such. My discussion of evolution is, therefore, focused not on how evolutionary theory is taken up in culture, but how culture constructs evolutionary theories in light of the particular needs and desires of the powerful so that both evolution and culture are understood as natural and biologically given. In this regard I subscribe to the philosophy of Donna Haraway who writes that “the detached eye of objective science is an ideological fiction, and a powerful one” (1989, p. 13).

This thesis rests upon the assumption that socio-cultural bodies of knowledge, particularly those concerned with the shape and form of the posthuman, must necessarily include discourses based on biological evolution, technological development, and informatic structures. It is my contention that these discourses also share an historical legacy of ‘struggle’ that is common to all bodies of knowledge, and that these discourses are, therefore, amenable to investigations similar to those conducted in other fields of study. Indeed, the recent debate surrounding ‘Intelligent Design’ can be nominated as proof that any definitive claims in evolution theory cannot be considered as a form of final statement, and that evolution theories remain a site in which political interests and ideologies continue to be voiced and continue to compete. The various discussions that are addressed in this thesis together show that the material and non-material conditions that constitute the posthuman are reflected in the various systems that surround it. And like other social and cultural discourses, the discourses that constitute the posthuman are, I argue, not arbitrary, but prone to continuous change. There can be, in other words, no one definitive and final posthuman, but many instances of the posthuman. I argue that new discourses of the posthuman arise and change in response to changes in the discursive, cognitive, and material systems from which they are drawn. It follows then, that the discourse I address in this thesis does not passively reflect the final reality of the posthuman, but participates in what I consider to be the emerging and ongoing shape of one particular instance of the posthuman, presented in this thesis as an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent.

The rejection of various tenets of modernism and humanism in poststructuralist thought and theory include a critique of positivist philosophical systems that argue that many intelligible propositions can be definitely and assuredly verified or falsified through scientific achievement. Foucault, for example, shows that knowledge is not acquired through a neutral observation of nature and natural phenomenon, but is always constructed by participants that are located within established discursive systems. This suggests that for any theory of natural evolution or biological inquiry, organisms can never quite achieve the ‘state of nature’ heretofore favoured in evolution theory. Natural organisms, like non-organic objects and artefacts, are always discursive constructs: a combination of the physical organism/object,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 9 the language used to describe and delimit the organism/object, and the practices that position the organism/object within broader socio-cultural frameworks. In other words our definition and description of nature itself is formed through social processes; the result of which has fostered a long tradition of colonisation and oppression. And any previous notion of power as it was derived from natural and naturally evolved sources must be reassessed in light of the broader discursive frameworks that implicate such relationships of domination in order to avoid the “badly mistaken identifications and explanations inherited from earlier generations” (Winner, 2005, p. 397). Such ‘mistakes’ within projects of Western science and technology, writes Winner, have frequently imposed “highly suspect, often flagrantly unjust assumptions” on natural organisms and objects (2005, pp. 397-398), including biases within humanist discourse based on gender, race, and other physical differences.

In Chapter Two I argue that, throughout history, the body of work positioned as evolutionary theory has exhibited a tendency to justify, naturalise, and normalise phenomena that must ultimately be considered as social and cultural constructions. My inquiry is based on a deconstruction of the metaphors historically employed in evolution theory. I use the term metaphor to mean those linguistic and structural devices whose most basic function is as conduit for idea or meaning (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 p. 3). As with other disciplines, metaphors are employed within the biological sciences when the language that is available cannot adequately carry the intended meaning, and one established sign is substituted as another comparative sign. Indeed, sign substitution through comparison is the base model of the metaphor, and it is through metaphor that we are subsequently able to name, position, and define that which is otherwise nameless, and at times unnameable. Metaphors, in turn, are examined, tested, challenged, and extended through regular use until they become a literal sign, entrenched in the linguistic machinery, and their function as metaphor declines (Draaisma, 2000, pp. 2-12). Of particular interest to my discussion is the metaphors Lakoff and Johnson categorise as ‘experiential,’ ‘orientational,’ and ‘personification’ metaphors (1980, pp. 1-14). For Lakoff and Johnson, these three cognitive realms of metaphor are particularly useful in the abstraction, organisation, and practical application of spatial and temporal phenomena. In this thesis, I extend Lakoff and Johnson’s classification to show that each of the three types of metaphor they present parallels the three categories of metaphor I present in this thesis: ‘metaphors of evolution’, ‘evolution as metaphor’ and ‘evolutionary metaphors’ respectively.

The first of these categories, ‘metaphors of evolution’, shows how the biological sciences borrow metaphors from existing social language to describe and explain biological evolutionary phenomena. The second category, ‘evolution as metaphor,’ is a reverse position of the first category and shows how biological mechanisms are applied as metaphors to explain social and cultural change. The last category, ‘evolutionary metaphors’ highlights a hybrid of the first two categories as a distinct new metaphor. This last category is

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 10 a synthesis of ‘biological’ and ‘socio-cultural’ language that contributes to the composite body of ‘evolution’ language that in turn serves to reflect and justify the dominant views of the epoch from which the metaphors were originally drawn. This category highlights the vectors at which ‘biological understandings’ and ‘social interpretations’ of evolution intersect to produce a constitutive narrative of change, a metanarrative that seeks to establish and justify a place for human and non-human objects within an otherwise unscripted or ‘natural’ world. I argue that there is vast power associated with the constitution and acceptance of new theories of evolution, and that the individuals or institutions who voice new interpretations of evolution ‘find’ in nature a means through which they reinforce their own privilege and prestige. Indeed, new ideas of evolution, once they have been enunciated, critiqued and debated, will only be generally accepted when people are able to see their own ideological practices and organisations as reflections of natural operating systems and principles (Rifkin, 1999, pp. 197-226). If the ideas of evolution that are presented are justifiable, then they are seen as inevitable and are upheld as truth. And when these ideas are presented as epistemic certainties they ultimately affect the ways we understand and constitute ourselves and our societies.

In Chapter Three my attention is drawn towards those discourses of evolution that underwrite the metanarrative of contemporary evolution. Like other fields of poststructuralist thought, these discourses are complicated in that they emerge alongside, within, or through seemingly disconnected discourses. That is, contemporary evolution theory extends the role of metaphor by unashamedly appropriating, deconstructing, liberating, extending, overlapping, borrowing, and questioning other bodies of knowledge, including biological and non-biological history, cybernetics, network theory, computation, informatics, psychology, and behaviouralism. I address three separate yet often overlapping major schools of thought that together constitute a larger body of contemporary evolution theory – ‘environmentalism’, ‘evolutionary psychology’, and ‘genetics’ – arguing that the reciprocity that occurs between these contemporary bodies of knowledge contributes to an overarching ‘evolutionary’ ideology, a contemporary metanarrative in which parts of the world are viewed as codified informatic systems of associated computational network logic through which the behaviour of participants is predefined according to an evolved structure.

Together, the three areas I discuss in Chapter Three provide the theoretical groundwork through which I then take my discussion of the posthuman. While each of the three areas discussed is inherently capable of standing alone, they can also be seen as simultaneously supporting, competing with, interacting with, and completing each other. And while there are discrepancies and competition between each theme, the overall picture that is presented shows a deeply rich, entwined, and ongoing discussion of evolution in which hybridity, fluidity, and interaction are the norm. I argue that such a hybrid theory of human evolution challenges previous assumptions based on rationalism and empirical supremacy by

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 11 emphasising connectionism, networked systems, chaos theory, and other nondeterministic ideals. Thus, I suggest that environmentalism, evolutionary psychology, and genetics show the human to be a construct of both an evolved biological substrate and disembodied informational patterns. For the human, this highlights a transition from a relatively stable, singular, fixed, and mostly homogenous species that has existed for many millennia to a posthuman genus that encompass numerous hybrid forms of human and non-human biological, technological, discursive, and other socio-cultural components into a multiple and fluid mode of being. And as this thesis emphasises the improbability and indeed the impossibility of one dominant and conclusive form of posthumanism, I draw upon the evolution theory I discuss in Chapter Three to advocate a version of the posthuman that emerges in response to perceived or constructed environmental needs. That is, the version of the posthuman I present would emerge in response to modifications in information that are seen in advances in scientific knowledge, new technologies and techniques, new networked institutional and organisational structures, and post-industrial economic systems, particularly those that have emerged from the computational science of Artificial Intelligence..

In this thesis I argue that the discourse of evolution is in itself a form of technology and that an additional level of utility can be gleaned from evolutionary definitions of human, non- human, and posthuman actors. To this end I propose a form of evolution literacy; a tool, I argue, is warranted in developing a sophisticated response to changes in both human shape and form. My use of the term literacy is not one based solely on the act of ‘reading’ or ‘writing’ evolution theory, but one that is based on the recognition that literacy is itself a dynamic resource that is constantly remade by users within specific contextual arrangements, including everyday relations and interests of power that operate within and across various social and cultural institutions. Literacy, as it is used in this thesis, is a ‘meta- knowledge’ of diverse meaning systems that is continuously evolving and shifting in response to social and cultural change. That is, it is an understanding of how our knowledge, ideas, information, and theories about evolution are structured and formed through ongoing relationships to other texts, genres, discourses, and modes of meaning, and how these, in turn, affect different social readings and usages of evolution theory. An evolution literacy is, therefore, a social knowledge that is constructed in political, social, cultural, and ideological practices that involve a diverse range of institutional discourses, pedagogies, and rules. And in order to attain a level of proficiency in evolution literacy, participants must understand the practices and contexts that are governed by these conventions, including the ability to recognise implied and stated meanings from a variety of fixed, flexible, and alternative viewpoints.

In developing and defining this evolution literacy I argue that an understanding of the mechanisms, terms, processes and outcomes of evolution may also be applied in discussions of non-biological change. An evolution literacy would therefore examine a

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 12 particular socio-cultural artefact, event or structural or institutional technique, outlining its evolutionary history and, subsequently, its potential or possible future evolution trajectory. It would acknowledge the role of a variety of actors in the historical shaping of particular socio- cultural artefacts or norms, simultaneously determining the extent to which certain actors have been shaped through particular evolutionary derived mechanisms. I argue that without such a form of literacy – that is, without understanding the processes and mechanisms employed in evolution – we risk producing discourses that justify all levels of change as simply ‘evolution’, and that this, in turn, evokes the most dangerous assumptions enunciated in pre- or post-Darwinian evolution theories: that by necessity evolution equals ‘progress’, and that progress in turn justifies ‘purpose’. The myth of evolutionary progress holds a strong place in many Western ideologies and is often reassociated in socio-cultural readings of evolution and evolutionary mechanisms. Similarly ‘purpose’ within evolution can be seen lingering in contemporary debates, particularly those concerned with ‘Intelligent Design’. While both progress and purpose have been generally refuted as an implied or apparent phenomenon that is read into evolution, the influence of these myths is still a dominant ideology in discussions of and models for change. Indeed, many of the discourses surrounding posthumanism contain statements claiming that the human has both choice of direction and control of continuous human evolution, that it is the human who will choose the human’s evolutionary successor, and that it is, indeed, time for the human to evolve in response to an environment now dominated by suitable technologies and techniques. I argue that an evolution literacy would understand and appreciate the application of evolution metaphors in such theories of technological and human development and the ways in which these metaphors ultimately condition our understanding of the relationships between human and non-human objects. An evolution literacy would, therefore, show how technology – here positioned as an active, living participant in human socio-cultural life – constructs, acquires and redistributes human agency within society.

Throughout history, the paradigm of inquiry that has sought to locate human selfhood has slowly shifted from religiosity and philosophy to natural history to biology. Prior to the nineteenth century, Foucault argues, molecular structures, organic bodies, ecologies, and other biological entities did not ‘exist’ in the manner in which they are now known. This is not to claim that biological organisms did not exist, but that such things could only be articulated through the knowledge systems that was available at that time: [A]ll that existed was living beings, which were viewed through a grid of knowledge constituted by natural history. (Foucault, [1966] 1970, p. 127). Drawing on Foucault, Richard Doyle argues that the conditions of possibility – the conceptual matrix framing biology as a science of life – had yet to be articulated (Doyle, 1997, p. 10).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 13 The unfolding of evolution theory throughout history has enabled biological inquiries to branch further into fields of molecular biology and genetics, leading eventually to a transition from the study of human ‘nature’, to the study of the human organism. This shift, however, has by no means led to the end of humanist ‘grand narratives’. For instance, when Francis Fukuyama claims that “human nature is the sum of the behaviour and characteristics that are typical of the human species, arising from the genetic rather than environmental factors [where] typicality is a statistical artefact [that] refers to something close to the median of a distribution of behaviour or characteristics” (2002, p. 130), he is attempting to re-identify the essential ‘human’ that is located within a genetic base (Fukuyama’s mysterious ‘Factor X’) (2002, p. 149). Fukuyama’s core argument regarding the posthuman is that any change to the human will inevitably and irreversibly changes the ethics and values of a shared human nature.

Undoubtedly genetic research and associative technologies such as gene therapy, embryo selection, and in vitro fertilisation will continue to ease the means by which humans intervene in the ‘natural’ cycle of genetic transference. These technologies have led commentators such as Gregory Stock to claim that the current stage of human biological development is by no means the last. Natural selection, Stock argues, has given way to “a highly selective social process that is far more rapid and effective at spreading successful genes than traditional sexual competition and mate selection” (Stock, 2002, p. 3). Stock argues that such technologies will not only reinforce the continuity of the human species but will effectively increase the human’s chances of living a healthy life. Indeed, turning away from the promise of genetic engineering “would be to deny our essential nature and perhaps our destiny […] such a retreat might deaden the human spirit of exploration, taming and diminishing us” (Stock, 2002, p. 170). Stock’s vision of such emancipatory science is also evident in the work of Damien Broderick (1999), who outlines the potential for a genetically enhanced human longevity of four-hundred or more years. Missing in Broderick’s text is the discussion that address the implication such a slow rate of generational change would have on social advancement, the implications for a four-hundred year term of labour, and the diminishment or displacement of the intrapersonal ‘metanarrative’ that is constituted in the face of a standard lifespan. Perhaps it is that these texts consider such social and cultural phenomena elements of the human and humanness that will ultimately be superseded by the posthuman.

I align myself with Halliwell and Mousley who, in their critique of the posthuman future ‘debate’ that has developed (for example, the discussion that has occurred between Stock and Fukuyama), draw attention to the fact that both camps ultimately return to key humanist issues about human nature, freedom of choice, responsibility, and ‘shared humanity’. This indicates, they argue, that any debate about the posthuman is intimately bound to humanist concerns (2003, p. 190). This comment is repeated by Andy Clark (2003), when he writes that

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 14 [t]here has been much written about our imminent ‘posthuman’ future, but if I am right, this is a dangerous and mistaken image. The very things that sometimes seem most posthuman, the deepest and most profound of our potential biotechnological mergers will reflect nothing so much as their thoroughly human source. (2003, p. 6) One might imagine that biologically based definitions of species, organism, and environment would ultimately position people of different sex, gender, race, age, embodiment, and location as sharing a form of humanness that is more inclusive than exclusive. As Steven Best and Douglas Kellner suggest, in their discussion of the postmodern, “clearly human beings are a distinct group that differentiates itself from others in order to secure its own identity, in this case, from other species rather than members of its own species” (1991, p. 268). Despite Best and Kellner’s commitment to postmodernism, a similar claim to theirs can be found in a recent article written against the teaching of postmodernism in Australian secondary schools by playwright David Williamson, who argues: We have a universal set of human emotions that vary little between cultures and which drive us to universally exhibit egocentricity, tribal affiliation, susceptibility to charisma, nepotism, sensitivity to social pressure, altruism, excessive fear of threat, pair bonding and other deep rooted tendencies that literature has identified as "human nature" for thousands of years. (Williamson, 2006, ¶ 4) On principle, evolutionary psychologists and genetic behaviouralists would agree, arguing that such behavioural traits are a legacy of human evolution. I argue that the fact that social, cultural and technological institutions, artefacts, and ideologies consistently and constantly change suggests that any humanism that claims to speak for all humans or indeed non- human actors, including ones that are based on biology or technology, ultimately impose limits on what characteristics and behavioural traits qualify as human.

Poststructuralist discourse analysis has shown that such claims to universality are highly suspect in their assumption of neutrality and non-bias. Nevertheless, many instances of the posthuman re-appropriate universals, both contentious and agreeable, through a commitment to the belief that if universals can be found hardwired or programmed by ‘nature’ then they can also be programmed into posthuman entities. Hayles reminds us that such renderings of the posthuman are deeply involved with discursive constructs and boundary questions, arguing that the relocation of human selfhood from an original and natural being, to an evolved and mechanistic organism, to an abstract codified structure does not only change the seat of identity – from soul to brain to cell – but radically alters the nature of the human subject (Hayles, 1999a, p. 279-280). The ‘programmed’ approach to the posthuman indicates that any such alterations involve a degree of applied decisions, and that any universal is either included or rejected at the discretion of the designer. Any version that seeks to perpetrate or engineer a form of posthumanism based on the myths of

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 15 masculine auto-reproduction, parentless replication, or computational ‘consciousness immortality’ has purposefully and actively sought that application, and purposefully and actively sought to extinguish other ‘incompatible’ universals. It is in this regard that this thesis rejects the self-centred and amoral versions of the posthuman found in the discourse of commentators like Minsky (1988), Moravec (1988, 1999), Kelly (1994), More (1997a, 1997b, 2001, 2004) and Kurzweil (1999), and argues instead, in Chapter Six, for a version of the posthuman that is capable of retaining and articulating the best of humanism while simultaneously rejecting the essentialist, determinist, and universally fixed definitions that have been shown to marginalise and alienate others.

Poststructuralist methods of inquiry into the natural sciences have shown that technological objects and techniques can also be regarded as social and cultural constructions. Whether it is the technology of language and writing that first drew the attention of structuralist and poststructuralist inquiry, the technology of science and scientific discourse or the technology of constructed artifice, both the human and humanity can be better understood by appreciating the role technology has played in their discursive construction. And any discussion of such technologies and techniques should also take into consideration the historical, social, and political concepts, theories, research programs, ideologies, and practices that are involved in defining, producing, and using them. Individual scientists, researchers, developers, technicians, and engineers are not simply subjects apprehending objects in an unstipulated ‘state of nature’: their activities are conducted within the conceptual limits of particular and historically situated discourse. Science is not disembodied truth; it is social knowledge, a form of life and a material- semiotic practice utilising narrative forms similar to those of other social knowledges. (Wajcman, 2004, p. 83) Poststructuralist accounts of technology suggest that at the level of the individual, the practical and symbolic integration of ubiquitous technology into the everyday makes the individual an other to the ‘originary’ or ‘naturally evolved’ human. Yet poststructuralism also resists attempts to normalise or define an essentialist view of nature, the human, human subjectivity, and technology, regarding each instance as culturally determined. Instead, it considers the individual who uses that technology as one that is framed or contextualised by that usage: framed by the utility functions of that technology, framed by the internalisation of their relationship to the technology, and framed by the extraneous discourse of the technology (the ‘prior’, ‘outside’ or ‘additional’ information and knowledge about that technology). This thesis approaches technology through a cultural perspective that is, in turn, positioned within a biological evolution framework.

The term ‘technology’ is itself an extraordinarily broad term. Stephen Kline writes that the term is used to represent things, actions, processes, methods and systems; it is used symbolically and metaphorically to discuss human behavioural and organisational

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 16 characteristics; and it is employed as an epithet for social and cultural progress (1980, p. 210). However, where Kline argues that “this much conflict within the usage of one of our central terms […] can lead only to chaos” (1980, p. 210), I relish such an expansive term, arguing that the utility an open definition of technology is that it enables greater discussion and critique of its historical formation, current position and applications, and its future potential. In other words, I see this definition as one in accordance to the biological discourse of complexity. The relationship between the human and the technological is heterogeneous and polyvalent, highly contextualised, and impossibly complex. Here, I outline the base definitions of technology that inform the inquiry throughout this thesis.

I start my definition from within a biological framework, suggesting that this initial approach to technology shows that there is ultimately no discrete or distinct difference between the human and the technological. In such a framework the hypothesis of the human as ‘toolmaker’ is repositioned so that the human and technology are seen to be, effectively, one species. This goes beyond technological deterministic suggestions in which the human assumes “a position of extreme and even pathological dependence upon their technical artefacts” (Winner, 1973, p.190), in that it suggests a human-technology symbiosis that prefigures all human relations. It subsumes, therefore, all other definitions of technology. Nevertheless, within this framework we can acknowledge and accept other definitions of technology. Of these, the most common, and perhaps most useful, understanding and definition of technology is that of the technological artefact: objects that are human-produced and do not occur naturally on earth. Such definitions of technology concern the ‘things’, the ‘bits and pieces’ of ‘stuff’ that have been selectively shaped into unique objects. Whether that object is a ‘digging-stick’ or a ‘digital camera’, we ascribe the term technology to what is otherwise an inanimate, ‘unsituated’ or ‘unconnected’ human-produced object. This definition denotes a device or system that is described solely in terms of its inputs and outputs; instruments that perform certain prescribed utility functions, whose end requirements are established by a human user who remains in control throughout the operation (Nardi & O’Day, 1999 p. 25; Winner, 1973, p. 190; Winner 2003, p. 234-235). I show in this thesis that such definitions of technology are similar to biological definitions of individual ‘organisms’ or ‘species’ when defined or discussed outside the systems in which they are otherwise embedded. This leads me to suggest, then, that unless it is lying dormant and forgotten, technology has purpose, and I use the term technology also to denote the process by which the human uses technology to ‘create’. This suggests that technology is also an item that has a projected future utility; most often, to produce (to a greater or lesser extent) further utility items. For Ellul ([1980] 2003) this process is one in which technology enables nothing more than the production of more technology. The more technology we have, the more technology we will produce, in a relentless, endless cycle. Every component under operation is a utility piece of technology, and any problem identified is the outcome of technology and must therefore be solved through more utility technology. Thus, technology includes not just

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 17 tools, but the manufacturing equipment (tools) used in the production process, the human labour that operates the process, the resource materials used, the excess or waste materials produced, and, ultimately, the broader technological environment that shapes and directs the overall process (Kline 1985, p. 215-218). Often, such definitions of technology appear under the banner of ‘technique’, denoting the broader knowledge, know-how, information, skills, processes, procedures, and rationalised methodologies that are constantly and consistently refined in the search for greater technological efficiency. Technology, then, includes not only built devices, but also the practices and knowledge related to them and the social arrangements that form around the devices, practices and knowledge (Dierkes & Hoffmann, 1992; Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999; Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2002). I argue that we should include here quasi- technological objects. These are the hybrids, the non-human objects, and creatures that are the offspring of nature, culture, society, technology, and technique. They are objects such as computer software, the hole in the ozone layer, fish stocks, the World Health Organisation, and so forth, that at various times function as a technological object, a social force, and a driver of innovation. As hybrids they are particularly useful in suggesting that the symbiotic relationship between the human and technology is never simply or solely ‘determined’, ‘determining’, ‘shaped’, ‘guided’ or ‘constructed’, whilst strengthening the argument that technique is the most dominant organising principle of society, and one that often occurs at the expense of other human values. It is the standard by which everything else is to be compared and the guiding force for the development, adaptation, diffusion, and adoption of all technology. For Ellul, technique is a force that moves on its own in a rapid, relentless, omnivorous, and autonomous fashion (Ellul 1964, p. 14). Technique demands that new forms and methods of refined technique be built over previous forms and methods of technique.

This definition of technology leads also to an understanding of the technological sublime. This suggests that amidst the many utilitarian functions of technique is a metanarrative in which the term ‘technology’ overlays our understandings of ‘nature’, ‘religion’, the ‘mystical’ and the ‘mythical’ as dynamic and vital organising forces of humankind. In this denotation technology and technological development are similarly positioned as that which we cannot fully imagine or represent in what we know and see. Technology attempts to fill those gaps in our understanding of our place in time and in space, and the inability to present the infinite can be filled only through the representation of technique. Within this framework we can see that often it is not the technological object or artefact or technique itself that promises redemption, but the constitutive discourses, hyperbolic or critical, that aim to seduce the reader into arguments that parlay and exploit the probable and the possible. These representations outline the imaginative effects technological development will bring, addressing the emancipative aspects of a technological utopia or the paranoid imaginings of a technological dystopia.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 18 Taken together as a whole, the highly complex technological infrastructure of our society can be seen as “an aggregate phenomenon [that] dwarfs human consciousness and makes unintelligible the systems that people supposedly manipulate and control” (Winner, 1973, p. 190). Returning to the biological framework in which I am working, I suggest that the technological ecology, or the technosphere, extends the range of human scope and meaning beyond the biological shape of self or nature into spaces inaccessible in any way other than through technology or technique. This broader concept of technology, gleaned from the discourse of biological evolution, suggests that technology is not just our ‘second nature’. Rather, the concept of a human-technology symbiosis suggests that technology is us, along with everything we know and everything we do.

The rapid development and proliferation of machine technologies following industrialisation led social commentators such as Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul to eulogise the lost place of the human in a technological world. Technology, writes Ellul, [w]as meant to be a buffer between man and nature. Unfortunately, it has evolved autonomously in such a way that man has lost all contact with his natural framework and has to do only with the organised technical intermediary which sustains relations both with the world of life and the world of brute matter. (1964, p. 428) Likewise, Lewis Mumford (1967) writes against what he saw as the prominence of the tool- making myth, a discourse he saw as a worshipful obsession with material technology that ultimately detracted human attention from more worthy and hopeful endeavours. His argument rests on the idea that the development of symbolic language and socio-cultural rituals was far more influential in generating intellectual, economic, and political accomplishments of human beings in prehistoric and ancient times than material technology could have made possible. Mumford’s argument delimits technology to material utility instruments, and, as Langdon Winner suggests, while such tool technologies may ease the conditions of labour production and thus affect how social populations flourish, this definition of technology “takes for granted that a firm, reliable boundary exists between humans as organisms and tools regarded as material aids to their activity” (2005, p. 395). In this thesis a more expansive and inclusive definition of technology is favoured that not only includes symbolic language and rituals and other socio-cultural accomplishments as technology or technique, but simultaneously recognises the role of utility instruments in extending the realm of human signification and action. Such a representation of technology actively embraces technology as an integral part of the human and human experience. Guiding this discussion is the overarching question as to whether there has ever been any meaningful boundary between the human and technology.

In addressing this question I recontextualise my discussion of evolution within the framework of technological development in Chapter Four. I adopt the view that technology can also be

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 19 viewed as a form of biological ‘species’2, arguing that the evolutionary history of the biological human is so intricately entwined with the evolution of technology that in reshaping the external world technology has given the human its biological and socio-cultural shape. I agree with Andy Clark (2003) who argues that in order to understand our relationship with technology it is necessary that we “recognise that, in a very deep sense, we were always hybrid beings, joint products of our biological nature and multilayered linguistic, cultural, and technological webs” (p. 194-195). The result of this evolution has effectively produced a symbiosis between the human and technology. I argue that such an understanding of technology forces us to reconsider traditional understandings and definitions of how the human, humanness, technology, and technique are understood.

Human evolution, I argue, is the composite of physical biological evolution, cognitive development, and social and cultural evolution, and that technological development is, therefore, very much a part of human evolution. In his outline of evolution, Pier Paolo Saviotti (1996, pp. 42-43) makes a distinction between endosomatic and exosomatic instruments. Endosomatic instruments are the biological organs with which one is born, and exosomatic instruments are those that have been formed by means of technology. In outlining the symbiotic relationship between the human and technology I argue that the two species cannot be separated, as each is to the other both endosomatic and exosomatic instruments. That is, the human is born into a world in which technology and technique are already permanent prostheses, and all technologies that exist do so within human-produced or human-defined systems. And as the human is constantly producing, reproducing, repositioning, redefining, and refining technology, technology has the ability to reposition and redefine what it means to be human. Technology cannot be shown to exist outside the realm of human discourse, and the human cannot be shown to exist outside of technology. This is the true nature of symbiosis: the two species can be separated for discussion only.

Another vector in this mode of thinking is the terminology and perspective that is offered in the hybrid theory common to the cyborg figure. Hybrid theory, exemplified in the work of Haraway, makes it possible to account for the numerous arrangements that interactions of biological knowledge, science, technology, technique, technological change, and social and cultural practices produce, in ways that are not limited by earlier fixed and distinctive conceptions of nature, technology, and society. Hybrid theory likewise asserts that the mixture of elements that constitute a discourse cannot be sorted into their original parts. The

2 In his essay ‘Darwin among the Machines’ (1863) and novel Erewhon (1872), Samuel Butler explored the idea that technologies develop in a fashion remarkably similar to the evolution of living beings, transforming in increments from simple stone-tool technologies to advanced industrial machines. The diversity of technological artefacts suggested to Butler that machines should be classified according to existing genera, species, and varieties: a classificatory system heretofore reserved for living beings. In this thesis I argue that such a system of classification shows that the continuous branching of existing technologies and techniques ultimately enables the overall scope of the human-technology relationship – here defined as a symbiosis – to incrementally increase.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 20 posthuman, therefore, emerges as a figure that cannot be classified in terms of species, genus, sex, gender, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, politics, and class. Jennifer González writes that the term hybrid has several meanings, including a person or group of persons reflecting the interaction of two unlike cultures, traditions, and ideologies; anything derived from heterogeneous sources or composed of elements of different or incongruous kinds; and an entity or organism that is bred from two distinct races, breeds, varieties, species or genera (1995, p. 547). González suggests that the term hybrid, the actual hybrid, and hybridity in general have always posed a problem for those worried about purity of forms, interfertility, and unnatural mixtures, writing that the “forced breeding between species that did not amalgamate in the wild […] surfaced in threatening metaphors of infection, contamination, rape, and bastardry” (1995, p. 547): What makes the term controversial, of course, is that it appears to assume by definition the existence of a non-hybrid state – a pure state, a pure species, a pure race – with which it is contrasted. It is this notion of purity that must, in fact, be problematised. For if any progress is to be made in a politics of human or cyborg existence, heterogeneity must be taken as a given. It is therefore necessary to imagine a world of composite elements without the notion of purity. This, it seems, is the only useful way to employ the concept of the hybrid: as a combination of elements that, while not in themselves ‘pure’ nonetheless have characteristics that distinguish them from the other elements with which they are combined. (González, 1995, p. 547) In a similar fashion, Langdon Winner (2005) draws on Latour to argue that any retrospective attempts to deny that relevant human and non-human creatures, objects, systems, and situations are hybrids, and to insist that significant varieties of nature and culture be recognised in their former non-hybrid states is "the work of purification." Such a practice would ultimately continue to marginalise and exclude a range of human and non-human actors, whilst simultaneously reinforcing the normative practices of such ‘uncomplicated’ technology. We must, argues Winner, set aside such purifying labours and confront the world of hybrids directly (2005, pp. 395-396).

In this thesis hybrids are accounted for through the lens of cybernetic theory. Drawing on Katherine Hayles (1999), my interpretation of cybernetics sees all discourse as a probabilistic act in a probabilistic universe. That is, discourse is itself an analogical system whose outputs can have no pure or universal ‘essence’, but can only be interpreted as input. This ‘open-system’ approach favoured in poststructuralist thought means that readers experience discourse as one that “proceeds through selection from a field of possible alternatives rather than through the direct articulation of inherent reference” (Hayles, 1999a, p. 98). To this end, I also draw upon the hybrid theory that is highlighted in the work of Haraway to show how Haraway’s cyborg figure promotes a continual, pervasive blending of nature and artifice; an admixture of natural, social, cultural and technological elements. In

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 21 Chapter Five I discuss how, for Haraway (1985, 1989, 1991,1995, 1997), the cyborg constitutes a metaphorical way of thinking about the relationships that exist between the self, technology, and nature in which hybrids are seen as a product of discourse: a literary and figurative creature that is manifest in the real, lived, and everyday technologised world, and also in the imaginative world of science fiction and other social-discursive realms.

My discussion in Chapter Five concerns not only instantiated historic versions of the cyborg, but the formation of the discourses through which cyborgs as hybrid entities emerge. I extend my discussion of human-technology symbiosis, arguing that with the emergence of the cyborg the historical distinction between the evolved biological human and made technological artefacts fades, as humans and tools merge into one. The vision of the cyborg advocated in the writing of Chris Hables Gray (1995b, 2002) is one in which mechanised technologies are incorporated into the biological human organism in order to restore, normalise, reconfigure, or enhance ‘natural’ behaviours, characteristics, and properties in terms of strength, mobility, intelligence, and communicability. Advances in biology, cybernetics, robotics, pneumatics, and electronics have resulted in an array of prosthetic and orthotic devices that leave the boundaries of the biological human anything but distinct, and while the technologies that are attached to or incorporated within the organic body are “not in themselves regarded as intrinsic features of human beings” (Winner ,2005, p. 396), they are on occasion interpreted as evidence of the inherent ‘inadequacy’ of the biological body within advanced technological environments (cf. Stelarc, 1997). The implication here is that ‘we’ can do a better job in designing bodies, beings, and worlds based on the power of rapidly advancing technologies than that supplied by ‘nature’ or ‘God’ (Winner, 2005, p. 390). In such versions of the cyborg, distinct humanist ideologies and tenets can be detected, most notably in the reappropriation of the vision of a self-reliant, autonomous, independent, and masterly individual. Indeed, the base model for Gray’s version of the cyborg is that first proposed by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline’s seminal article ‘Cyborgs and space’ (1960), in which the authors proposed a range of prosthetic, robotic, homeostatic, and organisational devices aimed to take care of the many “robot-like problems” that accompany the organic human with the sole purpose of easing the burden of the human, leaving it “free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel” ([1960] 1995, p. 31). Nevertheless, the incorporation of technology into the human organism does expose the heretofore concealed nature of the already technologised human, suggesting that the locus of human selfhood may be construed as a technological construction.

The erasure of embodiment in the cyborg analogy is a strategy that is often not shared by feminist theorist, and it is little wonder that this principle has been interpreted and described by feminist commentators such as Moira Gatens as a “miracle of masculine auto- reproduction” (1996, p. 50). Indeed the modification of the human body in technologised posthumanism is often counterproductive to the subversion of established gender orders in other areas of posthuman discourse. Judy Wajcman argues that cyborg technologies such

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 22 as trans-gender operations, cosmetic surgery, athleticism, and fashion are on occasion used “precisely to reinforce gender stereotypes rather than subvert them” (2004, pp. 92-93). Nonetheless, as Robert Wilson has suggested, the analogy and application of cyborg technology ultimately encompass, for better or for worse, both genders: [In the cyborg analogy] both women and men must exist within an inherited, trans- individual discourse. Even if that discourse is identified as male, or as patriarchal, it is nonetheless relentlessly imposed upon all human individuals most of whom will participate in it uneasily. (Wilson, 1995, p. 244)

In Chapter Five I argue that the analogy of the cyborg has often enabled a reinstatement or a reappropriation of many of the grand narratives associated with humanist thought. Writers and commentators who advocate cyborg technologies often fail to notice that the overarching culture of the cyborg is predominantly the culture of the white Western male. Thus, as Judith Squires suggests, “while for Haraway cyborg imagery suggests positive new ways of negotiating complex material differences, for others it offers the option of transcending them altogether; of leaving the messy world of material politics behind and entering a post-political Utopia of infinite possibility” (in Wajcman, 2004, p. 94), her statement supporting the hypothesis I outline above; that a ‘programmed’ posthuman must retain and articulate the best of humanism while simultaneously rejecting the essentialist, determinist, and universally fixed definitions that have been shown to marginalise and alienate others.

The discursive space I propose for a programmed posthuman capable of fulfilling this criterion is developed throughout this thesis in light of the discourses of contemporary evolution. Throughout the thesis I argue that the current focus of evolutionary theory shows the human to be a networked, embedded, informational being, and that this construct is indeed reflected in and a reflection of our current social paradigm. In Chapter Six I discuss the deconstruction of the human and its subsequent reconstruction in an informational form that, I argue, is well-positioned within the framework of contemporary evolution theory. I argue that, through the evolution theories that surround biotechnology and computational intelligence a new discourse has been produced. This discourse is one in which the near limitless possibilities to reconstruct and reinvent the human, to move codified structures across organic and non-organic boundaries with relative impunity, to erase the legacy of genetic inheritance in rewriting and pre-programming the genetic future, radically alters our understanding and acceptance of the place of the human within the current gestalt. In Chapter Six I present the human as an individual amalgam of historically determined constructs of genetics, vital statistics, citizenship, user identities, locating devices, financial records, consumption preferences, and other forms and instances of digitised information. Following poststructuralist representations of the fractured and multifaceted self, I argue that such disparate forms of human-centred information could together represent a digitised

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 23 representation of a ‘multiple’ self, and that such information could be collated to render a fairly accurate linguistic or symbolic construction of the human subject. Such a concept of self is amenable to an advanced computational intelligence capable of recognising multiple ‘I-positions’ and their patterning. Yet it is also my contention that such a technology constitutes a ‘new direction’ in the story of the human: it is a posthuman that is by no means intended to replace or succeed the biological human, but one that extends the human through an act of supplementation.

This version of the ‘programmed’ posthuman is not, therefore, one that seeks to reinstate essentialist metanarratives, but one that seeks to supplement the human through an act of suturing. Autonomous agents, I argue, are in this way a form of ‘representational’ cyborgs amalgamating the otherwise disparate realms of human-users, utility information, and computation as digital information beings. This is in effect the immediate legacy of contemporary evolution theories.

Nevertheless, as such a computational agent is a form of technology itself and, as I argue, therefore part of the human-technology symbiosis, it should also be expected that it would have an impact upon the physical and virtual environments in which the human operates. Likewise, one should expect that a distinct human bias in the programmed rules and structures would ensure that agent technology remains at least amiable, useful, and committed to the human-technology symbiosis.

This thesis maintains that the only alternative to a thorough engagement with the discourses of posthuman evolution, posthuman technologies and techniques, and the posthuman itself, is to remain locked in the obligatory posthuman relationships that are foisted upon passive subjects. Perhaps James Hughes (1996) is right when, in his manifesto for the radical modification of the human species, he contends that the social and cultural advancement of the posthuman depends on "faith in the potential unlimited improvability of human nature and expansion of human powers”, which is, he writes “far more satisfying than a resignation to our current limits” (p. 100).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 24 Chapter Two

The reciprocal role of evolution metaphors

Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection. Charles Darwin (1859) The origin of species, p. 109

Metaphors create insight. But they also distort. They have strengths. But they also have limitations. In creating ways of seeing they tend to create ways of not seeing Gareth Morgan, 1997, Images of organisation, p. 348

Evolution and metaphor This thesis rests on the assumption that the posthuman is a discursive construct, and that evolutionary biology – generally framed within the discipline of science – can be approached as a body of knowledge capable of providing an invaluable framework for a detailed and complex discussion of the posthuman. To this end, in this chapter I approach evolution as an ongoing theory whose rules and mechanisms are, whilst firmly and definitively established, still very much under the directive influence of rigorous scientific investigation. Evolution theory is not a finished or finalised statement, but an open and ongoing discourse. The constantly changing structure of the theory creates a space in which the human is able to recognise itself and its aspirations as they also continue to change. It is, therefore, my contention that paralleling the historical development of evolutionary biology is a social and cultural cognitive project in which change is likewise defined and described according to evolutionary mechanisms and principles. Evolutionary theories are ongoing dialogues, the understanding of which is constantly changing in terms of boundaries, scope, meaning, and direction. In this chapter I outline the function evolution theory has as ‘metaphor’: a system of representations that in turn develops a language or discourse of evolution. I argue that through re-accessing and negotiating the meaning and accepted terms and mechanisms of evolution we are able to outline a form of evolution literacy. In Chapter Four I outline this proposed literacy, arguing that an evolution literacy would enable us to understand and perhaps influence, if not direct, the outcome of future evolutionary ‘applications’, including

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 25 the future evolution of the human organism: the posthuman. An evolution literacy further verifies the position I take in Chapter Five, in which I argue that there can be no one dominant and conclusive form of the posthuman, but a variety of discursive constructs that compete within suitable perceived or constructed environments.

For the non-scientist, our accepted understanding and use of the term ‘evolution’ often extends only as far as that of the most basic dictionary definition. For instance, evolution is seen as “the development of a species, organism, or organ from its original or primitive state to its present or specialised state; phylogeny or ontogeny” (Merriam-Webster, 2002, ¶ 1-9). A more pragmatic explanation might suggest that biological evolution is a quantifiable (slight or substantial) change in the properties of a population of organisms that transcends the lifetime of a single individual – a change that is inheritable, via genetic properties from one generation to the next (Futuyma, 1986, p. 7). However, in its broadest definition, the term evolution simply signifies ‘change’, and any system, or indeed any part of a system, that is prone to continuous, ‘orderly' change can be said to evolve.1 As this thesis shows, the looseness of this definition has granted ‘evolution’ a metonymic function in which ‘change’ in non-biological systems – including human psychological, cultural, and technological development – is increasingly measured and defined according to ‘rules’ and ‘mechanisms’ borrowed from the biological sciences. In this chapter I argue that these rules and mechanisms of evolution are not only used to measure the extent and effect of unplanned, random or ‘natural’ change in non-biological systems, but that they may, in addition, be actively and purposefully applied in such non-biological systems. In other words, once the principles of evolution are understood they may be mapped, modelled, and reproduced in different strata. The benefit of such an approach is that it allows observers and participants to manipulate and direct ‘change’ towards a desired outcome. This thesis shows that such an appreciation of participant evolution goes well beyond the early examples of ‘artificial selection’, ‘selective breeding’, and ‘eugenics’ in that it is capable of recognising the complex nature of ecologies. Through this appreciation of evolution I am able to show in following chapters how an evolution literacy can be applied towards directed change within technological systems, and how this in turn extends human action and participation with these systems. I argue that acknowledging the broad reciprocity between the discourse of biological and non-biological evolution enables a conversation of greater scope and complexity between nature, the human, and the technocultural. It is from this starting point that this thesis develops and discusses a position for an alternative ‘application’ of posthumanism that remains open to evolutionary underpinnings without being bounded by the mechanistic ‘necessities’ of Darwinian evolution.

1 I use the word orderly here in lieu of the term ‘randomness’ or ‘chaos’, and in favour of the more accurate classification of ‘non-random complexity’.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 26 I begin this chapter by arguing that the accepted theories and the established mechanisms of evolution can be successfully viewed as applied and operational metaphors, and that these metaphors continue to be employed in the establishment of an evolution language, or an ‘evolution literacy’. I present three categories of ‘evolution’ metaphors. The first of these categories, ‘metaphors of evolution’, shows how biological science has historically borrowed metaphors from existing social language to describe and explain biological evolutionary phenomena. The second category, ‘evolution as metaphor’ is, in effect, a reverse position of the first category and shows how biological mechanisms have historically been applied as metaphors to explain social change or evolution. The last category, ‘evolutionary metaphors’ highlights a hybrid of the first two categories as a distinct ‘new’ metaphor. This last category is, in effect, a synthesis of ‘biological’ and ‘socio-cultural’ language and contributes to the composite body of ‘evolution’ language. This evolutionary language in turn serves to reflect and justify the dominant views of the historical epoch from which each metaphor was originally drawn. This category highlights the vectors at which ‘biological understandings’ and ‘social interpretations’ of evolution intersect to produce a constitutive narrative of change; this is a metanarrative that continues to establish and justify a place for human and non- human objects within an otherwise ‘unscripted’ or natural world.

Jeremy Rifkin (1998) argues that, throughout history, humankind has sought to identify and position itself in relation to its place within the natural environment. Each generation, he argues, justifies its place with a new definitive metanarrative of the surrounding world. This chapter outlines some of the key historical developments of evolution theory, starting with early creationist views and their associated ‘descending’ ’Chain-of-Being’, through the individualist mechanistic view and its associated ‘ascending’ ‘Chain-of-Being’, and to Darwin’s ‘economic’ relational view with its associated ‘progressive’ capitalist logic. I do this not to outline the history of evolutionary theory, but to show how each of these historical paradigms makes use of, provides, and re-applies existing metaphor in constituting their own philosophical, cultural, and social ways of being and knowing within their contemporaneous worlds. As this thesis rests on the assumption that the version of the posthuman I present will emerge from contemporaneous evolution theory, it is crucial to demythologise evolution by showing it as a definite and definitive product of history. Developing this argument here allows me to show, in the following Chapter Three, the reciprocity that exists between current ideas and understandings of the natural and the technocultural world, and to argue that the near simultaneous emergence of computational and informational technologies and theories of non-linear causality have produced a range of new evolutionary metaphors that continue to redefine the place of the human in the world.

Rifkin writes that once the ideas about evolution become gospel, debate becomes futile, arguing that the development of an acceptable theory of evolution wields an extraordinary influence over individual and social understanding and acceptance of our place in the world,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 27 and ultimately reflecting the views of those who authored it (1998, p. 207). Rifkin’s argument is immediately evident in an analysis of the role Darwinian evolution enjoyed in guiding the gestalt of twentieth century biological (and indeed, social) organisational thought. This thesis shows that in order to adequately reflect contemporary thought, the re-organisation of culture, society, technology, and nature in the twenty-first century must include a contemporary re-telling of the narratives of life. Yet as Rifkin suggests, this time around, nature is cast in the image of the computer, and in the abstract language of codified information (p. 212). In participating in this contemporary story this thesis creates a space within evolution theory from which to hypothesise the possible shape and trajectory of ongoing human evolution, emphasising in particular a version of the posthuman that is compatible with the codified informatic systems of associated computational network logic.

Three categories of evolution metaphors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) argue that metaphors – derived from the Greek verb metapherein meaning ‘transfer’ or ‘to bear’ – are structural devices whose most basic function is as conduit for idea or meaning (p. 3). Douwe Draaisma (2000) extends this definition, arguing that metaphors are superfluous words, used mainly for decorative reasons, and that in principle they could be replaced by a literal expression. Yet as Draaisma goes on to suggest many metaphors, particularly those within the sciences, “owe their existence precisely to the fact that they express what cannot be said literally – either not yet or in principle” (2000, p. 10-11). Often words themselves cannot carry the intended meaning, and one established sign is substituted as another comparative sign. Indeed, sign substitution through comparison is the base model of the metaphor, and it is through metaphor that we are subsequently able to name, position, and define that which is otherwise nameless, and at times unnameable. Metaphors, in turn, are examined, tested, challenged, and extended through regular use until they become a literal sign, entrenched in the linguistic machinery, and their function as metaphor declines (Draaisma, 2000, pp. 2-12).

In the ancient definition of metaphor, Aristotle (1968) delineated a dual function within each metaphor; the use of a ‘strange name’, and the ‘transfer of meaning’. The ‘strange name’ function of a metaphor refers to the fact that every metaphor appropriates a sign or symbol from one particular context into another. For example, the word ‘Tree’, which is a sign for a tree, becomes appropriated as the ‘strange name’ in the term ‘Tree of Life’. The ‘transfer of meaning’ indicates that the meaning of the word in its usual context is transferred to its new ‘strange name’ context (thus, the Tree of Life includes in its application the extension of the meaning of ‘roots’, ‘branches’, ‘trunk’, and ‘tree-top’). At face value, metaphors work by highlighting the parallel and analogous relationship between two objects, events, or relationships (Draaisma, 2000, pp. 9-10). However, as Lakoff and Johnson stress,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 28 metaphors do not merely substitute one concept in favour of another. There are, they argue, no recognised laws or equations dictating the balance of concepts within metaphors, the relationship between the named and unnamed contexts, the degree to which a metaphor is tied to ‘reality’, and the extent to which a metaphor can be exchanged for a literal description. Poststructuralist thought would here suggest that such conceptual arrangements are determined only in the subsequent use of the metaphor. Nevertheless, in establishing the utility of ‘evolution’ metaphors, some basic terms and mechanisms can be immediately drawn.

Of particular interest to this discussion is the metaphors Lakoff and Johnson categorise as ‘experiential,’ ‘orientational,’ and ‘personification’ metaphors (1980, pp. 1-14). For Lakoff and Johnson, these three cognitive realms of metaphor are particularly useful in the abstraction, organisation, and practical application of spatial and temporal phenomena. Here, I extend Lakoff and Johnson’s classification to show that each of the three types of metaphor they present parallels the three categories of metaphor I present in this thesis: ‘metaphors of evolution’, ‘evolution as metaphor’ and ‘evolutionary metaphors’ respectively.

The first of these three types of metaphor – ‘experiential’ – refers to human experiences with non-human objects in space. Naming these objects provides the basis for further ontological or ‘experiential’ metaphors as the objects are continuously refined, categorised, identified, grouped, qualified, classified, and reasoned about. I argue that the naming and grouping of organisms, along with the application of available terms to describe and delimit the mechanisms of evolution, shows that Lakoff and Johnson’s concept of ‘experiential’ metaphors corresponds with the ‘metaphors of evolution’ category I outline below. The second type of metaphor – ‘orientational’ – refers to the metaphors we apply as we nominate, define, and impose natural and artificial boundaries and territories in order to negotiate our own position in time and space. The result is the learned use of metaphors in defining, mapping, and navigating of our daily physical and cognitive lives (cf. Soja, 1971). I argue that analogies and metaphors drawn from the natural world and re-applied to social and cultural phenomena show that Lakoff and Johnson’s concept of ‘orientational’ metaphors corresponds with the ‘evolution as metaphor’ category I outline below. Finally, the third type of metaphor Lakoff and Johnson nominate – ‘personification’ – refers to the way that a physical or non-human object is specified as being a person, or having human-like attributes. (In developing an evolution literacy I argue in Chapter Four that the way that the human or human attributes may be referred to as non-human or as having non-human attributes, should also be included here). Lakoff and Johnson argue that personification metaphors are produced only in conjunction with experiential and/or orientational metaphors. In a similar manner the associated ‘metaphors of evolution’ metaphors and ‘evolution as metaphor’ metaphors are re-combined in a distinctly new category, which may be applied under its own terms and contexts or re-applied to biological or non-biological strata and phenomena. I

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 29 argue that the use of biological evolutionary language and mechanistic terms as metaphor is a ‘mirroring’ phenomenon between the natural and the socio-cultural worlds. And importantly, it involves the naming or re-positioning of developments in social and cultural realms – an organisational logic borrowed from natural realms – for which no other literal expression exists. I argue that Lakoff and Johnson’s concept of ‘personification’ metaphors corresponds with the ‘evolutionary metaphor’ category which I outline below, and show that through the reciprocal adoption and adaptative reconfiguration of these metaphors a metanarrative is produced in which nature, the human, and evolution is contemporaneously represented and positioned.

In the West, biological science has always drawn metaphors from broader ‘culturally based’ archives to describe and explain evolutionary change. Categorical descriptions of observed organic variation necessitate biological classification and evolutionary explanations, and science must, through necessity, draw upon available social and cultural archives to record such distinctions. In turn, social and cultural phenomena have been similarly explained through the production of metaphors that draw upon the mechanisms and methods of evolutionary change. The adoption and adaptation of metaphors between the sciences and the humanities has not always resulted in a free and easy exchange of ideas. In the first instance, a resolutely scientific approach to human cultural change must argue that certain mechanistic categories be filled before such change can be deemed ‘evolutionary’: evolution, biology shows us, occurs only through mutation, genetic inheritance, and natural selection, a process that takes many generations, and therefore cannot be used to describe and explain the ‘fast and fickle’ change that takes place in social and cultural realms. However, ‘the continuous, orderly change’ of human cultural, social, and technological systems very often does follow a process of mutation, selection, retention, and inheritance, and the social sciences and humanities may indeed be correct in nominating such change as evolutionary. In this manner, social processes, ideologies, and institutions can be said to evolve; for example the “evolution” of democracy or capitalism. The hybridity that occurs between the two disciplines is further complicated in a society where metaphors of survival and growth, complexity, connectivity, dependency, networkability, diversity, reciprocity, embedded environments, mobility, feedback, control, anticipation and response, shared relationships, hybridisation, information, codification, and telemetry are increasingly and equally comfortable in the biological sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. In Chapter Four I argue that the accelerated exchange between these realms leads to a new set of metaphors, and that these metaphors continue to define and describe the nature of the human and the technological as one of mutual reciprocity, or symbiosis. In this thesis I argue that the symbiotic relationship between the human and technology forces us to reconsider traditional understandings and definitions of how evolution, the human, humanness, technology and technique are understood.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 30 Draaisma argues that metaphors, particularly within the sciences, exist because they express what cannot be otherwise said (2000, pp. 10-11). The natural sciences therefore abound with examples of applied metaphors. Within biology, these are particularly obvious in taxonomic genus and species definition and categorisation in both ‘common’ and ‘scientific’ name. Nomenclature metaphors are usually derived from among the following: • Their habitual location or place of origin. For example, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, the Yangtze River Dolphin, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis (the Sumatran Rhinoceros), and Eubalaena australis (the Southern Right Whale). • Observable features. For example, the Two-horned Rhinoceros, the Bristly Rabbit, Xanthocephalus xanthocephalu (the Yellow-headed Blackbird), and Lepomis megalotis (the Long-ear Sunfish). • Characteristics or attributes they may enact or display. For example, the Common Sapsucker, the Bird-eating Spider, Melogale personata (the Ferret-Badger), and Muntiacus feae (the Barking Deer). • Common names given by indigenous people. For example the Kookaburra, the Wombat, Canus lupus dingo (the Dingo), and Oncifelis guigna (the Kodkod). • People who were instrumental in discovering or describing the species or influential in other arenas. For example, the Gould Finch, the Jason Mirabilis Miller Nudibranch, the entire Banksia family, the Oratosquillina berentsae (the Mantis Shrimp, named in honour of Dr Penny Berents of the Australian Museum), and the Qantasaurus, named in honour of the corporate sponsorship that enabled excavation of this Australian dinosaur. (Massicot, 2003, ¶ 4; Myers, Espinosa, Parr, Jones, Hammond, & Dewey, 2005, ¶ 1-7).

Evolutionary theories, however, show that the biological sciences appropriate metaphors from common language in many ways beyond nomenclature. Biology borrows and applies ‘strange names’ in order to name, describe, define, and contextualise perceived patterns, processes, and events. In identifying and applying the three categories of evolution metaphors, I demonstrate how evolution theory appropriates ‘strange names’ from common language, how common language appropriates evolutionary mechanisms and terms as ‘strange names,’ and how in combination, mechanisms of evolution are applied as metaphor to explain and justify broader socio-cultural assumptions. This approach highlights the discursive nature of evolution theory, illustrating the argument that the discourse of evolution, like other socio-cultural discourse, is one forged through the negotiation of meaning. Nevertheless, as with all philosophical developments, each new ‘generational’ definition of evolution does not completely overwrite previous versions and the continuum of evolutionary ideas and theories retains many assumptions and prejudices. (This, I argue, is particularly obvious around notions such as ‘hierarchy’, ‘legacy’, ‘purpose’, and ‘progress’). However, it can also be argued that some of the metaphors of evolution – or at least, the ideas or assumptions they contain – remain in use simply because there is no other literal exchange available. What makes the biological genus human ‘human’? Is it through ‘mate selection’,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 31 ‘fear of threat’, ‘success’, or an otherwise equally intangible or unnameable phenomenon? I argue below that many of these everyday assumptions are formed through metaphorical representations of biological phenomena, and that the paradigm of evolutionary ideas has, through time, led to the common supposition that what is natural and what is unnatural are disparate, separate realms, and not a mutable continuum. This chapter argues that through the use of evolutionary metaphors we are able to establish a language that, in turn, leads to a greater depth of evolution literacy. Such a form of literacy, I argue, is needed to overcome the assumptions and suppositions that continue to structure and define human and non- human actors within broader world environments. This thesis maintains that without such a form of literacy – that is, without an understanding of the processes and mechanisms employed in evolution – we risk producing discourses within the social sciences and humanities that justify all levels of change as ‘evolutionary’ by nature. An evolution literacy would equip us with a sophisticated response to changes in both human shape and form, and show how technology and other non-human actors – positioned as active, living participants in human socio-cultural life – construct, acquire and redistribute human agency within social discourses.

In this chapter I show how each category of evolution metaphor has been variously used throughout history to justify our positional relationship within broader environments. This thesis claims that as new technologies and technological relationships continue to produce new spatial and temporal conditions (and therefore new environments), the (re-)application of ‘evolution’ metaphors enables us to navigate personal, cultural, and social responses to these changes with greater success. To this regard I outline, in Chapter Four, an evolution literacy that is formed through such metaphors, as they expand and extend the range and scope of the intended or original signified meaning. The base level definitions of the three categorical combinations of ‘evolution’ metaphors I have identified are presented below in Table 1. Throughout this chapter I revisit this table to demonstrate the ways in which changing evolution theories reflect, challenge, and construct (historically located) societies and their contemporaneous understandings of the natural and the socio-cultural.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 32 Table 1. Three categories of evolution metaphors

Metaphors of Evolution Evolution as Metaphor Evolutionary Metaphor

In this category, I employ Lakoff and Johnson’s In this category, I employ Lakoff and Johnson’s In this category, I employ Lakoff and Johnson’s concept of ‘experiential’ metaphors – that is, how concept of ‘orientational’ metaphors – that is, those concept of ‘personification’ metaphors – that is, the human experiences non-human objects in time terms that nominate, define and impose natural and those terms in which a physical object is specified and space – to show how various theories of artificial boundaries and territories in order to define as being a person or having human-like attributes – biological evolution draw from available cultural and negotiate a subject position – to show how the to show how accepted theories of evolution are archives to describe and delimit biological rules and mechanisms of biological evolution are used to explain and justify broader contexts of phenomena and the mechanisms of evolution (for transferred and used to explain non-biological, change and progress within biological or non- example ‘selection’, ‘variation’, and ‘inheritance’). social, and/or cultural phenomena (for example, the biological strata and phenomena (for example, the use of the term ‘survival’ in a competitive economic term ‘common ancestry’ used as a metaphor for context). common connectivity). (I argue also that the way that the human or human attributes may be referred to as non-human or as having non-human attributes can be included here.)

33

Evolution theory and human social cognition Human experience and cognition are negotiated in terms of what, or who, the human is, and perhaps more importantly, what, or who, it is not. Human orientation, on the other hand, is negotiated in terms of where the human is in space and in time, and likewise, also in terms of where it is not. Perceiving and orienting coordinates in space and time enables the formation of a base position from which a cosmological set of beliefs may be formed; humans do this through reflecting, organising, and classifying the otherwise intangible interface that exists between nature, self, and society. Such beliefs are usually aimed at answering metaphysical questions, such as: where did we come from, why are we here, what is our purpose, and where are we going? An understanding of the natural world enables the human to manipulate and appropriate those parts of the world in which it exists. In other words, the story of “who we are as a people in a socially organised world” needs to be contextualised first in terms of “where we are as a species in a naturally organised world” before we can address any further questions as to why we are.

Throughout human history, such questions have been addressed through the construction of a contiguous set of theories and ideas around the theme of natural evolution. Yet that these concepts and arrangements are contiguous and able to supplant one another suggests that any consensus regarding the natural world, or our position within the natural world, is itself not ‘fixed’, but prone to continuous unremitting change. What does this mean for the story of evolution, particularly human orientation within an evolutionary framework? That is, if evolutionary theories and ideas attempt to explain and justify the relationship between the human and the natural world, why do they change? The obvious answer is that evolution, as a concept, works only through consensus. Evolution does not attempt to explain the position of an individual organism within the natural world, but the position of a collective species within the natural world. It follows, therefore, that ‘human collectives’ must also be able to conceptualise a position in relation to the natural world. And human societies are not stable entities. They undergo continuous change (generational change, technological change, social and cultural change, and political change, for example), and it follows that the theories and concepts of evolution will change with them. What counts at a particular point in time as an accepted understanding of ‘life’ or ‘nature’ is an effect of fixation, or a stabilisation of cosmological interpretations that are upheld as a regime of truth. Rifkin argues that “every major economic and social revolution in history has been accompanied by a new explanation of the creation of life and the workings of nature,” and that [i]n each instance, the new cosmology serves to justify the rightness and inevitability of the new way human beings are organising their world by suggesting that nature itself is organised along similar lines. Thus, every society can feel comfortable with the natural order of things and, therefore, a legitimate reflection of nature’s grand design. (1998, p. 197)

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 34 The orientation and organisation of nature conceptualises and constructs a narrative, an open-ended and ongoing dialogue that exists between contemporary society and the natural world. Any new or additional conceptualisation and application of theories or models of evolution will have further implications for non-biological, social, and cultural institutions. As Rifkin argues, throughout history refined evolutionary theories and ideas that position the human and human society as it is reflected through the prism of the natural world ultimately serve to justify and police the established social strata: Concepts of nature also serve as essential political instruments for eliciting unequivocal ‘difference and resignation’. No one in [their] right mind would suggest that it is correct or even possible to resist the natural order. And if society happens to be unjust, exploitative, repressive, what is a person to do? If it’s merely a reflection of the natural order of things, or at least structured in a way that adheres to nature’s grand design, then to challenge it in any fundamental way would be as foolhardy and self-defeating as challenging nature itself. For society at large, and for ruling elites in particular, a concept of nature provides a mantle of legitimacy for the existing social order. (Rifkin, 1998, p. 200)

In outlining the chronology of Western theories of evolution I demonstrate how various historical eras have made use of metaphor to explain their understanding of the natural world, the contemporaneous position of the social world, and their justification for continued governance of the world. This chronology illustrates the immediate effect that the discourse of evolution, as a body of ‘power-knowledge’, has upon human and non-human subjects and highlights the importance of an evolution literacy in the ongoing negotiation of the place of the self within changing or redefined social and natural environments.

Pre-Darwinian evolution theories Until the nineteenth century, the creation story outlined in the opening verses of the Book of Genesis remained the dominate explanation regarding the natural world in Western thought. God created Heaven and Earth, Plant, Animal, and on the sixth day, Man.2 By the late medieval era, the God-centred creationist view was, under the guidance and instruction of the Church, generally accepted view throughout Christian Europe. The earliest scientific approach to biological evolution, however, can be seen in ancient Greek philosophies which queried whether demons and gods, as

2 By no means limited to Western philosophy, order emerging from chaos either under the guidance of, or concurrently with, the ‘divine’ is a staple creation story throughout pre- modern cultures.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 35 personified forces of nature, provided the basic principles of life. The pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander (c.610-546 BCE) writes: It is said that in the wet element the first living beings come to be, in a husk of prickly rinds; with increasing age they climbed onto the dry element, the rind tore off on all sides and so, for a short time they took on a different live form. (in Mainzer, 1996, p. 78)

Plato and Aristotle continued the exploration, hypothesising a classificatory system of species differentiation and definition. The typological approach to evolution developed by Aristotle is premised upon the dual theses that all species and species types were unchanging and fixed and that living forms were imperfect representations of an idealised and specific norm. Comparative reflection of differing species types suggested an average, or typical individual from which could be drawn the eternal, unchanging ‘essence’ of the type. In this philosophy of essentialism, variation and difference are abnormal, and have no worthwhile meaning; only essence matters. In support of his thesis, Aristotle postulated the notion of the ‘Chain-of-Being,’ that effectively remained unchallenged until the late eighteenth century (Figure 1.). In Aristotle’s version of the ‘Great Chain-of-Being’, the idea or essence of the world emanates from a higher reality, and flows down through human mind and intelligence, the ‘world soul’, and, finally, earthly matter. Humankind, being made of both matter and spirit, is positioned towards the middle of this system.

Figure 1. Aristotles ‘Great Chain-of-Being’ (Lahanas, 2004, ¶ 20)

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 36

In medieval times, philosophers extended the Greek conception of a hierarchy of beings to explain the role the Christian God played in creating the universe. The Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas ([c1270] 1998) conceived the Scala Naturae (‘Chain-of-Being’) as having various gradations, with God at the pinnacle and unformed matter at the base. In Aquinas’s version God is pure actuality, and unformed matter pure potentiality. Aquinas promoted his model by arguing that things cannot order or design themselves, and as the natural world displays order and design, there must be an intelligent and powerful designer who made things this way (his argument recently revived in ‘Intelligent Design’ theory – discussed below). Aquinas believed that the eternal, unchanging essences of all things exist in the mind of God, and as it would be ‘imperfect’ of God to deny material existence to something He conceived, existence must be bestowed on everything that ever existed as an idea of God. To deny existence to anything at any time would introduce imperfection into His creation. Thus, all things must have been created in the beginning ([c1270] 1998, ¶ 1-49). For Aquinas, evolution was the work of a benevolent God who had designed a “complex world of relationships, obligations and dependencies, with many creatures differing among themselves in gradation of intellect, in form, and in species” (Glacken in Rifkin, 1998, p. 200). And in this world of complex relationships, God purposefully designed and established a hierarchy of diversity and inequality; this hierarchy flows from a benevolent God, though His Godly representatives, to common man, then beast. And as God designed the Great Chain, it must be perfect, permanent, and unchanging: evolutionary change could only occur if there were imperfections within species types, and as God is perfect, imperfection is impossible. The reason for perceived inequality and hierarchy in this design was that if all creatures had been created equally they could not act for themselves or another in fulfilling, or striving to attain, their ideal form.

And since the natural order was the perfect creation of a perfect God, it was not difficult to conceptually extend such a hierarchy to higher and lower social classes in human societies. In Aquinas’s version of evolution, every species and sub-species in the natural world has its proper rank and station; likewise, every member within a feudal hierarchy has a preordained position. The order of feudal society, with ”tightly defined social structures and institutional arrangements” (Rifkin 1998, p. 200), could not be critiqued and dismantled without calling to question the ineffable wonders of God’s creation. A Frog might just as easily ascend to being ‘King of the Jungle’ as a Vagabond might become a Viscount, Marquis, or Archbishop. Indeed, as Rifkin writes: [The individual’s] survival depended upon the dutiful performance of a complex set of mutual obligations within a rigidly maintained hierarchical setting. From serf to knight, from knight to lord, from lord to Pope, all were unequal in degree and kind, each was obligated to the other by the medieval

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 37 bonds of homage, and all together made up a mirror in which could be viewed, though only hazily, the perfection represented in God’s total Creation. (1998, p. 201) Thus, the combination of the existing social organisation, the social and cultural predominance of the Church, and the concept of Christian plenitude strengthened the ‘universal’ acceptance of Aquinas’s story of evolution, and substantiated the continued arrangement of feudal relations.

As Western society expanded its scope and extended its influence beyond the bounds of Europe, institutions of exploration, trade, cultural exchange, and empirical colonisation led to the discovery, or uncovering, of new flora, fauna, and peoples. The preoccupation with science and art during the European Renaissance combined with a concern surrounding anatomical similarity between various species eventually guided science towards the development of a system of biological taxonomic classification. Nevertheless, these early taxonomists were simply attempting to provide a theoretical basis for naming God’s natural world,3 and were in no way proposing a mechanism for evolution: most learned scientists of the day would have been horrified at the idea.4 Instead, they remained satisfied, guided by the argument that since God created the world it was possible and even admirable to understand God’s wisdom by studying closely the works of His creation.5

Nevertheless, in his work on taxonomy and classification, the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus noted the obvious similarities in body shape and size between human and ape. This led him to conclude that humans, apes, and chimpanzees all belonged in taxonomic category of ‘primates’. Linnaeus further differentiated human and ape, not only naming them

3 Swiss botanist Casper Bauhin (1623) first introduced the binominal system of naming plants by genus and species, English naturalist John Ray (1690 through 1713) was the first to distinguish plants and animals from one another based on observable features such as the nature and number or petals on a flower, or fingers and teeth on an animal. Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus (1735) presented a system of taxonomy that remains in use today. Rather than dividing observable large categories along logical lines, Linnaeus groups individual taxa together according to observable similarities, identifying twenty-four classes of plants, and six classes of animals.

4 In 1619 the Italian philosopher Lucilio Vanini was burned alive for hypothesising such an idea (Scott, 2003, ¶ 1).

5 Ray (1660) writes: There is for a free man no occupation more worthy and delightful than to contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honour the infinite wisdom and goodness of God. (in Waggoner, 1996, ¶ 5) And Linnaeus (1735) writes: Creationis telluris est Gloria Dei ex opera Naturae per Hominem solum [The Earth’s creation is the glory of God, as seen from the works of Nature by Man alone] (in Wagoner, 2000, ¶ 5).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 38 (Homo sapiens “Wise Man” and Homo troglodyte “Cave Dwelling Man”), but also positioning them within the existing hierarchy.

This, in turn, prompted further classification, and Linnaeus developed a system of hierarchical classification based upon racial differences. Yet Linnaeus’s classifications went further still, as he defined among the hierarchy a range of racial characteristic behaviours and traits: ‘White’ people, Homo sapiens Europaeus albescens, were "sanguine" and "muscular"; the ‘dark’ Homo sapiens Asiaticus fucus were "melancholy" and "stiff"; the ‘red’ Homo sapiens Americanus rubescens were "choleric" and "upright"; and the ‘black’ Homo sapiens Africanus negreus were "phlegmatic" and "relaxed". Additional classifications fared no better, with the large, the small, the wild and hirsute, the disabled, the elderly, prisoners, refugees, Hottentots and Huguenots all lumped under the category Homo sapiens Monstrous (Linnaeus in Wagoner, 2000, ¶ 4). Despite Linnaeus’s system being based mainly upon perceived cultural differences, the ideological assumptions inherent in his categorisation and classification system continued to justify and foster racial and racist beliefs, and the typological approach to race based upon observable difference remained a common theme throughout much European6 history.

Over time, the discipline of taxonomic classification in categorising and classifying the various taxa prompted the question of why notable differences between species existed. The first real attempt to answer this question came from Count de Buffon’s (George-Louis Leclerc) Histoire naturelle (1749), in which the author rejects the idea that one particular species could simply change into another particular species through no other cause than divine intervention. In turning his attention away from the common taxonomic goal of classification and towards assessing the population of a species as a unit, Buffon recognised both the similarities and differences within species, concluding that the external environment was the agent of change in a species; however, despite his belief in organic change, Buffon did not provide a coherent mechanism for such changes (Nichols, 2000, ¶ 1-3). Arguably the greatest contributor in generating a unified theory of evolutionary change was the eighteenth century biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Dissatisfied with Linnaeus's classification of invertebrates into only two classes (insects and worms), Lamarck distinguished molluscs, arthropods, crustaceans, insects, and other classes. In doing so, Lamarck made his major contribution to a theory of evolution, suggesting that taxonomic groups were linked genealogically and that species responded to changes in their environments through the

6 Leonardo da Vinci explained variation of human skin colour as the result of human activity: dark skinned peoples lived in hot climates and could only be active during the night and therefore had dark skin, whereas light skinned peoples lived in cooler climates and were active during the day and therefore had light skin. And the Dutch anatomist Peter Campter applied the perceived hierarchy to the study of human skulls, and concluded there was a "regular gradation from apes, through Negroes, to Europeans". The co-habitation of the African continent by Negroes and apes made the assumption that miscegenation between (male) apes and black women occurred a common theme here (Tasa, 2003, ¶ 13-15).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 39 adaptation of acquired characteristics. Lamarck proposed a theory of ‘evolution’ as a means to explain how various taxonomies of species form, through a specific and quantifiable process; in that species change according to their environments. Lacking any empirical evidence for evolution, Lamarck was unable to propose any useful mechanism for a theory of evolution. He did, however, put forward a hypothesis that radically changed the direction and understanding of evolution per se. Prior to Lamarck, the ‘Chain-of-Being’ metaphor proposed a rigid, unchanging structure that descended from the Supreme to humans to the apes to other beasts right down to the lowest infusoria, whereas in Lamarck’s hypothesis, evolution is seen to start with the lowest infusoria and leads up to man (Bateson 1972, pp. 427-428). Yet despite inverting the ‘top-down’ ‘Chain-of-Being’ Lamarck’s hypothesis (in which he argued that all living things descended from inanimate matter by spontaneous generation) was still guided by a dominate religiosity that led him to suggest that evolution is the inevitable progress toward greater complexity and perfection by “powers conferred by the supreme author of all things” (Futuyama 1986, p. 4).

In this way, Lamarck’s reordering of the ‘natural’ hierarchy infused theories of evolution with a non-biological, quasi-metaphysical mechanism, and his ideas and assumptions have overarched many popular conceptions of evolution ever since. It suggests, for example, that if organisms evolve from lower to higher forms of being, then evolution must be a progressive movement. While a contemporary understanding of biological diversity rejects such a generalised approach, the popular view is that the flow of evolution towards greater complexity should be regarded as progression towards a ‘better’ state of existence. (I address this phenomenon in the context of technological evolution in Chapter Four.) Indeed, the notion of progressive, upward, linear evolution towards a ‘greater state of being’ sugar- coats the belief that Homosapien sapiens evolved from the ‘primitive,’ ‘primal,’ ‘ape-like’ ‘animals’ of our progeny. It likewise fuels popular assumption that evolution (particularly social, cultural, and technological evolution) progresses in one direction only and that, therefore, any evolutionary change is for the better, as it can lead only to a more ‘highly’ evolved robust species that can no longer slip backwards or disappear. At the extreme, this would suggest that an evolutionary change in which a particular gene slips out of the gene pool entirely, bringing to a halt that organism’s evolution and perhaps leading to its extinction, should still be considered as following an upward or forward evolutionary trajectory. (Accidents or catastrophes included. Whatever catastrophe eliminated the Dinosaurs ultimately established the reign of mammals – a ‘great leap’ from these clumsy prehistoric beasts.) This perceived ‘forward momentum’ in evolution leads us to baulk at the notion that through the process of natural evolution an organism or the entire ecosphere might be taking steps towards a ‘worse’ genetic structure. Instead, we have been consistently encouraged since the Enlightenment to regard with awe and wonder the immense complexity that exists within certain biological systems whose evolutionary traits seem at times to border on the absurd or uncanny. There is a sense of comfort drawn from

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 40 the possibility of progressive evolution, that follows the understandable logic that if evolution is progressing towards a higher state then it must also have a purpose to its design: a concept infinitely easier to swallow than the idea that evolution is a haphazard, non-directed, chaotic affair upon which the intentions of humankind or indeed the divine has neither aim, purpose, or role. In the terms I have outlined in this thesis, this suggests that through these metaphors the discourse of evolution exerts its power and influence via the subtle mechanisms of coercion and seduction. In contributing towards an evolution literacy I argue that it is imperative that the metaphors of ‘purpose’ and ‘progress’ be confronted within non- biological appropriations of evolution theory, particularly those that are active within the discourse of socio-technological development and advancement.

The assumption that evolution was under the controlling influence of purposeful design was prevalent within biological science until the early nineteenth century when Darwin presented a feasible account of natural evolution. Nevertheless, despite Darwin’s contribution the idea of a purpose and a design to evolution remains a central a concern for many public commentators and popularisers of biological evolution, and remains a core belief for many people throughout the world.7 In recent years, this has been particularly evident in the popularisation of ‘Intelligent Design’, a movement whose proponents argue that “certain features of life, unexplained by evolution, are too complex to have developed through an undirected process and are best attributed to an unnamed and unseen intelligent agent” (‘Darwin vs. God case opens in US’, The Australian, 2005, p. 9). In 2005 Intelligent Design was bought to the attention of the public through the highly publicised Kitzmiller v. Dover School District court case in Pennsylvania. The case was bought to court by eleven parents who argued that the Dover Area School District was violating the constitutional separation of church and state in making reference to Intelligent Design in its ninth-grade biology curriculum. Acting pro bono, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans for Separation of Church and State argued that Intelligent Design was a tactical repackaging of creationism, the teaching of which was similarly prohibited in public schools by the United States Supreme Court in 1987. The defence for the Dover Area School District, represented by the Thomas More Law Centre (which describes its mission as “to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs”) argued that the theory of Intelligent Design was scientific in nature and that the theory was devoid of any reference to the Bible or the divine. One expert witness for the defence, Professor Michael Behe, a molecular biologist from Lehigh University, said Intelligent Design considers that evolutionary theory is incomplete and flawed. “Intelligent Design”, he stated, “relies on physical, empirical, observable evidence from nature plus logical inferences – we infer design when parts appear to be

7 A United States CBS poll conducted in November 2004 found 65 per cent of Americans favoured teaching creationism with evolution, while 37 per cent wanted creationism taught instead of evolution. The poll also found that 55 per cent of respondents believed God created humans in their present form (‘Darwin vs. God case opens in US’, The Australian, 2005, p. 9).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 41 arranged for a purpose” (Anderson, 2005, p. 29). In Australia, the case gained attention when the Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson, after talking with the national director of the Campus Crusade for Christ Australia and viewing the organisation’s DVD Unlocking the Mystery of Life (2000), argued that parents and schools “should have the opportunity if they wish to for students also to be exposed to [Intelligent Design] and taught about it”. Both ‘sides’ of evolution, he argued, ought to be properly taught so that people could have an understanding of what the debate is about. The position endorsed by Nelson (and favoured by United States President George W. Bush) is that Intelligent Design supplements, rather than replaces, standard evolutionary biology (Caton, 2005, p. 29). Nelson’s statements in turn prompted the Australian Council of Deans of Science, an organisation representing 70,000 Australian scientists, to issue a statement rejecting the central thesis of Intelligent Design – that some living creatures are so complex they are explicable only by the agency of a superior force (Anderson, 2005, p. 29). Tim Brown, President of the organisation, argues that to date the biological sciences have uncovered a vast and growing body of factual knowledge supporting the hypothesis that biological complexity is the result of natural processes of evolution, and the organisation insists that evolutionary science is a work in progress aiming to uncover missing information through rigorous and accepted scientific practice (O’Keefe, 2005, p. 31; Anderson, 2005, p. 29). Brown suggests that the idea that evolution is designed by an intelligent force is a hypothesis that cannot be tested, and that Intelligent Design would therefore be better suited to theological and religious studies, and not science (O’Keefe, 2005, p. 31). In Pennsylvania, the non-jury trial (heard by John Jones III, a Federal Court judge who was nominated in 2002 by United States President George W. Bush) agreed, ruling on 21 December 2005 that it was unconstitutional to teach children the intelligent design theory of life (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC News Online, 2005, ¶ 1-4). The debate around Intelligent Design can be nominated as proof that any definitive claims in evolution theory cannot be considered as a form of final statement, as it shows that the discourse of evolution remains a site of ongoing power-knowledge struggle in which political interests and ideologies continue to be voiced.

In concluding my discussion of pre-Darwinian discourse I present the following (Table 2.) in which I show the three categories of evolution metaphor – ‘metaphors of evolution’, ‘evolution as metaphor’, and ‘evolutionary metaphors’ – here arranged to illustrate how the major Western ideas of evolution prior to Darwin evoke ‘strange names’ that simultaneously delimit and describe various non-human and biological phenomena within the natural world, equate biological and natural phenomena to structures and institutions within the social world, and, subsequently, create a stable and favourable place for both the individual and socially oriented human within the world.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 42 Table 2. Three categories of evolution metaphors in pre-Darwinian evolution theories

‘Strange Name’ Metaphors of Evolution Evolution as Metaphor Evolutionary Metaphor

Creation A benevolent being or force ‘creates’ The metaphor of creation suggests The unquestionable belief that the universe, the Earth, and all life that all that exists in the world is as it accounts of ‘creation’ are literally true therein; explaining the existence of all was intended; perfect, ineffable, and is seen to be a measure of Faith. that exists prior to its explanation. unquestionable.

Differentiation and Definition Perceived difference between taxa. If the social world is a reflection of the Marked differentiation and definition No two individuals/species are exactly natural world, then it follows that the within the natural and social worlds alike. social world should also be divided must be part of God’s divine plan. according to marked differences.

Classification The comparative reflection of different The organisation of 'everydayness' The typological approach to many taxa enables the allocation of into discrete categories on the basis of forms of social organisation, such as 'individuals' to 'groups' according to observable characteristics, such as the production of a ‘hierarchy’ of type. the differentiation, classification, and knowledge, and the organisation of organisation of ‘race’, ‘class’, and ‘value’. ‘gender’.

Essence, ideal, perfection Reflection upon differentiation within Differentiation in class, race, and To pursue perfection is to follow the species types suggests an average, or gender. suggests individual essential path between actuality and typical individual from which can be ‘traits’ and ideal ‘types.’ potentiality. As individual types are drawn the eternal, unchanging eternal and unchanging, the best ‘essence’ of the type. course of action available to any individual is in the pursuit and 43

realisation of their 'ideal type,' independent of its actual existence.

Hierarchy, 'Chain-of-Being' Different species have different traits The natural order of the world is The ‘birth-right’ of both commoner and and characteristics (such as strength, likewise repeated in the social order, gentry is preordained, and the fixed, intelligence, and agility), and the with ranks of power and seniority unscaleable structure of society is part ‘natural order of the world’ shows a (from Gypsies, Pirates, Thieves, and of God’s design. hierarchical arrangement between Actors to the Queen, the King, and A world arranged according to the lower order species (plants, The Holy Roman Emperor). importance of each individual, ensures invertebrates, insects) and the higher Prior to Lamack’s interpretation, social notions such as the ‘Divine Right of order species that prey upon them. change flowed from divine decree Kings’. The obvious power over the natural down. world that humankind enjoys is Lamarck’s radical interpretation evidence of its position towards the provided a space for social politics top, closer to God. that grew from the ground up. The earliest interpretations of evolution suggested that all matter flows from the ideal, or the supreme, to the lowest base. Lamarck argued that evolution progressed from the lowest infusoria to the divine. Nonetheless, regardless of whether evolution occurs at the top and flows down, or at the bottom and crawls up, the hierarchy remains intact.

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Dominion and stewardship Biologists noted relationships, In the social realm, power and status The obligations, responsibilities, and obligations, and dependencies demanded certain responsibilities, inter-dependencies that structured the between the species, for example the obligations, and rights between class rigid social system were ineffable and 'Food Chain'. Humankind’s position on ranks. pre-ordained. the Chain demands responsibilities For example, as whites were seen (by and grants rights over all Earth's whites) as being ‘higher’ than non- plants and animals. whites, they were granted (by whites) the attendant rights of slavery. (As slaves themselves were ‘lower’ than freemen, African slaves were doubly discriminated against).

Design, purpose Nothing can design and order itself. All things have their place and Each individual must be the best they Therefore, there must be some purpose. If the design of the world is can be, without questioning their rank intelligent and powerful designer. And to fulfil its purpose, then the purpose or station. Each individual should where there is such an intricate of humankind must be to do the strive to achieve their purpose, the design, there must also be a powerful designer’s work. purpose the designer designed for purpose. them.

Progress (after Lamarck) If plants and animals can actually Change should only be for the better. The gestalt of the Enlightenment adapt to changes in their environment, A more complex society must be a equals progress for society, a then any change must be towards a better, ‘enlightened’ form of society. progressive movement towards ‘higher’ state of complexity (and Self-improvement (through Christian Godliness. being). meditation) brings the individual closer to the divine.

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Darwin and Darwinian evolution theory Despite being popularised as the ‘father of evolution', Charles Darwin was not the first to propose the idea that human beings, like all other animals, have evolved throughout time from an early primitive form to their present biological state. The idea that all of the Earth’s plants and animals did not appear in their original and unchanged form a mere 6,000 years ago was already tentatively accepted by certain schools of science: naturalists, biologists, and taxonomists were cataloguing the world’s diverse species; palaeontologists were locating fossilised remains of pre-historic animals; and archaeologists were finding evidence that human culture pre-dated Biblical accounts. Thus, by the time Darwin presented his theory of evolution to the Linnaeus society in 1858, the search for a unified, workable theory of evolution was firmly on the intellectual agenda of his time. Like most of the ‘great’ scientific discoveries (Newton and gravity, Franklin and electricity, Currie and penicillin, Einstein and the atom), the mythologising of Darwin’s ‘discovery of evolution’ – the familiar story about how Darwin uncovered the secrets of evolution during a visit to the Galapagos Islands onboard the Beagle – is less a ‘foundation of facts’, and more a celebration of the important role Darwin’s theories have had on social and cultural life.

Darwin([1859] 1972) presents three discrete theses offering a plausible mechanism through which biological evolution occurs: change, variation, and selection. Darwin’s story of natural selection is that all life on Earth has always been at the mercy of evolutionary forces. As primordial creatures sexually reproduced, they continuously exchanged and recombined their hereditary nature. Thus all the individuals in a given breeding population combined to form the ‘species’. Natural selection, Darwin concluded, operates on a species as a whole, as both individual and group competed for survival against elements of starvation, other predatory organisms, disease, or plain bad luck. Those individuals best suited to the particular circumstances of a given environment were best equipped to survive, produce more offspring, and generate a continuation of their form, whereas those with a less appropriate genetic constitution suffered extinction. As generations pass, each lineage of creatures becomes more closely adapted to its environment, and over time, deficient organisms are lost to the species, while organisms capable of promoting survival and reproduction see their prodigy spread throughout the species. Thus changes in the composition of an organism will eventually result in changes to the species as well. In light of these three observations, Darwin concluded that evolution was the capacity of a species to adapt to changes to its environment.

In presenting his theory, Darwin produced a workable mechanism that was able to satisfy a society primed (seeking a reason and an excuse) to reject the old cosmological paradigm and embrace a new, modern era. And like the evolutionists who had preceded him, Darwin’s version of evolution was itself heavily influenced by the prevailing social climate and structure of his time. Indeed, the great mythologisation and widespread acceptance of

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 46 Darwin’s theory can be attributed to two concurrent assumptions: firstly, his theory presented no challenge to existing hierarchical views of the natural world that (like the patriarchal Victorian society in which he wrote) saw ‘Man’ as the pinnacle of nature’s achievements; and secondly, his theories reflected perfectly the prevailing social agenda of his time – the expansion of capitalism fuelled by burgeoning industrialisation. Indeed, as Darwin’s biographer Geoffrey West writes: In the machine age [Darwin] established a mechanical conception of organic life. He paralleled the human struggle with a natural struggle. In an acquisitive hereditary society he stated acquisition and inheritance as the primary means of survival. (West in Rifkin 1998, p. 202) Richard Lewontin likewise argues that Darwin’s theory effectively expanded nineteenth century ‘political economy’ to include the ‘natural economy’ (Lewontin 1993, p. 10), inadvertently providing the entrepreneurs, organisers, financiers, politicians, and other ‘elites’ of industrialisation with an assurance in regards to the correctness of their behaviour. Darwin’s theory confirmed what such interests so anxiously wanted to believe: that the way they were organising their existence was “harmonious” with the natural order of things (Rifkin, 1998, p. 197). David Stack rounds this argument, suggesting that at the time Darwin presented his thesis, the spheres of politics and science were still intricately intertwined. “There could be”, he argues, “no Darwinism prior to, or independent of, social Darwinism. They emerged as one from the ‘common context’ of nineteenth century social and scientific thought” (2003, p. 7-8). Again, these interpretations of Darwin’s legacy show the extent to which evolution theory is itself a discourse that is formed in conjunction with vested power interests that effectively delimit additional cognition or interpretation by defining and guarding the boundaries of knowledge. This thesis maintains that the human that has been formed through the discourse of evolution is amenable to an analysis through which a version of the posthuman emerges, recontextualised in light of current evolutionary theory.

Darwin’s discourse differs from the theories that precede (and many that were written after) him, in that he does not explicitly advocate the idea of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ forms of life: rather, his theory emphasises the idea that natural or un-aided evolution has neither direction nor destiny.8 The mechanisms of evolution, Darwin suggests, are opportunistic; responding to immediate stimulus with no mind for the distant future. In Darwinism, evolution is neither moral nor immoral, and the consequence of presenting an amoral theory that so closely reflects and is reflected by many social mechanisms is that Darwinism, as metaphor, has been continuously exploited from both the left and the right to justify political and economic ideologies and interests.9 As Rifkin notes, within all economic and political debates

8 The misrepresentation of evolution as progress was so apparent to Darwin that he reminded himself in his notebook “never to say higher or lower” in reference to different forms of life (Futuyama, 1986, p. 7).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 47 surrounding Darwinism, there is an underlying assumption that the theory is a disinterested, objective, impartial recording of nature’s operating design, untainted by social context and cultural bias (1998, p. 202), and that what is observable, testable and provable in nature is, indeed, necessary and right for society. Indeed, all forms of Social Darwinism were encouraged by Darwin’s proposal of “one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings” (Darwin, [1859] 1972, p. 263).

As suggested above, in terms of both the social and the scientific, the broader body politic was already deeply engaged in the exchange of metaphors between the biological and the social, actively contributing to the construction of ideas that directed and conditioned the ideologies of both left and right late nineteenth and early twentieth century politics: ideas that were ultimately used to critique and justify class, race, and gender prejudices and struggles well into the twentieth century. For the Left, Darwinism suggested the dissolution of eternal, divine, rigid, idealistic, and hierarchical concepts of nature (and thus society) and the promotion of a transitory, intertwined, egalitarian, materialistic, and cooperative world. For the Right, Darwinism offered justification for the might and power advancing capitalist enterprises.10 While Darwin rejected the idea that ethical implications could be drawn from his writings (Singer, 2000, p. 10), his work “exalted competition, power and violence over convention, ethics, and religion [becoming] a portmanteau of nationalism, imperialism, and dictatorship, of the cult of the hero, the superman, and the master race” (Himmelfarb in Rifkin 1998, p. 206-207). If the assumption that ‘natural selection’ was simply the work of nature or God could be drawn from Darwinism, then the notion that any artificial or directed selection was simply accelerating what was ostensibly a natural, or Godly, process could also be inferred and justified. Thus, when applied to human social and cultural evolution, Darwinian principles predicted that, un-aided, the fit would survive while the weak would perish. Extending these principles into the realm of artificial or aided selection, on the other hand, suggested that the same techniques that made wheat from wild grasses and Aberdeen Angus from Aurochs could hypothetically transform humanity in any direction prescribed (Tudge, 2002, pp. 25-26), and the principles of eugenics – an ongoing concern to human society throughout two millennia11 – gained widespread recognition and acceptance in the early twentieth century.

9 The utility of Darwin’s amoral theory is suggested in David Stack (2003) where he writes that readings and applications of Social Darwinism differed in content and meaning according to the demands of their audience. In Russia, for example, Darwinism was seen as a more co-operative doctrine of nature, whereas in the United States it was seen as more individualistic and competitive (pp. 7-8).

10 Herbert Spencer, prominent among the defenders of laissez-faire capitalism, drew ethical ideals from Darwinism to oppose state interference with market forces: his famous slogan “survival of the fittest” is often attributed to Darwin.

11 Plato ([1955] 1971) writes that “among the honours and rewards our young men can win for distinguished service in war and other activities, will be more frequent opportunities to sleep with a woman; this will give us a pretext for ensuring that most of our children are born

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 48

Eugenics is directed to work in either one of two ways. ‘Positive’ eugenics is selective sexual reproduction in order to ‘strengthen’ the genetic material of the human species, whereas ‘Negative’ eugenics is applied in order to eliminate unwanted genetic material. The eugenic doctrine argues that random natural selection need not apply to humans, or indeed non- human organisms. Rather, human action should be used to obtain progressive evolution. Such ‘human action’ would, in most instances, be the action of ruling institutions and ideologies, again highlighting the discursive power that exists within evolution theory.

In his study on eugenics, Adam Parfrey (1990) argues that turn of the century eugenics, fuelled by popular Darwinism, were sold as a ‘moral imperative’: “health-consciousness applied in a positivist science-directed manner” (p. 217). And whilst up-to-date Edwardian matrons spoke approvingly of ‘eugenic marriages’ (Tudge, 2002, p. 26), social scientists argued that eugenics was a positive way to increase the quality of humanity through a steady increase in human intelligence and a simultaneous decrease in violent or criminal tendencies or disabling birth defects (Parfrey, 1990, p. 217). By the dawn of the twentieth century, the numerous articles, novels and plays from evolutionary theorists, writers, and social commentators (including Sir Francis Galton12, H G Wells13, Herbert Spencer14, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain15) celebrating the perceived benefits of eugenics encouraged

of that kind of parent,” and that officers of the state will “take the children of the better Guardians to a nursery and put them in charge of nurses living in a separate part of the city: the children of the inferior Guardians, and any defective offspring of the others, will be quietly got rid of”. “They must be,” he writes, “if we are to keep our Guardian stock pure” ([1955] 1974, p. 215- 216.).

12 Our human civilised stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals, whether wild or domestic (Galton, [1883] 2003, p. 38).

13 I believe that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies (Wells in Peart & Levy, 2002, Denying human homogeneity: Eugenics & the making of post-classical economics, p. 2).

14 Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles. (Spencer in Miller, 1976, p.197).

15 Are the so-called (and rightly so) ‘noble’ animal races, the draught-horses of Limousin, the American trotter, the Irish hunter, the absolutely reliable sporting dogs, produced by chance and promiscuity? Do we get them by giving the animals equality of rights, by throwing the same food to them and whipping them with the same whip? No, they are produced by artificial selection and strict maintenance of the purity of the race. Horses and especially dogs give us every chance of observing that the intellectual gifts go hand in hand with the physical; this is specially true of the moral qualities: a mongrel is frequently very clever, but never reliable; morally he is always a weed. Continual promiscuity between two pre-eminent

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 49 a number of Nation-states – including Australia, Bermuda, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States – to embrace those eugenic principles that promoted strong national ‘stock’ through a range of breeding programs16 or sterilisation laws for the physically or mentally ‘unfit’ or ‘defective’ (Parfrey, 1990, p. 217). The history of eugenics offers an immediate and obvious example of the ways in which social institutions and organisations can draw inference from natural phenomena; and the ideological practices and policies behind eugenics history offers an insight into the extraordinary power available to those who would exploit the perceived laws of nature that constitute evolution theory for political ends.

The discourse, however, travels both ways and whether Darwin intended to or not, he drew from the social and political ideologies of his day a theoretical conception of nature that was already biased towards maintaining and promoting the status quo. His conception of nature as a competitive struggle mirrors the competitive ethos of industrial capitalism; his assertion that strong hereditary traits enable the acquisition of the means for survival mirrors the social arrangement of an acquisitive hereditary society; his account for diversification within species reflects the principle of the division of labour and the rightness of property; and his view of divergence in nature, and the ability of a species to migrate, adapt, and survive in new niches where there is both less competition and more available resources, reflects the colonial enterprise.

That Darwin’s theory so closely reflects the social arrangements of his day shows that his discourse drew metaphors extensively from contemporaneous social, political, and economic institutions. And in turn, various social, political, and economic institutions have drawn metaphors extensively from Darwin’s theory in re-stating their own worldviews. While this can be seen as a reciprocal ‘justification’ of each worldview, the exchange of metaphors often occurred simply because there was no literal expression available for the views that late-nineteenth century biologists, social scientists, economists, politicians or any other social commentator wanted so desperately to present. That is, no historical, cultural or social precedents could be called upon to explain, justify, and extend the range of new technological, social, political, and economic arrangements that were sweeping Europe at that time. Indeed, Darwin’s writings are a testimony to the extraordinary changes he

animal races leads without exception to the destruction of the pre-eminent characteristics of both. Why should the human race form an exception? (Chamberlain, [1912] 2004, ¶ 3-4)

16 In Australia, the eugenic project attempted to ‘assimilate’ the Aboriginal population through policies that saw the removal of mixed-race, or ‘half-caste’ children from their Aboriginal mothers in an open attempt to ‘breed out the colour’. The belief at the time was that Aborigines were a race of primitive, dark Caucasians – the racial ancestors of contemporary Europeans, and as Europeans had evolved from dark skinned progenitors, there could be no danger of atavism or ‘throwback’ among children of mixed-race marriages. Thus, a policy of assimilation, or ‘absorption’ was pursued and encouraged: half-caste, quarter-caste, and octoroon; until all trace of Aboriginal blood would be erased (Manne 2002, pp. 4-5).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 50 witnessed, in which the small-scale ‘haystack industries’ – the cotton loom and the water wheel – gave way to the large-scale ‘smokestack industries’ – mechanised factories, steamships, and railways. Darwin witnessed the shift in workplace organisation as the division of labour shifted from an individual ‘artisan’ work process to a conglomerate factory ‘machine assemblage’ process. In his time, Darwin would have seen the rapid growth of towns and cities based around industry and large scale mining, the opening of North America, the spread of telegraphy and telephony, and the imperialist expansion that followed, in which the focus of government turned from internal management to the building of unified nation-states (Flew, 2002, p. 60). And the evolution metaphors that Darwin and his contemporaries produced ultimately accompanied this period, interpreting, re-interpreting, and reinforcing what soon became the dominant ideology: that change, variation, and selection are phenomena common and justified in both the natural and social world, and that the movement in which natural organisms evolved justifies similar ‘progressive’ movements in society. Thus, more than providing a theory of evolution, Darwin’s work effectively mythologised a natural cosmology acceptable to the gestalt of the twentieth century.

Regardless of his intentions and his emphasis on ‘directionless’ evolution, the misrepresentation of evolution as progress is apparent in many interpretations of Darwinism. Arguably, the greatest voice for ‘progress’ in evolution theory can be found in the later writings of Julian Huxley, who saw evolution “infusing the history of life with a progressive glow” (Barlow 1995, p. 3). Huxley wrote that: If we accept the doctrine of evolution, we are bound to believe that man has arisen from mammals, terrestrial from aquatic forms, vertebrates from invertebrates, multicellular from unicellular, and in general the larger and the more complex from the smaller and simpler, to the average man it will appear indisputable that a man is higher than a worm or a polyp, an insect higher than a protozoan, even if he cannot exactly define what resides this highness or lowness of organic type. (Huxley in Barlow, 1995, p. 5) Huxley noted that “a bacillus, a jellyfish, or a tapeworm is as well adapted to its environment as a bird, an ant, or a man,” and that each of these creatures has been able to ‘adapt’ and ‘survive’ into its ecological niche. So what, Huxley asked, made “man a higher organism than the tubercle bacillus?” ([1943] 1974, p. 556). While directional change can be assessed scientifically (changes to body shape and size, species population, and increase to environmental range, for example), the conflation of any such change with the notion of ‘advance’ or ‘progress’ ultimately remains a subjective act (Barlow, 1995, pp. 20-21). Drawing upon the ‘dominant type’ mechanism hypothesised by his father Theodore (also a noted biologist), Huxley deduced that the answer must lie in the fact that humankind resided at the ‘top’ of the ‘food chain’, concluding that organisms “making for greater control over the environment, and those making for greater independence of the environment” fulfilled the “criterion of biological progress” (Huxley, [1943] 1974, p. 562). ‘Control of’ and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 51 ‘independence from’ the environment are also highly subjective criteria, and to nominate species that fulfil these criteria (of which humankind is undoubtedly the ‘winner’) as ‘higher’ is equally difficult. In Chapter Four I argue that, in fulfilling these two categories, ‘technology’ itself is increasingly seen as a measure of human biological progress.

Historically it has been important to identify ‘progress’ in evolution, particularly human evolution, because without progress, there is stagnation, regression, or at worst, extinction. And any evidence of past progress elicits the promise of future advancement, whilst reinforcing the idea that the Homo genus has rightfully attained station atop of any ‘Chain’. Progress (and its antonymic measure ‘regress’) are retrospective and future oriented terms. They each imply that things have changed from their original state, and that they will necessarily continue to change in the future. Each evokes a value judgement that is impossible to define and measure by any non-arbitrary criteria (Futuyama, 1986, p. 7). ‘Progress’ as such “is a noxious, culturally embedded, un-testable, non-operational, intractable idea that must be replaced if we wish to understand the patterns of history” (Gould, 1988, p. 319). ‘Progress’ is arguably the most misconceived and ill-applied evolution metaphor, and any ‘criteria’ for measuring it must always remain subjective and incomplete. Nevertheless, progress remains a dominant driver of social, cultural, and technological change; a mechanisms through which the human continues to seek justification for its actions.

The idea that evolution is progressive also suggests that evolution maintains something of a momentum or trajectory, or, at the very least, a discernable direction. At its simplest, this might suggest that as the genus Homo has grown taller over the past five million years, and the brain has swollen from 400ml to 1400ml, future progeny of the genus should therefore be extraordinarily tall with massively swollen crania. Darwinism, however, shows that for a species to undergo any notable form of evolution, a change in environmental circumstances must first occur. Likewise, the spawning of a new genus within a species population requires favourable environmental circumstance and geographically based reproductive isolation. In the past, geographic barriers and the environmental terrains contained therein provided the genetic isolation necessary for human biological evolution. Modern culture and technology, including modern agriculture, urbanised living, and trans-migrational movements, have rendered genetic isolation obsolete. In addition, the decline of child mortality in the developed world means that family sizes now tend to be comparatively small, and the mutations in the chromosomes of eggs or sperm that become more common as parents age occur less frequently. Nevertheless, this evolutionary impasse could be broken by a dramatic change in the Earth’s environment, ecosphere, atmosphere, or climate through catastrophe caused by global war, nuclear, biological, or chemical mishap, geological or tectonic disaster, the slow degradation of the environment through pollution, or the collapse of the food chain through species depletion. Any of these scenarios could result in human beings

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 52 being again isolated in small groups living in a variety of untried environments (Cohen, 2001, p. 26). It is plausible, then, that under such conditions mutation and natural selection could produce pockets of ‘neo-humans’, each adapting to its own environment. Hypothetical scenarios (represented as such within popular science-fiction) include races whose mutant offspring can withstand higher levels of radiation than its progenitors, or the “Mole Men” who feed off of dirt, and see in the dark.

This thesis, however, recognises the discursive nature of evolution theory and promotes an evolution literacy capable of recognising the notions of ‘progress’ or ‘purpose’ as subjective, loaded and ideological terms whose biases need not feed realisations of future human evolution.

In the following (Table 3.) I show the three categories of evolution metaphor – ‘metaphors of evolution’, ‘evolution as metaphor’, and ‘evolutionary metaphors’ – here arranged to illustrate the principles and mechanisms commonly attributed to the Darwinian ‘cosmology’. This table shows how the prevalent ideas and theories presented through the Darwinian paradigm were adopted wholeheartedly in order to delimit and describe organisational structures and institutions within both the natural and the social worlds, and how these metaphors were subsequently approved in order to reinforce and justify the prevailing worldview. The table highlights many ideas that remain so powerfully entrenched within our culture that they continue to be used to describe and define any type of change, variation, or selection – whether natural or guided – as ‘evolutionary’.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 53 Table 3. Three categories of evolution metaphors in Darwinian evolution theories

‘Strange Name’ Metaphors of Evolution Evolutionary Metaphor Evolution as Metaphor

Common ancestor/ The single taxa from which some Adapting the idea of an unbroken Ancestry suggests that ‘“we are all descent other organism, population, or species lineage of all life on Earth, the term connected” and that there is some (and divergence from) descended by reproduction. ancestry suggests an unbroken similarity between all taxa. ‘Ancestry’ is often the only common historical, social, and cultural lineage. characteristic shared, as ‘evolution’ suggests divergence.

Primitive A character state present in the An earlier form of a current character The primitive state of a character ‘original condition’ of a common state, the original condition being seen indicates the extent to which evolution ancestor. as not fully formed. has occurred. This has, historically, been inferred to represent a measure of ‘progress’.

Variation Concentrates on observable Principles of variation used to explain Observance of variation between two differences between individual observable difference between and distinct states emphasises difference. organisms within and between within individuals within human Variation encourages comparative species. populations, human cultures, human approaches, aimed at generalisations Interprets patterns of variation in techno-systems, and human societies. about aspects that are similar or context of environmental and/or unique to specific systems. evolutionary forces. Visual variation: variation visible to the human eye, such as skin colour, eye colour, height, weight, hair colour, hair 54

type, body proportions, sex, and age. Biochemical variation: variation observable only through chemical tests, such as blood type, polymorphisms, and mtDNA and nDNA.

Mutation Thomas Hunt Morgan identified In social realms, radical or drastic The hangover of Linnean taxonomy chromosomal mutation in 1910 as the mutations that ‘shock’ and ‘surprise’ suggests ‘mutants’ have little or no ultimate source of genetic variation. us are – or are not – ‘selected’ for worth. ‘Blind’ or ‘random’ mutations most ‘survival.’ For example, change in Indeed, mutations most often result in often result in adverse effects upon government through revolution, civil things going awry, as is seen in the the individual, but occasionally will upheaval, or insurrection. notion of the ‘throwback’. lead to changes amicable to In social realms, only constant adaptation (remembering that vigilance against dangerous mutagens evolution is an incredibly slow can impede the atavistic rot they process, and that ‘good enough’ in bring. evolution is usually acceptable).

Punctuated equilibrium A state in which evolutionary change Massive and rapid upheaval or The idea that institutions and occurs in relatively rapid bursts, change in surrounding environment infrastructures can adapt very quickly followed by longer periods of stasis or resulting in quick change to socio- to change when necessary. slower change. Often attributed to cultural structures. For example, dramatic change within the massive change to industrial environment. technologies creates new economic and social infrastructure. 55

Adaptation Change in an organism or organism’s Adaptation of individual or social Current generations must carry structure resulting from natural structures and ‘norms’ resulting from adaptations based on the selection selection. selection process. choices of their ancestors.

Selection, ‘Natural’ and ‘Artificial’ The survival of the genotype most The science of selective breeding, of The term ‘selection’ implies ‘wilful suited, or best able to adapt, to its plants, animals, and humans choice,’ usually in coherence with ecological niche under abiotic stress. (eugenics) is merely accelerating what specific criteria. is a natural process. That the English ‘Selection’, both ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ However, in suggesting that some rose does not flourish in the Australian is particularly comfortable within the adaptations are selected over others, outback is a simple accident of realm of economics, where the idea rather than how or why, natural history, and as the mechanisms of that the ‘species’ (market shares, selection also suggests that the evolution are amoral, it is not against portfolios, individuals, businesses, ‘shortest path to success’ is the best nature to change the plant – or corporations, nation-states) best able approach. perhaps the environment – to to ‘adapt’ (change tack, outwit accommodate each other. competition, cut losses) will be Artificial selection is thus justified as it ‘selected’ (given favour, gain is simply helping the ‘natural process’ reputation, increase market share) for of selection by purposefully selecting survival (growth!). the ‘best suited’ parent organism in Such a ‘champion’ will thereafter set hope of producing a hybrid that the ‘standard’ through which future possesses the desirable observations might occur. characteristics of both parents. The idea is also comfortable within a range of social and cultural institutions, such as sport, religion, education, business, and politics.

Survival Organisms best adapted to their Evolution favours the strong, the “Survival of the fittest” is the catchall 56

environment have the best chance of beautiful, the fast, graceful, and smart. cry for most competitive institutions. survival. Purposefully favouring such genotype Competition being the key motivator in The ‘struggle’ to survive is part of the and phenotypes is on par with nature. the ‘struggle’ to survive. natural process.

Extinction The evolutionary end of a species that If only the strong survive, the weak The inability to adapt to change will has failed to successfully adapt to its are doomed to extinction, evidenced often lead to irreversible entropic environment, leaving nothing behind. by their inability to leave any legacy. damage.

Pseudoextinction The supplantation and supersession Inherited legacy. The passing down of The inheritance of certain attributes, of one species by its progeny, eg. certain attributes of one generation to usually ‘the best’ attributes of a Homo erectus lives on in Homo the next. (Natural selection species/organisation will ‘live on’ in sapiens. guarantees that these attributes are succeeding generations, regardless of the ‘best’). how these change.

Dominant types Where one species (usually the A ‘natural’ occurrence where one Power, in its many forms (majority stronger predator) exerts greater social or cultural group exerts great rule, physical size, financial worth, influence upon another species in a influence at the expense of others. greater knowledge, military might), given environment (to the point where produces various dominant groups, competing species are severely whose domination is justified as it disadvantaged). mirrors ‘natural’ mechanisms.

Balance When the growth of a species It is natural for a social organisation to The expansion of any system (for exceeds the resources available to it seek new ‘markets’ when it has example, capitalism, imperialism, and within its environment, competition exceeded its own. religion) beyond its borders is within the species for limited If natural resources are exhausted, acceptable if that system can find resources will contribute to either the new resources may be found balance elsewhere. 57

natural decline of the species, or the elsewhere. expansion and adaptation of the species to new environmental niches.

Taxonomy, rank Traditionally, taxa are ranked The organisation of social institutions The hierarchical ‘containment’ of according to their level of according to perceived rank. organisations or institutions within inclusiveness. ever larger organisations or Thus, in order, a genus contains one institutions. or more species, containing one or more families, which include one or more genera, and so on.

Food Chain An interconnected chain of organisms In the “eat or be eaten” world, it is far The tendency to view social and in which all species are both predator better to be a predatory species at the cultural institutions operating along the and prey. Each organism is eaten in ‘top’ of the food chain. lines of an hierarchical food chain, turn by another member of the with some ‘organisms’ (individuals, system. Despite being cyclical institutions, nation-states) ‘at the top’. (autotroph-herbivore-carnivore- The less accepted view is that all autotroph), the ‘food chain’ (no doubt energy must be shared in a cyclical inheriting the legacy of the ‘Great- manner. Chain’) is generally assumed to be hierarchical.

Character A heritable trait possessed by an Usually described in terms of Personal character traits, such as organism ‘presence’ and ‘absence’, ‘favourable’ ‘trustworthiness’, ‘truthfulness’, and ‘unfavourable’ character traits ‘stubbornness’, and ‘resourcefulness’ alike may be passed to reproductive are described in terms of heritable 58

progeny. character traits in individual and social organisations.

Inheritance, lineage Formed through the observation that In social realms, inheritance Inheritance includes the passing on of the genetic offspring of a species is concludes that social and cultural material possessions and acquired shaped by their parents’ genetic norms are heritable traits. The power (family business, thrones, structure. assumption that prevailing social and property, assets), justifying the right of Any continuous line of descent or cultural conditions are the legacy of acquisitive heredity, and the series of organisms connected by previous generations absolves some importance of ‘legacy.’ reproduction. degree of responsibility for the present generation.

Blended Inheritance The observation that the genetic Like the mixing of red and yellow Homogenisation is seen as the offspring of a species is generally paints to produce orange, a ‘tall dark- inevitable result of miscegenation. intermediate between their parents. skinned man’ and a ‘short white- skinned woman’ should result in an ‘intermediate’. Blended inheritance led to the conclusion that race could be ‘bred out’. Such ‘breeding policies’ had devastating effects on many indigenous peoples.

Diversity, Divergence The natural diversity of Earth’s taxa as The many different social and cultural Social principles of divergence (“we they have evolved to fill many different institutions that have evolved to can’t all be the bank,” and “you have environmental niches. perceived niches. to find your niche”) reinforce the division of labour as mirroring the 59

natural order.

Convergence Describes similar characteristics Social and cultural institutions that are The idea that things evolve towards a between species that have evolved held to be ‘universal’ – such as common ground emphasises separately rather than from a common religious beliefs, feudal systems and universal similarities, and regards species and adapted to similar so forth – are seen as ‘natural’, and perceived differences as impeding environmental conditions, such as the therefore ‘right’. difficulties. Tasmanian Tiger (marsupial mammal) Particularly relevant in political, and the American Wolf (placental corporate, and technological realms mammal) being similar in shape and were the ‘coming together’ of habit. disparate parts is conflated to equal ‘strength in unity’.

Anthropometry The measuring of visible human Application of anthropometric ideals Measurable differences lend variation. and methods to social miscreants, themselves to quantifiable proof that Anthropometrics, osteometry, using pseudoscience such as ‘nature’ preordains fate. odontography, anthroposcopy, physiognomy, phrenology, and dermatography, and other craniology. Anthropometry attempted populational or clinal approaches lent to name brain components according a sense of scientific authority and to attributes such as destructiveness, certainty to measurements of human secretiveness, veneration, hope, variation. Often based on over- wonder, wit and individuality (Scott, simplified observations and pre- 2003, ¶ 9). formed prejudice, for example, that Light is better than Dark, and Tall is better than Short.

60

While theories of evolution continue to be produced and explored, those core mechanisms central to Darwin’s thesis – change, variation, and selection – remain central to contemporary understandings of evolution. Functioning as metaphors, these mechanisms have been extended to describe, define, and direct many areas of non-biological change. Nevertheless, it is an oversimplification to nominate ‘change’ within social, cultural, and technological organisations and institutions as ‘evolution’. The metaphor here becomes a meaningless tautology; for evolution without mechanisms is simply change. And while it can be proven that observable, continuous, change occurs in many non-biological systems (environments, institutions, organisations, machines) such change can rarely be equated with natural evolution. Natural evolution, Darwin showed, takes place through the creation of random combinations of existing genetic materials. These new combinations will subsequently struggle and compete for continued existence, and those best suited to their environment will survive and proliferate as others less suited perish. The mechanisms of natural evolution include mutation, blind or random variation, adaptation, trial and error- elimination, and selective retention. Yet in non-biological realms, particularly social, cultural, and political realms, these mechanisms run into problems. Employed as metaphors, these mechanisms are here driven not by ‘nature’ but by the specific goals of agents guided by informed choices. Mechanistic evolution, then, involves generational rounds of mutation, trial, and error, and selective retention, whilst facultative change is, in comparison, a process of applied decision-rules that are, in essence, metaphors of evolution (Curry, 2003, pp. 112- 117). Nevertheless, we continue to seek an understanding of the rules and mechanisms of evolution in order to respond to perceived change. With no other means available, we construct metaphors in order to describe and define the three possible responses applicable in the face of any change: stability, adaptation, or innovation.

In Chapter Four I outline again the importance of an evolution literacy, arguing that an understanding of the mechanisms, terms, processes, and outcomes of evolution may in turn be applied in discussions of non-biological change. An evolution literacy, I argue, would examine a particular socio-cultural artefact or structural or institutional technique, outlining its evolutionary history and, subsequently, its potential or possible future trajectory. An evolution literacy would acknowledge the role a variety of actors has had in the historical shaping of particular socio-cultural artefacts or norms, simultaneously determining the extent to which certain actors had been shaped through particular evolutionary mechanisms. I argue that without an evolution literacy – that is, without understanding the processes and mechanisms of evolution – we risk producing discourses that justify all levels of change as simply ‘evolution’, and that this, in turn, evokes the most dangerous assumption enunciated in pre- or post-Darwinian evolution theory: that by necessity evolution or change equals progress.

Throughout this chapter I have shown how the discourses of evolution at any given time have been used to interpret, justify, and reinforce our positional relationship with the broader

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 61 natural environment. In enunciating an understanding of the natural world, we name the objects and phenomena we experience in the natural world, drawing from the linguistic and cultural archives available at that time. In turn, that which we have identified, categorised, refined, qualified, and classified as ‘natural’ is transplanted to the social and cultural world in order to describe and define previously unnamed phenomena. Theories of evolution have always sought, and continue to seek, an explanation of the position of the human within the world. And the metaphors that are exchanged between ‘the natural’ and ‘the social’ serve mainly to anthropomorphise or personify the world in workable terms. I have argued that there is ultimately vast power associated with the constitution and widespread acceptance of new theories of evolution, and the individuals or ideological institutions who voice new interpretations of evolution ultimately find in nature a way in which to reinforce their own privilege and prestige. New ideas of evolution, once they have been enunciated, critiqued, and debated, are accepted when people are able to see their own ideological practices and organisations as reflections of natural operating systems and principles (Rifkin, 1998). If the ideas are justifiable, then they are seen as inevitable, and are upheld as truth. And, I argue, ideas presented as epistemic certainties ultimately affect the ways we understand and constitute ourselves and our societies.

I have suggested in this chapter that ‘generational’ change parallels changes to our understanding of evolution and, subsequently, the relational position of the human within both the natural and social world. Changes to our understanding of evolution and the place of the human within the natural and social world always reflect the prevailing social and cultural gestalt. In early creationist views the world was understood as having been created by Gods, Spirits, or other personified forces of nature. Evolution was positioned as a hierarchy: at the top, a potentiality enmeshed in the perfect idea; at the base was the actuality in which all life existed. And social organisation was ordered in a manner best suited to the enterprise of all actors becoming closer to the ideal. In medieval times, the hierarchical ‘Chain-of-Being’ was reconstituted to reflect a world made of mechanistic components. Each unit had its own unique place, as it was initially planned in God’s ineffable design. Society was likewise ordered to ensure that each individual maintained and fulfilled the role God assigned for them. The Darwinian view of evolution later showed that organisms are able to change according to need, enabling those organisms best suited to their environment to survive. While weakening the strict hierarchical ‘Chain-of-Being’ of previous eras, Darwinism imbibes a progressive capitalist logic in which ‘strength’ ensures the station of the organisms. Darwinian ideology can be seen in the concentrated strength of acquisitive hereditary and accumulative wealth, might, and power that ultimately contributed to the political, social, and cultural organisation of the twentieth century.

In the following chapter, I present an outline of our contemporary understanding of evolution, which, I argue, is shaped by three separate yet often overlapping schools of thought:

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 62 ‘environmentalism’, ‘genetics’, and ‘evolutionary psychology’. In the terms I have outlined in this chapter, I argue that these bodies of theory contribute to the exchange of evolution metaphors as they seek to interpret, justify, and reinforce the current place of the human in the world. That is, I argue that the reciprocity between contemporary ideas and understandings of the natural, social, cultural, and technological worlds contributes to current evolution-based ideologies and vice versa. This thesis argues that current evolutionary through produces a contemporaneous metanarrative in which parts of the world are viewed as codified informatic systems of associated computational network logic through which the behaviour of participants is predefined according to an evolved structure.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 63

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 64 Chapter Three

The role of metaphor in contemporary evolution theory

A ‘bit’ of information is definable as a difference which makes a difference. Gregory Bateson (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind, p. 286

Evolution metaphors at the dawn of the twenty-first century Like evolution itself, the theory of evolution can by no means be considered ‘complete’. Indeed, as is the habit of research and scholarship, the discourse that constitutes our knowledge and appreciation of evolution continues to expand in scope and in depth of understanding. Nevertheless, in twenty-first century evolution theory the mechanisms that Darwinian evolution originally outlined – change, mutation, variation, selection, and survival – retain a predominantly unchallenged and universally accepted structural or ‘base’ position. Many of the contributions that were made to evolution theory throughout the twentieth century have also been, in this regard, a continuation of the Darwinian thesis, effectively ‘fine-tuning’ the original concept. Indeed, much of contemporary evolution theory has its foundation in the ‘modern synthesis’ (Futuyama, 1986, p. 10), an evolutionary theory that combined Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms with an amalgam of ‘environmentalism’ or ‘systematics’, ‘evolutionary psychology’ or ‘genetic behaviourism’, and ‘molecular biology’ or ‘genetics’. It is important to recognise that the evolution theories I discuss in this chapter have by no means replaced previous terms, mechanisms, description, and definitions of evolution: as is suggested in the idea of the ‘modern synthesis’, many of these developments overlay or in other ways extend existing evolution theories. Evidence of this can be seen in the appropriation of contemporary biological terms and mechanisms in reiterating previous ‘evolution’ based social biases. For example, the nineteenth and twentieth century socio- economic appropriation of Spencer’s evolutionary axiom ‘survival of the fittest’ is reappropriated in twenty-first century ‘network systematics’ to suggest a survival of the ‘better positioned and most informed’. And elsewhere, the essentialist and universal claims common to the ‘Chain-of-Being’ are revisited in the notion of a genetic pre-programming of human behaviour that is often alluded to in the discourse of evolutionary psychology. And in other discourses, modern genetic theory is appropriated in order to justify the otherwise (scientifically) discredited notions of evolutionary ‘creationism’, ‘purpose’ and ‘design’.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 65 That vast bodies of scientific, lay, and populist accounts of evolution continue to be produced suggests, I argue, that evolution theory remains a site of contested power-knowledge. Indeed, as with previous paradigms of evolution theory, contemporary accounts of evolution are acceptable in that they reflect and are reflected in accepted accounts of contemporary society. I argue in this chapter that the reorganisation of culture, society, technology, and nature in twenty-first century thought is justified by and reflected in contemporary accounts of evolution; a metanarrative in which nature is cast in the image of computational networks and in the language of abstract, programmable code.

My approach in this chapter is to develop a theoretical framework in which to position the version of the posthuman I advocate in this thesis. To this end, I argue that a discursive space within contemporary evolution theory can be exploited in order to promote an evolutionary model based on networked, codified, and programmed structures. I argue that, like other fields of postmodern thought, the discourses of contemporary evolution are complicated and problematised in that they emerge alongside, within, or through seemingly disconnected discourses. This contemporary metanarrative, I argue, extends the role of metaphor I have outlined in Chapter Two by unashamedly appropriating, deconstructing, liberating, extending, overlapping, borrowing, and questioning other bodies of knowledge, including biological and non-biological history, cybernetics, network theory, computation, informatics, psychology, and behaviouralism.

In this chapter, I address three separate, yet often overlapping, major schools of thought that together constitute a larger body of contemporary evolution theory, being ‘environmentalism’, ‘evolutionary psychology’, and ‘genetics’. Continuing to discuss the role metaphor plays in evolution theory, I argue each of these three areas also participates in the liberal and reciprocal exchange of ‘evolution’ metaphors. In Chapter Two I suggested that the category ‘metaphors of evolution’ shows how biological science borrows metaphors from existing social language to describe and explain biological evolutionary phenomena. Here, I suggest that this is exemplified in the use ‘environmentalism’ makes of other existing ‘systemic’ and ‘network’ terms and mechanisms, ‘evolutionary psychology’ makes use of recognised behavioural characteristics and traits, and ‘genetics’ makes use of other ‘abstract’, ‘codified’ and ‘informatic’ structures. The second category addressed in Chapter Two, ‘evolution as metaphor’, shows how biological mechanisms are in turn applied as metaphors to explain social change or evolution. This is exemplified in the application of ‘environmentalism’ terms and mechanisms in explaining social networks and abstract phenomena such as ‘infospace’ and the ‘datasphere’, the application of ‘evolutionary psychology’ in explaining social and cultural ideologies and other institutional arrangements, and the application of ‘genetics’ in explaining perceived universalism and/or difference. And, the last category addressed in Chapter Two, ‘evolutionary metaphors’, highlights a hybrid or synthesis of ‘biological’ and ‘socio-cultural’ language and contributes to the composite body of ‘evolution’ language that

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 66 in turn serves to reflect and justify the dominant views of the epoch from which the metaphors were originally drawn. In Chapter Two I argued that this third category highlights the vectors at which ‘biological understandings’ and ‘social interpretations’ of evolution intersect to produce a constitutive narrative of change: a metanarrative that continues to establish and justify a place for human and non-human objects within an otherwise ‘unscripted’ or natural world. This chapter rests on the argument that the reciprocity between contemporary ideas and understandings of the natural, social, and cultural worlds contribute to such an ‘evolutionary’ ideology in which parts of the world are viewed as codified informatic systems of associated computational network logic through which the behaviour of participants is predefined according to an evolved structure. This chapter offers a recontextualisation of evolution theory through which, in conjunction with the evolution literacy in discuss in Chapter Four, a version of the posthuman as an informatic structure embodied in the form of a computational agent that serves as an additional and exosomatic supplement to the human can emerge.

As is indicative of the current gestalt, and indeed, this thesis, each of the three areas discussed in this chapter is inherently capable of standing alone whilst simultaneously supporting, competing, interacting, and completing each other, both as a framing device and as a metaphor. And while there are discrepancies and competition between certain areas, the overall picture that is presented in this chapter shows a deeply rich, entwined, and ongoing discussion of evolution in which hybridity, fluidity, and interaction are the norm. Together, the three areas discussed in this chapter provide a theoretical groundwork through which I will continue to take my discussion of the posthuman, and I use this framework to emphasis the improbability, or indeed, the impossibility of one dominant and conclusive form or version of the posthuman. Here, I suggest that a hybrid theory of human evolution such as the one presented in this thesis challenges those assumptions based on rationalism and empirical supremacy by emphasising connectionism, networked systems, chaos theory, and other nondeterministic ideals. I argue that environmentalism, evolutionary psychology, and genetics show the human to be a construct of both disembodied informational patterns and an evolved biological substrate. And for a constructed form of posthuman, this highlights a transition from a relatively stable biological state that has existed for hundreds of thousands of years: a transition from a singular, fixed, and mostly homogenous species to a posthuman genus that may encompass numerous hybrid forms that may mix human and non-human biological, technological, and socio-cultural components into a multiple and fluid mode of being. In terms of a universal or essential human or humanism, this transition also highlights the end of any previous ‘Grand Narrative’ based on the notion of a linear, purposeful, directed, or designed biological evolution in favour of one based on multiple stories of happenstance, coincidence, and autopoietic action.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 67 The environment, complexity, autopoiesis, and other network enterprises The first of the three areas of contemporary evolution theory I discuss in this chapter is the concept of ‘environmentalism’ or ‘systematics’. Here, I argue that the concept of environmentalism, like other evolutionary terms and mechanisms, is a composition of metaphors appropriated from existing social and cultural terms. In turn, environmentalism, as metaphor, is used to explain and justify a range of social and cultural phenomena. And taken together, the metaphor of ‘environmentalism’ functions as a powerful metanarrative that presides over many of the terms and mechanisms that exemplify the current social paradigm, such as ‘interdependency’, ‘network relationships’, ‘mutual obligation’, ‘complexity’, and ‘globalisation’. Guiding this discussion is the argument, which is expanded in Chapter Four, that ongoing social and technological relationships continue to produce or recontextualise new environmental systems. In turn, these new socio-technological environments produce new systemic relationships and new componential entities. This thesis rests upon the argument that new forms and versions of the posthuman will continue to emerge, autopoietically, from such a system-structure.

By the end of the twentieth century, human beings were able to understand and envision themselves as part of a larger planetary system, a system they shared not only with each other but with all the Earth’s species. Drawing upon the broader informational, mathematical, and mechanical references of cybernetics and the integrated natural synergism of biological evolution, ‘complexity theory’ has emerged and developed into a compelling and powerful metaphor that enables investigators to describe, position, and discuss both ‘individual component’ and ‘system of locus’ in a fashion that points towards broader definition, greater openness, and higher levels of abstract organisation. Like traditional cybernetics, complexity theories synthesise the analogue world of biology – where information is embedded in physical dynamics – and the digital world of computation – where information is abstract and symbolic. However, complexity theories extend the scope of cybernetics by discerning the multiple, diverse interconnections individual components produce as they are linked together in larger systems.

The broad spectrum of theories, ideologies, and practices that form theories based on complexity, connectivity, and autopoiesis have a heritage in many historic non- and pre- Western societies in which the human is seen as part of the natural environment. In such ecologies, the separation of the human and the natural is a misnomer as human and non- human organisms and the environments connect with each other through reciprocal exchange. However, for most of its history the Western liberal subject has been positioned as a componential ‘part’ of nature, rather than an integral element within a natural system. In the years following the publication of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica ([1687] 1969), geometry, mathematics, engineering, and mechanics guided the principles of the natural sciences. The mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 68 the physicist Christian Huygens, for example, conceived nature and natural systems as consisting of separate elements, like the cog wheels of a clock. Every effect of nature, they suggested, could be explained mechanically by reducing the system to linear causal chains in which each component functioned in sequence like the inner workings of a clock. Under this paradigm, the motions, functions, and behaviour of both animal and human were derived from the mechanistic functions of internal bodily organs, which were themselves seen as separate blocks also governed by the laws of geometry and mechanics; laws that were also determined as stable and unchanging. This idea of eternal and continuous stability was challenged by the Modernist evolutionary paradigm (famously attributed to the publication of Darwin’s The origin of species (1859)) that hypothesised a dynamic, unstable and changing natural history in which individual species evolved in response to environmental changes. This suggested that ‘species’ and ‘environment’ could no longer be viewed as entirely separate realms, but as a ‘systemic relationship’ in which changes to one would impact upon the other.

It is not surprising, then, that by the mid-twentieth century, the contribution of cybernetic theories and methodologies had greatly influenced the continued refinement of theories of evolution, particularly through highlighting biological, environmental, and ecological systems that followed algorithmic logic and abstract rules similar to those that informed traditional cybernetics. The contribution of cybernetic principles to biology continued to challenge previous assumptions based on rationalism and empirical supremacy through an approach that emphasised connectionism, networkability, chaos theory, and other nondeterministic ideals. It can, in fact, be argued that cybernetics has itself always shown an interest in evolutionary principles and biological systems. The mathematician and philosopher Alfred Whitehead ([1920] 1964, 1929, [1934] 1968), for example, argued that every natural organism consisted of patterns of activity that interacted with other such patterns of activity. In terms of biological evolution, his approach suggests that Darwinian success depended upon an organism’s ability to enact functions of ‘pattern seeking’, ‘pattern recognition’, and ‘pattern response’. Indeed, anticipation and response are central dynamics to all organic life, as organisms continuously interact with their environment, learn from previous experience, and adapt to the stimuli accordingly. Recognising such processes in nature led biologists such as Francisco Ayala to argue that “the ability to obtain and process information about the environment, and to react accordingly, is an important adaptation because it allows the organisms to seek out suitable environments and resources and to avoid unsuitable ones” (Ayala in Lewin, 1992, p. 138). In appropriating the ideas these theorists present, this thesis contends that an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent (positioned in this thesis as a version of the posthuman) located within a networked computational environment would also behave in this fashion. This is particularly evident in light of these technologies inbuilt or programmed information seeking, processing and synthesising abilities and functions. However, as I discuss here, the complexity within these environments must also be

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 69 considered in the design and application of these agents. This discussion is concluded in Chapter Six, where I discuss the structure and role of computational agents within networked environments.

Among the early cyberneticists, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson was foremost in applying cybernetics as an approach to broader situated and contextualised natural systems. Bateson’s motivation came through a critique of the traditional cybernetic focus that, he believed, remained primarily concerned with closed homeostatic systems. Bateson (1972) argued that any separation or decontextualisation of component or system is distortional and misleading, and he advocated instead a more holistic view of self-corrective or reflexive systems in which each individual component held a unique place, intricately linked to other individual components that were likewise embedded in a given system. All systems and all components of a system, Bateson argued, are, in turn, themselves part of a broader system. Bateson’s concept of ever broader systems is illustrated by and example he offers in which a laboratory rat is self-taught through positive (reward) or negative (no-reward) reinforcement as it learns to approach or avoid a particular object. The rat incorporates this new piece of information into its behaviour and, in traditional cybernetic terms, the experiment is seen as a success – a predictable output for a given input. However, ‘success’, Bateson argues, will not discourage the rat from future exploration of extraneous objects (p. 253) and in his view, the observer must take into account the extended ‘system’ of the rat, which could include, for example, the rat’s genetic history, the rat’s extrinsic behaviour, the type of reinforcement, and the broader environment of the experiment. Through this illustration, Bateson was able to turn the focus from component to system, leading him to conclude that within any given system no single component retains absolute unilateral control. Rather, he argued, the system itself determines the behaviour of componential elements and its own global organisation. Bateson writes: Even in very simple self-corrective systems, this holistic character is evident. In the steam engine with a governor, the very word ‘governor’ is a misnomer if it be taken to mean that this part of the system has unilateral control. The governor is, essentially, a sense organ or transducer which receives a transform of the difference between the actual running speed of the engine and some ideal or preferred speed. This sense organ transforms these differences into differences in some efferent message, for example, to fuel supply or to a brake. The behaviour of the governor is determined, in other words, by the behaviour of the other parts of the system, and indirectly by its own behaviour at a previous time. (1972, p. 315)

For Bateson, this simple principle of cybernetics was an integral key to understanding highly complex natural systems. Bateson argued that in any given biological system no one element retains complete control. Rather, each element of the system (Bateson includes

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 70 here the cognitive, biological, and organisational elements of the system) has its own functional processes; processes that are communicational in their disposition “and therefore subject to the great generalisations or ‘laws’ which apply to communicative phenomena” (1972, p. 253). Yet rather than conclude that communication was simply the successful exchange of information (see Shannon and Weaver (1949)), Bateson saw communication as a “pattern of patterns that connect” (Gray, 2002, p. 180). Identifying communication as the exchange or interaction of pattern, Bateson also identified an inherent paradox of communication: communication must also include the absence of pattern. This meant that the creation or exchange of any non-information, randomness, chaos or noise within a given system must, by necessity, be included as an integral component of the system. Thus, regardless of whether ‘non-information’ is introduced through an act of purposeful and decided intervention or unplanned upheaval, once it is introduced to a system, the system must re-organise in order to respond to or accommodate this noise.

Bateson’s conception of communicable patterns led him to a new appreciation of highly complex analogue systems, and he continued to apply cybernetics in order to show that analogue systems (such as natural biological systems) are capable of performing highly complex computations. (Complex computations, he argued, could be seen in examples of fractal patterns that repeat themselves on different scales, such as snowflakes, or the ‘unfurling’ growth of sea-shells, and bracken ferns.(Gray, 2002, p. 180)). Bateson’s cybernetic appreciation of complex systems allowed him to approach both digital and analogue systems as systems that remained infinitely open to the possibility of new variation, and this, in turn, led him to conclude that in uncertain or unstable systems a seemingly small componential input might have a radical effect upon the larger system1. This is particularly evident in systems that do not tend to stabilise, such as human social systems, where localised events can produce radical social change and cultural repercussions for many years after the event. The distinction here is between those systems that are open, and those systems that are closed. On the one hand, closed systems cannot exchange anything with their environment and when responding to introduced noise, disorder, or randomness they tend to move towards a state of equilibrium, measured in terms of system entropy (the second law of thermodynamics). Open systems, on the other hand, do not have equilibria, but instead achieve a steady state in which the variables that constitute the open system are maintained through continuous exchanges of matter, energy or other forms of information with their environment (Bertalanffy, 1950, [1954] 1973). And non-equilibrium thermodynamics, developed from the work of Lars Onsager in the 1930s (see Nicolis & Prigogine, 1977, 1989; Prigogine, 1967, 1980; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984), shows that every interaction that occurs within such systems changes the behaviour and order of the system irreversibly. That is, the system cannot return to its previous state without introducing

1 This effect is popularly imagined as the Butterfly Effect; a theory in which it is suggested that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Rio global weather patterns will be adversely affected.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 71 some further change in the environment (Saviotti, 1996, p. 31). In Chapter Four I continue this discussion, arguing that the introduction of any new technology or technique into existing techno-social systems irreversibly changes the nature of that system. Chapter Five continues this discussion, contextualising it within the particular techno-social discourse that surrounds and constitutes the biological human and the hybrid cyborg figure, and I argue that the introduction of new technologies or techniques irreversibly changes the nature of the human. And in Chapter Six I argue that the posthuman version I present in this thesis – an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent – would also have an irreversible impact upon the informational environment in which it is introduced, resulting in an informational environment of ever greater complexity. Operating as an interface between the human-user and digital information, this posthuman technology would further complicate human-technology symbiosis, cementing its place as supplement to, and extension of the biological human.

The foundation of this argument can be seen, in terms of biological evolution, in the employment of non-equilibrium thermodynamic theory in answering the question as to why, if systems tend towards stability, biological homogeneity was not the outcome of natural evolution. Richard Dawkins (1976, 1986, 1995, 1996) outlines biological ideas analogous to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, when he argues that natural selection, the subtractive mechanism of evolution, is not the only force at work in evolution. Mutation, the additive mechanism, often results in a movement towards a stability of higher complexity, as systems respond to new energy, matter, or information, by reorganising themselves into greater diversity and new niches. Biological complexity, Dawkins suggests, does not imply a lack of order or control in natural systems. Natural systems reorganise information patterns, randomness, and any additional noise into highly complex systems that hold the capacity for recursive and additive feedback. Dawkins writes: People sometimes think that natural selection is a purely negative force, capable of weeding out freaks and failures, but not capable of building up complexity, beauty and efficiency in design. Does it not merely subtract from what is already there, and shouldn’t a truly creative process add something too? One can partially answer this by pointing to a statue. Nothing is added to the block of marble. The sculptor only subtracts, but a beautiful statue emerges nevertheless. But this metaphor can mislead, for some people leap straight to the wrong part of the metaphor – the fact that the sculptor is a conscious designer – and miss the important part: the fact that the sculptor works by subtraction rather than addition. Even this part of the metaphor should not be taken too far. Natural selection may only subtract, but mutation can add. There are ways in which mutation and natural selection together can lead, over the long span of geological time, to a building up of complexity that has more in common with addition than with subtraction. (1986, p. 169)

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 72 In Chapter Two I outlined the three categories of evolution metaphor – ‘metaphors of evolution’, ‘evolution as metaphor’ and ‘evolutionary metaphors’ – highlighting the reciprocal nature of such metaphors as they are employed in order to delimit and describe organisational structures within both the natural and the social worlds and subsequently approve, reinforce, or justify prevailing worldviews. Here, I argue that as a metaphor of evolution, ‘complexity’ highlights the emergence of self-organising organisms. That is, structures – both biological and non-biological – that create or produce complex systems out of simplicity, and order out of chaos, randomness, and noise. The use of ‘complexity’ as a metaphor also recognises that simplicity and singularity are themselves integral componential parts of larger systems. And if complexity thinking has any utility value other than as a method for understanding diversity, it is its acceptance that rules are created, changed, and abandoned in a relentless process of random and non-random actions and unique interactions. Thus, the metaphor of complexity highlights comprehensiveness, connectivity, and networking, which, as a metaphor, emerges as one of the most decisive qualities of two principal social and cultural paradigms of the current gestalt – ‘globalisation’, and the ‘information age’.

In promoting the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis I argue, in Chapter Six, that the emergence of autonomous agents within complex techno-social environments would function best as an autopoietic operation. That is, in highlighting the complex nature of networked informational environments I promote the ‘self-making’ of agent goals and rules, agent structures, and agent operative spaces. Here I discuss the development of autopoietic theory within biological science, highlighting the potential autopoiesis has in extending the discourse of contemporary evolution theory. I argue that autopoiesis, reflected in and reflecting contemporary social structures and ideologies, becomes a powerful metaphor for ‘self-made’ change within techno-social systems.

Within the discipline of biology, the publication of Jerome Lettvin, Humberto Maturana, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts’s paper ‘What the frog’s eye tells the frog’s brain’ (1959) greatly advanced the development of complexity theory. The paper discusses an experiment undertaken by the researchers in which microelectrodes were implanted in a frog’s visual cortex in order to measure its response to various stimuli. The researchers discovered that small objects moving in fast and erratic motions elicited maximum response, whereas large, slow-moving objects evoked little or no response. They surmised that this evolutionary trait allowed the frog to perceive its prey against other irrelevant phenomena. Prior to their research it was assumed that there was, for the frog, “a clearly defined cognitive situation: there was an objective (absolute) reality, external to the animal, and independent of it (not determined by it), which it could perceive (cognise)” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. xiv). However, their research suggested that the frog’s eye did not transmit an ‘accurate’ copy of the image (distributed light) upon the frog’s neural receptors. Rather, the frog’s eye “speaks

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 73 to the [frog’s] brain in a language already highly organised and interpreted” (Maturana quoted in Hayles, 1999, p. 135). From this, the authors were able to conclude that the reality the frog perceives is a reality constructed according to the frog’s evolutionary adaptation. That is, the frog’s reality, behaviour, and its ‘living system’ (world) are the frog’s own reality, behaviour, and system. For Maturana, this raised deeper questions as to whether reality could indeed remain objectively independent of the observer, or if the observer constructed reality through interactive processes determined solely by its own organisation. Maturana writes: An observer is a human being, a person, a living system who can make distinctions and specify that which he or she distinguishes a unity, as an entity different from himself or herself that can be used for manipulations or descriptions in interactions with other observers. An observer can make distinctions in actions and thoughts, recursively, and is able to operate as if he or she were external to (distinct from) the circumstances in which the observer finds himself or herself. Everything said is said by an observer to another observer who can be himself or herself. (1978, p. 31)

Together with Francesco Varela, Maturana (1980), developed this theory arguing that within natural systems, causality and behaviour could no longer be reduced to linear or mechanistic effects. Rather, organisational interaction occurs in a circular, cybernetic, and often self- reflexive manner. To describe this circularity, Maturana coined the term autopoiesis – the creative ‘self-making’ of an organism’s reality.

Autopoiesis ‘begins’, as such, with the observer or the ‘constructor’ of reality. The observer (such as the frog previously discussed) is an organism capable of distinguishing its own unity from the unity of another (for example, mosquito larva). A unity is, in turn, an entity distinct from a background, and characterised by that distinction. For the observer, a unity, be it ‘self’ or ‘other’, may be defined as simple – the unity is a constitutive whole – or as composite – the unity has components that may be specified through additional distinctions. Maturana argued that the organisation of a composite unity refers to the relations, or interactions, between components that participate in distinguishing and defining the unity as a system whereby it can be treated as a single structure (1978, p. 31-34). An autopoietic unity or living ‘system-structure’ capable of distinguishing its own unity or generating representations of its own interactions between self and/or non-self is capable of becoming an observer-system. The structure of a composite unity is distinguished by the componential relations that must be satisfied (such as ‘feed’, ‘sleep’, ‘procreate’), in the constitution of the unity’s properties, and is thus able to recursively generate representations of these representations (methods of response) and interact with them. The overall ‘property’ or composition of a unity characterises, specifies, and defines the unity’s embeddedness in its spatial domain. That is, the organisation of the observer-system is tied to its domain of being. (In biological terms, this is often referred to as ‘structural coupling’.) Thus, the observing unity does not remain

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 74 separate from its environment or other unities. Indeed, the observing unity is only able to ‘self-make’ through the structural relationships that exist between it and the other unities with which it interacts. Thus, ‘environment’ becomes the domain of a unity in which all possible interactions undertaken by the unity or the broader collection of unities occur – anything beyond that domain, Maturana argues, simply does not exist for that unity. This suggests that organisms do not simply find the world as it is, but rather, create the world through their interaction with it. And interaction itself occurs when two or more unities, through the interplay of their properties, modify their position in the space that they specify, thus re- organising or self-making their position as observer. Autopoiesis, Maturana suggests, means that every recursive or reflexive observation enlarges the unity’s domain of observation, and introduces, through addition, greater complexity (Maturana, 1978, p. 31-34). In the terms I have outlined, this suggests that an autonomous agent operating within an informational network would interact with its own unity, the unity of composite or whole informatic archives, the unity of its human-users, and the unity of the broader techno-social symbiosis in which it is contained. While the initial programming of the agent would reflect its human germination, autopoietic theory suggests that, as the space of agent action increased in complexity, the agent would construct its own reality.

In biological inquiry, autopoiesis or autopoietic theories can be used to account for any notable change or transformation within a given biological system. As such, it offers useful means by which biologists can monitor the ways such systems behave, particularly in regards to how complex biological systems self-organise. This enables the non-participant observer (located outside of the system) to construct abstract models based on systems behaviours, reinterpreting the cybernetic principle that what can be observed happening within one system may be creatively adapted to or constructed for a different system. Autopoiesis adds greater scope to the structure of such models by de-limiting the circular, causal approach of traditional cybernetics in favour of the unlimited and expansive possibility that reflexivity, randomness, non-information, chaos, and complexity patterns provide. Such models mirror complex systems capable of self-reference, self-organisation, reflexivity, and recursion, and offer an insight into the rapid, responsive, highly flexible, amd reflexive self- organisation and re-invention inherent to non-linear and fluid systems. In Chapter Six I argue that human knowledge systems display similarly high levels of reflexive awareness (evident in the ability to measure, represent, and manipulate spatial and temporal reality through abstract symbolic code), and that an autopoietic approach to existing human knowledge systems is a calculated movement towards the greater creative organisation of information in new, unexpected, non- or, in the terms I have outlined in this thesis, posthuman ways. I argue that the more we are able to differentiate and separate forms and types of cognition, the more we will be able to incorporate forms of non-human reflexivity into the organisation of our own human knowledge. In highlighting the additive nature of autopoietic evolution I argue that, the more human knowledge systems can accommodate non-human complexity

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 75 (informatic randomness and noise), the greater the chance of information systems producing accepted and recognised non- or posthuman forms of cognition. This shows the posthuman, as it is represented in this thesis, as one that moves in a distinct ‘new direction’ to the biological human. It overlays a computational intelligence onto the liberal or modern human subject, and positions it within a system in which it is hereafter authorised to ‘self-make’ its own reality, its own post- humanness. The direction the posthuman takes is, finally, at its own discretion.

It is evident, in terms of biological inquiry, that the mechanism of autopoiesis secures diversification and complexity within biological evolution by showing how evolution, rather than arriving at a point in which no further diversification can occur, continues to produce complex systems that accelerate the overall evolutionary process. Edward O. Wilson (1992) documents the process through which environments tend to evolve towards greater biological complexity and diversity, showing that as the number of different species increases, the number of intricate dependencies and linkages increases. As organisms migrate towards or create new niches they introduce new predatory opportunities and arrangements, and, in a recursive movement, the introduction or arrival of any new organism into a hitherto un-utilised niche will, by its mere presence, create a set of new niches for other organisms to now occupy (parasites, predators, symbiotic species, cooperative dependencies). Each of these new species will create new niches, attract new species and so on, ad infinitum. Ecological models suggest that as the complexity surrounding the overall system grows, the dependency of each species upon other species becomes more intricately entwined. Removing or introducing a species into the system will always result in a re-organisation of the species, often with dramatic effects. In Chapter Four I suggest that the metaphor of ecology is analogous to the broader technological system, arguing that technological migration creates new niches (needs, desires, dependencies), and that these, in turn promote greater technological complexity within existing social-systems. In initiating this discussion I argue here that biological theories of complexity also highlight the mechanism of synergy.

In the natural world, synergistic relationships or ‘symbiotic mutualism’ occurs when separate organisms are so closely coupled that their union yields what is essentially a new organism (Heylighen, 1996, ¶ 37-47). An example of synergism can be seen in the giant tube worms that live near hot springs on the ocean floor. Lacking mouths, these creatures take nourishment from bacteria that live in their tissues, metabolising energy-rich sulphide compounds carried out of the earth’s crust by the springs (Margulis & McMenamin, 1990, p. 35).Other examples include lichen, the symbiotic combination of photosynthesising alga and water-retaining, root-bearing fungus. In each symbiotic instance, each organism supports the other by behaving in a manner their partner is incapable of; their joint behaviour renders them, effectively, as one (Margulis & McMenamin, 1990, p. 30-37). Peter Corning (1983)

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 76 points to evidence of symbiotic organisms as a mechanism of evolution that defies the simple ‘tooth and claw’ model of natural selection. Corning uses the term ‘synergy’ to describe the combinatorial effects produced by the joint action of two or more discrete elements, components, or individuals. Within or between multicellular organisms, Corning writes, symbiotic relationships often result in the production of cooperative behaviours including hunting and foraging and the protection of reliable food sources; the detection of, avoidance of, and defence against predators; cooperative reproduction, nesting, feeding, and protection of offspring; and the reduction of energy expenditure through joint navigation and group movement or the sharing of heat (p. 77-84).

Recognition of symbiosis and synergism within biology began as early as 1909, when the Russian botanist Konstantin S. Merezhkovsky argued that symbiosis played a leading role in the origin of all organisms (Dyson, 1997, pp. 111-112). Coining his theory symbiogenesis, Merezhkovsky argued that the first evolutionary leap of some 3.5 billion years ago was that of a biochemical reaction (energy) passing through nonliving chemical matter at its most complex, a fundamental transition resulting in living matter at its simplest. Symbiogenesis can also be seen in the prokaryotic (simple) cells of bacterium, which are a symbiogenetic combination of biochemicals and aggregates of macromolecules in a membrane sack (Stock, 1993, p. 25-26), and again, in eukaryotic organisms (organisms composed of complex, nucleated cells containing distinct other organelles – that is, most organisms other than simple bacteria) that evolved out of the synergistic assembly of prokaryotic cells (Heylighen, 1996, ¶ 40). Similarly, the molecular make-up of DNA consists of only four alternative nucleotide bases (guanine, adenine, cytosine, and thymine), while the precise synergistic patterning or sequencing of the bases in various combinations makes possible the construction of an endless variety of multicellular organic substances.

Returning to the three categories of evolution metaphor I outlined in Chapter Two – ‘metaphors of evolution’, ‘evolution as metaphor’, and ‘evolutionary metaphors’ – the terms symbiosis, synergism, and symbiogenesis can be employed to describe a wide range of mutual dependencies in both natural and techno-social realms. In the discourse of contemporary evolution theory, symbiosis and synergism highlight the connected nature of organic entities. It is a metaphor that borrows from social understandings of connectivity and dependency, and it is a metaphor that, in turn, justifies politicised social relationships in which one entity supports the other. As an overarching evolutionary metaphor, the discourse of synergy, symbiosis, and symbiogenesis often leads to the assumption that nothing occurs independent of something, highlighting a wide range of additional power-based assumptive metaphors, such as ‘obligation’, ‘interdependence’, and ‘mutualism’. In Chapter Four I return to these metaphors, arguing that the relationship between the human and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 77 technology is one that can be positioned as being of symbiotic mutual dependency and that, when applied retrospectively, the human-technology relationship can be seen as having always been symbiotic. In light of this thesis, these metaphors suggests that the version of the posthuman I present as an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent is one that sutures the realms of the human and technology into an ever tighter symbiotic relationship. Nevertheless, this version of the posthuman is further complicated as the mechanisms of synergistic or symbiotic coupling through the relationships of interdependent organisms are, in turn, extended by biological science’s concepts of ecosystems. As a metaphor, ‘ecosystems’ have emerged as one of the most powerful social, cultural, and economic metaphors of the current paradigm. This, I believe, can be seen in the current organisational status terms such as ‘network’ and ‘globalisation’ enjoy. The ecosystem metaphor is often employed to describe any broad system in which everything is seen as somehow ‘fitting together’. Here, I discuss the idea of ecosystems, showing how in many instances such thinking is overtly anthopic, and arguing for the employment of an ‘autopoietic’ approach to broad environmental arrangements. Such an understanding, I argue, is necessary to enable the version of the posthuman I present the independence it needs to continue its self-made evolution within informatic environments.

In 1926 the Soviet crystallographer Vladimir Vernadsky popularised the idea of the biosphere, arguing that a ‘membrane’ of life existed over the entire Earth. Vernadsky argued that just as there is a lithosphere of rock forming the Earth’s crust and an atmosphere of gaseous air surrounding the planet, there is a biosphere: an envelope covering the whole planet, harbouring all life, and which is itself life. The biosphere is the composition of all oceanic, terraneous and atmospheric life, and is itself a living system: a ‘geologic force’ moving, processing, and recycling, re-structuring, or re- organising all the living mass of the Planet. “A biosphere”, writes Vernadsky, “is a stable, complex, adaptive, evolving life system with the potential of operating in the right conditions as the major geological force transforming a planet's crust and as the source of sufficient free energy to power the start-up of a technosphere” ([1926] 1997, p. 4). In his discussion of the biosphere, Vernadsky argued that the Earth tended to evolve towards dynamic disequilibrium and tremendous diversity. What kept the Planet in balance was a living ‘system’ that remained energetically open yet relatively materially closed. In outlining the ‘laws of biospherics,’ Vernadsky suggested that as time passed the energy that passed through the system increased the amount of free energy within the system. The system then used that free energy to increase its potential to attract and extract a higher rate of free energy, thus allowing the system to increase its mass by migrating chemical and other inorganic elements towards maximum manifestation, converting the chemical and inorganic matter into organic matter, or systems capable of creating and storing more free energy. As no energy

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 78 ever escapes the biosphere, Vernadsky’s worldview suggests that any human- tempered technological enterprises (including biotechnologies) such as agriculture, mining, irrigation, and other industrial infrastructure that shift vast quantities of chemical and minerals within the biosphere only increase the amount of matter and energy transference that occur in biochemical cycles (Barlow, 1995, p. 205). This worldview could, in turn, suggest that any alarm for environmental degradation and increased levels of toxins and other pollutants is little more than unfounded anthropism. Nevertheless, it can also stress the need for responsibility and care within mutual arrangements and broad dependencies. For the French Jesuit and geologist/palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, such responsibility would be found in an additional ‘human’ layer that similarly encircled the planet. Coining the term ‘noosphere’ Teilhard described what he saw as an envelope of human social consciousness that encapsulates all the Earth. Defining the noosphere as a “sphere of intelligence” (from the Greek noos, meaning ‘mind’) Teilhard likened it to a growing union of humankind: an evolutionary transition toward a divine state in which layers of humanity, culture and technology are integral parts of the planetary sphere (1961, p. 221-234). Extending Vernadsky’s biospherics, Teilhard argued that the convergence of organic life produces higher-level complexities from which consciousness, or self- awareness, emerges, and later, with the dawn of intelligence, love. Teilhard believed that, guided by Christian love, the intelligent technosphere would eventually culminate in the ultimate convergence of the ‘Omega Point’, an end point of time equivalent to the Final Coming of Christ (1961, p. 251-259). In Teilhard’s view, humankind could collaborate freely with nature, transforming the entire biosphere to an egalitarian and synergistic sphere of organic life, social intelligence, and culture (Heim, 1999, p. 35- 36).

Ultimately, Vernadsky envisioned in the biosphere a world of increasing and endless energy returns and Teilhard approximated this valueless resource into the hands of an egalitarian human workforce (Barlow, 1995, p. 206). Nevertheless, neither of these worldviews sits comfortably within Capitalist ideology, and the extropian (ever- increasing) ideals that both promote are commonly left outside of Western based biological (and in the terms of this discussion, social, cultural and economic) ecology models. Nonetheless, such systemic approaches to the planet and planetary resources have been embraced, by both the left and the right, as a way through which we can understand, organise and manage the planet. The paradigm of such holistic thinking reaches a zenith in James Lovelock’s Gaia theory. Lovelock (1988) presents planet Earth as a complete, ‘self-regulating’ or ‘self-organising’ living organism that actively maintains a state that is favourable for life. His hypotheses is that the climate and chemical composition of Earth are under active biological control, and the oceans, land, and atmosphere are regulated and organised at a planetary level. The Earth, in

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 79 this worldview, operates as a living system; humans, like all other species, organisms and non-living elements, do not live on the Earth, but within Gaia. Thus, “global temperature, the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, and the salinity and alkalinity of the oceans are all more than chance and necessity: they are all crucially influenced, and perhaps even orchestrated, by Earth’s acting as a body” (Barlow, 1995, p. 207). Lovelock’s theory, like Teilhard’s noosphere, incorporates human culture as additional layers of Gaia. Yet for Lovelock, human society presents a dichotomous picture: a misanthropic worldview in which humans are a cancerous blight on the planet ruining everything they touch, and an anthropic view in which humans become protectors and caretakers of the Earth and its species. In the first instance, Lovelock writes: At the present rate of clearance, it will not be long before the forests no longer have the critical mass they need to exist as self-sustaining ecosystems. When they vanish, the billion poor of those regions will be left with little to support them and in a harsher climate. This is a threat comparable in scale to a global nuclear war. The human suffering, the refugees, and guilt, and the political consequences of such an event have all been described (1988, p. 266). The alternative, anthropic worldview borders on ‘paganism’, for which Lovelock makes no apologies (in the chapter titled ‘God and Gaia’, Lovelock claims “Gaia is a religious as well as a scientific concept” (1988, p. 194)), and supporters of Lovelock’s worldview openly advocate a ‘brotherly stewardship’ of all the Earth’s species. Wilson, for example, advocates a responsible human approach to biodiversity would benefit all the Earth’s species, humankind included, writing: The ethical imperative should therefore be, first of all, prudence. We should judge every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity. We should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct. And let us go beyond mere salvage to begin the restoration of natural environments, in order to enlarge wild populations and stanch the haemorrhaging of biological wealth. There can be no purpose more enspiriting that to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that surround us. (1992, p. 29) And adopting such a worldview, suggests biologist Connie Barlow, “[c]an also give the gift of community, nurturing a cross-species affection that knows no bounds. It can even conjure a stand-in mother, Gaia, eminently worthy of our love and respect” (1995, p. 204).

Lovelock’s anthropism continues as he ascribes to human techno-systems the further ‘awakening’ of Gaia, enabling ‘her’ to become ‘self-aware’: Homo sapiens, with his technological inventiveness and his increasingly subtle communications network, has vastly increased Gaia’s range of perception. She

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 80 is now through us awake and aware of herself. She has seen the reflection of her fair face through the eyes of astronauts and the television cameras of orbiting spacecraft. Our sensations of wonder and pleasure, our capacity for conscious thought and speculation, our restless drive and curiosity are hers to share. (1979, p. 140) Connie Barlow extends this utopic techno-anthropism further, suggesting that the role of humankind might be to not only protect the Earth and its species – including against “errant strikes of comets and giant meteors” (p. 205) – but to fulfil the manifest destiny of the Planet by aiding the artificial reproduction of Gaia: To my mind the existence of a self-supporting ecosystem floating in space or settled comfortably on the surface of another world would represent nothing less than the reproduction of Gaia. Indeed, this thought experiment helps support the Gaia hypothesis, as the argument has been raised that Earth cannot be alive like an organism if it is incapable of reproducing. (1995, p. 210) Such worldviews are decidedly anthropocentric, with both misanthropic and anthropic alternatives allowing the human to remain ‘above’, ‘outside’, or ‘in charge’ of nature and to assume a level of custodianship over nature and its resources, and in each view, it is the human who retains the ability to ascribe a measurable ‘use’ value to the rest of nature.

A less human-centred view is that offered through the ideologies of deep ecology. Deep ecology effectively extends the holistic approach to systems cybernetics (such as that promoted by Bateson), by enabling the observer to procure abstract connections in a conceptualised ‘self-making’ of the world. Fritjof Capra (1996) outlines the deep ecology view, arguing that the ‘holistic’, systemic meaning of traditional cybernetic inquiry is inadequate within more recent conceptualisations of ecologies. He writes: A holistic view of, say, a bicycle, means to see the bicycle as a functional whole and to understand the interdependence of its parts accordingly. An ecological view of the bicycle includes that, but it adds to it the perception of how the bicycle is embedded in its natural and social environment – where the raw materials that went into it came from, how it was manufactured, how its use affects the natural environment and the community by which it is used, etc. (p. 6-7) For example, a ‘holistic’ environmental impact study surrounding a proposed new freeway would consider the impact land clearing would have on a nearby creek. It would consider the impact land clearing would have on the creek and the organisms which depend upon the creek. It would consider the impact land clearing would have on the organisms that depend on the organisms that depend on the creek, both downstream and nearby [and so forth]. A deep ecology view would consider that while nature, in situ, has no symbiotic dependencies that would include the proposed freeway, upon its realisation the ecology must recognise the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 81 freeway as a componential part of that system, and reorganise the corresponding system structure accordingly. This worldview, as Capra suggests, see the world “not as a collection of isolated objects but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent.” (1996, p. 7).

Advocates of ‘deep ecology’ argue that humans, like any other organism or element, cannot be separated from their environment, and that it is an anathema to remove humans from the biosphere upon which we depend and in which we exist. However, many ecological worldviews that grant custodianship (or shirk environmental responsibility) do just that, by positioning ‘nature’ as a domain which is ontologically prior to or separate from that of culture. Being ‘outside’ or ‘beyond’ culture, nature remains accessible to humans only through indirect and mediated ways. On the other hand, an autopoietic approach to ecologies is one in which human beings, as components of a larger system, self-organise and self-realise their individual worlds and in doing so contribute to the determination of the larger system and thus the individual worlds of other human and non-human components of the system. It is as Maturana writes (of human beings), that “all actions, however individual as expressions of preferences or rejections, constitutively affect the lives of other human beings and hence, have ethical significance” (1978, p. xxvi).

In Chapter Two I argued that the discourse of evolution serves to position, reflect, and justify the place of the human within the natural world. Here, I would suggest that the metaphors of biospherics, holism, and ecology – prevalent within contemporary evolution theory – effectively tie all human social and cultural action to nature in a historically unprecedented way. Human action and the environment in which that action occurs can no longer be viewed as separate entities, and the actions of humankind is now seen as having had an extraordinary effect on the constitution of the biosphere. In an evolutionary timeframe, human beings have transformed the arrangement of the biosphere in an extraordinarily short time-frame – transforming the Earth’s natural resources via mining, deforestation, agriculture, and irrigation and turning vast areas of land into crop producing ‘gardens’ or sprawling urban infrastructure (Kinnear, 1994, p. 195). Aided by machine technology, the transformation of energy in the biosphere through human intervention has, in no small measure, remade the biosphere as an ongoing human endeavour. And without resorting to anthropism a claim can be made that human beings (having harnessed or resisted all other geographic forces) are the dominant force in the arrangement of life on the planet. Humans are indeed unique in developing rich and diverse collaborative systems between other individual humans, collections of individual humans, other non-human organic species, and human technologies, and successive collaborations continue to reorganise and produce human behaviours and interactions that accelerate the cycle of autopoietic complexity. In Chapter Six I argue that this entire process has been accelerated as computational and electronic communications rapidly expand the scope and range of human methods and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 82 systems of exchange, particularly the exchange of abstract symbolic information. I argue that the paramount artefact to have been produced through human complexity is the datasphere, the abstract, symbolic matrix draped over the Planet. In promoting the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis I argue that the ability to create artificial systems to navigate this conceptual network will enable us to reorganise, transform and create life anew. I demonstrate how autopoietic principles, applied to such artificial agents, might extend human-systems without denying the existence or position of the human or insisting that human nature is in itself finite. I argue that by operating outside of human agency, non- human intelligence may be directed towards the creative organisation of information. This would continue to create new, imaginative opportunities for structures that foster mutually beneficial forms of cooperation amongst a broad range of human and non-human systems. Developing this discussion in Chapter Four I argue that the evolutionary mechanisms and frameworks I have outlined in this chapter continue to contribute towards the autopoietic formation of the version of the posthuman I present, as both human and technological components continue to self-make; both their own positions and their relational arrangements within broader environments. I present a theory of technological development in which the natural, the human, and the technological are seen as constitutive elements of broader techno-social ecologies.

Evolutionary psychology and the pre-programmed human mind The second of the three areas of contemporary evolution theory I discuss in this chapter is the concept of ‘evolutionary psychology’ or ‘genetic behaviourism’. Here, I argue that the concept of evolutionary psychology, like other evolutionary terms and mechanisms, is a composition of metaphors appropriated from existing social and cultural terms, particularly from those presented in other psychological discourses. In turn, evolutionary psychology as metaphor uses terms and mechanisms appropriated from biological evolution theory to explain and justify a range of individual, social, and cultural behavioural characteristics and traits. And taken together, the metaphor of ‘evolutionary psychology’ functions as a powerful metanarrative that serves to explain and justify human behaviour. Perhaps more than any other evolutionary metaphor I have presented in this thesis, evolutionary psychology exhibits what can best be described as ‘evolutionary determinism’. Evolutionary psychology argues that human behaviour is inherent in the biological or genetic structure of the human, and that, like the embodied human form, human behaviour has evolved in response to prevailing environmental needs. It is a metaphor, I argue, that promotes the idea of programmed behaviour, and it is for this reason I include it in this discussion. Evolutionary psychologists argue that human cognition has evolved under the influence of prevailing natural environmental conditions. It follows, therefore, that the autopoietic emergence of the posthuman should likewise be influenced by its prevailing environmental conditions. And, as

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 83 the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis is of a form of cognition constructed according to the organisational constraints of informatic environments, I argue that the principles of evolutionary psychology could be employed, through purposeful manipulation, in guiding and selecting the initial shape of this version of the posthuman. I emphasise here my aversion to the ‘programming’ in any way of those essentialist, determinist, or universal definitions that have historically marginalised and alienated some human subjects, and reissue my call for a version of the posthuman capable of retaining and articulating only the best aspects of humanism. I argue that an understanding of the discourse of evolutionary psychology would enable further commentary on the programmability of humanness, and provide designers and developers with an evolution literacy that would enable them to engineer an amicable version of the computational posthuman, whilst avoiding the more negative outcomes that are often associated with a programmed subjectivity.

In the final pages of the The origin of species, Darwin ([1859] 1972) pre-empts evolutionary psychology, writing: In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation ([1859] 1972, p. 449). Forty years later, William James ([1890] 1983) introduced into the field of psychology the notion of ‘instinct’, suggesting that specialised neural circuits have evolved throughout all members of the human species, and clustered together constituted what he considered ‘human nature’ ([1890] 1983, p. 700 - 836). In its current form ‘evolutionary psychology’ (at times referred to as ‘genetic behaviourism’) is, as its name suggests, a hybrid field of study combining the knowledge and principles behind evolution, genetic hereditary, human physiology, and human psychology. The goal of evolutionary psychology is to “discover and understand the design of the human mind” (Cosmides & Tooby, 1997, ¶ 1), which is seen as a set of complex information-processing machines that developed through natural evolution. The general focus of psychology is upon how human brains process information and, in turn, generate behaviour. Evolutionary psychology extends this focus towards the causal (evolved) processes that created and shaped the human mind into its current form, in turn asking how sensory input from the current social environment interacts with the ‘adapted’ and ‘evolved’ human mind in the production of observable human behaviour (Buss, 1999, p. 3).

Evolutionary psychology eschews the common idea that the human mind, at birth, resembles a blank slate, free of substance until inscribed upon through experience of the ‘external’ world. In such a state, the human mind is seen as empty neural ‘hardware’ that awaits the loading of content through learning, induction, experience, interaction, and reflection. Evolutionary psychology argues that our minds are not empty, but that we have inherited the capacity to solve adaptive problems faced by our ancestors. Evolutionary psychology

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 84 suggests that the human brain generates behaviour that is appropriate to prevailing environmental conditions, and that the brain and neural circuitry have been selected, through adaptation and selection, as those best suited to solve problems our ancestors faced during our species’ evolution. And, as evolution through genetic heredity has been shown to be a slow, inter-generational process, evolutionary psychologists suggest that there have simply not been enough generations of human beings for the twenty-first century brain and mind to evolve beyond one that is best adapted towards solving the day-to-day problems our ancestors faced more than 10 million years ago. Our brains, they argue, are better suited towards finding, selecting and keeping a sexual partner, producing many healthy offspring, hunting and gathering, choosing a good habitat, and defence and aggression. (see Buss, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001; Buss & Malamuth, 1996; Fisher, 1992; Morris 1967; Rushton, 1995; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992; Wright, 1994).

Stanford biologists Paul Ehrlich and Marcus Feldman (2003) argue that the general tendency among evolutionary psychologists is to vastly overestimate how much of human behaviour is primarily traceable to biological universals that are reflected in our genes. The chief reason for this overestimation, they argue, is “the ease with which a little evolutionary story can be invented to explain almost any observed pattern of behaviour" (2003, p. 88). This ‘adaptationist’ approach, favoured by evolutionary psychologists, is introduced by George Williams ([1966] 1996), who clarifies a logic examining niche-differentiated physical and mental abilities that are unique to the species under investigation. Williams’s argument is that any arbitrarily selected feature of an organism must be an adaptation, having some function that explains its selection over time. Adaptationism is, in this regard, a metaphor for ‘retro-engineering’, in which a problem is posed for an already identified solution. An adaptationist approach, for example, starts with an observation such as “a dog wags its tail when happy”. It then considers what other viable options were available to the observed species (bark, growl, roll-over), before posing a scenario in which the observable trait is shown to be the best outcome for an environmental situation (see Gould & Lewontin, 1979; Dawkins, 1986). In a strictly biological investigation, adaptationism shows that organisms adapt in order to overcome the environmental conditions that impede their survival, such as extreme climate and weather, food and water shortages, and predators. Evolutionary psychology, however, appropriates the mechanisms of adaptationism to argue that certain human behaviours (for example human fears of snakes, spiders, heights, and darkness) are likely the evolved remnants of the psychology of survival, sculpted in an environment long gone (Buss, 1998, 1999). However, as Ehrlich and Feldman point out, such behaviour is by no means a universal phenomena, showing that in environments where poisonous snakes abound indigenous residents exhibit little fear of snakes (2003, p. 89).

One of the most contentious issues surrounding evolutionary psychology is its tendency to draw parallels between animal and human behavioural traits. In doing so, there is a noted

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 85 prejudicial bias that suggests that animals and insects, in displaying or demonstrating the characteristic under investigation, are merely acting out an evolutionarily inherited trait of which it has no intelligence, understanding, or control. The issue is further complicated when drawing conclusions from human behavioural traits, in that the human is effectively reduced to a set of animal, often bestial, impulses and desires, a view that is both overwhelmingly simplistic and deeply problematic. David Buss, for example, in examining the phenomena of ‘mate guarding’ writes that “evolutionary biologists have discovered an extraordinary array of mate-guarding mechanisms among male insects and animals […] ranging from sequestering the female, remaining physically attached to the female after copulation, emitting scents to counteract the attractant signals of the female, reducing the conspicuousness of the courtship display, physically repelling other males, building a fence around the female, and inserting a mating plug in the female reproductive tract,” before concluding that “traditional psychologists have never thought to examine mate guarding in humans,” and that “no mainstream psychological theories had guided researchers to this potentially important domain of inquiry” (Buss, 2001, p. 424). Following a similar logic, Bruce Ellis has argued that, like other mammals, female humans are genetically programmed through natural selection to seek a mate who is dependable, generous, ambitious, and confident (1992, p. 283), while ethicist Peter Singer uses similar arguments to argue that men’s and women’s inherited attitudes towards reproduction and work explains the lack of female representation in most employment sectors (1999). Elsewhere, Buss argues that behavioural traits such as passion are “evolutionarily inherited capacities” that inspire us “to achieve life's goals, satisfy our desire for sex, our yearning for prestige and our quest for love”. Buss also argues that passion’s darker side can lead to “the disastrous choice of a mate, the desperation of unrequited obsession, or the terror of stalking” (2000, p. 1). This tendency to equate aggression, violence, dominance, submission (and numerous other behavioural aspects) as part of an inherited genetic legacy shows a flagrant disregard for the influence of social and cultural structures and habits that are learnt or taught across generations. Yet in identifying ‘problems’ for ‘solutions’, and drawing analogous illustrations from animal and insect behaviour, evolutionary psychologists have sought to explain traits such as mate preferences (Buss, 1994, 1998, 2000; Buss & Schmitt, 1993), intersexual competition, sexual attraction and arousal, monogamy, polygyny, polyandry, the desire for sexual variety, sexual service and servitude (Symons, 1979, p. 27), rape (Thornhill & Palmer, 2000), cheater detection mechanisms (Cosmides, 1989), judgments of attractiveness (Singh, 1993, 1995, 2002), female inhibition mechanisms (Bjorklund & Kipp, 1996), jealousy, marriage and divorce (Fisher, 1992), homosexuality and lesbianism (Aries, 1993; Blackwood, 1993; Downey, Ehrhardt, Schiffman, Dyrenfurth, & Becker, 1987), incest taboos and the Oedipal complex (Alexander, 1979; Wright, 1994), female trafficking, dowry practices, child abuse, sibling rivalry, and all manner of homicide (Daly & Wilson, 1988).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 86 The reduction of human behaviour to loosely defined ‘instincts’ and ‘urges’ leads evolutionary psychology to fall short in a on a number of points. Evolutionary psychology does not provide mechanisms able to explain why we have been able to successfully adapt our environment to our needs in what is, in evolutionary terms, a considerably small amount of time. Nor can it explain why we have been able to keep abreast of rapidly changing social and natural environments. The human mind and its ability to adapt to its environment is much more a matter of cognition than of physical evolution. Evidence of this claim is suggested by the way in which the human mind is mostly (with some exceptions) comfortable in a range of social and cultural situations which comprise a level of complexity that the stone-age mind would not be able to navigate. Human behaviour is mostly learnt and taught through intra-, inter- and extra- personal experience; any ‘hereditary’ attributes to behaviour are best measured in terms of generational ideologies, norms, and social institutions, rather than the strata provided by biological evolution. Humans are cooperative, social beings, and it is through collaboration that the human mind has been able to successfully adapt to so many different environments. In other words, the greater the scope of exchange between individual, environmental, and the social is, the better equipped the human is to negotiate intrinsic behavioural attributes. This is particularly evident within rapidly changing social environments. Human society produces artefacts, namely ‘culture’ and ‘technology’, that record and measure past experiential and ideological achievements and failures, with the explicit purpose of easing similar future burdens and events. The ability of the human to learn, negotiate, and share experiences enables the identification of a problem and the perception of a solution. This is seen in the ability of the human to change either themselves or their environment in response to a perceived problem. Indeed, evolution and history show human beings, through accident and/or design, have successfully ‘domesticated’ themselves, nurturing our psychological and physiological attributes alongside that of our environment. That we are able to do so – to change both habit and habitat – is why we do not exhibit behaviour that is identical to our ancestors.

Loosely defined, the debate that surrounds evolutionary psychology is based on the long running question surrounding ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’. One side of the debate argues that severe environmental and climatic challenges in early humanoid biological evolution structured the human brain in a certain fashion, and that human behaviour and the similarities and differences in behaviour between individuals and groups are the genetic legacy of a brain selected for its ability to cope with such prehistoric challenges. The other side argues the human behaviour emerges through complex interaction with and understanding of both nature and self through social and cultural systems of language and knowledge. The middle ground of this argument is occupied by an idea suggesting that human biological evolution and human social and cultural evolution emerged simultaneously. In Chapter Four I address this argument, suggesting that the human and technology co-evolved in a manner best defined as ‘symbiotic’, and that for the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis this

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 87 suggests a hybrid approach to behavioural programmability, in which the autopoietic evolution of behaviour occurs concurrently with ongoing human interaction.

In doing this I must first address a notion found in much of the discourse of evolutionary psychology that dismisses any premise based on the co-evolution of genes and culture. Genetic behaviourists such as Richard Dawkins question the likeliness of the co-evolution of human genes and culture. Dawkins argues that cultural change is simply “too fast and too fickle” for it to have any significant impact on the human gene pool. Cultural trends and fashions, Dawkins argues, change almost daily, whereas a human reproductive generation will take at least twenty-five years. Thus culture, he argues, may only “toss the human gene pool around, like a cork thrown into the ocean, without tugging it in any particular direction” (Dawkins in Cohen 2001, p. 27). Yet the idea that long term trends within human society may in fact draw the species in a particular direction cannot be easily dismissed, and is seen, for example, in evidence that suggests that in societies where milk drinking is an ancient practice people have genes that allow them to digest the milk sugar lactose, whereas people whose ancestors were not milk-drinkers tend to lack these mutations (Cohen, 2001, p. 26). Similarly, in 1996, researchers from the United States National Institute of Health used parish records dating to 1540 to track down the modern day descendents of survivors of the Black Plague. They identified a high rate of a gene mutation called CCR5-delta 32. Previous HIV research had found that the gene CCR5 codes for a protein on the surface of white blood cells which acts as a receptor for other molecules involved in inflammation. This protein acts as a gateway for HIV to enter the bloodstream and destroy white blood cells. People who have the mutated form of the gene do not have this protein, and have either a tolerance against HIV or a slower rate of infection. The research showed that areas that had been greatly affected by the plague had comparatively high levels of the CCR5-delta 32 mutation, about fourteen percent of the population, compared to two percent in areas that did not experience the Black Plague. The research concluded that the Black Plague increased the genetic frequency of CCR5-delta 32 mutation in the Caucasian gene pool, protecting the surviving population from later epidemics of both the Black Plague and, subsequently, HIV (Lavelle, 2004, ¶ 36-41).

Research such as this illustrates that human cultural and social structures and habits can have an effect upon our biological makeup, and goes against those who suggest that it is, in fact, modern culture that effectively ‘halts’ human biological evolution. As human biological evolution is so intricately entwined with the social, the cultural, and the technological, it is highly likely that human biological evolution will continue. In terms of this thesis, the discourse of evolutionary psychology (as part of a greater discourse of contemporary evolution theory) attempts to position the biological human as a construct that presumably evolved independently of technology and culture. This shows again the discursive power that

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 88 is maintained in evolution theory, and I maintain that it is how evolution is measured and defined that remains the point of contention.

The gene, codified information, and the utility of data The third and final of the three areas of contemporary evolution theory I discuss in this chapter is the development of genetic science. Here, I argue that ‘genetics’, like other evolutionary terms and mechanisms, is in many ways a composition of metaphors appropriated from existing social and cultural terms. Indeed, the representation of life as a codified structure draws heavily upon social and cultural understandings of information, data, and code. In turn, genetics, as a metaphor, is used to explain and justify a range of social and cultural phenomena, often reducing complex phenomena to computational algorithms and syntax. And taken together, the metaphor of ‘genetics’ functions as a powerful organising force that presides over many of the terms and mechanisms that constitute current social ideologies and institutions. That is, the reciprocal relationship between ‘gene’ and ‘code’ often constructs new hybrid terms and mechanisms that are comfortable in a range of disciplinary settings, such as ‘replication’, ‘transmission and reception’, ‘splicing’, ‘hybridity’, and ‘engineering’. Guiding this discussion is the argument expanded upon in Chapter Six that the ability or the desire to ‘construct’ life is, through genetics, rendered as a problem of coding. Indeed, the burgeoning field of Artificial Life has appropriated many of the mechanisms found in genetic replication in the construction of computationally derived life. In this thesis I outline my preferred vision of the posthuman, arguing that, aided by the ability to ‘self-make’, codified computational life may be justifiably contextualised as one new form of the posthuman.

The basic premise of Darwinian evolution is that organisms simply find the world as it is, and either adapt to it or die. For the genetic biologist, however, evolution is nothing more than a change in certain gene frequencies within a given population. This suggests that rather than external causes driving evolution, the organism is in fact determined by the effect of environmental factors upon its internal genes: The world outside us poses certain problems, which we do not create but only experience as objects. The problems are to find a mate, to find food, to win out in competition over others, to acquire a large part of the world resources as our own, and if we have the right kind of genes we will be able to solve the problems and leave more offspring. So in this view, it is really our genes that are propagating themselves through us. (Lewontin, 1993, p. 13)

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 89 The most vocal advocate of this ‘genocentric’ world-view is the popular-science writer and genetic behaviourist Richard Dawkins who stresses that the only thing that natural selection can select is genes (1976, 1986, 1995, 1996). Instead of focusing on the individual organism or the environment, Dawkins instead adopts a “gene’s-eye view of nature” (Dawkins, 1976, p. viii). This, he argues, is a different way of seeing natural evolution rather than a new or different theory (Dawkins, 1976, p. viii). In Dawkins’s most influential book, The selfish gene (1976), the core argument is that the human, and all other animals, “are machines created by our genes” (p. 2). Our genes, he argues, are inherently ‘selfish’. That is, they are autonomous and determinate, and as such they produce ‘selfish’ behaviour, behaviour designed only to perpetuate more genes. Dawkins’s theory suggests that genes ‘programme’ organisms to behave in ways that will enhance the rate of survival: a gene which causes infant death is thus unlikely to survive, while a gene for pain reception will. Genes serve their own interests, and that interest has formed the shape of the human – an organism whose intelligence, body shape, sexual traits, character, and behaviour are ordered and arranged according to the needs of ‘selfish’ genes.

Dawkins’s selfish-gene theory deploys the terms ‘replicator’ and ‘vehicle’ in revoking the organism’s autonomy and granting determinism to genes. Dawkins defines replicators, the genetic material constituting the organism, as ‘the fundamental units of natural selection, the basic things that survive or fail to survive’ (1976, p. 254). It is, he argues, for the sake of the replicator that the organism exists. In his theory, organisms are not constituted of genetic material. Rather, replicators inhabit vehicles. Individual organisms are those vehicles, survival machines that “don’t replicate themselves; they work to propagate their replicators” (1976, p. 254). His selfish-gene theory emphasises that it is not the entire genome of an organism (even single-celled organisms) that strives to be expressed. Rather, certain sets of the genetic sequences are replicated, and through a lengthy, recursive sequence, nested programs unfold reproducing an approximate likeness of themselves. In terms of the organism’s bodily reproduction, it is simply the unfolding of these genetic sequences that reconstructs a similar ‘hardware’ on which the ‘operating system’ runs (Dyson, 1997, p. 123). In other words, genes build bodies that will host them and ensure their survival and propagation. The shape and structure of the organisms is, to the replicator gene, entirely unimportant: The only kind of entity that has to exist in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator (Dawkins, 1976, p. 266).

In this view, the human body (and subsequently the human brain) are nothing more than mutations, a simple epiphenomenon of evolution. And human agency, identity and autonomy lie not within the heart or brain or mind (as claimed by philosophers and humanists

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 90 throughout history), but within the nucleus of every somatic cell of the human body (Gilbert, 1997, p. 40).

Dawkins’s influential and contentious argument rests firmly upon the claim that genes are the primary force of all evolution. Understandably, this view draws criticism from those who argue his theory is overly deterministic. The ‘behaviouralist’ argument, for instance, suggests that there is a lot more to organisms, particularly Homo sapiens, than genes. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby use an example of a forest of oaks in their argument against genetic determinism: Let's say that for height, 80 per cent of the variance in a forest of oaks is caused by variation in their genes. This does not mean that the height of the oak tree in your yard is "80 per cent genetic". (What could this possibly mean? Did genes contribute more to your oak's height than sunlight? What percent of its height

was caused by nitrogen in the soil? By rainfall? By the partial pressure of CO2?) When applied to an individual, such percents are meaningless, because all of these factors are necessary for a tree to grow. Remove any one, and the height will be zero. (Cosmides & Tooby, 1997, ¶ 90)

A parallel analogy could be easily drawn for individual and social human development, and Scott Gilbert reinforces the argument when he suggests that many molecular biologists, embryologists in particular, have long argued that the fate of a cell is determined in the body by its interactions with other cells. “We are walking”, he argues, “on cells that could have been used for thinking had they been in another part of the embryo” (1997, p. 41). His argument suggests that, in terms of individual humanness, genetics can tell us little about the development of the individual and can offer no conclusion to any form of “nature/genes vs. nurture/environment” debates. For Gilbert, human evolution is epigenetic, and the human itself is determined only through interactions that occur between, and within, the body (which forms through the instructions of genetic DNA, as they are decoded embryologically by cell-cell interactions), and the self (which forms through interactions with environment and others/non-self).

To this end, a growing body of discourse has commented on the distortions created in modern biology by the present overemphasis on DNA (c.f. Doyle, 1997a, 1997b; Kay, 2000; Keller, 1985, 1992, 1995, 2000; Kember, 2003; Lewontin, 1993, 1994, 2000; Rabinow, 1996, 1999). Indeed, there is often an tendency for people to discuss genes in a mystical, quasi- creationist way, to treat genetic material as ‘essences’ that inevitably give rise to behavioural characteristics and traits, regardless of the environment in which they are expressed. As an organising principle, genetic determinism is a stark contrast to autopoietic theories and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 91 evolutionary psychology (discussed above) that suggest that organisms are ‘self-produced’ and that they are able to learn, adapt, and change as they develop. However, Linnda Caporael (1994, 2001) sees a related thread running through each when she argues that the selfish-gene theory shares a “conceptual deep structure with religion” (2001, p. 620). Each system retains an ‘essential’ element, whether this is soul, system, or gene that counters the ‘transitory’ body. Yet unlike the human soul or the organism’s system-structure, an individual’s allotted genes cannot be altered without the aid of technology. Indeed, Francis Crick’s ‘Central Dogma’ of molecular biology is that the process of protein ‘translation’ (in which double-stranded DNA is partially unwound and copied by a single-stranded RNA enabling the synthesisation or ‘transcription’ of specific proteins) essentially entails a one- way flow of information: once information has passed into the proteins which comprise the tissues and organs of the body, it cannot get out again (Kember, 2003, p. 15). Thus, where the liberal human subject could improve or enhance their immortal soul, and deny their base, ephemeral body, the human as it is represented in genetic discourse is rationally devoid of subjectivity, and is thus a body-object unable to escape or alter the destiny its genes have preordained. In Chapter Five I draw on the work of Donna Haraway to show how such inherently power-based discussions are reconfigured in the hybrid cyborg figure. And in Chapter Six I argue that extending the discursive metaphor of the gene as ‘abstract codified information’ into computational environments can produce an informatic entity or posthuman that is able to alter its representational structure without loss of meaning or form.

Since Gregor Mendel’s Experiments on plant hybridisation (1866) (his famous work on peas) showed that inheritance works by transmitting ‘particles of information’, or genes, which encapsulate and combine genetic information from parents into their offspring, the gene has been seen as a fundamental component of organic life. And with the uncovering of the structure of DNA in the 1950s, the ‘secret of life’ seemed to be a lot closer. Indeed, molecular biology has always ordered and organised its inquest into organisms – particularly humans – around a single quest; to discover the ‘invisible secret’ that is life. I argue that, in the terms of this thesis, the history of genetics shows that molecular biology discourse, as a whole, continues to rewrite, order and organise ‘life’, ‘human’, ‘body’, and ‘brain’ on a subcellular level. And, as I have discussed in this thesis, the discourse of genetics (when functioning as metaphor) describes and positions its subject in terms of otherwise un- nameable (‘absent’, ‘improvable’, ‘intangible’) abstractions. Genetics and genetic technologies function to supplement the gaps inscribed both on and between biological organisms and their environmental and/or social systems, focusing not only on the extent to which differences between organisms in a given environment can be accounted for by differences in an organisms genes, but also how genes produce an underlying architecture common to all organism’s within a species. In the terms I have outlined in this thesis, I argue that in molecular biology and genetic technologies the metaphor of evolution shifts from

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 92 ‘machine ensemble’ to ‘informatic code sequence’, the mode of enquiry shifts from body to gene, and ‘essentialist’ and ‘universal’ claims shift from the human soul to human DNA.

I argue that in its function as metaphor the paradigm of information that surrounds and constitutes molecular biology is analogous to the information paradigm per se. In this regard I follow Richard Lewontin (1993), who critiques the system of DNA representation – information, messages, texts, codes, cybernetic systems, programs, instructions, alphabets, and words – writing that such representation is homologous to both biological and digital information structures. Richard Doyle (1997) argues that the ‘code’ analogy runs deeper as ‘life’ is overwritten with ‘information’. In the final analysis, argues Doyle, that is all there is – “a story of coding without mediation or bodies” (1997, p. 22). In such representations organisms are no longer represented as composite ‘bits and pieces’ of mechanised and situated nature that are essentially organised around a self-referencing mind. They are instead constituted as informatic systems, little more than an amalgam of codified algorithms in the guise of atoms, proteins, enzymes, molecules, cells, and genes: singular units of information that ultimately determine the shape and history of the organism. And the conjoining of ‘cybernetic’, ‘informatic’ and ‘biologic’ paradigms – at both the level of metaphor and the level of material technology – shows that all biological organisms are nothing more than codified messages – patterns of codified information waiting to be cybernetically deciphered, understood, rearranged, improved, and rebuilt. For the version of the posthuman I promote in this thesis, such a codified embodiment is essential.

In this codified arrangement individual human autonomy and agency are subsequently ascribed to the constitutive arrangement of genetic material rather than organism, species, environment, character, or behavioural development, factors that are considered secondary to processes of evolution. Indeed, evolution itself is seen here as mere mathematical adjustment (absent/present) of the frequencies of alternative alleles. Complex computations at subcellular levels merely make available the illusion of an animated human subject, and individual humanness no longer resides in the human body but in the information that constitutes it. This is the identity of the human that is actively sought through genetic technological endeavours, such as the Human Genome Project; in which the analogy of ‘human life as information’ becomes ontology as it is displaced from the body and dispersed through the narratives and networks that make up the interpretations of genetic databases’ (Doyle, 1997, p. 24). Thus, in the Human Genome Project we see metaphors employed in order to appropriate complex biological structures. Highly codified representations of ‘information’ are substituted as comparative signs in order to express what is otherwise meaningless. In a fashion parallel to that outlined in Chapter Two the Human Genome Project is seen as the latest inquest into the long running endeavour to uncover the mystery of organic life, and to provide a point of reference for the human that simultaneously reflects and justifies its social location, contemporaneous with increased informationalism. Indeed,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 93 the employment of such metaphors can be seen in the discourses that surround (critique, popularise, question) the project. Margarete Sandelowski, for instance, writes that the ‘book of life’ as represented through the codified structures of the Human Genome Project is shown to consist of “twenty-three chapters (chromosomes), each of which contain several thousand stories (genes), each of which, in turn, contains paragraphs (exons) interrupted by advertisements (introns) and which is made up of words (codons) written in letters A, G, C, T (bases)” (2002, p. 60). Yet as Colin Tudge suggests, the lexicon provided through the project is incomplete: An individual's apportionment of genes - the genome - should be construed as an arcane work of literature with its own syntax, puns, allusions, redundancies, colloquialisms and overall "meaning" of which we have almost no inkling, and may never understand exhaustively. (2002, p. 27) And while Lewontin argues that decoding the ‘incoherent babble’ of three billion A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s may ultimately tell us nothing of humanness as every individual human genome is unique, ”the” human DNA sequence identified and promoted through the Human Genome Project as an insight into everyone offers, in reality, little more than “a mosaic of some hypothetical average person corresponding to no one” (Lewontin, 1993, p. 68).

While the listing of genes through the Human Genome Project has not fulfilled media fantasies of a thoroughly open ‘book of life’, it has, for the biological posthuman, made great headway towards overcoming any lingering resistance the physical body retained from earlier incursions and penetrations. It also instates the informatic body as the preferred site of continued human investigation, for while the fleshy ‘analogue’ body is complicated, redolent and mortal, the codified and digitised DNA body is acquiescent to the fortunes of other instances of digitised information. The digitised body is easily and infinitely reproducible; easily compressed and infinitely storable; able to be transmitted or transported over vast distances at high speeds; highly impartial; amenable to digital networks and exchange; and extremely durable. And the 4-letter alphabetised ‘map’ will allow investigators to simulate future divergences, creative linkages, and potential shortcuts between organisms, without ever blunting the knife. Again, we see here that the rendering of the human body as information is a further indication of the role evolution metaphors play in reinforcing and justifying contemporaneous social institutions, structures and norms.

Like many other (post-)industrial endeavours, the Human Genome Project is simultaneously a discourse, a body of power-knowledge, and a commercial enterprise driven by global capital. In the opinion of the instigators who participated in the Human Genome Project, the knowledge they produced equated the project to a scientific endeavour comparable to the conquest of space, and they were quick to point out that while it did no good to get

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 94 humankind halfway to Mars, a quarter or a third of the total human genome sequence could “provide a most valuable yield of applications” (Gilbert and Watson quoted in Kember, 2003, p. 30). A multibillion-dollar, international program of such magnitude should continue to attract capital in order to finance further research particularly as the discursive ‘myths’ that surround biotechnologies continue to be circulated in mass media. Thus, regardless of the utility outcomes of the project, real and perceived consumer desire and a profit-focused market will ensure a steady supply of molecular biologists anxious to participate in the project. Whether the Human Genome Project will benefit all humankind (and other non- human organisms) or merely increase the earnings of profit-conscious scientists and global biotech corporations depends, I believe, on how the discourse of the human genome is positioned. This, in no small way, highlights the importance of approaching biological evolution theory as discourse.

In popular representations, the unravelling of the human genome is often seen as the opening of Pandora’s Box, spewing all the ills of biotechnology, such as human cloning and genetic engineering; the manufacturing of animal organs for xenotransplants; the military production of the ultimate soldier; the debate surrounding research on embryos for stem-cell development; the cultivation of deafness in a child born to a deaf couple; ‘Frankenstein Food’ and other ‘Monster Crops’; the patenting of certain DNA and the subsequent loss of individuality to corporate property rights; the confirmation that Dolly, the world first cloned sheep, aged prematurely; increased data gathering through DNA databanks, genetic testing, genetic screening and genetic fingerprinting for panoptic surveillance; a new Eugenics in which genes are held responsible for medically defined diseases and a range of social ills such as addiction, violence, and mental disorders; and a world in which gene-rich and genetically enhanced individuals are the new elite, while those unable to participate are compelled to remain human. Again, this shows that the discourse of biological evolution theory is a contested site, suggesting that any ‘culture war’ regarding the human genome must be fought on these grounds. Thus the appropriate response for the genetic advocate here would be that the analogy of Pandora’s Box is indeed welcome, for “it was well for Pandora that she opened the box a second time, for the Gods, with a sudden impulse of compassion, had concealed among the evil spirits one kindly creature, Hope, whose mission was to heal the wounds inflicted by her fellow prisoners” (Guerber in Boyce, 2002, ¶ 15). In the discourse of genetics, incursions are not always seen as being beneficial. Yet they are also seen to offer great benefits and hope to humankind. Foucault would argue that medical and surgical discourse has always promised to ‘enhance’ human subjects by increasing life- spans, overcoming diseases, and reducing infant fatality and stillbirths. Genetic discourse promises the same enhancements, although the method differs radically: human genes have been put into animals, allowing sheep to produce a human growth hormone in their milk; potatoes have been altered to make human proteins for use in medicine; ‘working’ copies of faulty genes put into living cells are sprayed into the lungs of people suffering Cystic

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 95 Fibrosis, helping them deal with the symptoms of the illness; cancer cells could be altered to prevent them dividing and causing more damage, or to make them more susceptible to drug- therapy. Benefits can also be seen through genetic screening, a technology that would enable the early diagnosis of potentially fatal disease, and knowledge of such a disease might reduce the risk, through medicine, surgery, or a simple change of lifestyle or diet. The discourse surrounding such technologies promotes them as ostensibly safe, as they are used for diagnosis only and no actual transformation takes place, and it is hard to counter such discourse when the benefits to the future child far outweigh the potential costs.

Perhaps the most ‘hardline’ discourse of genetics concerns germ-line therapy, a technology that allows for altered genes to be inserted into egg cells, and the engineered material passed to later generations (Jones, 2000, p. 150). This technology is seen as one of the more controversial developments because, as Lewontin points out, these alterations would be inherited by future generations in no position to make a choice of their own (1993, p. 70). Indeed, throughout evolution, no genetic material, mutation, or other manipulation has been passed to the offspring of a physical organism unless it is encoded in the DNA. In other words, biology has demonstrated that “no mutation or other manipulation of the physical organism gets carried on to its offspring unless encoded in the DNA of the parental gamete”, the sexual cells that combine to in the offspring (Buchanan, 2002). As commercial and social pressure to consciously and purposefully manipulate the DNA that constitutes the human gene pool builds, it remains to be seen how long this truism can hold. If the genetic manipulation of the human gene pool is, as both proponents and opponents suggest, only a matter of time, then the distinction of evolution through the mechanisms of biological inheritance will be over for the human (Buchanan, 2002, 18-19).

Using the principles, terms and mechanism of computational communication, the digitisation of biotic bodies has meant that genetic information can also be transmitted in and out of cells (neurons) by proteins that act as gates. This ‘simple’ idea means that certain proteins in one organism can be cloned and mutated to produce a range of similar cells that are transplanted to a recipient organism. The idea behind such transgenic organisms is that an organism may carry genes from an unrelated species to its advantage, for example ‘transgenic’ tomatoes that contain genetic information extracted from cold water fish, enabling the tomato to withstand cooler temperatures and frost (Kull, 2002, p. 279), or the cells of a healthy pancreas transmitted to an insulin-dependent diabetic. For the French artist Eduardo Kac, extracting the proteins from Pacific Northwest Jellyfish that fluoresce green, and cloning and mutating these cells to produce a range of red, yellow, and blue colour- coded fluorescence (Hacking, 2004, p. 26), became a similar technical problem. And Kac, with the assistance of scientist Louise-Marie Houdebine, created his project ‘GFP Bunny’, which saw the genes of Alba, the albino rabbit, embedded with green florescent jellyfish protein, resulting in a green, florescent rabbit (Becker, 2000, p. 45). In the terms I have

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 96 outlined in this thesis I argue that projects such as this firmly establish the reciprocal relationship that exists between metaphors of evolution, as the codified information from one substrate is creatively reconfigured into another substrate, rendering a traditional naturally occurring ‘resource-substance’ into tradeable information. Here, ‘genetics’ and ‘codified information’ are not only equated with each other but are also drawn together in the constitution of the metaphor of ‘informatic structure’, a metanarrative comfortable within the current social paradigm. Regardless of the nature of the exchange – whether it is for health, art, athleticism, or other social reasons – genetic information becomes a tradable commodity amenable to the rule-structures, patterns and variables of other informatic exchanges within an information economy.

In this chapter I have argued that the continued evolution of the human towards greater complexity has had, and continues to have, an extraordinary effect on the constitution of the biosphere. Within the biosphere, humans are unique in developing rich and diverse collaborative systems between other individual humans, collections of individual humans, other non-human organic species, and human technologies. And as successive collaborations continue to reorganise and produce human behaviours and interactions they will continue to contribute to the cycle of autopoietic complexity as each instance of collaboration alters the surrounding environment in such a way as to promote further colonisation and evolution. In the following Chapter Four I argue that the entire evolutionary process is accelerated further as technology and technique rapidly expands the scope and range of human methods and systems of exchange. In the broader evolutionary timeframe human beings have, through technology and technique, transformed the arrangement of the biosphere in an extraordinarily manner, transforming the Earth’s natural resources via mining forestry, agriculture, and irrigation and turning vast areas of land into crop producing ‘gardens’ or sprawling urban infrastructure. Aided by machine technology, the transformation of energy in the biosphere through human intervention has, in no small measure, remade the biosphere as a human endeavour, and having harnessed, resisted or accommodated all other geographic forces humans have emerged as the dominant force in the arrangement of life on planet Earth.

However, the evolved shape of the human can by no means be considered the first or the only form the genus homo has taken; and, I argue, nor should it be considered the last. In Chapter Five I argue that, in the continuing evolution of the human, new posthuman forms will emerge, suggesting, for the human, a transition from a relatively stable biological state that has existed for hundreds of thousands of years; a transition from a singular, fixed, and mostly homogenous species to a posthuman genus that encompasses numerous hybrid forms that mix human and non-human biological, technological and socio-cultural

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 97 components into a multiple and fluid mode of being. I argue that many of these forms will be in response to perceived or constructed environmental needs, and, drawing on the principles of evolutionary psychology, I argue that these environmental needs must also appreciate the modifications in information through which many new environments are formed. That is, the vision of the posthuman I present would emerge in response to modifications in information that are seen in advances in scientific knowledge, new technologies and techniques, new networked institutional and organisational structures, and postindustrial economic systems. Arguing in favour of the autopoietic emergence of the posthuman, I follow Francisco Ayala who writes that: The ability to obtain and process information about the environment, and to react accordingly, is an important adaptation because it allows the organisms to seek out suitable environments and resources and to avoid unsuitable ones (Ayala in Rifkin, 1998, p. 207-211).

However, in many of the discourses surrounding the posthuman, statements are often made claiming that the human has choice of direction and control and of continuous human evolution, that the human will choose its own evolutionary successor, and that it is time for the human to evolve in response to an environment now dominated by technology and technique. There are, generally, two threads of discourse that contend – often cooperatively or at least synchronistically – for this future position. Firstly, posthuman theories and cyborgology suggest that we can, and indeed should, allow the technologised environment in which we are intricately involved to encompass the human biological medium in a contemporaneous existence. Secondly, biotechnology demonstrates, and on occasions advocates, the possibility of altering human biological makeup at the genetic level. In this illustration we see again the reciprocal role evolution metaphors play as they reflect and justify the current information paradigm. Indeed, one of the dominant organising principles of the postindustrial paradigm is seen in the shift from an economy based on the production of ‘industrious’ material goods to one based upon ‘creative’ outputs. In light of this I argue, in Chapter Six, that it is within this context that genetic biotechnologies and computational intelligence take on a new importance and relevance. In their near limitless possibilities to reconstruct and reinvent the human, to move codified structures across organic and non- organic boundaries with relative impunity, to erase the legacy of genetic inheritance in rewriting and pre-programming the genetic future, information itself, I argue, will bring the concepts of ‘human’ ‘being’ and ‘life’ squarely in line with the new protean spirit.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 98 Chapter Four

The employment of evolutionary metaphors within a technological innovation framework

In going beyond what is already known, one cannot but go blindly. If one can go wisely, this indicates already achieved wisdom of some general sort. Donald T. Campbell (1974) Evolutionary epistemology, p. 422

Technē is the instrument by which man can make himself immune to tuchē. Bruce Mazlish (1993) The Fourth Discontinuity, p. 180

The Tool we have invented is our successor. Biological evolution has given way to a far more rapid process – technological evolution. Arthur C. Clarke (1973) Profiles of the Future, p. 228

Human biological and technological evolution In popular representations of human biological and cultural evolution, the history of the Neanderthal – often dubbed our ‘closest human relative’ 1 – is iconic in a particular way. Enhanced by a significant fossilised record, the Neanderthal holds a general and popular appeal, largely driven by their fated demise. About 35,000 years ago, the biological and cultural bifurcations between the two species reached a nadir and Homo neanderthalensis suffered extinction while Homo sapiens survived and prospered (Tattersall, 1999, Tattersall & Schwartz, 1999). While there is some suggestion that, through interbreeding, Neanderthals may have undergone a pseudoextinction (their weaker phenotype succumbing to the dominate Homo sapiens phenotype) (Smith & Spencer, 1984; Nitecki & Nitecki, 1994; Stringer, & McKie, 1996), the common view suggests that they were eliminated by Homo sapiens by direct conflict or indirect economic competition, or a combination of the two (Tattersall, 1998; 1999). Such accounts suggest that where the Neanderthals remained in one area, depleting it of its natural resources, Homo sapiens planned migration according to seasonal resource availability, and

1 There is ongoing debate as to the degree of separation between the two species, in terms of physical linguistic capabilities (Lieberman & Crelin, 1971; Arensburg, Schepartz, Tiller, Vandermeersch, Duday, and Rak, 1990; Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992; Frayer, 1993; Shreeve, 1995; Fitch & Reby, 2001), brain size and function (Holloway, 1974), anatomical structure (Lewin, 1988; Cuozzo, 1998), and RNT DNA sequence (Hammer & Zegura, 1996; Krings, Stone, Schmitz, Krainitzki, Stoneking & Pââbo, 1997; Nordborg, 1998; Harris & Hey, 1999).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 99 while the Neanderthal worked hard in order to survive, Homo sapiens decreased the workload by developing increasingly more complex tools out of stone, wood, bone, and skin (Tattersall, 1998; 1999). Thus, according to evolution discourse, the more culturally refined, physically flexible and technologically enabled species of the two was ultimately able to “out-wit, out-play, and out-last” their weaker kin. The great appeal to this evolutionary story is one of progress. “Technology,” the story goes, “expands our cultural horizons, extends our biological processes and thus enhances our evolutionary trajectory”.

The term ‘technology’ is itself an extraordinarily broad term. Stephen Kline writes that the term is used to represent things, actions, processes, methods and systems; it is used symbolically and metaphorically to discuss human behavioural and organisational characteristics; and it is employed as an epithet for social and cultural progress (1980, p. 210). However, where Kline argues that “this much conflict within the usage of one of our central terms […] can lead only to chaos” (1980, p. 210), I relish such an expansive term, arguing that the utility an open definition of technology is that it enables greater discussion and critique of its historical formation, current position and applications, and its future potential. In other words, I see this definition as one in accordance to the biological discourse of complexity. The relationship between the human and the technological is heterogeneous and polyvalent, highly contextualised, and impossibly complex. Here, I outline the base definitions of technology that inform the inquiry throughout this thesis.

I start my definition from within a biological framework, suggesting that this initial approach to technology shows that there is ultimately no discrete or distinct difference between the human and the technological. In such a framework the hypothesis of the human as ‘toolmaker’ is repositioned so that the human and technology are seen to be, effectively, one species. This goes beyond technological deterministic suggestions in which the human assumes “a position of extreme and even pathological dependence upon their technical artefacts” (Winner, 1973, p.190), in that it suggests a human-technology symbiosis that prefigures all human relations. It subsumes, therefore, all other definitions of technology. Nevertheless, within this framework we can acknowledge and accept other definitions of technology. Of these, the most common, and perhaps most useful, understanding and definition of technology is that of the technological artefact: objects that are human-produced and do not occur naturally on earth. Such definitions of technology concern the ‘things’, the ‘bits and pieces’ of ‘stuff’ that have been selectively shaped into unique objects. Whether that object is a ‘digging-stick’ or a ‘digital camera’, we ascribe the term technology to what is otherwise an inanimate, ‘unsituated’ or ‘unconnected’ human-produced object. This definition denotes a device or system that is described solely in terms of its inputs and outputs; instruments that perform certain prescribed utility functions, whose end requirements are established by a human user who remains in control throughout the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 100 operation (Nardi & O’Day, 1999 p. 25; Winner, 1973, p. 190; Winner 2003, p. 234-235). I show in this thesis that such definitions of technology are similar to biological definitions of individual ‘organisms’ or ‘species’ when defined or discussed outside the systems in which they are otherwise embedded. This leads me to suggest, then, that unless it is lying dormant and forgotten, technology has purpose, and I use the term technology also to denote the process by which the human uses technology to ‘create’. This suggests that technology is also an item that has a projected future utility; most often, to produce (to a greater or lesser extent) further utility items. For Ellul ([1980] 2003) this process is one in which technology enables nothing more than the production of more technology. The more technology we have, the more technology we will produce, in a relentless, endless cycle. Every component under operation is a utility piece of technology, and any problem identified is the outcome of technology and must therefore be solved through more utility technology. Thus, technology includes not just tools, but the manufacturing equipment (tools) used in the production process, the human labour that operates the process, the resource materials used, the excess or waste materials produced, and, ultimately, the broader technological environment that shapes and directs the overall process (Kline 1985, p. 215-218). Often, such definitions of technology appear under the banner of ‘technique’, denoting the broader knowledge, know-how, information, skills, processes, procedures, and rationalised methodologies that are constantly and consistently refined in the search for greater technological efficiency. Technology, then, includes not only built devices, but also the practices and knowledge related to them and the social arrangements that form around the devices, practices and knowledge (Dierkes & Hoffmann, 1992; Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999; Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2002). I argue that we should include here quasi- technological objects. These are the hybrids, the non-human objects, and creatures that are the offspring of nature, culture, society, technology, and technique. They are objects such as computer software, the hole in the ozone layer, fish stocks, the World Health Organisation, and so forth, that at various times function as a technological object, a social force, and a driver of innovation. As hybrids they are particularly useful in suggesting that the symbiotic relationship between the human and technology is never simply or solely ‘determined’, ‘determining’, ‘shaped’, ‘guided’ or ‘constructed’, whilst strengthening the argument that technique is the most dominant organising principle of society, and one that often occurs at the expense of other human values. It is the standard by which everything else is to be compared and the guiding force for the development, adaptation, diffusion, and adoption of all technology. For Ellul, technique is a force that moves on its own in a rapid, relentless, omnivorous, and autonomous fashion (Ellul 1964, p. 14). Technique demands that new forms and methods of refined technique be built over previous forms and methods of technique.

This definition of technology leads also to an understanding of the technological sublime. This suggests that amidst the many utilitarian functions of technique is a metanarrative in which the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 101 term ‘technology’ overlays our understandings of ‘nature’, ‘religion’, the ‘mystical’ and the ‘mythical’ as dynamic and vital organising forces of humankind. In this denotation technology and technological development are similarly positioned as that which we cannot fully imagine or represent in what we know and see. Technology attempts to fill those gaps in our understanding of our place in time and in space, and the inability to present the infinite can be filled only through the representation of technique. Within this framework we can see that often it is not the technological object or artefact or technique itself that promises redemption, but the constitutive discourses, hyperbolic or critical, that aim to seduce the reader into arguments that parlay and exploit the probable and the possible. These representations outline the imaginative effects technological development will bring, addressing the emancipative aspects of a technological utopia or the paranoid imaginings of a technological dystopia.

Taken together as a whole, the highly complex technological infrastructure of our society can be seen as “an aggregate phenomenon [that] dwarfs human consciousness and makes unintelligible the systems that people supposedly manipulate and control” (Winner, 1973, p. 190). Returning to the biological framework in which I am working, I suggest that the technological ecology, or the technosphere, extends the range of human scope and meaning beyond the biological shape of self or nature into spaces inaccessible in any way other than through technology or technique. This broader concept of technology, gleaned from the discourse of biological evolution, suggests that technology is not just our ‘second nature’. Rather, the concept of a human-technology symbiosis suggests that technology is us, along with everything we know and everything we do.

In this chapter I argue that technology should be viewed as a form of ‘species’, and I discuss the merits of classifying and defining technologies and techniques within such a biological framework. Many commentators, from Samuel Butler (1863, 1872) through to Kevin Kelly (1994), have adopted biological metaphors and mechanisms to argue that technology exhibits characteristics similar to organic species. Here, I extend my discussion of evolution theory to argue that the discourse of human biological evolution is intricately entwined with the discourse of human technological evolution. Through its constitutive discourse, I argue, technology has reshaped the natural world and subsequently given the biological human its socio-cultural shape. In positioning evolution discourse in this way, I argue that ‘technology’ and ‘the human’ can be seen to have co-evolved in a tight, symbiotic relationship with each ‘species’ directly shaping the other through ongoing interaction with their respective environments, members of their own species, and members of their symbiotically coupled species. For this thesis, positioning the human and technology within a symbiotic arrangement allows for the emergence of an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent that effectively straddles and sutures the human and the technological. I argue in this thesis that such a version of the posthuman is a

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 102 representation of the human and a form of technology itself and, therefore, emblematises the intricacies of the current gestalt as they are reflected in and as they are a reflection of contemporary evolution theory.

In this thesis I have discussed the role evolution theories play in constituting the frameworks within which various communities conduct their discourse. Scientific, technological, economic, political, and other such ‘knowledge communities’ continue to draw metaphors from evolution theory that best express or explain an understanding of their discipline and its role within broader socio-cultural systems. Examples of this can be seen in areas such as evolutionary psychology, evolutionary politics, evolutionary computation and evolutionary economics, and other schools of thought that draw on biological meanings and interpretations in discussion of endogenous change. Evolutionary economics, for example, is a branch of economic science dedicated to understanding, describing, and harnessing the processes of continuous technological and institutional change and innovation. Evolutionary economists argue that economic systems can be seen to change or respond to changes within their structure, and they argue that a form of process or processes must, therefore, occur, and they propose that these processes are evolutionary processes that are Darwinian in nature. In drawing on the mechanisms defined in biological inquiries, evolutionary economics shows economic structures to also be complex adaptive systems with self-organising features that exhibit a greater potential for exchange, specialisation, and growth than static, deterministic accounts of economic change and diversity. Thus, in accommodating change within non-biological economic systems, evolutionary economists argue that the mechanisms that provide selection, generate variation, and establish self-replication contribute to a self-organising and non-linear economic market composed of complex interdependencies, competitive growth strategies, and resource constraints (see Potts, 2000a, 200b; Laurent & Nightingale, 2001; Foster & Metcalfe, 2001). The argument I present throughout this chapter is a participant in such a discussion in that I also position technological innovation, development and change within a biological framework.

Returning to the terms I have outlined in Chapter Two, I argue that the human-technology symbiosis – in functioning as an overarching evolutionary metaphor – is itself an ongoing historical and discursive process that continues to shape our selves, our technologies, and our societies. In arguing that the discourse of technological change closely mirrors our understanding of biological evolutionary processes, I show how this metanarrative can in turn extend our understanding of technological change beyond familiar ‘social shaping of technology’ and ‘technological determinism’ arguments, showing how an evolutionary perspective adds greater complexity by granting actor ‘status’ and ‘roles’ to various technological and sociological elements. I stress that it is important to understand the application of evolution metaphors in theories of technological development, as these ultimately condition our understanding of the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 103 relationships between humans and technology. I argue that evolutionary theory can show how technologies acquire and redistribute human agency within society, suggesting that this, in turn, helps us to overcome any presupposed distinction between the human, technology, and society. To this end, I position technology here as an active, living participant in human socio-cultural life. The potential of this theory of technological evolution is expressed in the proposal of an evolution literacy that, I argue, could be applied in mapping, modelling, directing, and accounting for the development and diffusion of future technologies and similar changes within other non- biological systems. In proposing this literacy I argue that an understanding of the mechanisms, terms, processes, and outcomes of evolution may also be applied in discussions of non- biological change, and that that without such a form of literacy – that is, without understanding the processes and mechanisms employed in evolution – we risk producing discourses that justify all levels of change as simply ‘evolution’. Such a discussion would also extend the approach generally taken in researching, understanding, and defining technologies and techniques. Langdon Winner (2003) outlines this approach, arguing that it is fairly consistent in viewpoint and disposition. Usually, he argues, the researcher locates a particular technology or technique, identifies the social interests that shape its development, shows if, how, and where the development addresses developer interests, shows how the development is interpreted and contextualised by third parties, identifies any areas of conflict, cooperation, agreement, disagreement, and possible consensus, before concluding that the final shape of the development is determined by the most powerful actor (p. 236). I show in this chapter how positioning technology within a biologically-based framework greatly extends the scope of ‘Technological Determinism’ and ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ discussions and definitions of technological change by locating all participants within the human-technology symbiosis.

In this chapter I argue that continuous technological change and development are inevitable: not in the manner of the utopian technophile who sees only the advantage and potential future benefits of technology, nor in the manner of the dystopian technophobe who sees technology as an intrusion on all social experience. Instead, I see continuous technological change and development as the logical progression of an open and complex evolutionary system. This hypothesis does, of course, draw on and reconstitute earlier evolution metaphors in that it positions technological change as a function of an inevitable force of nature, effectively transferring to the realm of biology a form of ‘determinism’. It is a transfer, as such, of biological determinism into a discussion of socio-technological systems. I argue that, within a given environment, the ‘technological’ and the ‘socio-cultural’ both function as systems that are capable of acknowledging or recognising their own position. That is, in an act of symbiotic accordance, both the human and technology behave in an antipoetic fashion, establishing a place for themselves and their symbiotic counterpart according to the unique wants or needs of the union (see Chapter Three). Thus, human ’progress’ is a phenomenon that is tightly related to

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 104 technological evolution and vice versa. This is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the specifically technological computational networked information space that in many ways dominates contemporary society.

The discourse of technological evolution can be seen, within the humanities and social sciences, enunciated in the long running argument that technology is a necessity driven by human biological deficiencies. For example, Arnold Gehlen ([1965] 2003) quotes a quasi-religious passage from Ludwig Noire’s Das Werkzeug [The Tool] (1880): Then man became released from nature, for he became his own creator, created his own organs, became a tool maker, a tool making animal. ([1965] 2003, p. 213) Technology, the argument suggests, separates ‘human’ from ‘beast’ and fuels the idea that the human is unable to survive unaided: without “intelligently altering existing environmental conditions […] this instinct-poor and defenceless creature [is unable] to preserve himself” (Gehlen, [1965] 2003, p. 213). This ‘organ projection’ thesis suggests that humans produce tools in order to provide relief through the substitution, replacement, strengthening, or improvement of natural abilities and deficiencies. Gehlen argues that technology enables an extension of the biological human, in both physical and mental terms, beyond what has been made obviously available in nature. And while the earliest human tool technologies such as fire, clothing, pottery, textiles, the hammer and the knife can be presented as free, constructive inventions developed through experimentation (Gehlen, [1965] 2003, p. 213), an argument can be made that ‘human’ socio-cultural and biological evolution are, indeed, intricately linked to technological innovations.

Indeed, anthropology has long considered tool-making to be one of the most definitive characteristics of the genus Homo. Yet while there is extensive evidence of simple ‘found’ tool- usage among birds, rodents, and primates both in and out of captivity (Boesch & Boesch, 1984; McCrew, 1992; Schaik, Deaner, & Merrill, 1999; Whiten, Goodall, McGrew, Nishida, Reynolds, Sugiyama, Tutin, Wrangham & Boesch, 1999), tool making capabilities are less common. Some primates make and use several kinds of tools to extend the success of their foraging, including leaf sponges, termite and ant fishing probes, marrow picks, levers, pestles, stick brushes, leaf scoops, hooked sticks, wood and stone hammers and anvils (Ambrose, 2001, p. 1749). However, non-human animal tool use is generally constrained by behavioural and anatomical capabilities and the availability of objects in the environment that make feasible tools. No animal has been known (outside of the laboratory) to use tools to fashion new tools, to improve upon existing tool designs, or to build an archive of technical knowledge for future use (Basalla, 1988, p. 13). Humans, on the other hand, strive to overcome such limits by purposefully shaping their tools, the environment, their anatomical and their communication capabilities accordingly:

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 105 For non-human animals that use technology, tools are simply an available object that helps to sustain life. For the human, technology helps to sustains life and nurture well- being. (Basalla 1988, p. 14)

So, the two immediate questions that arise concerning tool technologies in this regard are, “what were the main influences for the origin and development of technology?”, and “to what extend has technology influenced human biological evolution?” Briefly, technologies are developed to serve the challenges of everyday and long-term survival, and success, in turn, influences biological and behavioural evolution. However, the process becomes increasingly autocatalytic as evolution drives technology, language, and cultural systems of knowledge, and these, in turn, direct our understanding of self, nature, and society (Ambrose, 2001, p. 1752). It is this intricate relationship, I argue, that hints at towards a deeply symbiotic union between the human and technology: a co-evolutionary relationship of mutual dependency.

Palaeontologist Stanley Ambrose suggests that there is no direct evidence for tool manufacture and use prior to 2.5 million years ago when ‘stone tool technology’, Paranthropus robustus, the genus Homo, and ‘culture’ appeared “almost simultaneously” (2001, p. 1748). From this point, Ambrose argues, human biological evolution (increased brain size, increased population size, and a greater geographical range) and cultural evolution increase rapidly. Drawing on a study in which functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) shows that the prefrontal cortex activates only when imagining a main objective while performing related secondary tasks, Ambrose argues that Palaeolithic tool manufacture and usage, such as flaking a stone point, cutting and shaping a wooden shaft, and collecting and processing resource materials, demands the planning and coordination of a number of different kinds of tasks, suggesting that the complex problem solving and planning demanded by composite tool manufacture may have actually influenced the evolution of the frontal lobe (2001, p. 1751). Lewis Wolpert likewise suggests that an understanding of ‘cause and effect’ enabled the human to interact with and manipulate the environment, leading to the further development of complex tool technology, and thus a deeper integration with the natural world (2003, p. 1709-1719). Such an understanding of the environment and of interaction therein is obviously a great evolutionary advantage.

I argue that in these examples we can see forming the idea that technological change enables human progress by extending human capabilities in time and in space and enabling those tasks needed for biological survival and propagation of the species to be more easily accomplished. We must, however, be critical in our understanding of the term progress as it is presented in such discourses. The biologist Julian Huxley (see Chapter Two) argues that human progress can be measured according to the amount or separation from or control over a given

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 106 environment. The greater the separation from or control of the environment human societies attained, Huxley argues, the more progress could by qualified. And as technological change is quantifiable, measured in terms of the artefacts it produces and those it leaves behind, the assumption that technological development equals social advancement has produced numerous discourses that commonly represent an historical hierarchy of societal evolutionary progress. In these discourses, human societies are seen to evolve from ‘traditional’ hunter-gatherer societies, to ‘least developed’ agrarian societies, to ‘developing societies’ built around agriculture and mining, to ‘industrial societies’ dependent on smoke stack manufacturing, to the current industrial paradigm of the ‘advanced postindustrial’ society (Barr, 2000, p. 21). In this manner (and in such discourse) contemporary social technologies are seen to exhibit an extraordinarily high separation from and control over the natural environment, with many economic and social sectors recognised as being less dependent upon industrialised energy production and resource manufacturing technology, trading in ‘weightless’ ‘intangible’ goods, and reorganising environmental arrangements accordingly. Scientific and medical reproductive technologies, modern housing technologies, advanced agricultural, transportation, and defence technologies no doubt enhance successful survival and propagation of the human species and, in Huxley’s view, such modern technologies exhibit a high degree of human progress. Yet progress, in this regard, is a power-based assumption associated with these discourses, and to signify any such achievements as ‘evolutionary’ is therefore an overly hasty response.

In this chapter I argue that continuous technological development has merely overlaid the discursive construct of a ‘natural’ environment with the discursive construct of a ‘technocultural’ one. In current discourse, the human is seen as being so enmeshed in modern technological systems that rather than achieving any degree of ‘separation from’ or ‘control over’ the natural environment, they experience an increasing dependence on their constructed technological environments. Nevertheless, contemporary discourse maintains that the human exerts absolute control over constructed technological environments, and human input is, therefore, still very much a guiding influence. However, in other versions, despite this element of control, the continued survival of an increasingly technological species presupposes a continuous and undisturbed functioning of technology. In 1965, Gehlen suggested that the human “could not get through three days in a non-functioning technological-industrial system” ([1965] 2003, p. 217). While I doubt this is entirely true, I argue that the human is as dependent upon its built environment as it was once dependent upon its natural environments. That is, without the infrastructural support of resource energy plants, water supply systems, communication and transport infrastructure, economic systems, and health and welfare systems, many of the geographic locations the human species now inhabits would be barred to, or would at least impede the continued biological survival and propagation of the species.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 107 I argue that the relationship that exists between the human and the technological extends beyond social and cultural understandings and definitions, in that it is capable of positioning both human and technology within a broad biological framework. All human existence has become so enmeshed with technological systems that, increasingly, transfusions between biological and technological realms are considered ‘safe’, ‘natural’, and ‘normal’. It can be suggested here that throughout human history that which has been seen in biology as ‘natural,’ ‘unaided,’ or ‘traditional’ (as loaded as these terms may be) is increasingly redefined or replaced by new technologies and techniques. The current technological imperative suggests that if a natural process can be synthesised through science and technology then it should not be left to the caprices of nature. As technology is something that has been built by humans then as humans we should ultimately place more trust in it than something that occurs naturally. Joseph Dumit and Robbie Davis-Floyd (1998) offer a compelling example of this phenomenon, arguing that it has become unnatural for women to give birth in a familial or homely environment. Our culture has, through recent history, normalised and naturalised the high-tech obstetrics of surveillance, assistance and control that is now so greatly associated with ‘technobirth’ (Dumit & Davis-Floyd, 1998, pp. 1-11). Cyborg technologies suggest that human experience and acceptance of technology within biological realms has its own unique history, and I address this in greater detail in Chapter Five.

Here, I argue that human evolution must be seen as a composite of physical biological evolution, cognitive development, and social and cultural evolution. Technological development, I argue, can be positioned within evolution discourse as being very much a part of human biological evolution. I argue that all technology is a product of human relations and is not, therefore, something foreign to or outside of human evolution. Yet as much of our technology can alter and vary our physical, cognitive, social, and cultural capabilities, an argument can be made that controlled evolution is actually an integral part of human evolution. In this regard I follow Pier Paolo Saviotti who, in his outline of evolution, (1996, p. 42-43) makes a distinction between endosomatic and exosomatic instruments. Endosomatic instruments, Saviotti writes, are the biological organs with which one is born, and exosomatic instruments are those that are produced. In outlining the symbiotic relationship between the human and technology I argue that the two species cannot be separated and as such they are, each to the other, both endosomatic and exosomatic instruments. That is, the human is born into a world (a discourse) in which technology and techniques are already permanent prostheses, and all technologies exist in human produced or defined systems (discourse). And as the human is constantly producing, reproducing, repositioning, redefining, and refining technology, technology has the ability to reposition and redefine what it means to be human. This, I argue, is the nature of symbiosis: the two species can be separated in theory only.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 108 It is my contention in this thesis that this human-technology symbiosis comprises both the components and the overarching system that is the contemporary world, and that in this manner the symbiosis is itself both an evolution metaphor and a tangible environment. Drawing on the terms and mechanisms defined in evolution theory I argue that the introduction or autopoietic emergence of any new species within such an environment will irreversibly impact upon that environment, subtlety rearranging its constitution and promoting greater complexity. Here, I develop this discussion showing how an appreciation of human-technological symbiosis gained through an evolution literacy enables commentators to describe, develop, colonise, and advocate new environmental niches within existing non-biological and socio-cultural systems. Within a technological system this model may be applied to new or existing technological artefacts. Yet it is not my intention here to discuss any one particular biological or technological object, artefact, or instance. Instead, I continue to develop a broader theoretical framework for the version of the posthuman I advocate. That is, in light of the discussion that is developed in this chapter, I argue that the posthuman as an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent will have a similar additive impact upon the networked computational environments in which it is positioned.

Human-technology symbiosis Historically, that which is defined as human and that which is defined as technological have been discursively positioned as belonging to two separate realms, with boundaries that are defined according to two sets of distinct criteria. Firstly, the human is regarded as ‘born’ not ‘made’ and the most basic wants, needs, and desires that surround the human are seen to stem from its biological state. Technology, on the other hand, is regarded as that which is made according to human-defined criteria. In recent years these criteria have become complicated as the historical distinctions continue to be challenged by, for example, the ‘manufacturing’ discussions that surround new genetic technologies and the ‘biological life’ discussions that surround computational technologies such as Artificial Life. In this chapter my argument is directed towards subjugating the perceived separateness of the two ‘species’, and I argue that the immediate advantage in acknowledging this symbiosis is that it allows us to move beyond some of the crude definitions of technology and technological innovation that underpin and influence current understandings of the technological imperative. Many of the discussions that surround technology are, I argue, the anthropomorphised response of the utopian technophile who sees only the advantage and potential future benefits of technology or the dystopian technophobe who sees technology as an intrusion on all human experience. As such, they project into the discourse of technology the drives, needs, aims, and desires that, I argue, are essentially human in formation, reason, and cogency.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 109 As Winner argues, the most important decisions regarding the relationship between the technological and the human must be made by the human suggesting that, in some circumstances, the projection of human faculties onto technology is more than warranted. After all, all technology is ultimately designed and created by humans to “perform a specific, predetermined function” (1973, p. 182). Technology is, in this regard, subservient to the human, who ultimately sets the goals, determines the criteria, and performs any further evaluation. From dirty industry to high-end laboratory technoscience, technology does the routine grunt work on behalf of the human, yet the overall relationship between the human and technology is deemed much more successful than if the human attempted to perform this work unaided. Indeed, most of our technological infrastructure is ultimately geared towards sustaining, maintaining, and propagating human life. And in the same manner in which our biological bodies evolved to the conditions of our earthly environment, we have adapted our technologies to support and enhance human existence wherever possible, addressing our perceived organic deficiencies and restructuring our environments to favour us. This has come at a price, and commentators such as Mumford (1967) and Ellul (1964) have argued that we have paid for our technologies by enabling them to ultimately reposition and realign that very human component that was in itself the instigator of the original symbiotic endeavour. As Winner writes, while the human is responsible for the “synthesis, regulation, and continued maintenance” of our technological systems, in almost no instance “can artificial-rational systems be built and left alone”. Technologies and technological systems require continuous attention, rebuilding, and repair: “eternal vigilance,” Winner writes, “is the price of artificial complexity” (1973, p. 183).

The highly complex technological infrastructure of our society is, in Winner’s view, “an aggregate phenomenon [that] dwarfs human consciousness and makes unintelligible the systems that people supposedly manipulate and control” (1973, p. 190). The technological ecology, or the technosphere, extends the human beyond the biological shape of self or nature into spaces inaccessible in any way other than through technology or technique. The broader concept of technology gleaned from the discourse of biological evolution suggests that technology is not just our ‘second nature’: the concept of symbiosis suggests that technology is us, along with everything we know and everything we do. Therefore, in repositioning the discourse of technology I am able to argue that, in the symbiotic relationship between the human and the technological I promote in this thesis, it is the extent of complexity that ultimately determines the necessary measure of human vigilance and maintenance or indeed any other measure of human action. This also suggests that within the human-technology relationship there are multiple formations and types of symbiotic relationships simultaneously occurring. That is, the statement I make regarding the symbiotic relationship between the human and the technological does not attempt to suggest that there is ‘one’ symbiotic organism upon which to base my critique. I argue that multiple individuals interacting with multiple instances of technology under

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 110 multiple contextual circumstances will obviously produce multiple examples of human- technology symbioses. These would include, for instance, ‘human and transport infrastructure’, ‘human and computer’, ‘human and agriculture’, ‘human and media technologies’, ‘human and labour’, and ‘human and familial care’, and the symbiosis can also, therefore, be seen manifest across various domains of genetics, information and communications science, Artificial Intelligence, and cybernetics. I argue that in all its guises, the symbiosis can be defined as a model that is interchangeable with similar processes found in organic evolution. Rather than outline the minutiae of any one particular example, I outline the terminology that constitutes basic biological definitions of symbiosis in order to reapply this terminology as metaphor and formulate a thesis of human-technology symbiosis. That is, I propose here a discourse in which discursive terms and mechanisms appropriated from biological-based definitions of symbiosis are applied, as metaphor, to a discussion of the human-technology relationship.

Symbiosis, in biological discourse, directs its interest towards two separate species that share the coordinates of time and space together. John Maynard Smith (1974) writes that the phenomena of symbiosis in biological discourse can be further defined according to three distinct relational terms; commensalism, helotism, and mutualism (Maynard Smith, 1974, p. 5). Here, I re-apply Maynard Smith’s definition within the framework of the human-technology symbiosis, showing how both human and technology can, in each term, be accommodated by and accommodate its symbiotic partner. • Commensalism: this is an associative relationship between two species in which one species benefits and the other is neither harmed nor benefited. Examples of such a relationship between the human and technology can be seen at any of the numerous occasions in which the human uses technology to achieve a perceived goal. If the technology itself is not harmed, then the relationship is commensal. A more complex example could be drawn from the relationship between the human and computational technologies, at which point both species share the same codified information: a great benefit to the human and neither harmful nor beneficial for the technology. • Helotism: one species is held to the benefit of the other as if it were a slave. Examples of such relationships can be seen in either direction. While the human uses indentured technology in order to achieve numerous tasks, technology can often been seen to enslave or delimit human activity. At the extreme end of biological symbiosis, such relationships take on the form of predation, with one species, the ‘predator’, inhibiting the growth of the ‘prey’, while the ‘prey’ has an accelerating effect on the growth of the ‘predator’. • Mutualism: a relationship in which two organisms contribute to the well-being of the other. The relationship may be obligate or facultative. Examples of such a relationship between the human and technology can be seen in any of the numerous supporting, sustaining, or

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 111 caretaking roles that are performed for the other by either human or the technological species.

While these definitions do suggest a degree of ‘anthropomorphic’ interpretation, they show that any relationship between the human and the technological can not be considered as entirely causal in its structure or outcomes. Rather, the wide varieties of relational arrangements within human-technological symbiosis suggest that the human and the technological follow a collaborative enterprise. And regardless of the degree of centrality one or the other ‘species’ plays in the formation, administration, and operation of the symbiotic relationship, one cannot conclude that the entire enterprise is one of direct competition or determination on behalf of either.

Indeed, the macro-structure of the enterprise presents a structure that can, I argue, be seen as a singular human-technological species. I agree with Andy Clark (2003) who argues that in order to understand our relationship with technology it is necessary that we “recognise that, in a very deep sense, we were always hybrid beings, joint products of our biological nature and multilayered linguistic, cultural, and technological webs” (p. 194-195). In a similar vein, Gregory Stock argues that the patina of human biology, culture, and technology that envelops the world is in effect itself a living system, a community of organisms and entities so intricately and completely entwined that it functions as a morphological whole (1993, p. 20). While the human played a key role in the foundation of this whole, and the system remains ostensibly human- centred, its scope is in its entirety much greater than that of the human or humanity: [It] is also the crops, livestock, machines, buildings, communications transmissions, and other nonhuman elements and structures that are part of the human enterprise. (Stock, 1993, p. 20) It is often at this macro-scale that we see the human as being profoundly enmeshed in the human-technology symbiosis. Yet it is, nevertheless, human interpretation that chooses whether the system is represented amiably or objectionably. In such discussions, no part of human social, economic, cultural, or ideological constitution can be easily and entirely removed from the human-derived technosphere. Indeed, we are so totally dependent upon a number of key technologies and components therein that to forego them would be quite disastrous. I am reminded here of the old English nursery rhyme Confesio Amantis attributed to John Gower ([c1390] 2000) in which an entire Kingdom is lost for want of a horseshoe nail. And in outlining the dependent and interdependent relationships within the technological order Winner (1973) writes: Components that handle the planning or steering for the whole system are more central than those that take care of some small aspect of a technical subroutine. One may ask: On what does everyone and everything depend? On what do many things depend?

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 112 Relativity few things depend? Rather than a condition of equality or a classless state, we find arrangements of subroutine and superordinate units. Large man-machine networks require hierarchical structure as a normal operating condition. (p. 184-185)

Drawing on biologically-based definitions of complex systems we see that hierarchical structures cannot adequately represent the complexity of human socio-technical systems. Instead, human- technological relationships form as or around systems. The manner in which biology represents complex systems has led us to understand that these systems remain open, and that causal input and output can occur at any instance with genuine and unique effects. This means that, taken in isolation, most components of the human-technological enterprise are quite useless. Washing machines, for example, save time. Yet without the componential support that the generation of electricity, the supply of water, harvesting equipment on distant rubber plantations that supply off-shore hose-making factories, harbour navigation facilities, and detergent producing biochemical laboratories supply, tablecloths would be dirty throughout the world, catering companies would be forced to shut down and nuclear non-proliferation summits would be cancelled. The complex ecologies of human-technology symbiosis highlight the manner in which these otherwise diverse interconnections link together as functional wholes. Indeed, where Winner argues that “if a significant link in a technical system ceases to function, the whole system stops or is thrown into chaos,” and that “in large scale technical networks composed of artificial components with complex interconnections and interdependencies, apraxia is a constant danger” (1973, p. 185-186), I argue that the greater the degree of complexity a system exhibits, the more successfully it is able to reroute and reorganise itself to accommodate chaos. Decentralised components within complex human-technology systems avoid apraxia in that they defy structural hierarchy, and instead, promote mutual dependencies or greater symbiotic coupling in which components, environments, and relationships interconnect in a synergistic fashion. Thus, in socio-economic systems, synergism (another metaphor drawn from biology) replaces the hierarchical, competitive, rationalistic structure of modernist theories, and instead promotes a system in which individual components and subgroups or subsystems cooperate in a complementary effort to achieve a broader, common goal: one that the Japanese technologist Yoneji Masuda states ultimately seeks to keep the system active, effective and (in the language of this thesis) ‘alive’ (Masuda, 1985, p. 621-629).

To this end I argue that technology and human-technological development must be discursively positioned and aligned as dual components within an as yet unfinished (and perhaps unfinishable) co-evolutionary enterprise. This position would suggest that not only have technologies and techniques always been intricately tied to human existence, but that every new technology or technique is developed through or as a part of a symbiotic enterprise. And in

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 113 outlining a shared evolutionary path I argue that changes within the environment – that is, each new perceived vantage point, each new problem, and each new technological fix – generate greater environmental complexity and thus greater evolutionary potential. This goes beyond the idea that technological fixes to perceived problems reroute the existing problem, create a new set of problems, or solve the problem entirely before directing attention towards a new problem. Rather, it highlights the increased complexity, interactivity, and reflexivity all evolutionary systems exhibit, and the manner in which these forces contribute to a continued evolution. What emerges then is a coevolution system in which the human component shapes technological components along with the overall environment; the technological component shapes human components along with the overall environment; and the environment shapes both human and technological components. And environment, human, and technology may function here as both/and/or selection criteria and object of selection. It is a symbiotic arrangement that, I argue, can be seen within the framework of autopoiesis I discuss in Chapter Three. That is, it continues to self-regulate, self-maintain, and self-make individual human and technological components and the overall unity of the human-technology symbiotic superstructure.

Developing an evolution literacy within a technological innovation framework Like all science, evolution biology remains an unfinished project or a work in progress. It does not claim to have ‘proven’ or ‘solved’ the phenomena of biological complexity within the natural world, but continues to promote and explore the hypothesis that such complexity is the result of evolutionary processes, and the usefulness of the biological research tradition consists in formulating problems and hypotheses, not in providing answers (Saviotti, 1996, p. 8). Evolution theory has made apparent the fact that biological evolution occurs under different circumstances and within different timeframes compared with technological innovation and development and other forms of social and cultural change. However, the outcomes of biological evolution and technological innovation and development, I argue, are analogous. In biology, evolution rests on generational changes in genetic information, and in this chapter I show that technological innovation and development follows equivalent modifications in ‘structural’ information. I have already shown (in Chapter Two) that the mechanisms of evolution are themselves highly reflective and recursive cultural terms and analogies, freely exchanged and reciprocated ‘metaphors’ that are used to navigate and understand natural and socio-cultural worlds and immediate environmental conditions. In this chapter I argue that the applied and associated mechanisms and metaphors of biological evolution can be reinterpreted and reapplied as a means of understanding, measuring, and promoting technological evolution, particularly when the discourse of human biological evolution is manipulated in order to highlight the human-

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 114 technology symbiosis as a form of evolutionary co-dependency. Bruce Mazlish (1993) also presents this form of symbiosis, writing that: Technology is represented as the instrument of progress in response to which culture, economy, social space, and the human body must continuously reorganise themselves. Technology, or rather the imperative of technological change, takes the place of the natural environment to which humans adapt. […] This means not only that we must learn to view human evolution as coextensive with technological evolution, but that technological evolution must be understood with reference to bioevolutionary principles of adaptation and the survival of the fittest. (p. 80).

To this end, I promote an evolutionary ‘literacy’ as a way of appropriating the mechanisms, terms, processes, and outcomes of biological evolution theory in discussions of non-biological change. Biological evolution theory is able to hypothesise the success and failure of various organisms and species, of genotypic structures and phenotypic traits, of ecological and environmental patterns and configurations. In doing so, biological descriptions and theories have produced many metaphors that may be extremely useful in discussing innovations, developments, and diffusion within non-biological systems including economics, politics, technology, and techniques. As an example, biological evolution explores why some species proliferate in certain environments with greater success than others. Represented as models, the outcomes of these investigations could be used to explore why certain technological prototypes succeed in certain markets over others. In such an investigation, evolution theory could examine a particular technological artefact or structural or institutional technique, outlining its evolutionary history and potential future trajectory. It would acknowledge the role technology has had in the shaping of social norms, determining to what extent certain actors had been shaped through particular ‘evolutionary’ mechanisms. Hypotheses that could be tested in such a framework might include whether or not and to what extent technological artefacts or techniques can be conceptualised and represented as competing ‘species’; technologies and techniques can be conceptualised as ‘resources’ within an ‘environment’ in which ‘competition’ occurs; technologies and techniques can be conceptualised as ‘selection mechanisms’, guiding the human into ever more complex ‘environmental niches’; and technologies and techniques can be conceptualised as an overarching ‘ecology’ in which the technological and the human play interactive parts. Within such a framework, various hypotheses can be presented and tested within a population of candidate solutions to a specific problem. These selection mechanisms can be further defined in order to test these solutions and evaluate their performance before eliminating the worst or retaining and replicating the best solutions. While this process would produce innovation within a non-biological system, it may not necessarily promote the best solutions. The biologically defined mechanism of variation would therefore be employed in order

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 115 to take the best solutions and modify them in order to generate new candidate solutions, thus restarting the initial process in order to refine the outcome solution. An evolutionary approach would therefore also account for success and failure throughout the artefact’s life, including the manner in which that artefact may contribute to the success or failure of other actors within its environment. I do not suggest that evolutionary models, mechanisms, and metaphors can account for all forms of economic, political, technological, or socio-cultural innovation and change, and the need to find other kinds of explanation for these phenomena remains. I suggest instead that evolutionary methods may extend discussions surrounding change within particular non-biological systems, including development and innovation in technologies or techniques.

In Chapter Two I suggested that evolutionary models serve as paradigmatic representations of the age in which they were originally presented, while in Chapter Three I demonstrated how contemporary evolutionary theories that surround and constitute complex network ecologies, programmed behavioural structures, and codified genetic information mirrors the computational and informational network of contemporary social structures. It is apparent that, as technology is positioned as a major contributor and participant in the current gestalt, theories of technological innovation and change would be conducive to any paradigmatic representation. Indeed, technological or economic development discourses often display evolutionary motifs in accounting for systemic change. Yet the fact that these discourses often state that such systems simply ‘evolve’ (without discussing either the mechanisms of evolution or positioning the evolutionary mechanisms as metaphors that may serve for further critique) highlights, I argue, the need for an evolution literacy. Without this literacy, technological and socio-cultural evolution will continue to be positioned as something that happens without direction, analysis, nor critique. Jody Berland (2000) discusses the relationship between technology and biological evolution, and the passage I include here highlights the need for an evolution literacy: The technology-biology-evolution connection has become so pervasive that its metaphorical nature has become quite invisible, and evolutionary accounts are repeatedly offered as objective, scientific representations of history, of technological change, and of the necessary trajectory of human nature itself. Many ostensibly critical discussions are shaped by this trope, so that participants in the discourse begin to perceive evolution solipsistically as both author and product, and cause and effect of technological change. (2000, p. 237)

It is because technologies and techniques exhibit quantitative and qualitative changes, continuously introducing improved performance attributes with each new generational expression, that they are perceived as mirroring the phenomena Darwin outlined as evolution. I argue that while we can accept the phenomena of technological innovation and change as

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 116 evolutionary in structure and manner, we must first understand the mechanisms that promote and allow evolution, positioning them within an evolution literacy that may be used to test and critique any hypothesis claiming technological evolution. I believe that without understanding the processes and mechanisms employed in evolution we risk producing discourses that submit to the most dangerous assumptions enunciated in pre- or post-Darwinian evolutionary discourses: that by necessity evolution equals ‘progress’, and that progress in turn justifies ‘purpose’ (see Chapter Two for a discussion on the metaphors of ‘progress’ and ‘purpose’ within evolution discourse). Such discourses succumb to the myth that societies enmeshed with advanced technologies and techniques are necessarily ‘progressive’, ‘advanced’, and ‘higher’ than low- or pre-technological societies, and reinforce the essentialist and universalist approach to the human, human society, human culture, and technology that has been the target of much poststructuralist critique. Equating technology with ‘better’ is problematic, and I argue that accountable theories of technological evolution formed in conjunction with an evolution literacy would avoid any assumption or bias that either promotes, on the one hand, technological development as a purely autonomous process in which individual or social choice is neither desirable nor possible, or argues that, on the other hand, any attempt to impose critical standards towards our technology is an impediment to further development and is against the idea of free enterprise and therefore destructive.

The first step in developing an evolution literacy is to outline the co-evolutionary setting of the human and the technological. In the first instance, technology, techniques, and the socio- technological environment are represented as instruments of progress to which the human, human society, and culture must adapt. Here, technology serves as mutation trigger and selection and retention mechanisms. Technology moves towards niches within socio-cultural environments and modifies or adapts human behaviour in order to meet the demands of the new niche, and the most successful or fittest adaptation (best shaped, best practice, greatest outcomes, most efficient) is selected. In the second instance, the numerous varieties of technologies and techniques are represented as biological species and the ensemble of technology as equivalent to a biological gene pool. It is the human or human society that fulfils the function of selection and retention mechanisms, identifying gaps within the existing technological ensemble and encouraging technological innovations to occupy them. Technologies and techniques are combined and recombined as new ‘mutations’ or innovations are encouraged, produced, selected, and adapted in order to fill a particular niche in the technological ensemble. However, in the symbiotic relationship between the human and the technological, the two evolutionary settings can, like their biological equivalents, be separated in theory only: the human shapes the technological on some occasions and the technological shapes the human on others.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 117 Working within the discourse of evolution, and drawing on its range of metaphors, I argue that in establishing the evolving shape and structure of the human-technology symbiosis, the question should not simply be ‘what evolves into a new species’? Rather, observers must ask what elements create and shape the evolutionary process? Observers must establish what forces or actors enabled the evolutionary process, what niches have been identified and by whom, what actors responded to the evolutionary process, and how. Technological definitions must be able to account for both the historical and the causative conditions. George Basalla (1988) provides many examples of technologies that have changed slowly over time, and he shows that while many vestigial structures and features remain, the latest example of a particular technology is often a markedly different species from older technology. Basalla suggests that if we were to construct an evolutionary tree illustrating the connections between the various forms of mechanical life, we would find both continuities and discontinuous diversions amongst technological artefacts. A single stone tool device may once have served for hammering and digging before diverging into separate tool streams (hammer and shovel). Thus, the pick, jack- hammer, pneumatic pole-driver and diesel powered backhoe, for example, are ostensibly different technological devices with a common antecedent function (p. 32). The evolution of computational technologies offers a similar example. Between 1937 and 1939 John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry designed the world’s first digital electronic computer, the ABC prototype (Schoenherr, 2004, ¶ 1). The colossal first generation machines, with vacuum tubes and magnetic drums seem far removed from today’s cellular computational devices with network capabilities. However, despite the shape of these computational devices, they share a similar deep level structure and logic whose evolutionary lineage could be traced to the development of language around 50,000-100,000 years ago, and the formation of symbolism around 70,000 years ago (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003p. 1-16). Alphabets, abacuses, feathered quills, zoetropes, billboards, and screen prints simply branched out along the way.

In outlining an evolution literacy, I argue that the terms and mechanisms defined by biological scientific discourses could be applied as metaphor in order to trace and contextualise technological developments and predict possible future trajectories. Metaphors included in such an analysis would include those that surround and constitute the biological definitions of ‘ecology’, ‘complexity’ and ‘diversity’, ‘mutation’, ‘variation’ and ‘selection’, ‘competition’, and ‘fitness’. Adopting such an approach would, I argue, enable observers and commentators to recognise that whether it is society operating as an environment in which technologies develop, or the technological ensemble operating as an environment in which human cultural and social behaviours develop, the reciprocal nature of the two realms leads constantly to new innovations and greater complexity as each new technological innovation raises the possibility of new social and cultural behaviours, and vice versa. In the symbiotic relationship I have outlined, the individual human is seen to respond to the shape of the overall technological ecology, and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 118 individual and collective technologies, in response to the shape of the social collective, evolve into new taxonomies or technological species. In such a hypothesis, a piece of technology could be positioned as an organic entity, the human could be positioned as an operating environment or new environmental niche, and the symbiotic relationship could be positioned as a mutation trigger or as a barrier in the selection processes of both/either.

In Chapter Three I argued that complexity and chaos theories suggest that when one element of a system is changed, effects can occur throughout the entire ecology, particularly in those marked by strong interdependencies. In complex systems (such as those enunciated under biological science inquiries) it is the relationship between individual elements rather than the individual elements themselves that determines the overall shape and stability of the system. For those interested in understanding the unfolding nature of technology, the metaphor of ecology shifts the focus of attention from the relationship between the human and technology towards the interdependent practices these relationships involve. The object of enquiry is no longer the extraordinarily large-scale socio-technological system that Ellul (1969), Mumford (1967), and others have previously described, nor is it necessarily the individual and his or her interactions with a particular technology or technique that ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspectives tend to advocate. Rather, the attention of investigators is drawn to location or nodality within complex and diverse networks, with a particular emphasis upon certain vectors and interdependencies. A functional socio-technological ecology is therefore one in which many different technologies and techniques emerge to satisfy the perceived and genuine needs of the system. In biological evolution theory, geographical structures, microclimatic and seasonal weather patterning, and ecological co-dependencies emerge as forces that impact on the evolutionary processes of biological organisms. In a similar manner, human biological necessities and environment and organic deficiencies are forces that shape the evolutionary processes of technology. Socio- technological ecologies, like biological equivalents (and, indeed, economic equivalents), are structures in which stability is achieved only through constant and consistent change in which no particular element (in this instance, no particular technology or technique) comes to dominate. The opposite of a robust, functional ecology or economy is one that tends towards monoculture; a false, constructed, fragile system focused around one particular element that will enjoy success for a period of time before either failing its dependencies or exceeding its limits (Nardi & O’Day, 1999, p. 52).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 119 Evolution literacy and technological change The term ‘technology’ is itself an extraordinarily broad term. Stephen Kline writes that the term is used to represent things, actions, processes, methods, and systems; it is used symbolically and metaphorically to discuss human behavioural and organisational characteristics; and it is employed as an epithet for social and cultural progress (1980, p. 210). However, where Kline argues that “this much conflict within the usage of one of our central terms […] can lead only to chaos” (1980, p. 210), I relish such an expansive term, arguing that the utility of such an open definition of technology is that it enables greater discussion and critique of its historical formation, current position and applications, and its future potential. In other words, I see this definition as one in accordance with the biological discourse of complexity I outlined in Chapter Three. In this chapter I have argued that the relationship between the human and the technological is heterogeneous and polyvalent, highly contextualised, and impossibly complex and, effectively, the symbionts can be separated in theory only, as there is no discrete or distinct difference between the human and the technological. In the context of this chapter, the hypothesis of the human as ‘toolmaker’ is repositioned so that the human and technology are seen to be, effectively, one species: the tool is also the human-maker. This goes beyond technological deterministic suggestions in which the human assumes “a position of extreme and even pathological dependence upon their technical artefacts” (Winner, 1973, p. 190), in that it suggests that the human-technology symbiosis prefigures all human relations including the biological shape of the human.

Samuel Butler (1863, 1872) explored the idea that technologies develop in a fashion remarkably similar to the evolution of living beings, transforming in increments from simple stone-tool technologies to advanced industrial machines. The diversity of technological artefacts suggested to Butler that machines should be classified according to existing genera, species, and variety, a system heretofore reserved for living beings. If granting such classification to technology and technique would enable them to be positioned alongside living beings, it may shelve the idea that technology is itself lifeless and therefore immortal. In comparison to living beings the immortality of technology adds a significance and weight to their part of the symbiotic union. Individual technologies and their impact can be seen and felt long after their designers and developers are gone. This suggests that vestigial elements of certain technologies and techniques live on even though individual members of the species may perish (Basalla, 1988, pp. 13-15). However, the continuous branching of existing technological genera, species, and organisms also suggests that the overall number of technological object and artefacts and techniques continues to increase. This highlights the additive nature of autopoietically driven complexity, and suggests there is a ‘self-making’ functional drive inherent to object-technology. Indeed, the complex nature of the wide and various ecologies of human-technology symbiosis show that technologies and techniques are becoming more specialised and unique in their

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 120 narrowly defined role and structure. Gregory Stock suggests that while an individual machine could be designed to perform multiple tasks, we increasingly see specialty machines designed specifically for a particular role. He writes that [given] an automated vacuum cleaner that cleans floors and a telephone-answering machine that takes messages, who would pay much to combine them into a general- purpose device that could do both? (Stock, 1993, p. 61) suggesting that technological complexity promotes diversity rather than absolute convergence. In this following section I discuss the manner in which technological change has heretofore been predominately understood and defined according to the seemingly opposed ‘Technological Determinism’ and ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theories and how, more recently, ‘Actor Network Theory’ has shown how both technological and social elements contribute to systemic change. Having outlined the key considerations that surround an evolution literacy and its application within discussions of human-technology symbiosis I show here how this discourse disrupts and extends previous understandings and definitions of technological innovation, development, and change.

One of the most obvious and important features of technology ‘innovation’ and ‘change’ is that it can be effectively measured in quantitative and qualitative frameworks. In a quantitative framework, technology is positioned as artefact, object or text, and innovation is measured by the production of new ‘things’ exhibiting noticeably new structures, features, shapes, and forms. Technological change leads to the production and emergence of new technological entities that may be subtly or substantially different from the technologies that preceded them. Furthermore, each new form of technology is seen to be more advanced than previous generations. In a qualitative framework, technological innovations are seen to contribute significantly to social change, suggesting that technology improves our way of living. While innovations in cultural, economic, and organisational arenas undoubtedly also contribute to qualitative change, technological innovation is often positioned as the most fundamental driver of all social change (Saviotti, 1996, p. 1). For Ernst Braun, this suggests that cultural, economic, and political progress is not a pre-given and monotonous function of time, but a phenomenon not unlike ‘natural’ or Darwinian evolution. Yet despite the contribution of happenstance or human intention and desire, innovations within these realms may actually lead to a deterioration of social conditions. With relatively few exceptions, the discourse of technological progress, on the other hand, suggests that technology moves only and always from a ‘lower’ to a ‘higher’ state (1995, p. 20-21).

The structural features associated with technological innovation that can be quantitatively and qualitatively measured include increased performance speed, greater production capacity,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 121 higher cost-effectiveness, higher efficiency, increased reliability, reduced human labour effort, and greater machine autonomy (Braun, 1995, p. 22), and it follows that technological ‘progress’ can be discerned from the accumulated effect that changes to existing technologies and technological features have upon the overall composition of human-technology systems. Nevertheless, as I have previously stated, I remain cautious of any approach that automatically equates technological innovation and change with social progress. Where V. Gordon Childe argues that “what characterises technology as progressive is its ability to accomplish new tasks, to aid in the growth of human populations, and to extend human capabilities in time and space” (in Winner, 1973, p. 249), for instance, George Basalla also reminds us that “neither the historical record nor our understanding of the current role of technology in society justifies a return to the idea that a causal connection exists between advances in technology and the overall betterment of the human race” (1988, p. 218). In considering the relationship between technological innovation and social progress, it should be determined whom the progress serves, how certain individuals, groups, environments, or other actors are advantaged or disadvantaged, and if the progress is an intentional or accidental outcome of interested actors. In this chapter I suggest that the processes associated with innovation and change can be accommodated within accepted definitions of ‘natural’ or Darwinian evolution, showing that features from an existing technology are purposefully manipulated, selected, and passed to succeeding generations, and that occasionally these mutations lead to the emergence of new features that are favoured over existing features. Obviously, when compared to biological organisms in stable geographic environments, artifice – whether technological, political, economical, or otherwise cultural or social – can be seen to evolve much more rapidly than nature. Yet as biological evolution theory has shown of nature, technological evolution is rarely linear, and innovations often follow ‘sideways’ or ‘divergent’ trajectories. Winner saw this as an issue of unintended consequences, arguing that much technological innovation resulted in what he calls ‘technological drift’. He argues that no individual or social system can possibly expect to predict, steer, or control all aspects resulting from technological innovation. Some innovations will result in immediate and obvious benefits while others will be considered harmful, and it is often the long-term and obscured results that frame the overall outcome of a given innovation. Ultimately, innovation leads to complex outcomes with most innovations coming with both perceived benefits and disadvantages. I argue below that this suggests that all technological innovations impact upon their surrounding environment to some extent, creating new environmental contexts and niches or limiting existing choices, but ultimately, I argue, promoting the continuous expansion of the human-technology symbiosis.

Technology is cultivated and developed in order to meet a perceived need, and not a set of universal needs legislated by nature (Basalla,1988, p. 14). Here, the concept of need is expanded to show both the notion of necessity – things wanted because they comprise

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 122 conditions for human survival – and the notion of desire – things wanted for the additional satisfaction they may bring. Throughout most of the developed world, technological aids have ensured that the supply of food, shelter, clothing, water, protection, hygiene, mobility, and communications has advanced beyond the basic rudimentary levels to luxurious surplus levels, and by the start of the twenty-first century, technological innovations have, in the developed world, touched every aspect of social life: a socio-cultural phenomenon I have outlined here as symbiotic. However, once technology and technique have been shaped and applied in the pursuit of our needs, the concept and the context of necessity and desire takes a particular and peculiar shape. In an autocatalytic process, the development of new technologies and techniques, Winner argues, creates new necessities and new desires that can only be filled with new technologies and techniques: At a certain stage in the development of technics, the need for physical mobility actually becomes the need to have access to automobiles, airlines, or effective equivalents. Such needs are as basic to that stage of technical capacity as the need for oxen or a good pair of sandals might have been for an earlier one. The development of productive forces not only generates variations on older needs but in a true sense creates whole new ones. Thus, the feeling that soap is one of life’s necessities appeared only with the coming of industrial techniques of soap manufacture. With the spread of this innovation came an unprecedented desire for a well-scrubbed cleanliness that is now second nature to most of us. There have been times and cultures, however, in which our need to do away with dirt, ‘germs’ and odours would have seemed totally puzzling. (1973, p. 84)

This suggests that the expanding range of human ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ that can be satisfied by technologies arises only as a result of the possibility of their satisfaction. Any causal relationship between technological development and social change is problematised by the fact that different social groups, and different historical periods, set different priorities and make different demands on their dominant technologies. ‘Technological Determinism’ theses argue that technology is an external force that influences and shapes society from a distance, a force that we can only “recognise and obey, but not hope to master” (Winner, 1973, p. 56), and these theses suggest that technology develops at such a rapid pace that the human can only hope to keep abreast of the constant change new technologies bring. Indeed, the idea that technology is an autonomous actor no longer under control of human agency is a powerful one that can not be easily or uncritically dismissed, and Winner outlines the central thesis of ‘Technological Determinism’ as such: Understood in its strongest sense, technological determinism stands or falls on two hypotheses: (1) that the technical base of a society is the fundamental condition

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 123 affecting all patterns of social existence and (2) that changes in technology are the single most important source of change in society. (1973, p. 75-76).

In a technologically deterministic worldview, the aim of technological development is to replace existing modes and ways of being in natural, social, and economic realms with new technologies and techniques. If anything can be done, or improved, through the application of a technological device, then it should, or must, be done. Any existing technological artefacts should be continuously improved so that they work more reliably, more accurately, more efficiently, and more effectively in a process that continues ad infinitum. As soon as the latest upgrade, addition or other improvement is introduced, focus turns towards the next developmental step, and the momentum of technology remains constant, forever searching for areas to improve, or imagining new wants that may be satisfied through technology. Monitoring, harnessing, and riding this wave of constant technological development is an equally motivated entrepreneurial force identifying and kindling new needs and desires that may result in a perceived economic or social advantage. Anything that may reduce cost or increase efficiency, profit, and competitiveness is harnessed as a new business opportunity. And the technocratic-entrepreneurial imperative, “if it can be done, it must be done,” inspires a similar imperative in the minds of producers and consumers, “if it works, it must be used”. Once new opportunities have been found, new technologies produced and diffused, and needs and desires seem satiated, the cycle of improvement starts again. Technological development is seen as a quest without end. And regardless of any real outcome, technological progress has come to stand for progress in general. Any other options that might arise through either the recognition of natural or traditional systems are, through the discourse of progress, seen as a rejection of the new technology and are thus rendered outdated, unimportant, or invisible in the face of the relentless production of the newest technologies and techniques. The introduction of new technologies follows a relentless cycle of innovation and development, and this, I argue, is a phenomenon ripe for reinterpretation according to the role of evolution metaphors I have presented in this thesis.

Much of the discourse surrounding new technologies, particularly new computational technologies, assumes that the cycle of technology innovation will continue unabated. Indeed, drawing on the principle of Moore’s Law 2has enabled some commentators to forecast an

2 Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, famously surmised that the number of components on an integrated circuit (IC) would double each year, while associated costs (producer, consumer, computer performance) would decrease (Moore, 1965: p.114-117). The phenomenon behind this exponential growth follows a simple algebra equation: doubling goes as two raised to the power of x, with x conjectured here to equal twelve months. In 1965, Moore argued that the number of transistors per IC would increase from 4004 in 1971 to 65,000 by 1975. Although Moore’s original prediction was a little ambitious it was remarkably close. Intel’s 1971 “4004”

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 124 ‘exponential’ increase in technology and technique and, subsequently, all technological, social and indeed cultural change. The faith in such technological growth has inspired many imaginative ideas, such as those outlined by Damien Broderick (1997), who sees the exponential growth of computer technology inspiring a similar growth in biotechnologies, nanotechnologies and egalitarian socio-economic change, resulting in a world of unbounded natural and digital resources to be enjoyed for free by a populous experiencing unprecedented levels of wealth, leisure time, health, and longevity. However, regardless of any continued accuracy in Moore’s Law, it is important to note that wherever and whenever technologically produced and inspired geometric surges have occurred in the past, none has maintained their ‘exponential’ trajectory. And if we accept that computational technologies are simply the latest in a long line of technologies to experience a geometric surge, we can learn from history that such surges cannot be maintained. An example of an historical geometric surge is steam locomotion, a technological boom that was followed by seemingly similar surges in associative technologies, infrastructure, labour practices, and product outcomes. If steam locomotion were to continue its original surge, rail track would exceed the limits of the planet. However, a combination of geographic, political, social, and economic forces, along with the emergence of supplementary and oppositional technological innovations acted to impede, resist, or avoid an excessive and superfluous growth of rail. Obviously, computational technologies, with their propensity to ‘smallness’, ‘relative cheapness’, and ‘effectiveness’ behave differently to rail technologies, but limits to growth such as ‘development costs’, ‘user needs’, ‘saturation,’ and ‘competition’ will eventually restrict their progress.

Nevertheless, it is important to revisit here Ellul’s argument that it is not one particular technology or technological enterprise, but technology per se or the ensemble of techniques that is continuously accelerating: For every technique taken by itself there apparently exist barriers that act to impede further progress […] For the technical phenomenon in its ensemble, however, a limitless progress is open. (1964, p. 62)

carried 2,250 transistors, the 1978 “8086” carried 29,000 transistors, the 1989 “Intel486™ Processor” carried 1,180,000, the 1997 “Pentium® II Processor” carried 7,500,000, and the 2003 “Itanium® 2 processor” carried 410,000,000 transistors, suggesting that Moore’s original conjectured ‘x’ be re-equated to approximately eighteen instead of twelve months. With such a simple equation, the potential for an exponential increase is apparent. Nevertheless, Moore himself remains committed to the idea, and in 1997 made the following remark: Before the semiconductor industry reaches any fundamental limits, we should be able to make economical processors with well over a billion transistors performing at speeds far above today’s. Another thousand-fold increase in computing power seems to me a conservative estimate. (1997, p. 112-114)

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 125 In its historical entirety, the ensemble of technologies and techniques seems to progress in a manner similar to a relentless surge. Continuing the previous example, we see that rail itself may not have spiked, but the entire ensemble of transport industries, infrastructure and mutual dependencies – which would include the automotive and aeronautic industries – have grown enormously and near exponentially in an extraordinarily short period of time. Ellul’s position, however, further suggests that the technological ensemble is structured in such a way that it takes shape as a distinctive entity ”with its own substance, its own particular mode of being, and a life independent of our power of decision” (1964, p. 93). While this statement may entice readers to assume positions familiar to ‘Technological Determinism’ or ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theses, I again put forward the symbiotic arrangement of the human and technology. If, as I have suggested, human and technology co-evolved, a case can be made for an overall ‘symbiotic’ surge in which the entire ensemble of human, technology, and various environments have rapidly and profusely developed, mutated, and changed shape.

In a similar vein, Gregory Stock (1993) views this ensemble of human and non-human entities as a community of organisms “so fully tied together that it is a single living being”. This, he argues, has resulted in the emergence of a new form of global superorganism he dubs Metaman. Stock outlines a timeline that creatively demonstrates the seemingly geometric surge the symbiotic ensemble has followed: [J]ust eight months ago the reptiles’ reign ended abruptly […] [Mammals] that had evolved from reptiles only ten months earlier, stepped in to fill the void. Our distant primate ancestors entered the scene less than six months ago, the earliest hominid only two weeks ago. Late yesterday afternoon witnessed the arrival of the earliest Homo sapiens. This morning was hectic. Less than an hour ago dawn broke, and with it came agriculture. Writing appeared about a half hour later. The last twenty-five minutes have recorded the rise and fall of empires, the rapid proliferation of humans, and the technological advances now changing life on the planet so dramatically. The glory of Rome began eleven minutes ago and ended three minutes later. James Watt built the steam engine a minute and a half ago. And in the past thirty seconds, with human collaboration beginning to assume global dimensions, Metaman was born. The development was momentous! When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon only eight seconds ago, life – through Metaman – had taken its first step towards the stars and begun a new phase in its evolution. (1993, p. 43) Like Broderick, Stock remains committed to the uninterrupted and unimpeded advancement of technological innovation, and he concludes his timeline, writing:

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 126 Although it may be hard to imagine what even the next “minute” will bring, the morning has barely begun. A whole day lies ahead, and then another, and another, and another. Even while reshaping its birthplace, life, robust and still shy of forty, has begun to reach toward the heavens. (1993, p. 43)

In these deterministic discourses a glorious and better shiny new future remains, as always, just up ahead, but unattainable without the aid of new technologies. Indeed, amidst the many utilitarian functions of technique is a metanarrative in which the term ‘technology’ overlays our understandings of ‘nature’, ‘religion’, the ‘mystical’, and the ‘mythical’ as dynamic and vital organising forces of humankind. In this denotation, technology and technological development are positioned as that which we cannot fully imagine or represent in what we know and see. Technology attempts to fill those gaps in our understanding of our place in time and in space, and the inability to present the infinite can be filled only through the representation of technique. As Stock suggests, this process has intensified and accelerated throughout human history, gathering momentum during industrialisation towards the current break-neck speed, as continuous innovation through technological enterprise is linked to the promise of (partial or complete) individual and collective redemption. Winner writes: The specific kinds of hardware linked to these fantasies have changed over the years: steam engine, railroad, telegraph, telephone, centrally generated electrical power, radio, television, nuclear power, the Apollo program, and space stations – all have inspired transcendental visions. But the basic conceit is always the same: new technology will bring universal wealth, enhanced freedom, revitalised politics, satisfying community, and personal fulfilment. (1997, p. 58-59)

Often, it is not the technological object or artefact or technique itself that promises redemption but the constitutive discourses, hyperbolic or critical, that aim to seduce the reader into arguments that parlay and exploit the probable and the possible. These representations, as I have suggested, outline the imaginative effects technological development will bring, addressing the emancipative aspects of a technological utopia or the paranoid imaginings of a technological dystopia, and the ‘middle ground’ of this technological sublime is rarely represented. This, indeed, highlights an ambiguity within the human-technology symbiosis, in that it suggests that only one species is authorised to purposefully and consciously shape the future of the symbiotic coexistence. In other words, utopic and dystopic discourses – whether creative fiction, public policy, or technoscientific exploration – are able to shape social reception and responses to technology, and influence future developments. I return to utopic and dystopic discourses momentarily.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 127

Here, I discuss how the arguments behind ‘Technological Determinism’ are opposed by the body of work that constitutes ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theses. This approach contends that technologies are made and continuously remade by the things users do with them, and that while some technologies may constrain human action and agency, it is ultimately people who make the choice about how to use them and not the other way around. ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theses are committed to the notion that ‘Technological Determinism’ is an inadequate description of or explanation for technological innovation and development. Technological innovation is instead positioned as a thoroughly social process throughout all stages of conception, design, production, marketing, diffusion, appropriation, use, and consequences (Livingstone, 2002, p. 19). It follows then that the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theses also sees ‘Technological Determinism’ as a grossly inadequate theory of social change in general (see Edge & Wolfe, 1973; Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1985, 1999; Law, 1991; Mackay, Young & Beynon, 1991; Wajcman, 1991; Mackay & Gillespie, 1992; Green & Guinery, 1994; Mackenzie, 1996; Green, 2002; Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2002).

The first issue taken to task by the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theses is the notion that technological innovation and development follows an inevitable trajectory or logic of its own. An early text that contributes to the idea of technological inevitability is that of William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas (1922), who establish a list of 148 scientific and technological discoveries that had been independently duplicated in cultures and societies around the world, ranging from agricultural methods, the discovery of oxygen, the discovery of the planet Neptune, the proposal of a periodic table, and the wave theory of light. Ogburn and Thomas argue that once the necessary constituent elements (cultural and technological) are in place, technological innovations became inevitable because accumulated social knowledge and shared social needs ultimately cause attention to be directed towards meeting and addressing these needs. The authors outline their position in a pithy rhetorical question: given the notion of the boat and the steam engine, is not the steamboat inevitable? (p. 90). An equally futile question just as easily demonstrates that innovation and development processes are neither inevitable nor simple: given the notion of the automobile and the airplane, isn’t the flying car long overdue? The ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective suggests that factors both intrinsic and external to the technology must first be taken into account. These may include, for example, the problems associated with gravity, power, and propulsion, the supply of a reliable fuel resource, the need for adequate safety measures, the availability of existing transportation infrastructure, and a sustainable market interest.

Ultimately, the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective sees technological innovation as a result of individual interactions and interpretations of existing social relations and conditions, and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 128 as a product of a historically specific social activity carried out for a particular social purpose. It suggests that new developments within technology ultimately remain embedded in the social landscapes which imagine, design, shape, contextualise, and domesticate any specific innovation. Of particular interest is the way existing social institutions and processes develop and shape new technologies that ultimately reproduce traditional power relations: Technology […] is not an irreducible first cause; its social effects follow from social causes that brought it into being; behind the technology that affects social relations lie the very same social relations. Little wonder, then, that the technology usually tends to reinforce rather than subvert those relations. (Noble, 1979, p. 19)

Our technologies mirror our societies. They reproduce and embody the complex interplay of professional, technical, economic, and political factors. (Bijker & Law, 1992, p. 3)

Rather than seeing technological innovation as the ‘cause’ and society as the ‘effect’, or technology as a politically and ethically neutral and independent force with its own logic and motives, or as a mysterious black box that cannot be analysed socially (Lievrouw, 2002, p. 185), the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective maintains that “the technological, instead of being a sphere separate from social life, is part of what makes society possible – in other words, it is constitutive of society” (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999, p. 23). Even in those accounts in which technology is seen as a neutral force or a means to an end it occupies a position as a vehicle for social change. Lelia Green (2002) argues that even if the physical object of a technology is neutral, as soon as it is combined with the knowledge of how it works, what it does and what its utility is, it becomes implicated in patterns of privilege and exclusivity. Thus, the knowledge surrounding a new technology or a technique, particularly concerning its utility value, is implicated through its relational power. Those who enjoy the benefits of superior technology tend not to share the advantage, but mostly seek to increase their privilege and power, and any subsequent advantage is vigorously protected through a range of mechanisms such as copyright, patents, intellectual property rights, and prohibitive laws and embargoes (Green 2002, pp. 5-6).

The ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective argues that there is a tight interdependence between social, political, economic and technological spheres. It argues, for example, that while the steam engine did not ‘necessarily’ and ‘inevitably’ create industrial society, there would nevertheless be no industrial society without the steam engine or the supplementary technologies it created and inspired. (It follows that there would be no information society without the range of computational components and systems that constitute and support it.) Sonia

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 129 Livingstone argues that while the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective rejects the central thesis of ‘Technological Determinism’, the generally accepted and acknowledged idea that technology does make a difference (positive or negative) to society leads to a more qualified and contextualised ‘soft determinism’ (2002, p. 19-20). This, she argues, can be used as a partial explanation for technological innovation and social change.

Therefore despite the overt influence technology has upon the social, the role of human choice and action has an important role in any social, cultural, or technological innovation and change. Instead of analysing technologies as harbingers of change, attention is directed towards the specific characteristics and histories that shape technologies, including distinctive patterns of interaction that emerge amongst a variety of users in a variety of contextualised settings. Leah Lievrouw points out that technologies develop in dynamic and often collaborative environments where “users, designers, manufacturers, investors, regulators, distributors and others work out their interrelated and competing interests, cultural assumptions, desires and visions” (2002, p. 183), incorporating their own ideologies into technological outcomes that shape, to some degree, the technologies that are developed. The ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective is that technologies do not arise out of vacuums to influence and change the world. Rather, they are purposefully and selectively designed before being diffused amongst communities: Technologies are not repressively foisted upon passive populations […] They are developed at any one time and place in accord with a complex set of existing rules or rational procedures, institutional histories, technical possibilities, and, last, but not least, popular desires. All kinds of cultural negotiations are necessary to prepare the way for new technologies, many of which are not particularly useful or successful. (Penley and Ross, 1991, p. xiv) I argue below that technological components and unities within the human-technology symbiosis show the process of technology development to be comparable – at the level of metaphor – to the process of biological autopoiesis, complicating further the role of designers, developers, and consumers. Here, however, I would stress that it is important to recognise that the communities that are involved in the development and production of technologies are themselves highly specialised, and the question of “whose interests these communities serve?” must be addressed. Are the designers and developers of new technologies servicing their own individual interests, the interests of shareholding investors, the interests of the greater society (or social sectors), or those of the technology itself? And are these interests always best met through developing new technologies?

It may be that such communities are actively pursuing a specified social change through technological innovation and development. As the internal features of technology are generally excused from overt public deliberation and decision making, engineers, inventors, and other

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 130 individuals and groups who successfully incorporate their own ideologies and pursuits of social change into technological developments acquire the power to engineer and invent society (Donwey, [1992] 1995, p. 364). Green argues that the research and development projects that tend to attract the most funding, policy, and priority commitment from government and business are those that promise technologies and techniques that offer to support and maintain, through additional benefit, the social elite who already enjoy the power and privilege of previous or existing technologies and techniques. Thus “technology,” Green writes, “is developed as a result of specific choices made by influential power brokers representing a limited range of social elites. These can be summed up as the A, B, and C of social power: the Armed forces, Bureaucracy, and Corporate Power” (2002, p. 9). At all stages of the technological cycle these stake-holders enjoy political and economic benefits shaped according to their own agenda, supported by the principle that “whomever pays the piper calls the tune” (2002, p. 9.) If we agree with this argument the question of whom a new technology benefits cedes to the question of how a new technology benefits, leading, in turn to an investigation of what or whom is exploited, and how?

Regardless, the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ thesis rejects outright any assumption that new technologies are introduced into society and then simply ‘bring about’ social change, despite this remaining a familiar cultural assumption regarding the impact or affect of new technologies. Indeed, users may feel removed or excluded from research and design cycles and feel they have no control over the role technologies play in their everyday life. And if one assumes they have no control over the shape and role of technology they may in some manner oppose or resist the technology. At the very least, their experience with the technology will be framed by their presumptions regarding their role in the technological cycle. Livingstone suggests that often these assumptions are considered and accommodated in the technological cycle: [Such] lay beliefs are themselves constitutive of the social contexts which frame new technology development, appropriation and, indeed, research. Undermining or qualifying these assumptions, particularly when they are seen to draw on a widespread moral anxiety sufficient to stifle complex, careful or contingent responses on the part of a policy community, becomes in turn a key strategy for some social scientists in the field when disseminating their research. (2002, p. 20) This suggests that the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ thesis is further complicated or problematised when it considers which elements of society are most active in the shaping of technology. That is, is a new technological innovation shaped by society in its entirety, a complex web of individual components that seemingly function as a whole? Or is it shaped by an amalgam of powerful interest groups that act as singular entities? Or are they shaped in a social

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 131 space in which one powerful interest group interacts with one other? Is it market driven or governmentally inspired?

Undoubtedly, the initial shape, position, and interpretation of new technologies represent the interests of the social groups whose ideas drive the innovation. In the same Foucaultian ‘power- knowledge’ manner in which an ethnographer, anthropologist, sociologist, or scientist’s own beliefs, assumptions, opportunities, affiliations, and interrelationships guide and direct their understanding and establishment of data, facts, and truths (Lievrouw, 2002, p. 185), interested communities and commentators shape the initial social shape or contextualised setting of technology. Winner (1997) suggests that this is particularly evident in the economic shaping of technological contexts as business interests and economic organisations drive to retool and reengineer in new technologised ways that achieve speed, flexibility, dynamism, agility, and leanness of production. Increasingly, public and private organisations, cultural institutions, social entities, and indeed individuals are organised (usually self-organised), administrated, and operated under the logic of technology-driven economic competitiveness, global communications, network dependencies, flexible social arrangements, and a decreasing dependence on costly resources.

However, the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ thesis claims that it is only during the initial research, design, and development processes that technology exhibits and retains anything like a predetermined shape and context. The ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective suggests that regardless of the intentions of the designers or producers, it is the end users of a technology who determine what that technology is and what it will become. Keith Grint and Steve Woolgar (1997) argue that technological contingency is not limited to the design and construction phases. The social and political capacities of technologies, they argue, do not stabilise upon their entry to the market, and the technology is always open to reinterpretation and redesign through use. Paul Levinson (1997) shows that unexpected outcomes, new and unintended uses, and radical reinterpretations are actually the norm throughout the history of technology. The telephone, for example, was at first dismissed as a technological toy capable of broadcasting music. Its initial growth was impeded by a society that felt it necessary to inform, by mail, the intended recipient of a future phone call. And it was by no means axiomatic in its initial design that it would come to serve as a global channel for electronic data communications (p. 59-68). The ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective recognises this phenomenon as ‘interpretive flexibility’: an element of contingency in the process of development, diffusion, and domestification where the interpretation and contextualisation of a technology goes one particular way where it could have gone differently (Lievrouw, 2002, p. 185). ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theses represent the different stages in which new products and innovations spread through the consumer environment as a process of diffusion, while the reasons and decision-steps that underpin a

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 132 consumer’s decision to take up a new product are represented as a process of adoption. In the terms I have outlined in this thesis, I argue that ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ representations of diffusion and adoption in the market can be reoriented to reflect elements of evolution or evolution metaphors, and how the employment of evolutionary terms and mechanisms therefore disrupt uncomplicated and oversimplified assumptions that technology is simply shaped by users.

When Wiebe Bijker and John Law write that “if technologies evolve or change it is because they have been pressed into that shape” (1992, p. 3), they suggest that it is users who decide the final shape and context of technologies and how they are used. Yet in accepting that users’ choices are limited by the range of technologies available to them, and that the interests behind the technology shape and contextualise it through design and presentation, and that this in turn generates effects in and elicits social and behavioural responses from end users (Lievrouw, 2002, p. 132), the ‘environment’ in which any such response may be formed is ultimately, as Jacques Ellul suggests, a space in which there is no position ‘outside’ of technology and technique from which one may effectively forge a critique: [H]uman beings are already modified by the technical phenomenon. When infants are born, the environment in which they find themselves is technique, which is a ‘given’. Their whole education is oriented toward adaptation to the conditions of technique […] and their instruction is destined to prepare them for entrance into some technical employment. Human beings are psychologically modified by consumption, by technical work, by news, by television, by leisure activities […] all of which are techniques. In other words, it must not be forgotten that it is this very humanity which has been pre- adapted and modified by technique that is supposed to master and reorient technique. […] We are no longer … dealing with an ethics of choice with regard to possible futures. Choices and orientations in technique are made according to technical criteria and not in virtue of some deliberate human decision which has been made as a choice between several non-predetermined possible solutions. In the same way, any reference to values […] is meaningless since the values defined by the traditional societies no longer have anything in common with the use of technique. (1989, p. 26)

Where Derrida has suggested that there is no ‘outside’ of the text, the human-technology symbiosis suggests, in a similar fashion, that there is for the human no ‘outside’ of technology, and for technology, that there is no outside of human produced or defined discourse. And in recognising the intricate symbiotic arrangements that constitute broader techno-social systems, commentators are able to appreciate the application of biological theories within technological frameworks. In this manner metaphors appropriated from biology are able to account for change

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 133 mechanisms within technological innovation discussions. Lelia Green (2002) offers an illustrative example of this theory when she outlines the basic process of technological diffusion, adoption, and domestification (pp. 21-42). Green argues that in most accounts ‘innovators’, ‘early adopters’, ‘opinion leaders’, and ‘actualisers’ are seen as being younger, educated, open- minded, curious, socially involved, self-motivated, and ambitious; they are generally characterised as being better equipped in perceiving and accommodating a variety of positive and negative potentialities involved with a new technology or technique. Recontextualised within a biological evolution framework, this account indicates metaphors that suggest characteristic traits of the ‘strong and fit’, a robust, young, informed group that is not only willing to ‘take risks’ in migrating to a new ‘ecological niche’, but ultimately ‘better suited’ and destined for ‘survival.’ On the other hand, ‘non-innovators’, late adopters’, ‘laggards’, and ‘strugglers’ are seen as being older, sceptical, with fewer alternatives and less social status and mobility; they are generally characterised as being more inhibited by and reactive to perceived risks and social pressures. Again, within a biological evolution framework, this group displays the characteristic traits of the ‘weak’ who are unable to adapt to new ecological niches or other environmental changes, and are ultimately ‘doomed to extinction’. Within a strictly technological setting, such characterisations pressure all human participants to accommodate technological endeavours by implying that the adoption and consumption of technology is a group or ‘species’ responsibility enacted at an individual level. However, within a symbiotic framework we are able to accommodate the manner in which technologies and techniques exert their influence on social, biological, and other technological areas and the manner in which the social or the biological exert influence on technologies and techniques. That is, reconfigured in this way, the processes outlined in discussions of technological innovation, development, diffusion, and domestification can be equated to processes of autopoietic reconfiguration, as self-making technologies and techniques and self-making utility practices emerge from the human-technology symbiosis in an autocatalytic process. And in this ‘self-making’ we come to see that we share our history with that of our technologies, and that through this shared history, we also share values, duties, ethics, processes, functions, and other constitutive elements.

This biological definition is similar to ‘Actor Network Theory’ in that it recognises that large sections of the social fabric are inhabited by non-human actors that must be accounted for within social processes. The ‘Actor Network Theory’ thesis (see Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Callon, Law, & Rip, 1986; Latour & Woolgar, 1986; Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987; Bijker & Law, 1992; Latour, 1992; Law & Callon, 1992; Bijker, 1995; Law & Hassard, 1999, and cf. Davidson, 1980; LePore and McLaughlin, 1985; Moya, 1990) rejects strong ‘Technological Determinism’ perspectives on the one hand and strong ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspectives on the other:

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 134 Society is not determined by technology, nor is technology determined by society. Both emerge as two sides of the sociotechnical coin during the construction processes of artefacts, facts, and relevant social groups. (Bijker, 1995, p. 274) Taking a ‘middle-ground’ approach, as such, between these two theses, ‘Actor Network Theory’ considers people, institutions, ideologies, environments, ecologies, and technologies as ‘actants’ or actors, each with the potential to exert influence on themselves and on other actors. No actor can claim a central, controlling influence because instances and influences will ultimately differ according to temporal, spatial, and social contexts, perspectives, and scale. A singular technological artefact may be cast in the role of actor which, through an analysis of its engagement with other kinds of actors (for example, owners, users, other artefacts, uses, and outcomes), can be used to define or locate a variety of physical, biological, and social processes and practices. As an actor within a network, technology exerts a ‘partial’ determinism: where the ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ perspective claims that all technologies are social products and that through all stages of their design, development, diffusion, and employment they engage and involve human relations, the ‘Actor Network Theory’ perspective suggests that this role is not always negotiable. ‘Actor Network Theory’ suggests that technologies are already, or they tend to become, embedded within institutional and social practices and structures, and that once this position is established and stabilised they may influence subsequent social and/or technological choices (Lievrouw, 2002, p. 186). Actors (in this case technological actors) define for themselves and for other actors their constituent role within a particular framework. Yet unlike the role of technology within deterministic frameworks, the role of technology within ‘Actor Network Theory’ will remain constrained by the composite of other actors that constitute and define the broader rules and structure of the particular framework in which they are presently located.

In both an ‘Actor Network Theory’ and autopoietic framework, we see that once a technological innovation has been introduced to a given system, its utility value and future potential are strongly shaped and guided by its encounter with that system, and the forces that shape technologies and techniques are in many ways guided by the general orientation of the system in which they are located (Braun, 1995, p. 56). For example, within a techno-economic paradigm, steady economic growth usually occurs through incremental developments of an existing technology or technique through a process of continuous evaluation and improvement. Major changes or redirections within such markets through radical innovation are rarely spontaneous. Rather, they are the result of deliberate research, development, planning, and directive policies and agendas (see Cimoli & Dosi, 1986; Dosi, Freeman, Nelson, Silverberg, & Soete, 1988; Dosi, Marengo, & Bassanini, 2000; Green, 2002). Increasingly, the ability of a new technology or technological process that is to be introduced to the market has already been defined, shaped, and constrained – that is to say, ‘self-made’ – by and for the market. The

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 135 position of a technological innovation or a new technique is thus more a process of negotiation and consensus than determination. Any uncertainties that emerge through the entry of new actors or the rearrangement of existing actors are accommodated by making choices from among the various options available in the existing conditions, or by purposefully creating and exploiting new options. Such choices recontextualise or reorient the existing system, promoting the conditions for further uncertainties or further choices (Lievrouw 2002, p. 192).

Agency and autonomy, particularly in shaping, defining, and steering circumstances, were abilities once granted exclusively to humans. Now many decisions are (increasingly) handled by technologised devices, and the depth or measure of affect of these decisions has (simultaneously) increased. Yet as ‘natural’ or ‘traditional’ human skills and judgement capacities are replaced by automated machines, and the high standards of technological efficiency are used as benchmarks for human performance (Nardi & O’Day, 1999, p. ix), concerns about the presumed affects and effects of a loss of autonomy to machines start to surface. However, in terms of the framework I have presented here, we are reminded that any decision or directive that a mechanised autonomy might suggest is ultimately shaped according to structures and rules analogous to the systems we occupy. As Latour writes: The label ‘inhuman’ applied to techniques simply overlooks translation mechanisms and the many choices that exist for figuring or defiguring, personifying or abstracting, embodying or disembodying actors. When we say that they are ‘mere automatisms’, we project as much as when we say that they are ‘loving creatures’; the only difference is that the latter is an anthropomorphism and the former a technomorphism. (1992, p. 241) Indeed, anthropomorphism or technomorphism are strategies often employed in situations of uncertainty by social, technical, and indeed, biological communities (Caporael, 1986, p. 215). Anthropomorphism applies human characteristics, particularly intelligence and emotive capabilities, to non-human systems, whereas technomorphism applies artificial machine attributes, particularly performative and efficiency capabilities to human and other ‘natural’ systems. In a symbiotic framework, I argue, we are unable to grant any form of agency or determinism to any actor before being able to answer the question of “what does that agent want?” without resorting to anthropomorphic or technomorphic assumptions. We project our own interpretations, fears, and desires onto non-human networks when we presume to speak on their behalf and while the full affect of intervention may not always be conditioned by human direction and decision it is important to consider what, if any, is the agenda of such systems without the human? In the terms I have outlined in this chapter we must ask if the technological component of the symbiotic union actually wants or needs anything, or if the union is ultimately one of helotism? I argue that the approach offered by an evolution literacy enables us to negotiate

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 136 agency and autonomy within the symbiosis, effectively avoiding or overcoming such historically prominent power-based assumptions.

Outside of the symbiotic framework I present, accounts of agency and autonomy within technological discourse commonly draw from utopic or dystopic scenarios in their visions of technologically induced need and desire. Within this framework, utopic or technophilic scenarios are always lively, positive, unproblematic, and come without any negative social or environmental cost. Nicholas Negroponte (1996), for example, writes of a forthcoming utopia with electronic butlers, robot secretaries, and fleets of digital assistants, a world where computers are sentient, show tact and discretion, and are responsive to their users’ social preferences and behaviours; and available to all at limited cost (in a paperless office). Technophillic discourses such as this fail to negotiate the affectations and discrepancies many technological developments bring, such as instances of famine, homelessness, ecological destruction, urban chaos, widespread unemployment, corporate power, and increased surveillance and it can be argued that the liberating promises that heralded the information age, such as increased leisure, decreased workloads, greater access to education, greater democratic participation and social freedom, and workplace equity have not been realised to the extent initially promised. On the other hand, dystopic or technophobic scenarios (at the extreme) claim that we are dooming ourselves to a world of technological mishap and mayhem, a world in which we are slaves to despotic, corporate-ruled technique, and where an impending technology disaster threatens to destroy what is left on the poisoned Earth. Less paranoid representations suggest that we have surrendered our subjectivity to the machine. Technology is here seen as something that obscures or distorts nature and society and leads to a forced uniformity based on an increased emphasis on efficiency and rationalism at the expense of imagination and creativity (Barbour, 1993, pp. 10-12), or something that will diminish the skills that humans have developed in differentiating themselves from other animals and machines (Dreyfus, 2001, p. 7), or something that will transform humanity and humanness into quantifiable data, leaving the human as little more than an information processing machine (Bolter, 1984, pp. 4-13). Elsewhere, Hal Foster claims that technology produces a schizophrenic state of psychological and physical 'disconnection' to that which is non-technological: These are only some of the splittings that occur with a new intensity today: spatiotemporal splitting, the paradox of immediacy produced through mediation; a moral splitting, the paradox of disgust undercut by fascination, or of sympathy undercut by sadism; and a splitting of the body image, the ecstasy of dispersal rescued by armouring, or the fantasy of disembodiment dispelled by abjection. (Foster, 1996, p. 222)

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 137 I argue that both utopic and dystopic scenarios are simple enunciations of a ‘determined’ future. Michael Heim (1999) argues that writers of both utopic and dystopic futures are essentially moralists or polemicists, attempting to either set desirable goals for humankind or warning us of outcomes that could be disastrous to pursue. The writer of utopian discourses promises a future that delivers what capitalism has always promised: a world where everything is nothing more than the total embodiment of one’s reflected desires; social awareness, freedom, love, and spiritual enlightenment amalgamate as worldwide networks cover the planet; information circulates freely and intellectual property vanishes as a concept; individuals give and take freely; private territory and material possessions no longer divide people; digital mediation does away with the battle of the books, and proprietary ideas give way to free exchange and barter; and cooperative intelligence vanquishes private minds and electronic angels distribute independent credit (pp. 33-37). On the other hand, the writer of technological dystopias, Heim argues, speaks from fear, addressing (or pandering to) the deep anxieties associated with burgeoning technological development: There is fear in abandoning local community values as we move into a cyberspace of global communities. There is fear of diminishing physical closeness and mutual interdependence as electronic networks mediate more and more activities. There is fear of crushing the spirit by replacing bodily movement with smart objects and robotic machines. There is fear of losing the autonomy of our private bodies as we depend increasingly on chip-based implants. There is fear of compromising integrity of mind as we habitually plug into networks. There is fear that our own human regenerative process is slipping away as genetics transmutes organic life into manageable strings of information. There is fear of the sweeping changes in the workplace and in public life as we have known them. There is fear of the empty human absence that comes with increased telepresence. There is fear that the same power elite who formally “moved atoms” as they pursued a science without conscience will now “move bits” that govern the computerised world (p. 33). Both views are propelled by the assumption that “if the outcome is unknown, strong lines must be drawn from which to entice/defend and thus fulfil/avoid the promised/threatened future”. The subtle shaping of technology and technique that occurs as a result of such discourse shows that both utopic and dystopic imaginings are determined, and it is, therefore, undoubtedly a mistake to glorify either the utopian or dystopian aspects of technological development.

However, in promoting the autopoietic emergence of technology, technique, and social response within a symbiotic framework I argue that a space for such imaginings must necessarily remain, and that it is important to acknowledge that while the promises of utopic discourses are rarely realised, they continue to play a role in enabling technologies to ascend from the drawing board and into everyday social use. Technological development continues to increase the role

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 138 technology plays as prosthesis, extending our ‘organic deficiencies’, our bodily senses, our conceptualisations of time and space, and our broader sense of being. As technologies, machines, media, and technique extend their scope and range, they continue to test, dissolve, blur, and merge the distinction and borders between the ‘natural’ and the ‘technological’. And this is the gap that utopic and dystopic representations, as discourses of the technological sublime, seek to address: the unknowable and unpresentable outcome of any future imagining. According to Ziauddin Sardar (1996) they are the discourses that are produced in a society in which morality and politics seem meaningless, where social, cultural and environmental problems seem totally insurmountable, and where injustices and oppression in actual reality have become unbearable. In such a society, Sardar argues, we are either seduced by the magical power of technology, or succumb to the magnetic attraction of its horror. One launches forth with unreserved optimism, the other longs for a space outside of technology (1996, p. 14- 41). Adopting a middle ground approach to the technological sublime acknowledges that there is a simultaneous pleasure and displeasure, fear and fantasy to all technological imaginings; for the human subject, this is the generous interaction of the symbiotic relationship human- technological commensalism produces combined with the invasive discipline and subjective dispersal of human-technological helotism. Along this middle ground, writes Sardar, technology will liberate in some ways, and enslave in other ways; it will enlarge consciousness and destroy self-respect; and it will enable greater human compassion and unleash the ugly ‘other’ within both ourselves and others (Sardar & Ravetz, 1996, p. 13). I argue that such representations are themselves actors within the symbiosis, and any autopoietic emergence of technologies, techniques and social responses occurs in a system in which such actors are also located. Nevertheless, adopting a middle ground approach to the technological sublime enables us to eschew utopian or dystopian discourses in favour of a decidedly heterotopian approach.

Imagining a future defined in terms of the power relations by which it is procured suggests that the whole future of humankind, technology, and nature do not lie down a single path. There is not only one technology, but many technologies, not only one system, but many systems, not only one symbiosis, but many symbioses, not only one future, but many possible futures. As Eleonora Masini suggests, if we think or act for only one future, we are determining, or colonising, the future itself; not only the future of the human, but the future of all that is non- human as well (1993, p. 8). This is not to say that we should not anticipate and act to build a useful future; the only historical space on which humans can have any real impact is the future. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that the future is deeply entwined with past and present values, choices, and principles – including technologically inspired and induced values, choices, and principles – all of which differ on the basis of cultural contexts, disciplines, and experiences. Warren Wagar (1991) reminds us that regardless of where or how effectual ‘inputs’ might occur, “the future will transpire in a single, continuous flow as the activities of all humankind occur

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 139 interactively, each in the context of all the others” (p. 4). The future, he argues, will not unfold in a casual linear fashion: We can not expect that the future will consist simply of a growth in world population, followed by an impact on resources, resulting in a political response, leading to new technologies. (1991, p. 4) While such cause and effect sequences may occur, numberless other (similar and contradictory) sequences running in numberless (parallel and non-parallel) other directions will (simultaneously, synchronistically and chronologically) also occur. In this manner, the minutiae of the human-technology symbiosis will undergo continuous change and development in response to every activity of every actor everywhere, and the overall symbiotic arrangement will continue unabated.

In this chapter I have argued that an evolution literacy is capable of showing how technologies acquire and redistribute human agency within society without necessarily succumbing to any presupposed distinction between technology and society. In an evolution setting human and technological actors are positioned as active participants in social, cultural, technological, and biological life, a symbiosis that can be separated in theory only. I have argued that an evolution literacy enables greater and active engagement and participation in social, cultural, and technological ecologies. There is a certain sense of urgency in developing a workable evolution literacy, in that without such a literacy we risk producing discourses that equate change to evolution without considering the reciprocity that occurs in complex socio-technological environments. In his discussion of evolution and change, Erwin Laszlo writes: There are […] three different rhythms of change in the human world, and there is a lag between all three. Biological evolution is slowest; cultural evolution is faster; and technology-triggered social evolution is the fastest. That biological evolution lags behind cultural and societal development is good: it permits successive generations to remain genetically stable while being culturally and technologically creative; it allows people to keep their bodies unchanged while changing their minds. But that cultures should lag behind technology-induced conditions could be dangerous. It prevents living generations from changing their minds fast enough to catch up with the social, economic, and environmental conditions their technologies have created. (Laszlo, 1994, p. 151) Contemporary biological evolution theory shows that change, within complex systems, necessitates change. An evolution literacy, I argue, would equip us with an understanding of such change, enabling us to not only keep abreast of, but also to manipulate, direct, or guide change through a purposeful manipulation of the metaphors present in evolution theory.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 140 In Chapter Five, I continue to explore the symbiotic development of the human and technology through the particular example of the increasingly technologised human. Here, technologies and techniques are seen to replace natural human neural and bodily mechanisms along with ‘traditional’ human values and behaviours with specialist technologies and technique systems such as behaviourist psychology, cybernetics, cyborg systems, prosthetics, and reproductive technologies. I show that a number of the discourses contributing to this discussion (see Stick, 1993, 2002, Kelly, 1994; Stelarc, 1997; Broderick, 1997, 1999; Minsky, 1988; Moravec, 1998, 1989; Kurzweil, 1999) assume that biological evolution, particularly human biological evolution, has reached a zenith, and subsequently stopped. They suggest that technological evolution, on the other hand, shows no signs of abating; indeed, it is only just getting started. If the human is to evolve, they argue, it will only be through the prosthesis of technology. As technological innovation can be seen to progress both qualitatively and quantitatively, this would seem a logical path to follow: coupling human biological evolution with technological evolution would enable the human to surpass any limit biology has imposed and facilitate ever new heights of evolutionary ‘supremacy’. Indeed, a common argument within cyborg studies is, as Winner points out, the assumption that “the fleshy part of the new technological ensemble will become a drag on an otherwise highly efficient system” (Winner, 1973, p. 59). While many human- technology systems seem to surrender any remaining control of the human or the human self to the technological component, I argue that both human and technological autonomy and agency arise through autopoietic processes, suggesting that if the human psyche is under the control of any ‘made’ condition or mechanism, then this control is ostensibly self-made in light of a continuously changing world.

I have shown in this chapter that the relationship between the human and the technological is symbiotic in nature. In the terms of this thesis, positioning the relationship as a truly symbiotic union suggests that there is no need to submit to the fear of losing human autonomy to the technological, as ultimately, the promise (or threat) of any posthuman evolution through the purposeful manipulation of human-technological symbiosis is that our biological, our cultural, and our technological structures will continue to retain a capacity to impact upon each other in real and useful ways. This, I argue, is reflective of the postmodern paradigm that strives to collapse any remaining ‘boundary’ between human, embodiment, culture, technology, and history. From this discourse emerges a version of the posthuman that radically alters our historical understanding and acceptance of the human, an informatic structure ‘embodied’ in the form of a computational agent that serves as an additional and exosomatic supplement to the human. It is a form of the posthuman that amalgamates the realms of human-users, utility information, and computation as a digital information being, and I argue that this is in effect the immediate legacy of contemporary evolution theories. Nevertheless, as such a computational agent is a form of technology itself and, as I argue, therefore part of the human-technology symbiosis, it should

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 141 also be expected that it would have an impact upon the physical and virtual environments in which both human and technology operate. Likewise, one should expect that a distinct human bias in the programmed rules and structures of this version of the posthuman would ensure that agent technology remains at least amiable, useful, and committed to the human-technology symbiosis.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 142 Chapter Five

The cybernetic de- and re-construction of the human subject

Cyborg. Cybernetic-organism. The melding of the organic and the machinic, or the engineering of a union between separate organic systems […] This merging of the evolved and the developed, this integration of the constructor and the constructed, these systems of dying flesh and undead circuits, and of living and artificial cells, have been called many things: bionic systems, vital machines, cyborgs. They are a central figure of the late twentieth century. Chris Hables Gray, Steve Mentor and Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, (1995), Cyborgology: Constructing the Knowledge of Cybernetic Organisms, p. 2

The discursive posthuman as cyborg Cyborg theories show that the human body is thoroughly and increasingly technologised – from its prenatal to its posthumous state, and to investigate and address all the technologies and techniques that enable greater interaction between the biological human and its environment within such a definition is obviously beyond the scope of this study. Even if I were to limit the scope of this study by directing my investigation towards those particular technologies and techniques that have developed under the influence of cybernetic theories and methodologies since Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline first presented their cyborg, the list would include an enormous range of textiles and clothing, optical technologies, prosthetics and orthotics, implant technologies, orthodontics and dentistry, and pharmacy, along with a range of sociological techniques formed under cybernetics in disciplines such as psychology, education, neurology, and linguistics. As an example, the technologies and techniques of reproduction and childbirth now include access to in vitro fertilisation programs and funding, genetic screening and gene therapy, adoption and surrogacy laws, and technologised labour and delivery rituals. (Dumit & Davis-Floyd, 1998, pp. 1-18). And throughout life, many if not most of the organic components of the biological human can be repaired, replaced, substituted, reconfigured, improved, or enhanced somehow through artificial or bionic mechanical, pharmaceutical, or sociological technologies, devices, and processes. Most of these technologies are a regular and generally accepted part of those societies that are able (or coerced, encouraged, or forced) to access them. Typically, investigations of the cyborg body focus on a range of ‘hard’ technologies

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 143 including prosthetics, exoskeletons, artificial organs, pacemakers, dialysis machines, intravenous nutrient systems, drug implant systems, cosmetic surgical enhancements, neurological implants, bionics, and sensory boosting devices, and a range of ‘soft’ technologies such as gene therapy, animal organ pharming and xenographs, dietary and nutritional supplements, antibacterial soaps, additives to toothpaste, steroids, anti-depressants and other psychopharmacological drugs, memory boosting exercises, anti-aging lotion, and hormone replacement therapy and libido boosting drugs (cf. Featherstone, 1982; Gray, 1995; Herr, Whiteley, & Childress, 2003). Many of these cyborg technologies aim to restore, repair or extend biological life and are driven by a desire to cheat death that motivates and encourages the rich and powerful (and often elderly) individuals who garnish funding, the medical engineers and physicians who produce and provide the technologies, and the individual patients who seek so desperately to prolong mortality (Gray, 2002, pp. 72-85). In this regard, cyborg constructs seeking to prolong life represent death as an actor within a human cybernetic system: an inevitable and entropic force within the ‘closed system’ of the human body. As such, cyborg technologies attempt to minimise entropic decay using cybernetic strategies to keep adversarial forces at bay. Chris Hables Gray quotes Willem Kolff to argue that no matter the cost, delaying the inevitable is seen as a just cause. People do not want to die, and no government committee, no FDA regulations, no moral or theologic, not even economic considerations are going to change this. (In Gray, 2002, p. 79) Even after death technologies and techniques continue to define the human body, including coronial inquests, autopsies, harvesting of donor organs, embalmment, cryogenics, and crematoria and other mortuary techniques (see Hogle, 1995).

Within a technological account, any singular cyborg technology or technique from such a list could be examined historically in order to identify the relevant social groups involved in its design, development, and diffusion processes. Using the evolution literacy I discussed in Chapter Four, such an examination would highlight the evolving nature of that particular instance of the human-technology symbiotic union, showing its environmental location and relational dependencies, the niche that encouraged mutational variation, and the fitness mechanisms that were retained in selection. Using this method, a chronology of such cyborg technologies could be drawn from early nineteenth century mechanised and institutionalised surgery and prosthetics, through twentieth century chemical-based medicines and cybernetic servo- mechanisms and robotics, to current computational and informatic representations. This would show that the evolution of the cyborg has been coexistent with the evolution of other instances, areas, actors or fields of human-technology symbiosis, suggesting that, like other social or technological examples, new cyborg technologies cannot be seen to override or replace existing

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 144 ones. And as cyborg technologies occur concurrently there can be, therefore, no ‘one’ type of cyborg.

Thus, rather than focus on any one particular cyborg technology in this chapter, I have chosen instead to look at the evolution of the cyborg as a hybrid and discursive being: a construct that merges both the discourses and the artefacts of biology, technology, and human sociology. In doing this, I draw on Donna Haraway who has shown that the cyborg, in as much as it is a technological being, is also a product of discourse, a literary and figurative creature that is manifest in the real, lived, and everyday technologised world, and also in the imaginative world of science fiction, and other social-discursive realms ([1985] 1991, pp. 149-181). Katherine Hayles (1999a) extrapolates this definition of the cyborg, arguing that at all times cyborgs are “simultaneously entities and metaphors, living beings and narrative constructions” (p. 114-115). Hayles writes: The conjunction of technology and discourse is crucial. Were the cyborg only a product of discourse, it could perhaps be relegated to science fiction, of interest to SF aficionados but not vital concern to the culture. Were it only a technological practice, it could be confined to such technical fields as bionics, medical prostheses, and virtual reality. Manifesting itself as both technological object and discursive formation, it partakes of the power of the imagination as well as of the actuality of technology. (1999a, p. 114-115)

My interest in the cyborg in this thesis lies not only in instantiated examples of cyborg technology, but in the discursive formations that construct them. I am particularly interested in how evolution theories that have historically shaped our understanding of the human biological (and socio-cultural) form are reformed or reconfigured – as discourse – to shape the cyborg figure. In Chapter Three I discussed the co-adaptation or hybridisation of biological evolution and cybernetic discourses in the formation of ‘ecology’ theories within contemporary evolution theory. In turn, the appropriation of the human body within contemporary evolution theory situates the human organism as a system, or perhaps more precisely as a cluster of systems, or an ecology. As such it relates to various elements of the body in terminology appropriated from other biological, environmental, and ecological models. Yet as a cybernetic endeavour, it also uses terminology appropriated from mechanical, computational, and communicative models, by appropriating principles and characteristics derived from these systems, recognising and mapping how these systems function in situ, and determining if similar traits can be exploited in vitro. The result is a symbiotic human, a discursive amalgam of technology and biology that turns the biological human that evolved from a ‘state of nature’ into a technological venture that, regardless of the underlying metaphors or models biological, technological or sociological discourse employs, renders the human organism as a technical component with a broader

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 145 technical system in which any technical problem that occurs can be addressed through technical solutions. Yet while commentators such as Minsky (1988), Moravec (1988, 1999), Krocker (1992), Stock (1993, 2002), Kelly (1994), More (1997a, 1997b, 2001, 2004), Stelarc (1997), Broderick (1997, 1999), and Kurzweil (1999) interpret this to mean the demise or the end of the biological human and the beginning of a strictly technological posthuman, I read it to mean the complexification of existing biological, technological and social systems, resulting in a state of greater ecological complexity in which the additive mechanisms of autopoiesis produce additional actor entities. The version of the posthuman I present in this thesis is, I argue, one such occurrence, and I outline in this chapter the discursive formations that enable it to emerge from within the human-technology symbiosis.

Peter Reynolds (1991) suggests that in most instances the cyborg is constructed through a two step process of mutation/mutilation and prosthesis; a deconstruction of nature or of natural processes followed by a technocratic reconstruction of that element in an artificial or prosthetic stratum. This is the case not only for a large range of cybernetic influenced ‘hard’ technologies including bionics, prosthetics, and artificial organs, and ‘soft’ technologies including gene therapy, organ transplants, pharmacological biochemistry, and therapeutical treatments, but a wide range of computational and digitised technologies that also seek to recreate systems or componential elements of systems in a new reconfigured stratum that need not be mechanical in form and structure. In many instances, notably within the computational disciplines of Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life but also within computer games, virtual reality, and other agent- based technologies, semiotic structures serve to instantiate the object in question. In the terms I have outlined in this thesis the process of cyborg construction becomes analogous to the deconstruction and reconstruction of the human, humanness, human identity, and human subjectivity and materiality through a range of linguistic and discursive systems; a field of inquiry that is heavily favoured in much poststructural and postmodern thought. In this chapter I show that the discourses of biological evolution and technological cybernetics have contributed towards a mechanised deconstruction of the biological human subject, and its subsequent reconstitution as a discursive hybrid and thoroughly technologised being.

The cybernetic prehistory of the cyborg In his seminal Cybernetics (1948) and The human use of human beings ([1950] 1954) Norbert Wiener developed what he considered as the ‘science of communication and control in man and machine’. Wiener extended Claude Shannon’s information theory (itself designed to optimise the transmission of information through communication channels), adapting Shannon and Weaver’s “sender → message → receiver” model of communication to include the concept of ‘feedback’

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 146 employed in engineering control systems. Wiener studied systems that could be represented or mapped using simple loops or more complicated looping structures, and was primarily concerned with designing or organising structures in order to minimise the loss of information within that system. He conceptualised such loss of information as a problem inherent to all ‘goal- directed communications’, a corrosive and entropic force that increased over time. As entropy increases, the universe, and all closed systems in the universe, tend naturally to deteriorate and lose their distinctiveness, to move from the least to the most probable state, from a state of organisation and differentiation in which distinctions and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness. In this universe, order is least probable, chaos most probable. ([1950] 1954, p. 12) For Wiener, the safeguard against such loss or a correction to the corrosive forces of entropy could be found through the application of regulated feedback. To this extent, Wiener argued that effective communication would best succeed through the facilitation and erection of temporarily closed systems, “local enclave[s] … whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for organisation to increase" ([1950] 1954, p. 12).

Wiener showed that in all systems in which a transformation occurs there are ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’; a phenomenon common to both organic beings and self-regulating machines. ‘Inputs’ refers to any information that is introduced to the system, and ‘outputs’ refers to any information that is produced in or by the system. Wiener found that in causally connected looped systems, information is introduced to the system through ‘sensory’ organs or devices, transformed in the system and upon output is re-introduced as new input, or ‘feedback’. Feedback can be further identified as either positive (self-reinforcing) or negative (self-balancing). Positive feedback occurs when the information that is re-introduced to the system facilitates and accelerates a transformation of that information in the same direction, with the same results, as the initial input. Here, input and output become cumulative, producing either an exponential unidirectional growth or an entropic decline of the system: once a certain threshold has been breached, the equilibrium of the system fails and the system is destroyed. Negative feedback, on the other hand, strives to maintain a state of equilibrium against the forces of undesired or unrelated variance, disorder, or excess information by counter-balancing any informational change introduced to the system: [E]very variation toward a plus triggers a correction toward the minus, and vice versa. (de Rosnay, 1997, ¶ 73).

In this way cybernetic feedback enables a system to produce an ongoing comparison between past and present exchanges (inputs and output-goals) enabling a “reciprocal flow” or “two-way

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 147 interaction between controller and controlled” (Wiener, 1948, p. 11). This enables an operator/observer to exert influence upon the system yet it also allows the system to communicate the results of the transformation back to the operator/observer, effectively enabling the system to exert influence upon the operator/observer (Wiener, 1948, p. 11). Humberto Maturana has written extensively on the tendency of such systems to privilege certain actors by enabling some subjects to exert control over others (Lettvin, Maturana, McCulloch, & Pitts, 1959; Maturana, Lettvin, McCulloch, & Pitts, 1959; Maturana, Lettvin, Pitts, & McCulloch, 1959; Maturana, 1970; 1975; 1978; 1983; 1987; Maturana & Varela, 1980). The cybernetic concept of feedback ultimately debunks the central epistemology of ‘one-way’ communication models, and the relative privilege the message recipient/object concedes to the sender is further problematised or complicated in systems that are able to successfully accommodate all actors as enunciating or participative subjects. I have suggested that cybernetics is primarily concerned with the successful transmission and reception of information, emphasising the process of communication inherent to a given medium rather than any intended or desired meaning. Yet to be able to communicate successfully, a system must be able to generate, with some certainty or accuracy, a level of equilibrium between inputs and outputs. Thus, in order to respond to the introduction of unexpected developments or the inevitability of increased entropic noise, the system must remain flexible, and for the system to remain flexible, certain components within the system must be capable of regulating feedback, without conceding to any one component complete control.

Cybernetics ultimately concentrates on the communicative practice; not the intended or desired meaning, but the transmission and reception of the broader informational pattern. In this manner, communication is recognised as a phenomenon that occurs between heterogeneous beings (organic or inorganic) within a given system. Individual actors are relegated as components within systems and must be controlled through effective communication management. Cybernetic communication, as Wiener argued, extends communication models based on an exchange of information by incorporating numerous informational ‘feedback’ processes including the constructing, transmitting, receiving, monitoring, surveying, scanning, reading, deconstructing, interpreting, adjusting, responding, modifying, regulating, reconstructing, and reproducing of any communicative message. Pre-empting the appeal of the cyborg, Wiener cautioned that the mechanical or non-human components of some systems would ultimately perform these functions with greater efficiency, dexterity, proficiency, consistency, and resourcefulness than the human, suggesting there was a very real potential to annihilate the human subject as the locus of control ([1950] 1954, pp. 160-164.), and, as Hayles comments, a strong dystopic view of cyborg technologies is enunciated by an historical figure whose work is recognised as central to their future development and application (Hayles, 1999a, p. 87). Indeed, as many communicative functions and actions that were previously and exclusively assigned to

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 148 the human came under the control of non-human actors and the most important and relevant information was “addressed to a machine rather than a person” ([1950] 1954, p. 148), Wiener’s concern for the potential ‘inhuman’ use of cybernetics began to rise. He particularly cautioned against the potential for certain militaristic applications, seeing such use as a “most imminent and dangerous contingency” ([1950] 1954, p. 178)1. Yet despite his criticism of the military appropriation of science, Wiener’s cybernetic theories resonate with strong militaristic logic and rhetoric: "the purpose of Cybernetics,” he writes, “is to develop a language and techniques that will enable us to indeed attack the problems of control and communications in general" ([1950] 1954, p. 17). And the enemy ‘problem’ that must be ‘attacked’ is, for Wiener, the chaotic, disorganised noise of entropy. Wiener was so opposed to entropy that he comes close to declaring entropic decay as evil. So evil in fact that he attempts to impose a fixing, stabilizing force that seeks equilibrium over any other possible response, missing the realisation “that large entropy production could drive systems to increasing complexity” (Hayles, 1999a, p. 103). Weiner believed with enough conviction that only machine-precision within communications could eradicate entropy that he was willing to forego, to some extent, exclusive human control.

The wartime success of cybernetics was an extraordinarily important development for understanding the behaviour of self-regulating and self-organising systems, and the post-WWII (and post- Cold-War) expansion of its influence has been felt across many diverse disciplines. Indeed, while cybernetics is popularly attributed to Norbert Wiener, it is essential to recognise the enormous contributions made to the science through its exchange with other disciplines, of which many were non-militaristic, non-mathematical, or non-scientific. The American Society for Cybernetics recognises that participants and members of the intensive cybernetic Macy Conferences that ran from 1943-1954 represented an assortment of disciplines including computer engineering, electrical engineering, engineering, mathematics, physics, logics, biophysics, biology, ecology, anatomy, neuroanatomy, physiology, psychology, psychiatry, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, comparative psychology, medicine, neurology, developmental psychology, and animal psychology alongside sociology, social science, anthropology, linguistics, literary criticism, and personnel management (American Society for Cybernetics, 2005, ¶ 2-5). Each discipline was attempting to define and enunciate the growing interface that existed between cybernetic command, control, and communication processes and a diverse array of naturally, artificially, or socially ‘complex’ arrangements and systems. Of particular interest were complex natural or organic systems that had no obvious or real boundaries. These systems were seen as entirely self-regulating and self-maintaining, and as

1 Katherine Hayles writes that upon learning of the role the information sciences had in the United States deployment of atomic weaponry Wiener withdrew entirely from military and governmental service, and never again accepted any form of governmental funding for his work with cybernetics (Hayles, 1999a, p. 106-108).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 149 Maturana later showed, self-making (Maturana, 1978; Maturana & Varela, 1980). The great appeal in the cybernetic approach was that it was able to direct attention towards the behaviour of complex systems and discern the function of certain elements within the system. Investigators from these various disciplines were able to model and in some instances reproduce the behaviour of a system in an abstract medium free from its specific or traditional form. In a cybernetic investigation the model itself (mechanical, electronic, mathematical, linguistic, neural) could then serve as an ‘original’ object for further inquiry, enabling the examiner or practitioner to correct any noted dysfunctions, or, importantly, to build upon or in other ways ‘improve’ traditional, normal system functions. Thus, in the cybernetic Imaginary, the human in its biological entirety, the human as a biological composite (an ensemble of organ, vascular, respiratory, renal, neural, and muscular parts), or human biological traits (physical movement, sensory cognition, reproductive systems) could be reformulated and understood as systems (or a system) that communicate patterns of information: “We are not stuff that abides”, Wiener writes, “but patterns that perpetuate themselves” ([1950] 1954, p. 96). Here, in the reformulation of organic entities as cybernetic enterprises, is the birth of cyborg science.

Cyborg science, as it was originally hypothesised and presented, argues that that which is ‘human’ can be reformulated as a disembodied, fluid, informatic pattern amenable to transportation between different suitable substrates without the gross disruption of loss of meaning or form (Hayles, 1999a, p. xii). At the bodily end of the cyborg spectrum this proposition lends itself to the continuous development of mechanised human organ prosthetics, enabling the biological engineer to retrospectively ‘play’ with natural organic systems in order to alter, extend, repair, or recreate them. At the disembodied end of the cyborg spectrum, the proposition suggests that human emotions and intelligence resemble mechanised systems and algorithmic computations to such an extent that human cognition could be defined as information processing or the manipulation of certain symbols based on sets of rules, and that once these rules are understood and replicated artificially intelligent systems could be created. At both the embodied and the disembodied end of the spectrum, cybernetics provides a powerful motive and method for the construction of the cyborg, and in the following section I discuss how the underlying principle of cybernetics – the elimination or reduction of entropy through feedback controls – are first instantiated in early human biological-system cyborg technologies. I show that in seeking to constrain, restrain, direct, or control the channels of communication through which entropy passed, these cyborg technologies extended the human-technology symbiosis in that they complicate definite boundaries between biological, technological, and sociological definitions of the human and human-derived ideologies. In tracing the historical or evolutionary development of cyborg technologies we see which human-biological and technological elements have been subject to a continuous process of mutation/selection and which remain, unaltered, in contemporary versions and visions of the posthuman.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 150

Clynes and Kline and the mechanised human cyborg Historically, the term ‘cyborg’ appears with the publication of Clynes and Kline’s essay Cyborgs and Space ([1960] 1995). Clynes and Kline extend the technological imperative that underpins human organic deficiency (outlined in Chapter Four), adopting a cybernetic approach to the improvement and modification of the human biological organism. Their core argument is that because the human has evolved according to the environmental conditions of Earth, it is poorly equipped to handle the adverse conditions presented by space travel. In their essay they discuss the possibility of altering the biological body and bodily processes of the human astronaut through the implementation of artificial, self-regulating biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications for the human body, in lieu of large-scale and expensive technologies that would adjust or accommodate the exogenous environment to the needs of the biological human astronaut.

Protected by the atmosphere, terrestrial environments on Earth vary between -89° and 58° Celsius, with a mean of 15° Celsius. Ambient temperatures in the vicinity of the Earth can vary between -160° and 130° Celsius, with a mean of -23° Celsius (Bennet, 2000, ¶ 11).The human body’s internal thermal regulation system is a biologically evolved system that attempts to maintain a consistent internal or core temperature of approximately 37° Celsius. Excessive variance in this temperature (+/- 2° Celsius) will result in corrective measures, such as vasodilation and perspiration or vasoconstriction and involuntary muscle contractions. Any variance beyond 3° Celsius greatly impairs the body’s ability to self-regulate, and the system generally fails when the core temperature varies beyond 8° Celsius. For millennia humans have produced shelter and clothing to aid biological homeostasis, erecting artificial ‘microclimates’ that act as media between the human body and the natural environment and help keep skin temperature at around 34° Celsius. Built environments, clothing and textiles have assisted regulation by providing insulation, ventilation, moisture absorption, and moisture transportation, enabling the human to survive (and in many instances flourish) in otherwise hostile environments that include high altitude, arctic, temperate marine, hot arid, and rainy tropical climates. The human body has also evolved under atmospheric conditions different to those of space. In brief, Earth's atmosphere is roughly 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen from 0m to about 5,000m. Beyond this point the oxygen levels in the air start to thin causing, in the human, hypoxia; a condition in which the low partial pressure of oxygen prevents the lungs from absorbing oxygen through the alveoli. Above the 19,000m threshold the total air pressure is no longer enough for the human to avoid ebullism, and bodily fluids vaporize and force their way from the body as bubbles. In addition, the atmosphere under which the human evolved provides enough protection against the increased levels of harmful radiation and the constant bombardment of micrometeoroids and particles of dust travelling at speeds up to 28,000km/h.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 151 Other adverse factors astronauts are likely to encounter include extended periods of weightlessness, resulting in softening of bones, loss of physical weight and muscle tone, disorientation and nausea, sinus trouble, orthostatic collapse and loss of appetite, along with increased exposure to radiation, magnetic fields and ionized air. Additionally, during acceleration the astronaut experiences excessive vibration and noise that can result in extreme discomfort, nausea, anxiety, choking sensations, abdominal pain, fatigue, difficulty breathing, headache, itching, and deafness, along with an increase in weight factor from 1g to 7g; a force that interferes with voluntary muscular activities, blood circulation and visual acuity (Sharpe, 1969, pp. 21-55). In order to counter these non-terrestrial extremes, astronautic engineers designed and developed a range of technologies from spacecraft to space-suit that would support and protect the human in its venture into space (Swift, 2005, pp. 106-109).

Yet despite all the advanced astronautic technologies, Clynes and Kline were convinced that “altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space” ([1960] 1995, p. 29). In many ways, Clynes and Kline’s cyborg is an obvious and logical descendant, or ‘progression’, of the biological human. Extraterrestrial environments provide new and unique environmental conditions and, as Darwinian evolution shows, new environments encourage evolution into new biological forms. Thus, Clynes and Kline suggested that a new form of the human should emerge for the large-scale colonisation of space. However, Darwinian evolution also shows that biological evolution is generally a slow, hereditary process in which organisms capitalise upon found environments. Evolutionary processes are in no way able to anticipate the needs of the organism beforehand, and organisms are unable to produce and select the necessary mutations at will (Dawkins, 1996, p. 71-72). Clynes and Kline simply suggest that as the human is purposefully moving into space then we should purposefully manipulate the human biological structure evolution has provided for the newfound environment of space. In the past evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible to achieve this to some degree without alteration of heredity by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications of man’s existing modus vivendi [Emphasis in original]. ([1960] 1995, p. 29) In outlining the physiological base of the cyborg, Clynes and Kline introduced a powerful new metaphor into the discourse of human biological evolution: the cyborg as a technologically enhanced and enabled human born through a participatory and co-evolutionary human- technology symbiosis. This metaphor of participatory evolution continues to influence an expansive range of biomedical, technological, scientific, and socio-cultural discourse, which I discuss in this chapter.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 152 In Clynes and Kline’s article, the authors list a number of ‘problems’ the human organism experiences in space including the need for wakefulness, radiation effects, metabolic functions and hypothermic controls, oxygenisation and carbon dioxide removal, fluid intake and output, enzyme systems, vestibular function, cardiovascular control, muscular maintenance, perceptual problems, pressure, variations in external temperature, gravitation, magnetic fields, sensory invariance and action deprivation, psychoses, and limbo. Instead of relying upon external technologies to counter these experiences, the authors propose a range of internal solutions. Aside from induced hyperthermic hibernation to reduce metabolic function, inverse fuel cells that expel carbon dioxide to “eliminate the necessity of lung breathing”, the sterilisation and the conversion of noxious substances in order to reutilise faecal and ureal waste, in vitro radiation to produce necessary enzyme production, and draining fluid prior to refilling cochlear cavities to restore balance, the bulk of the ‘problems’ (such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, and motion sickness) would be overcome by pharmaceutical and psychopharmacological drugs (Clynes & Kline, [1960] 1995, pp. 31-33; Driscoll, [1963] 1995, pp. 75-77). The delivery of drugs would be controlled by sensors and rose osmotic pumps, or if possible2 at the discretion of the astronaut.3 These radical intrusions into and extensions of the astronaut’s body and mind would, the authors argue, “allow him to live in space qua natura” ([1960] 1995, p. 30). (It is obvious the authors have a rather unique conceptualisation of nature.)

Clynes and Kline’s approach to human agency is, in the argument they present, slightly disconcerting. They suggest that the seemingly mundane tasks needed for self-support would drain astronaut resources, and opt instead for technologised cyborg systems that monitor, maintain, and sustain homeostasis. If the human were to constantly monitor and adjust life supporting technology it becomes “slave to the machine” they argue, suggesting that astronaut abilities would be better spent on maintaining, monitoring, and controlling the spacecraft ([1960] 1995, p. 31). However, if the spacecraft completely fails then all life-supporting technologies fail, and having to constantly moderate flight and navigation systems the astronaut ultimately remains ‘locked-in’ as a slave to the machine. Obviously spatial properties, resource availability, and temporal constraints delimit technological options in some regard, but the idea of building and implementing systems to “eliminate the necessity for lung breathing” ([1960] 1995, p. 32) in lieu of cybernetic craft control highlights a wide range of ‘deterministic’ questions. Whether or not the cyborg was shaped according to a ‘path of least resistance’ or ‘the greatest technological

2 [T]he frequent denial by an individual undergoing a psychotic episode that his thought processes, emotions, or behavior are abnormal, might keep him from voluntarily accepting medication. For this reason […] provision should be made for triggering administration of the medication remotely from earth (Clynes & Kline, [1960] 1995, p. 33). 3 The contingency of possible extreme pain or suffering as a result of unforeseen accidents must also be considered. The astronaut should therefore be able to elect a state of unconsciousness if he feels it to be necessary. Prolonged sleep induced either pharmacologically or electronically seems the best solution (Clynes & Kline, [1960] 1995, p. 33).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 153 hurdle’ it was fashioned under the influence of 1960s values and ideologies and the limits of available technologies. Thus Clynes and Kline’s cyborg is also a historic creature of the Cold War and the Space-race and is therefore, by and large, a patriarchal, militaristic, technologised being.

For Clynes and Kline anything less than a technologically augmented and altered biological human would mean that the human experience in space would amount to little more than “an exercise of putting ‘spam in cans’ and shooting them into space” (Spiller, [1999] 2002, p. 306). They saw the enormous array of advanced technological support systems that trained the astronauts for life in space, propelled them into space, sustained them during their time in space, and returned them safely to Earth as contributing to an entirely false and mediated experience with little value to the ideal they held of a great human endeavour. Solving the many technological problems involved in manned space flight by adapting man to his environment, rather than vice versa, will not only mark a significant step forward in man’s scientific progress, but may well provide a new and larger dimension for man’s spirit as well. .([1960] 1995, p. 33) In reminding us that “historically, there has always been a distinction between the ‘spam’ and the ‘can’”, Neil Spiller draws attention to the coevolutionary symbiont the cyborg astronaut was to become. The spam is wet, fragile, sensitised, the desiring observer and the conscious subject. The ‘can’ is bought, sold, slow, inert, often a hollow container and in thrall to its function. (Spiller, [1999] 2002, p. 306) The socio-cultural force behind the Space-race ensured that the ‘spam’ would venture into space and the technological imperative needed to overcome the obstacles the endeavour presented substantiated the need for the ‘can.’ The historical figure of the cyborg astronaut effectively merges in an immediate and significant way the ‘spam’ and the ‘can’ as a hybrid object.

Space travel and exploration – from rocket engineering, to astronaut training, ground-control communications, and remotely-operated flight systems – is invariably a highly technological venture and it is important to recognise the impetus socio-cultural factors have had in encouraging and shaping astronautic technologies. An obvious notation here would be the role the 1960s ‘Space-race’ ’Cold War’ and ‘Arms race’ rhetoric played in astronautic history. Thus, when Arnold Gehlen suggests that [T]he desire for controlling and interfering with nature, and for progress, has become so manifest as to create the impression that we set preposterous goals, such as landing on the moon, in order to solve the extremely difficult technical problems which only arise out of this venture.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 154 ([1965] 2003, p. 214) it is important to recognise that the venture is at heart a politically, socially, and culturally influenced and inspired one. While astronautic technology effectively captures the technological imperative “if anything can be done, or improved, through the application of a technological device, then it should, or must, be done”, cyborg technology extends this imperative as a distinctively cybernetic one, suggesting “if it exists it can be modelled, and if it can be modelled it can be synthesised, reconfigured, enhanced, and improved and recreated in a simulated and artificial form”. The technological imperative confirms, following its own logic of “if this can be done, it should be done”. Thus, the early ‘astronautic’ cyborg sees the human attached and merged with the aspirations and innovations of ‘Space-Age’ technologies and thus captures the attention of both ‘Technological Determinism’ and ‘Social Shaping of Technology’ theories. Indeed, behind the technological interface of Clynes and Kline’s cyborg there is a strong social imperative: at its heart, the cyborg has explicitly humanistic ideals, and simply incorporates technologies that leave the human part “free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel” ([1960] 1995, p. 31). That is, to experience.

Clynes and Kline retain the human subject as the central and defining feature of the cyborg, an embodied figure that functions as the subject’s ‘shell’. Their article does, however, introduce the cybernetic imperative to biological definitions of the human, and their emphasis on participant evolution reconfigures both biological and technological discursive frameworks in a new constitutive way. In the following section I outline the evolution of the cyborg since the 1960s, both in terms of new cyborg technologies and new discourses and metaphors that constitute its emerging shape. Through this discussion I show the human-technology symbiosis to be one in which a wide range of cyborg figures can be accommodated, highlighting the potential for a form of the posthuman that operates in an information environment located between the human and computational technologies. In terms of this thesis, this highlights the metanarrative of contemporary evolution that is both reflected in and is a reflection of contemporary social arrangements.

Contemporary cyborgs and the extension of the cyborg metaphor In the introduction to The cyborg handbook (1995), the authors suggest that every cyborg is a part of a system or of overlapping systems, a participant in ‘cyborgian relationships’ that extend from the “smallest creature” to the “whole web of life on this planet” (pp. 2-3). Even if many individuals in the industrial and post-industrial countries aren’t full cyborgs, we certainly live in a ‘cyborg society’. Machines are intimately interfaced with humans on almost every level of existence not only in the West and Japan but among the elite in

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 155 every country in the world. Cyborg society also refers to the full range of intimate organic-machine relations, from the man-machine weapons systems of the postmodern military to the rat-cyborg portrayed in the article where the term was coined, to the genetically engineered mice of today to biocomputers, artificial life programs, and any future extravaganzas like […] plant-intelligent-machine symbiosis. (Gray, Mentor, & Figueroa-Sarriera, 1995, p. 3) Indeed, cyborg theory is by now so broad and so encompassing, offering so many different categories and classifications, and with numerous contradictions and overlaps that it is, at times, difficult to gauge the usefulness of its general terminology. To this end, the authors of the handbook determine a set of distinctions between what they see as the main categories and classifications of the many different types of cyborgs: Cyborg technologies can be restorative, in that they restore lost functions and replace lost organs and limbs; they can be normalising, in that they restore some creature to indistinguishable normality; they can be reconfiguring, creating posthuman creatures equal to but different from humans […], and they can be enhancing, the aim of most military and industrial research, and what those with cyborg envy or even cyborg-phillia fantasize. (Gray, Mentor, & Figueroa-Sarriera, 1995, p. 3)

In this thesis I add to this list another form of cyborg technology, arguing that cyborg technologies can also be representational, in that they are often inherently capable of rendering the human subject as codified information amenable to the techniques and practices of abstract signification. I expand briefly upon this below before continuing the discussion in Chapter Six, arguing that such a form of cyborg technology precipitates the version of the posthuman as an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent I present in this thesis. In this chapter I suggest that in each of these five categorical definitions cyborg technology can be seen to recontextualise the human by taking the existing human system as it has been represented in biological discourse and redefining it as a new cyborg system.

This process of mutilation and prosthesis occurs in an attempt to rebuild natural systems and processes artificially or synthetically, and as I have mentioned above, such technologies have a long history, particularly those that attempt to repair, replace, or otherwise restore lost, broken, absent, or defective human parts. Many of these technologies subscribe to the previous evolution assumption of an ‘ideal’ form of the human, from which ‘normality’ can be measured, and to which all restorative and normalising technologies must seek to match. A Foucaultian analysis would critique such a generalised premise, asking what is normal, what is not normal, and who it is that decides. Nevertheless, in many instances normalising and restorative technologies do not need to meet the presupposed ‘ideal’ in order to improve upon the existing

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 156 condition of their recipients. In such cases if even the most basic functions can be restored, the technologies are generally welcomed. A paraplegic who regains even a small amount of limb movement is much better off, and so is a deaf person who recovers a modicum of hearing. (Stock, 1993, p. 153)

At the other end of the handbook’s list are the enhancing technologies. These technologies use the aforementioned definition of ‘normal’ as a form of baseline from which ‘improvements’ can be made, suggesting that there is a “better kind of normal”, and invoking assumptions about ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ categories of human. This also highlights the metaphor of ‘progress’ in biological, social and technological evolution that I have discussed in Chapter Two and Chapter Four. Like other technological developments, cyborg technologies are assumed to be a step forward; a movement towards a higher state of being. The argument in favour of enhancing technologies is powerful, in that it questions the motives and reasons why one should not improve upon existing conditions. This is a particularly compelling argument for those cyborg technologies that seek to enhance and improve human cognitive capabilities and traits, such as memory, communication, and computation abilities beyond the upper range of ‘normal’ intelligence, as there should be no reason why such enhancements would threaten or destroy the character or integrity of the human. As Russell Blackford (2004) argues, such technologies would seek only to increase or improve that which is already present in the human. [H]owever much we change, nobody is talking about transforming us into mutants or cyborgs that are less capable of reason, choice, plans, emotions and culture. (p. 18) Nevertheless, many enhancements and augmentations (particularly cosmetic or aesthetic enhancements) purposefully mutilate or destroy (often in a negative and destructive manner) functional, normal, or natural structures and systems in order to somehow improve or enhance the existing situation.

With the emergence of the cyborg as a cultural figure, renewed emphasis has been placed on the possibility of ‘participatory’ human evolution. While a large part of this interest is shaped by the potential advances genetics and genetic engineering offers, participatory evolution generally embraces Clynes and Kline’s initial idea of altering an organism’s shape without the ‘cumbersome’ mechanisms that hereditary evolution demands. Through the figure of the cyborg, participatory evolution again considers how new forms and shapes might be better equipped to cope with various environments (natural, social, and cultural). Many of the discussions around participatory human evolution are guided by a Clynes-and-Kline-like techno-fuelled assumption that the human is no longer equipped to handle the highly technologised environment that constitutes everydayness, and arguing that (as Wiener suggested) because machines are more

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 157 powerful, accurate, efficient, versatile, and dependable than humans, humans (as Wiener feared) cannot help “but fall back to second place in a world dominated by technology” (Basalla, 1988, p. 16). (See also Clarke, 1973; Kelly, 1994; Terranova [1996] 2000; Broderick, 1997,1999; Minsky, 1988; Moravec, 1998,1989; Kurzweil, 1999.) One of the loudest voices behind these arguments is the performance artist Stelarc, who famously states that the human biological body, as ‘shell’ to the human subject, is obsolete. It is time to question whether a bipedal, breathing body with binocular vision and a 1400cc brain is an adequate biological form. It cannot cope with the quantity, complexity and quality of information it has accumulated; it is intimidated by the precision, speed and power of technology and it is biologically ill-equipped to cope with its new extraterrestrial environment. The body is neither a very efficient nor very durable structure. It malfunctions often and fatigues quickly; its performance is determined by its age. It is susceptible to disease and is doomed to a certain and early death. Its survival parameters are very slim - it can survive only weeks without food, days without water and minutes without oxygen. (Stelarc, 1997, ¶ 1-2)

For the human, this generally means a consideration of how one might extend natural senses, increase bodily capacities, extend the scope of thought and action, and avert or stall mortality. Of course, none of these desires is new, and none has escaped human consideration and technologised intervention throughout history. Yet regardless of the number of cries of obsolescence and supersession, distinct human and humanistic ideologies, standards, and desires (to explore, create, think, feel) ultimately remain at the heart the cyborg. What we do see in the cyborg, however, is new technical, theoretical, and imaginative means created and explored in order to address these desires. In Chapter Four I discussed the ways in which highly specialised communities of interest shape technologies. In the same manner it can be seen that, regardless of the many possibilities imaginable, the motivations of distinct human interests, ethics, and politics that shape both genetic research and associated laws and regulations ensure that only minor alterations (generally ‘corrections’) are achieved, and the ‘normal’ shape of the human is retained. This suggests, as I state also in the introduction to this thesis, in no historical instance of the cyborg ‘posthuman’ is the ‘human’ absent, superseded, or made obsolete. Despite many technological advances the human remains, to the chagrin of some commentators, at the core of the posthuman. In Chapter Six, rather than seeking the obsolescence or abolition of the human, I argue that the human remains an essential starting point from which to build an additional version of the posthuman, presented in this thesis as an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 158 Nevertheless, the promise (or threat) of participatory evolution is that future generations may see a degree of transformation of the human biological species. The appeal is that it is the human who chooses what the future shape of the human might be. Believers in posthumanism are not so much saying, ‘we are what our genes say we are’ but ‘we are what we want to be’, and, ‘thanks to technology, there are no limits to what we can be’. (Terranova [1996] 2000, p. 275) In nature, evolution is subject to forces over which participants have little control. The lack of control was initially addressed with an understanding, acceptance, and appropriation of evolutionary mechanisms such as inheritance and artificial selection. Eugenic histories (see Chapter Two) show the extent to which prevailing social forces can exert influence over such evolutionary mechanisms. It follows then that contemporary appropriations of evolutionary mechanisms will also be influenced by prevailing social and cultural forces. And with the proliferation of technologies and techniques that interact with and exert influence within social realms (see Chapter Four), one can expect to see the technological attributes of human- technology symbiosis increasing its influence on future evolutionary growth. Observations on the likely impact of technology on future evolution has lead some commentators (see Minsky, 1988; Moravec, 1988, 1989; Kelly, 1994) to believe that the technological elements will eventually supersede the human component, with some questioning the necessity for biological component to continue at all. Arthur C. Clarke, for example, asks “can the synthesis of men and machine ever be stable, or will the purely organic component become such a hindrance that it has to be discarded?” (1973, p. 212). It must be restated that technology is never completely beyond the influence of other social and cultural forces, and again, I would state that human-technology ‘synthesis’ is in fact ‘symbiosis’, and the necessity of human centrality can be addressed through the rhetorical question “what does technology want?”

Nevertheless, for the human, the cyborg suggests a transition from a relatively stable biological state that has existed for hundreds of thousands of years, a transition from a singular, fixed, and mostly homogenous species to a genus that encompasses hybrid forms that mix human and non-human biological, technological, and socio-cultural components into a multiple and fluid mode of being. Yet it is important to recognise that none of the highly technologised elements that constitute the cyborg or the restorative, normalising, reconfiguring, enhancing, or representational effects these attributes produce can be passed through the biological process of sexual reproduction. The immediate temptation for strict evolutionists, then, is to state that these enhancements and refinements cannot be strictly classified as evolutionary. I believe, however, this is a misrepresentation of the same mechanisms of evolution such positions seek to protect. One must not assume that a continued human evolution necessarily means the end of the species Homo sapiens and the beginning of a new Homo genus. Biological theories of the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 159 late twentieth century have shown us that evolution moves towards a state of greater complexity (see Chapter Three). This suggests that any continued human evolution should not necessarily be seen as a divergence, but rather, as a continuum that branches from a singular species into multiple species. David Hakken (1999) succinctly captures this idea when he writes: [T]he idea that the cyborg constitutes a ‘revolution’ in terms of the evolution of the human species treats as a dichotomy – human vs. cyborg, nature vs. technology, biological vs. artificial, born vs. made – that which is a continuum. (p. 71-72)

In the figure of the cyborg, the structures and arrangements of human-technology symbiosis evolve into and occupy a range of new ‘environmental’ (social, cultural, economic, political, natural, and technological) niches. Prior to colonisation of these niches, an evolutionary history can be mapped for that niche and for the organisms and relationships that have adapted to it. From this we can draw a ‘post-colonisation’ understanding of the patterns of differentiations (such as localised environmental conditions, prevailing and competing ideologies, access to available resources, cultural and social traditions, and economic and political situations) alongside the projected or predicted wants, needs, and desires of the evolving organism/entity and/or environment, thus predicting the future evolutionary trajectory of both organism/entity and environment. In the midst of such ongoing complexity it becomes apparent that any biological or sociological singularity can no longer anchor the human subject and multiplicity and hybridity of self, society, and culture are likely to shape human futures, aided and directed by equally fragmented technologies. Yet contrary to voices such as Arthur and Marilouise Kroker (1987), a multiplex society of multiple selves does not equate to a society composed of superfluous, disposable, changeable, interchangeable, plastic, fragmented schizophrenics. Rather, cyborgs promote a diverse and polyvalent society able to accommodate a range of complex technological, biological, and sociological organisms that (much like the cyborg that is itself composed of multiple systems) is able to function as a fragmented but unified whole, and as I discussed in Chapter Three, contemporary evolution theory suggests such complex ecological systems are continuously strengthened through their broad diversity.

To accommodate such an array of cyborg figures and potentialities, Charles Sheffield proposes a method for positioning various cyborgs within a ‘complex plane of organisms’ (2000, p. 549). In his system, the biological species is retained as the real coordinate axis, with a machine-line assigned to an imaginary coordinate axis. Any point within this plane, he argues, represents some combination of organic and inorganic organised systems or an instance of the cyborg (Sheffield, 2000, p. 549). Stretching from the organic to the machine, this plane would accommodate many of the cyborg images that have become familiar to our society since Clynes and Kline hypothesised the augmented human-cyborg, and it would include the constructs of

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 160 prosthetics, implants, life-supporting machines, and exoskeletons. In other words, Sheffield’s plane represents those cyborgs that are an amalgamation of manufactured ‘hard’ mechanical technology and natural organisms.

I suggest that this plane can be extended by the addition of two other coordinate axes in order to accommodate a growing body of cyborg figures not accounted for in Sheffield’s system. Functioning as metaphor or model, the first coordinate axis extends the biological line, stretching from its ‘original’ position to the thoroughly reorganised biological species. It would include the biological human who has been reconfigured through pharmacological or therapeutic technologies and techniques. It would also include (real and imaginary) organic hybrids such as documented symbiotic-species and unintentional or purposefully interbred species like domesticated cattle, dogs, pigeons, and so forth. It would also include transgenic species, such as tomatoes infused with fish genes, human recipients of animal xenografts, and those somehow ‘altered’ through genetic screening, therapy or engineering. This plane would represent the ‘soft’, mostly organic cyborgs that are altered or mutated through technologies and techniques with relatively little or no ‘mutilation’. The second coordinate axis, again functioning as metaphor or model, stretches from the same starting position along a coordinate of codified information. It would include linguistic representations, semiotic structures, and other abstract significations of organic and inorganic entities, and would accommodate the potential to manipulate and alter these representations into new structural entities. It would position as cyborgs all manner of abstract and codified representations of digitised personal information, encompassing the generation, manipulation, transference, and storage of computational- information. It would therefore include the interfaces at which these modes of representation are enunciated and interacted with, including computational software, avatars, screen projections, databases, and so forth. This plane would represent the various ‘virtual’ structures and modes of cybernetic identities as they are formed and subjectified through technological and technical modes of investigation. This is the plane upon which I locate the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis, and I argue that in acknowledging this plane as a coordinate structure upon which cyborg figures can be located provides a new theoretical arrangement for further cyborg discussion beyond those presented in this thesis.

The risk of presenting and locating cyborgs along such imaginary coordinates is that it may continue to encourage readers to nominate acceptable ‘start’ and ‘end’ coordinates for the cyborg, thus enticing a range of power-based decisions and assumptions around notions already susceptible to bias such as ‘natural’, ‘normal’, ‘authentic’, and ‘artificial’. Nevertheless, a three- pronged plane of ‘cyborg signification’ such as this would continue to encourage the formation of new coordinate points along and between polar coordinates, with new real and/or discursive representational instances of the cyborg emerging at each node. And regardless of the relations

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 161 and agencies that interact, the creation of each new ‘cyborg’ node within this system would in turn become a point of reference for further interaction between other coordinate entities. This provides an opportunity in which (at the very least, hypothetically) new autopoietic or ‘self-made’ cyborg entities are able to emerge, and is an acknowledgement of Donna Haraway’s observation that cyborgs are not necessarily fixed entities, but may in fact be disembodied, abstract beings. Cyborgs do not stay still. Already in the few decades that they have existed, they have mutated, in fact and fiction, into second-order entities like genomic and electronic databases and the other denizens of the zone called cyber space. (Haraway, 1995, p. xix)

In the following Chapter Six I explore the autopoietic emergence of Artificial Intelligence entities in the form of agents or ‘bots’, presenting a case in which these agents – as discrete software packets with representational rules and logical structures – are able to function as beings subject to their own agency, interacting with themselves, with other agents, and the with relation power of other operative agencies (both human and non-human). In doing so, I show how these cybernetic subjects are able to create and navigate positions within existing systems and rearrange themselves or their situational systems as necessary. Such entities, I argue, can only extend the levels of complexity that exists between the world of objects and the fluid world of codified representations.

Contemporary evolution theory, particularly the discourse of autopoiesis, suggests evolution occurs simultaneously with the creation of new vectors and nodes within existing systems and ecologies. In the following section I draw on Haraway’s 1985 essay ‘A cyborg manifesto’ to highlight the mechanisms through which cyborg evolution would, according to the definition provided by contemporary evolution theory, continue. Haraway’s essay effectively liberates the cyborg by promoting a cyborg politics able to suture together the immense array of social fragmentations into functional multiplex systems. The act of suturing, Haraway shows, not only melds two system-objects together but also returns them as a new object within the existing system.

Haraway’s hybrid creature and hybrid discourse The cyborg that Clynes and Kline present takes the form of the superhuman. A product of a militaristic agenda, it is an organism in which biological and psychological components are networked and morphed with a technology that is amenable to the goal of the cyborg designers – to create a subject of pure communication and rational control. The 1960s cyborg attempted to

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 162 supersede ‘natural’ human processes – seen as poorly defined and understood; obdurate and vital; messy; cumbersome, time-consuming and unnecessarily laborious; hard to control under mitigating circumstances; susceptible to malfunction and breakdown; and entropic – with specialist (researched, designed, and built) communications and control technologies in order to produce the best human possible. Engineered, precise, exact, measurable, quantifiable, predictable, upgradeable, and interchangeable and fixable, cyborg technologies and technological processes promised a refined, enhanced, augmented, amplified, extended and reconfigured agent: a ‘better-than-normal’ über-man. Indeed, the image of the superhero presented by Klaus Theweleit (1987; 1989) is quite appropriate for this early version of the cyborg: The most urgent task of the man of steel is to pursue, to dam in, and to subdue any force that threatens to transform him back into the horribly disorganised jumble of flesh, hair, skin, bones, intestines, and feelings that calls itself human — the human being of old. (1987, p. 160)

Compared to the human, the militarised version of the cyborg (the astronaut/cosmonaut or high- tech soldier) is portrayed as stronger and faster, less susceptible to injury and pain, self- maintainable and self-repairable, invulnerable and impenetrable, permanent. It is a human- machine that has, through rigorous psychological and physiological tempering, achieved an impenetrable armoured physique, a predominantly masculine being of brute force that inherits its structure from the militarised body of soldiers. Bruce Grenville (2001) argues that this early form of the cyborg remains incapable of escaping its militaristic origins. Adaptability, intelligent application of information, and selective physical augmentation – these were the new measures of a cyborg, and yet they were virtually invisible within the broader cultural representations that appeared in the post-war period. Instead, the popular image of the heroic human machine largely remained modelled on the hardened [Friekorps] soldier – a superhuman, who in everyday life could pass for an average citizen, but when needed could summon up an enhanced strength and a wide range of superpowers. (p. 29)

Haraway’s essay frees the cyborg from its patriarchal and militaristic origin by showing the cyborg to be a hybrid entity with no history, no origin, and no gender. It is a creature, Haraway shows, that crosses and blurs traditional and new borders and boundaries, both metaphorical and material, with impunity. It is faithful to no ‘one’ essential holism, but amenable to a multitude of new social, technological and political categories and agendas. And it is, she argues, a creature born of a blurring between science and fiction, old and new, machine and organism,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 163 natural and artificial, mind and body, self-development and external design, physical and non- physical, material and immaterial. In no small way, Haraway’s theory breaks down the dichotomies on which previous discourses of biology and technology have been built, and she shows the cyborg to be a hybrid entity, partially located but not completely contained within either discourse.

Haraway’s ‘manifesto’ was, interestingly, written at a time when the personal computer was still an infant technology and internet services were limited mainly to military and academic institutions. Specialised computational technologies were by no means a personalised and domesticated everyday reality. Indeed, most technological innovation remained heavily dependent on the particular Cold War focus of military goals. In 1985, when Haraway’s manifesto was published, United States military spending was at record highs: Nation Defence Outlay was $US273.4 billion – 27.6% of the $US990.5 billion Federal Outlay or 6.2% of GDP (including then United States President Regan’s proposed $US85 billion Star Wars Defence System) (Kosiak, 2002, pp. 39-48). It was also published at a time when, within the humanities, a range of poststructuralist, postmodernist, and feminist discourse and theory had set about dismantling and displacing traditional or modernist ‘grand theories’ based on scientific, technological, economic rationalism, and empirical supremacy. And in light of a new found emphasis upon connectionism, networked systems, chaos theory, and nondeterministic ideals within technology and science, a range of new socio-cultural discourses were exploring new ways and means of addressing growing concerns around population growth, toxic pollutions and nuclear contamination, depleting global energy resources and burgeoning energy demands, environmental degradation, and the availability of natural resources. Produced from within such a body of discourse Haraway’s manifesto, as she openly states, is written for and about ‘socialist-feminism’ rather than for and about ‘hard technology’. And it is through or because of her essay that the command-control-communication-intelligence technologies and techniques that had developed within military settings begin to spill out of defence force bases, mechanised and militarised figures and specialised rhetoric, and into the everydayness of everyday life.

Haraway does not dispute that cyborgs and cyborg politics have historically been linked to ‘patriarchal mythologies’ such as the exploitation and domination of nature by technology; militaristic technology and science driven by ‘old World’ and Cold War biases; and capitalism oriented towards the acquisition and accumulation of property and the division of labour. However, Haraway states strongly that cyborg politics need not be a singularly focused masculine enterprise. There is much room, she argues, for technology and technique within progressive politics. In this manner, Haraway’s essay is also a response to ‘second-wave’ feminism, addressing in particular those movements which attempt to resist or reject all things technological or scientific and return women to an ‘Edenic’ natural ‘starting point’ of gender

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 164 identity. In the peculiar hybrid space and politics of cyborg discourse, Haraway argues, is a distinctive new starting point: one that is outside of history, gender, and technology and is faithful to both feminism and materialism. To this end, Haraway writes of ‘border crossing’, the blurring of the boundaries that exist between animal and human, human and machine, physical and non- physical (virtual or hyper-real) ([1985] 1991, p. 152). While the boundaries for each of these three categories has been thoroughly breached since antiquity (by, for example, animal husbandry; prosthetics and labour practices; and mythological, philosophical, and religious practices), the cyborg constitutes a new, technocultural underpinning of border relations. Haraway argues that the boundary between human and animal has been further breached by technocultural elements such as evolutionary theory, biology, ecology, zoology, medical experimentation and laboratory testing, animal transplants, biotechnology, genetics, animal psychology, and cross-species viruses. The boundaries have also collapsed through animal ethics, liberating or incarcerating farming practices, the relationship between humans and domestic animals, animal tourism and subjectified animal representations, animal psychology, and an acceptance and understanding of human-animal affinity. The boundary between organism and machine has been thoroughly breached by machines that, historically, were simply unanimated tools, and not the “self-moving, self-designing, and autonomous” (Haraway, [1985] 1991, p. 152), goal oriented, feedback driven, sensory receptive, responsive, adaptive, learning, contextualised, animated machines of today that, argues Haraway, make "ambiguous the difference between the natural and the artificial” (Haraway, [1985] 1991, p. 152). And the boundary between physical and non-physical realms has been breached by mediated imagery and simulation, and the growth of digitised information as the dominate source of representation. Haraway’s manifesto suggests that whenever or wherever these boundaries have been breached, broken or blurred by technocultural arrangements there is a cyborg.

Like other such historical figures that exhibit multiplicity, hybridisation, cross-fertilisation, or interdisciplinary effort, the cyborg is an idea that is relatively easy to approve and accept. Hybrids work by promising some form of salvation through a combining of the best aspects of each instance. Sometimes, however, the result is an unacceptable and undecidable monster, a messy, transgressive, and abject half-breed in which both instances are hampered by the cumbersome weight or needs of the other. Jennifer González (1995) notes that the term ‘hybrid’ often “poses a special problem for those who worry about purity of form”, conjuring metaphors such as ‘artificial insemination’ ‘contamination’, ‘interbreeding’, and ‘miscegenation’ (pp. 270- 275). Yet as Anna Munster argues, the cyborg extends the idea of hybridity, and provides examiners and readers with an opportunity to “seek out partialities and produce changing alliances with the technical” (1999, p. 127). If there is something potentially exciting about hybridity, it is the sense in which it resists a capture into the mere grafting of two connecting points (the technological and the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 165 cultural, the natural and the artificial, women and technoculture) and encourages a sense of movement between them. (Munster, 1999, p. 127)

It is in this manner that Haraway’s cyborg can be seen as one that colonises the gaps, disjunctions, distortions, schisms, and breaks that occupy the conceptual or real spaces between two positions, ‘suturing’ them together into a new entity. Her cyborg is a ‘both’ and an ‘other’, an ‘and’ and an ‘also’, which comprehends and extends more than just the sum of its parts. The cyborg functions, in this manner, much like French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s spatial-based idea of ‘thirding’ (1991). For Lefebvre, dualities or binary oppositions – real and imagined/virtual, material and immaterial, subjective and objective, natural and artificial, conscious and unconscious, the imagined and the unimaginable, the abstract and the concrete, the conceptual and the lived – are disrupted and disordered into ‘an Other’. The theory of ‘thirding’ suggests that the cyborg is not a simple product of meshed binary opposites, but a “deconstruction and tentative reconstruction” of opposing forces that result in an alternative being that “is both similar and strikingly different” (Soja, 1996, p. 61). And in suturing together and colonising any remaining space between binary instances, the cyborg eliminates any remaining possibility of a categorically stable and essentialist identity in that it is re-established as a linguistic or discursive entity that continuously disrupts these dichotomies.

All cybernetic relationships hinge on the tense, ambiguous, and often contradictory relationships that exist at any such interface, and if any element in the system is highlighted or privileged in a cybernetic system, the system will adjust and respond accordingly. In this manner, the dualities and binary opposites that compose the cyborg function as metaphor or mechanism that constantly defines and refines one another. The cyborg incorporates the ‘old’ just as successfully as the ‘new’, but only in the form of a new hybrid entity. In her analysis of the cybernetic structure of the cyborg, Haraway composes a two column chart, presenting on the left the "comfortable old hierarchical dominations" all have come to know, and on the right the "scary new networks" that constitute what she calls the "informatics of domination" ([1985] 1991, p. 161). These include

Representation Simulation

Organism Biotic Component

Depth, integrity Surface, boundary

Physiology Communications engineering

Perfection Optimisation

Eugenics Population Control

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 166 Organic division of labour Ergonomics/cybernetics of labour

Reproduction Replication

Racial ‘Chain-of-Being’ Neo-imperialism, United Nations humanism

Labour Robotics

Mind Artificial Intelligence

Second World War Star Wars

White Capitalist Patriarchy Informatics of Domination

Haraway continues her taxonomy, suggesting that "the objects on the right-hand side cannot be coded as 'natural', a realisation that subverts naturalistic coding for the left-hand side as well" ([1985] 1991, p. 162). Haraway shows that the boundaries that define ‘old’ and ‘new’ political categories no longer hold, suggesting that the cyborg is built through coalitions of affinity or communities of interest; networks in which any essentialist identity is a socially constructed category rather than an essential truth. Following Kristeva, Haraway argues that such discursive categories (including gender, women, youth, the left, and conservative) have never simply existed in nature, but are made by specific discourses and discursive techniques. There is nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as 'being' female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. ([1985] 1991, p. 155) And the discourses and discursive techniques in which these categories are constructed have been thoroughly recontextualised by highly specialised and specified disciplines such as molecular genetics, location specific ecology, evolutionary psychology, virology and immunobiology, and complexity theories. Thus, Haraway shows that the traditional essential components that are presented in the left hand column must be broken down and reproduced through the same logic that constructs the cybernetic components of the right hand column. Organisms and biotic components are both subject to cybernetic “terms of design, boundary constraints, rates of flows, systems logics, costs of lowering constraints”. The cyborg, she argues, operates by transgressing ‘old’ and ‘new’ regimes of signification and other such dichotomous realms, and in doing so highlights and disrupts both by effectively merging them into one. Encompassing both old and new realms of signification the cyborg thus encourages a fluid movement between its components. It becomes, in effect, an interface, or a vector through which two systems overlap: two systems that do not ‘naturally’ occur as one, but are together

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 167 organised in such a way as to function as a singular unit, albeit a unit that is fluid, un-fixed, and continuously emerging. In feminist cyborg discourse, emergence replaces teleology, distributed cognition replaces autonomous will, embodiment replaces a body seen as a support system for the mind, and a dynamic partnership between humans and nonhumans (including intelligent machines) replaces the liberal humanist subject’s manifest destiny to dominate and control nature. Of course, this is not necessarily what cyborgs will be about – only what cyborgs can mean, given that cyborg argument is still somewhat fluid and new visions and worlds are possible. (Kull, 2002, p. 285-286)

For Haraway, the informatics of domination highlights a situation in which the entire world has been translated into a problem of coding: No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language. ([1985] 1991, p. 163) Like Foucault, Haraway insists that identity construction remains grounded in discourse and technique, however, in addition she acknowledges the cybernetic logic that has appropriated modern representations of language and technique: In communications sciences, the translation of the world into a problem in coding can be illustrated by looking at cybernetic (feedback-controlled) systems theories applied to telephone technology, computer design, weapons deployment, or data base construction and maintenance. In each case, solution to the key questions rests on a theory of language and control; the key operation is determining the rates, directions, and probabilities of flow of a quantity called information. ([1985] 1991, p. 164) Cybernetic concepts, structures and modes such as codified information, representation, disembodiment, fragmentation, decentralisation, and dispersion, network relations, systems, access, control, regulation, and interaction continue to ‘make’ or ‘represent’ posthuman identities with a level of integrity similar to that of the troublesome and familiar ‘old’ hierarchies. Yet in recognising and positioning this control under the rubric of an ‘informatics of domination’ Haraway is able to conceive a world “about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints” ([1985] 1991, p. 154). In this manner Haraway’s cyborg is an emancipating and celebratory figure, capable of accepting and/or rejecting the best and/or worst of each dichotomous element. Her cyborg figure amalgamates essential and material binaries into new ideological (real or figurative) entities, erecting a hybrid position that accepts

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 168 neither the wholesale adoption nor the complete rejection of binaries, but posses the capacity to understand both perspectives at once. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters. Cyborg unities are monstrous and illegitimate; in our present political circumstances, we could hardly hope for more potent myths for resistance and recoupling. ([1985] 1991, p. 154) And whether or not, or to what extent ‘present political circumstances’ have changed in the twenty years since Haraway published her manifesto, the acceptance that binary distinctions are co-determinate rather than discrete has become a highly laudable tool for all manner of political discourse. Like the cyborg itself, cyborg discourse is able to suture together binary positions and stand as a singular unit. Thus, it creates a space that may not (contrary to those who wish to see the cyborg as a utopian figure) always be liberating, politically subversive, inevitable, progressive, and emancipating. In other words, those who recognise that every utterance acknowledges (or creates) a binary opposite also understand the potential to manipulate one binary position in order to entice a cybernetic response from or for the corresponding position. This is exemplified, I believe, in the somewhat triumphant rise of neo-conservative politics in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first century and the tentative arrangements that have emerged between conservative politics and environmentalists, unionists, refugee advocates, women’s rights campaigners, and pro-educationists. Many of these arrangements exist only in the ongoing discursive interactions between otherwise binary positions, and define succinctly the cyborg’s fluid nature along with its inability to be locked into any one position. As an example, war (seen by Haraway as a masculinist orgy) and elements thereof are sold and/or dissuaded under hybrid labels such as ‘enforced peace’, ‘freedom fighters’, ‘common cause’, ‘friendly fire’, ‘patriotism’, ‘military intelligence’, and ‘collateral damage’. I argue that such an understanding or appreciation of cyborg ‘suturing’ is tantamount to the ‘programmed’ approach to the posthuman I outlined in the Introduction to this thesis. This suggests that an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent programmed to accept or reject through applied decision making any particular binary position would do so initially at the discretion of the designer. I show below that, despite its informatic structure and computational location, the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis could, hypothetically, enact upon actors and agents in the real-world in a very real way, and I argue that this, in turn, highlights the need for ongoing discussion on the broader role and position this version of the posthuman has. Basing this discussion within an evolution framework would enable the posthuman to be positioned according to the dictates of the environment within which it is located, and to this end I restate the need for an evolution literacy through which such discussions may occur.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 169 In 1985, Haraway wrote of the need for socialist feminists to engage with rather than outright reject or appropriate technological discourses and economies. Haraway suggested that an ongoing engagement with technology and science would enable participants to challenge such establishments from within. What kind of constitutive role in the production of knowledge, imagination, and practice can new groups doing science have? How can these groups be allied with progressive social and political movements? What kind of political accountability can be constructed to the women together across the scientific-technical hierarchies separating us? Might there be ways of developing feminist science/technology politics in alliance with military- science facility conversion action groups? Many scientific and technical workers in Silicon Valley, the high-tech cowboys included, do not want to work on military science. Can these personal preferences and cultural tendencies be welded into progressive politics among this professional middle class in which women, including women of colour, are coming to be fairly numerous? ([1985] 1991, p. 169) Through these questions Haraway continues to suggest that affinity politics necessitates that participants may be positioned anywhere within the networks that constitute particular technological and scientific discourses and practices. For example, Haraway acknowledges that the informatics of domination that interact with new technologies of reproduction such as biogenetics and genetic screening, the associated techniques of law, social norms and ideological representations, reproduction ethics or bias, poverty, statehood, and citizenship have thoroughly blurred the meaning of parenthood in ways that may not always be liberating and emancipating for either mother or child ([1985] 1991, p. 163). Haraway shows that technology is still a major site for demarcated politics and while it may not be as marked as it has been historically, gender politics continue to be subsumed and normalised through a whole range of new technologies and techniques. In these broader social and political realms, commercial and capitalist enterprise has joined, and in many instances subsumed, military might in the research and development of new technological products and techniques. Indeed, Haraway's list of elements in the modern communications simulacra – the sites at which cyborg politics are enacted – includes "modern states, multinational corporations, military power, welfare state apparatuses, satellite systems, political processes, fabrication of our imaginations, labour-control systems, medical constructions of our bodies, commercial pornography, the international division of labour, and religious evangelism" ([1985] 1991, p. 165). Thus the subtle appropriation of technological discourse and practice through entrepreneurial coercion and persuasion means that any ”battle-of-the-sexes” is no longer waged around the obvious technologies of the ‘old hierarchies’ such as the cruise missile, the lawnmower, the washing machine, or the nursery, but is practised through the informatics of domination that penetrate everyday technological settings, including examples such as the advertisement of gendered breakfast cereals (for example,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 170 Special K™ and Nutri-grain™), the marketing of accessorised, glamorised technological fashion accessories (such as the Philips 655 mobile phone with compact mirror), the structure and dialogue of computer games, and so forth. Siding with technology, Haraway argues for “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction” ([1985] 1991, p. 150), suggesting that cyborg politics allows for the appropriation of many forms of military and commercial technologies and techniques by individuals and communities, and that such ‘sideways’ development enables all participants to communicate their own ideologies and determine their own levels of access.

Nonetheless, at an operational level the ability to manipulate the informatic structure of boundaries, and to destabilise, disrupt, or equalise systems according to a particular set of wants or needs remains in all cyborg relations. In the following section I discuss how command- control-communication-intelligence (C3I) cybernetics can be reformulated in order to manipulate bodies within the object world. In Haraway’s essay, such manipulation is outlined in terms of social and feminist informatics – cultural and linguistic signifying terms suitable for the appropriation and recontextualisation of identity politics. Here, I return to the earlier logic of C3I cybernetics to show how functions of enactment and control may be just as easily appropriated by agents wishing to destabilise, disrupt, or equalise the binary relations that so often exist between informatic representations and real-world object systems.

Command-control-communication-intelligence and posthuman agency The military origin of cyborg technology, and the influence of C3I cybernetics has been documented in many accounts of the early astronaut and cyborg-soldier cyborg figures (see for example, Clynes and Kline, [1960] 1995; Driscoll, [1963] 1995; Halacey, 1965; Johnsen & Corliss, [1967] 1995; Gray, 1989; Seltzer, 1992; Bukatan, 1993). Militaristic influences and desires can also be seen in instances of contemporary cyborg development such as “pilots wired into ‘intelligent cockpits’, artillery gunners connected to computerised guidance systems, and infantry soldiers whose ground attacks are instantaneously broadcast on global television” (Hayles, 1999a, p. 119). Yet the influence of C3I cybernetics is by no means limited to military endeavours. The logic of C3I can also be seen in all manner of social, political, and economic practices and infrastructures, and attention must be directed towards questions that are raised around notions of autonomy, agency, and self-control in all such cyborg systems. For example, the familiar figure of the cyborg recipient of a prosthetic device outlines assumptions that exist around ‘normalising’ cyborg technologies: who is in control of cyborg technologies, and where is that control located? The question is further complicated when we ask what happens when other people or technologies are able to manipulate our bodies and our selves beyond our control? In

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 171 many regards, such manipulation already happens, and is welcomed for the relief and comfort it can provide. Nevertheless, a number of new media technologies promise/threaten to take this control another step further. This is particularly evident in those cybernetic technologies and techniques that are seen to challenge the body or bodily organs as the seat of human identity.

For example, the brain – long considered the centre of human thought, identity, autonomy and agency – has not escaped consideration by cybernetics (or its progeny, Artificial Intelligence). Measured against a ‘standard’ model of human brain activity divergence, imbalance, or deviance has been routinely subjected to ‘normalising’, ‘restorative’, and ‘enabling’ technologies and techniques in, for example, the form of reparative surgery, the manipulation of the brain function at a cellular level through pharmaceutical products, and neural implants. Most of these technologies are endorsed as offering a level of therapeutic aid, and are seen as enabling the brain to meet the criteria of ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ human brain activity. Cochlea implants, for example, use platinum or glass electrodes to pick up sound waves and relay them directly to the auditory nerve. The same technology has been used, with less success, to relay light directly to the visual cortex, with the hope that one day artificial eyes may provide rudimentary vision to the visually impaired. Other bioelectronics implants have been able to bypass damaged neural links between limbs and brains, allowing paralysis subjects to regain lost functions or control mechanical devices in prosthetic limbs. Such technologies are critiqued and accepted on the grounds that they enhance the quality of life for their recipients, and they are easy to accept because the recipient retains (indeed regains) autonomy, agency, and control of the object world.

In 2005 neurologists at Emory University School of Medicine in the United States developed a brain implant for patients suffering from severe depression who have not responded to other treatments. The implant acts as a ‘pacemaker’ for the brain, using electrodes to switch off or interrupt electrical circuits linked to depression. A similar technology uses electric impulses in order to disrupt the abnormal electrical activity that causes tremors in sufferers of Parkinson’s disease (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC News Online, 2005, ¶ 1-2). In these examples we see technology exerting a controlling influence through a relatively simple cybernetic machine. Yet because this technology also exhibits life-enhancing and normalising qualities and cannot be seen to wield any obviously detrimental effects it would most likely be generally (although perhaps cautiously) accepted, as again, autonomy, agency and control of the object world are not lost.

However, in another example, researchers at the State University of New York developed implants that enabled them to steer by means of remote control a laboratory rat, stimulating the part of the rat’s brain that would usually respond to sensory information received telaesthetically

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 172 through its whiskers (Boyce, 2002, p. 56). The potential for ‘control’ – deeply inherent in cybernetics – can be seen here to challenge the authority and agency of the brain as seat of human autonomy, and give control over the subject to a remote operator, be that a human or a non-human machine. These control-devices inherit the legacy of earlier psychological experiments with electrode devices. In the 1960s and 1970s a few psychiatrists made crude attempts to alter people's behaviour with brain electrodes, in one case trying to ‘cure’ a man's homosexuality by stimulating his pleasure centre while he watched heterosexual porn. (Boyce, 2002, p. 57) They are also the legacy of telechirics and other remotely-operated cybernetic devices. In such operations a controller transmits a command to a remotely located actuator or operating device that carries out the activities and manipulations according to the information received. Usually, such systems are arranged around a machine actuator and a human controller assisted by an array of sensors that, if necessary, permit the operator to see, hear, or otherwise sense what the actuator is doing, providing the feedback necessary for the controller to achieve their objectives (Johnsen and Corliss, [1967] 1995, pp. 84-88). Such systems are typically designed to allow humans to carry out work in hostile environments or to manipulate objects that require greater strength, speed, or dexterity. There is, however, a possibility inherent to the structure of such arrangements for a computational, machinal, or technical operation or control of a human subject. Automated factories, for example, are often controlled by computer programs that assign and control the work schedules of individual human workers, and while they may not directly manipulate the movements of the human, operative elements such as production quotas and set-speed machines, delimit human agency within such cybernetic systems. Here, I use the example of ‘onscreen’ and ‘enacted’ computer games to discuss further the possibility in which information is capable of manipulating human actions and responses. Using this example, I argue that the cybernetic manipulation of real-world agents and actors obviously has implications for labour politics beyond the entertainment world of gaming, and that the structure of such a formulation highlights politically based outcomes in the design, programming, and operation of other C3I ventures.

Traditional onscreen computer games are based on a fairly direct relationship between ‘vision and mastery’ – what is seen by the player on the screen is there to be challenged, controlled, destroyed, or avoided. The focus of player identification within these games is usually upon an avatar, or game sprite (be that a rectangular white ‘racket’, pixelated tank or cartoonish monkey), which the player is called upon to employ as a surrogate in their passage through the screen environment (see Turkle, 1984). The player is called upon to identify with this sprite as ‘extension-of-self’, and is, in this manner, evoking and enacting tele-operative cybernetics to direct gameplay. The player responds to changes in the gameplay by promoting changes in

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 173 sprite movement as objects are challenged, controlled, destroyed, or avoided accordingly, and the computer is subsequently called to respond by reformulating appropriate changes in the game interface. The computational response is usually to introduce more challenging elements into the system of play as the game becomes faster, more demanding, or more aggressive. In this manner any change in actual gameplay is instigated in response to human input, while the spectacular dimension of gameplay is concentrated in onscreen action, and a great degree of control/power remains in the hands of the human-user. While the object of gameplay for the human is to improve their own play standards against the machine, the human has two controlling options available in that they can either ‘give-up’ or abandon the game, or continue to play until either the player or the game is finally ‘clocked,’ ‘beaten,’ or ‘mastered’.

Thus, in ‘player-’ or ‘play-’ centred games, the human prescribes and dictates any future output of the game, while player representation and embodiment remains definitely located within the aspatial realm of the game interface. However, this is not the case in Bemani™ games such as Beatmania (1997) and Dance Dance Revolution (1998), Percussion Freaks (1999), Keyboard Freaks (1999), and Guitar Freaks (1999). In these games, the player’s body rather than the screen become the locus of spectacle and the cybernetic loop of gameplay is repositioned to the point where embodied movement, as player response, becomes intricately involved with the computationally derived output to a much higher level than other screen-based games. In these games, gameplay spills out of the machines and into the surrounding space enticing spectacular and externalised player movement. There is usually no avatar in these games for the player to identify and demarcate game progress, which is instead registered in terms of scores and the occasional shouts of encouragement – “keep going,” “now you’re dancing,” “almost there” – from disembodied in-game voices. Likewise, the screen – the space of action usually associated with video games ‘pleasure’ – here merely provides a space for the player to read symbolised, or perhaps more accurately, codified instructions. The player is likely to be presented with a string of output symbols, such as ← ↑↑↑→↓→↓→↑↑, which are internalised, interpreted (in this instance as left-footpad, up-footpad, up-footpad, up-footpad, right-footpad, down-footpad, right-footpad, down-footpad, right-footpad, up-footpad, up-footpad), and enacted in an embodied and performative manner. The computer’s CPU has, it seems, made the human player a ‘bridge’ by which ‘it’ may leave the aspatial realm of the game to enter the space of the arcade or the street. This raises questions as to what, whom, and where is the telechimeric avatar here?

Beyond assisting or being incorporated in the self-regulation of the entire system, the human body here is performing according to algorithmic requirements. However, before enticing the reader to succumb to dystopian narratives about the reduction of human autonomy within cybernetic systems, I would again raise the question I asked in Chapter Four regarding the anthropomorphising of technological agents: what does that agent want? Bemani™ games offer

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 174 many playful opportunities for human social and cultural self-expression. Yet if output- performance is instead measured in terms of quotas, performance speed, effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity common to labour-based practises the enactment of algorithmic requirements is more problematic, and there are obviously deeper political implications when considering how other computationally derived, or formulated, algorithms may be enacted by remotely controlled human or cyborg agents, particularly in terms of autonomy, action, and behaviour.

Typically, within technological and cybercultural discourses, questions of autonomy, agency, and intelligence have been directed towards disembodied avatars and agents. The only evidence we have of another being's intelligence is the motion, motor behaviour, and symbolic behaviour of that being. By directly controlling the motion and behaviour of an avatar, a human operator provides the intelligence in real time. Barring the expressive and kinematic inadequacies of avatar embodiment, the intelligence of human embodiment is perceived quickly. The challenge – best expressed by Turing, but evident in the work of previous designers of automata – is to have an agent that somehow possesses or creates the illusion of intelligence. (Biocca, 1997, ¶ 4)

In the following Chapter Six I continue this discussion by examining how certain computational algorithms interact with other computational algorithms and how this in turn creates a situation in which the manipulation of information by information may result in a direct manipulation of the object world. I argue that like all cyborgs, Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents or ‘bots’ are constructed, both socially and technically. And like every other cyborg citizen or object in the modern world, bots are amenable to reconfiguration, deconstruction, reconstruction, connection and reconnection, extension, enhancement, rerouting, networking, re-presentation, and representation. In this thesis I have argued that the discourse of modernism reflected a world in which every subject was capable of being ‘positioned’ through medical, legal, social, cultural, political, and economic technologies, techniques, and discourse. I have shown how evolution theory has contributed to and borrowed from these discourses in constructing its particular version of the world. The discourse of contemporary evolution, including the discourse of cybernetics and cyborg politics continue to show how such spatially- and temporally- based governance is no longer capable of being the sole distributor, regulator, and enforcer of boundary rules. In the terms I have outlined in this thesis, I argue that at every junction within social and technological discursive and material environments, cyborgs create and colonise new niches. In the face of increasingly fluid boundaries and complex ecological arrangements, I argue that all human and posthuman subjects must contend with new spaces of negotiation, particularly the spaces produced through cooperative networks of information sharing. In the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 175 following chapter I show how, as constructs of flexible rules, Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents have emerged as a new technological entity capable of suturing together gaps within the space of informatics and other codified abstract representations. I argue that it is through their ability to suture the human, information, and technology together that the reach of such agents will extend beyond the abstract space or the virtual world and into the object world of the biological human. I argue that this enables agents to be positioned as an extension of or a supplement to the human, and that this is in effect a new direction for the human. Agents are, in this way, posthuman.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 176 Chapter Six

Agent technology as the progeny of the informatic subject

Civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Alfred N. Whitehead (1911) An introduction to mathematics, p. 61

Here they are, the hidden and despised social masses who make up our morality. They knock at the door of sociology, requesting a place in the accounts of society as stubbornly as the human masses did the nineteenth century. What our ancestors, the founders of sociology, did a century ago to house masses in the fabric of social theory, we should do now to find a place in a new social theory for the nonhuman masses that beg us for understanding. Bruno Latour (1992) Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artefacts, p. 227

A new direction for posthuman discourse In Clynes and Kline’s ‘Cyborgs and Space’ ([1960] 1995) the authors argued that the array of advanced technological support systems that trained astronauts for life in space, propelled them into space, sustained them during their time in space, and returned them safely to Earth contributed to an entirely “false and mediated experience” with little value to the ideal they held of a great human endeavour (p. 33); an exercise equivalent to “putting ‘spam in cans’ and shooting them into space” (Spiller, [1999] 2002, p. 306). In the forty-five years since its publication, much has changed in scientific, technological, and popular entertainment conceptualisations and representations of explorative deep-space astronautics. Extraterrestrial exploration is now conducted in absence of the ‘spam’, which routinely sends remotely controlled virtual representations of itself via the ‘can’ – robotic rovers, surveillance probes, and satellite drones (Swift, 2005, p. 108). Yet even in its absence, space exploration remains an entirely and distinctly ‘human’ endeavour, motivated by human formed research objectives, resource dependency, economic and market imperatives, colonisation hopes, and a faint and distant romanticism. However, none of this astronautic technology is a technology that runs of its

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 177 own accord. In Chapter Four I discussed the evolution process technology undertakes, suggesting that the enterprise of technological innovation and development is intricately associated with human socio-cultural and indeed biological evolution. In this regard, the evolution of the technologies and techniques I mention here suggests that it is a symbiotic ‘can- spam’ that is involved in space exploration. This symbiosis becomes a surrogate, and in many ways, a replacement or supplement for the biological human. In this regard, such technology can, therefore, be considered as posthuman.

In this chapter I discuss the deconstruction of the biological human and its subsequent reconstruction in an informational form. This is, indeed, another story of the deconstruction and reconstruction of the human that has been performed many times before, through economics, linguistics, discourse, psychology, dialogue, religion, existentialism, social theory, feminism, and technology. Throughout this thesis, this story is re-told through the perspective of evolution theory. I have argued that the biological human is itself a construct of evolutionary theories, and that as these evolutionary theories change in order to reflect and justify the prevailing social paradigm, the construct shape of the human undergoes a similar shift. I have argued that the current focus of evolutionary theory has shown the human to be a networked, embedded, informational being, and that this construct is indeed reflected and a reflection of our current social paradigm. Within the framework of contemporary evolution I tell this story of the posthuman, here presented as an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent.

There are, indeed, many stories concerning the shape and structure of the human. For much of its history, the human subject has been seen as a ‘given’: an essential, eternal, rational, thinking, conscious soul. It is Marx, argues Althusser, who shows the human subject is not the cause but the effect of an individual’s material conditions of existence. The fact that these conditions so radically differed, Marx showed, accounted for subjectivities constructed from seemingly incompatible histories, politics, and social relationships. In outlining his ideas concerning social formation, productive forces, relations of production, superstructure, ideologies, and economic determination, Marx showed that any definitive claim to humanity or human subjectivity could only be inferred as an ideology (Althusser, 1970, pp. 219-241). From this point in history, humanity and human subjectivity are understood to be the mere effect of forces that are always peripherally located, be they economic, linguistic, social, sexual, historical, racial, psychological, scientific in nature, or based on rationalist ideologies like truth, liberty, and progress. Through ongoing deconstruction of such representations during the past century, the human subject gave way to that of the posthuman. At present, posthumanism may appear variously as a dubious neologism, the latest slogan, or simply another image of man’s recurrent self-hate. Yet posthumanism may also hint at a potential in our culture, hint at a tendency struggling to become more than

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 178 a trend […] We need to understand that five hundred years of humanism may be coming to an end, as humanism transforms itself into something that we must helplessly call posthumanism. (Hassan, 1977, p. 832) Obviously, as with the human, there are many different discourses that shape and structure the posthuman. And, as with the human, there should indeed be many more stories. Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley argue that any attempt to quantify or reify the human denies to it the opportunity of further interpretation and reinterpretation (2003, p. 9). This should not be seen as a declaration of the human or the posthuman as a ‘limitless’, ‘unbounded’, ‘infinite’ or ‘eternal’ being, but as an ‘unfinished’ and ‘open’ one nevertheless. Halliwell and Mousley argue that stories of the posthuman become increasingly significant, as they concern the nascent future unfolding in the present, the destination of which remains unknown. The question for any account of the posthuman then, is at what starting point does the posthuman begin, and in which direction does it move?

The account I present in this thesis starts with the assertion that the ‘self’ of Modern times, the subject as the forger of the subject’s own destiny, or as a unit of action under the control and ownership of its own self has been thoroughly displaced through its relationship with the technological. In its place is a posthuman subject that is characterised in a way similar to the neo-individual of Baudrillard’s thought. This individual is, argues Christopher Horrocks, a discursive representation of technical performance, embodied consumer proclivity, and entrepreneurial aptitude and heroism (1999, p. 40). It is a subject that is the same as itself and only related to others through implied difference rather than radical otherness. And as Baudrillard suggests, this implied difference has been historically determined through discursive and informational constructs such as genetics, vital statistics, citizenship, user identities, locating devices, financial records, and consumption preferences (Horrocks, 1999, pp. 51-52). Much like the ‘identity’ that is sought through the digitised and informational projects of both the Human Genome Project and the earlier Visible Human Project – projects that ultimately attempt to ‘fix’ individuality at the moment of conception (Gilbert, 1997, p. 40) – the neo-individual or informatic posthuman acts as a ‘differend’ locked in a system where “there is no more soul, no more metaphor of the body” (Baudrillard, 1987, p. 19). In the human-technology symbiosis I have presented in this thesis, the metaphors of life, the human, and nature that were, I have argued, formed in conjunction with earlier evolution theories have been problematised and complicated in contemporary evolution theory. In this framework life is equated to informatic code, the human is equated to technological componentry, and nature is equated to networked systems.

This illustrates Halliwell and Mously’s statement that “the dangers of completing such genetic and neurological maps often appear to weigh heavier on the layman than the benefits, because

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 179 they project human life into an unknowable future in which technology is so sophisticated that no ordinary individual will be able to cognitively map it” (p. 161). Nevertheless, the general and relentless drive to render and represent the human subject as informatic construct persists in many social, cultural, economic, and scientific institutions. Perhaps this is, as Gilbert suggests, the legacy of enlightenment ideologies that represented the natural sciences, “like most of the academy,” as being hierarchically organised in a manner much like the great ‘Chain-of-Being’, a ‘natural’ progression from matter into rationality. Hence, argues Gilbert, the ‘theoretical end’ of science is usually considered as being much more important than the ‘practical end’ (1997, p. 45). Whereas the Great Chain originally represented the extension of rationality over matter throughout the Universe, it now extends merely across the University. Biology deals with dirty matter: blood, guts, menstrual fluid, semen, urine, lead mould, frogs, jellyfish, lions, tigers, and bears. Chemistry deals with purified and quantified matter: 20mg/ml NaCI, 4mM ATP. Physics deals with idealised matter (when it deals with matter at all): ideal gases, electron probability clouds, frictionless surfaces […] Finally, mathematics claims to have escaped matter altogether! (Gilbert, 1997, p. 46) In the terms of this thesis it is, therefore, totally unsurprising to see the human now thoroughly deconstructed and represented in state-of-the-art digital formats: Bayesian logic has delivered the ultimate form of the evolved human subject, a symbiotic componential construct of 1/0.

This is an idea that is central to Katherine Hayles’s critique of the posthuman, in which the human is represented as having been rendered as a disembodied informatic pattern that, in light of the plethora of more ‘robust’ technological strata available, no longer needs its biological body. This is an arrangement that, Hayles argues, is based on a continuation of the conceptualisation that sees information and materiality as distinct entities (1999a, p. 12). Nevertheless, this account of the human is one which is synonymous with both the computer and computational technologies. Sarah Kember (2003) argues that it is increasingly the Net that defines the evolutionary parameters of culture and identity, “partly in so far as it is regarded as an ecosystem for emergent artificial life-forms and as an entity or intelligent life-form in itself” (2003, p. 5). I argue that this statement is magnified when our conceptualisation of the Net extends beyond the computational network to embrace the informational archives and cognitive networks that, increasingly, join with and extend the scope of the Net. I argue that within this broader cognitive network the informatic posthuman can be read in a manner similar to Haraway’s reading of Foucault’s concept of biopower. That is, the informatic human is not confined to digitised representations of the biological or neural body. Rather, it is constituted of “all the diverse means, projects and devices” of modern representation including the practices of

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 180 administration, management, and surveillance of bodies that “discursively constitute, increase, and manage the forces of living organisms” (Haraway, 1997, p. 11).

Following the assortment of poststructuralist representations of the fractured and multifaceted self, I argue that the disparate forms of human-centred information could together represent a digitised representation of a ‘multiple’ self. While many of the constructs of interest to poststructuralist representations of the human (psychology, anthropology, social science, history, gender representations, colonialism, discourse) can by no means be effectively and accurately represented in digitised symbolic form, many other instances of human representation can. In this chapter I argue that such information could be collated to render a fairly accurate linguistic or symbolic construction of the human subject. Much like the narrative self Daniel Dennet (1991) discusses, the informatic self is “yet another abstraction, not a thing in the brain, but still a remarkably robust and almost tangible attractor of properties, the ‘owner of record’” (p. 418).

Extending this concept of the self as the ‘centre of narrative gravity’ to the use of intelligent agents, Slava Kozlov suggests that an advanced computational intelligence would be capable of recognising users’ multiple ‘I-positions’ and their patterning, and (through sensory perception) understand the physical and personal contexts that are currently associated with the user and respond accordingly. In order for this to occur, agents must be able to understand a wide range of user-focused contexts. If this can be achieved, agents would, in turn, herald the use of a technology able to provide, interpret, collate, and facilitate both human- and non-human centred information that is relevant and useful. For any such application to succeed, the computational intelligence used would, argues Kozlov need to recognise who is talking (or more generally interacting) with whom, in what mood, and even why they are talking at all. Ideally, it should be able to define a whole set of various I-positions in such contexts, as well as remember the typical ways they pattern in their occurrence and narrative form. Equipped with interconnected and personalised interfaces, Ambient Intelligence should be able to do this, and react appropriately to different personality modes, modifying its interfaces and functionalities as appropriate. (2003, p. 36).

In this chapter I argue that such a technology constitutes a ‘new direction’ in the story of the human, in that it is a posthuman that is by no means intended to replace or succeed the biological human, but one that extends the human through an act of discursive supplementation. I suggest that the rendering of the human as digital information is the immediate legacy of a contemporary evolution theory that through the use of metaphor, as I have demonstrated, both reflects and is a reflection of the organisation of contemporary society. In presenting the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 181 posthuman in this way, this discussion goes beyond the discourse of biology and evolution theory, and relocates the posthuman within the context of media communications theory and analysis.

In this thesis I have shown how the reciprocal use of metaphors establishes an accepted evolution theory within a given historical period. In doing so, I have demonstrated that the vectors at which ‘biological understandings’ and ‘social interpretations’ of evolution intersect produce a constitutive metanarrative that establishes and justifies the place of the human and non-human objects within an otherwise ‘unscripted’ world. In this discussion I have argued in favour of the development of a form of evolution literacy. This form of literacy extends our understanding of the symbiotic nature of human and technological evolution. In Chapter Four I suggest that the constant redefinition of the relationship between the human and technology/technique through continuous innovation leads to an ever greater symbiotic complexity, in that all technological innovations impact upon the socio-cultural environment in which they where realised to some extent and that such innovations subsequently create new contexts and niches that ultimately promote the continuation of human-technology symbiotic evolution. I have argued that these new ‘evolution’ arrangements follow the three dominant and major schools of thought that together constitute the larger body of contemporary evolution theory I outlined in Chapter Three as ‘environmentalism’, ‘evolutionary psychology’, and ‘genetics’. In doing so, I have shown that cybernetics, genetic behaviouralism, and abstract codification, in a process of reciprocal reformulation and redefinition, both produce and are products of contemporary evolution theories. In this chapter, I show how the development of the Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent or ‘bot’ adheres to contemporary definitions and understandings of human evolution, suggesting that these pieces of software can also be justified according to the terms and definitions of contemporary evolution, human-technology symbiosis, and the posthuman that I have presented in this thesis.

A technological construct, the informatic human Throughout this thesis I have argued that evolution metaphors have been employed contiguously throughout human history to explain and simultaneously justify the place of the individual and collective human in the world. I use the word ‘contiguous’ here purposefully because, as I have shown, many of the new metaphors that are produced through scientific endeavour and/or social progress merely ‘update’ rather than ‘replace’ previous orientational and experiental metaphors. Thus, it can be suggested that even in current representations of evolution the human remains, as always, an historically specific construction that emerges by the agency of contemporaneous configurations of nature, embodiment, technology, and culture.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 182 I argue that evidence of evolution theory contiguousness can be seen most obviously in the hierarchical portrayal of the human mind and the human body throughout the various paradigms of evolution theory. In antiquity, the ‘psyche’ or ‘soul’ of the human was conceived of as an impersonal and transcendent entity exempt, as such, from the limitations of the physical body (Figueroa-Sarriera, 1995, p. 128). In this version, an eternal and unchanging ‘essence’ of humankind emanated from a higher reality, and human mind and intelligence – being closer to the idea of the human – were hierarchically positioned above the ‘matter’ that constituted the human body. Later, following the pervasive philosophy of Descartes, the modern human was seen as a dualistic being: two separate substances – a body and a soul – that were mutually dependent upon one another. In Cartesian representations, the human brain, with its rational soul and self-knowledge retained a hierarchical dominance over the human body. The brain was rendered as a command centre, empowering the rest of the body to do its bidding by way of the central nervous system (Gilbert, 1997, pp. 36-37). I have demonstrated in this thesis how representations of the human are contemporaneously reflected in representations of nature and natural evolution, and I have shown that current representations of the human are similarly reflected in the accepted definitions of nature and natural evolution; particularly those based upon environmentalism, evolutionary psychology, and genetics. In this chapter I argue that the legacy of the mind-body split can be seen remnant in the current information-based paradigm, wherein the human body is seen as an information produced (thus, environmentalism), processed (thus, evolutionary psychology) and procured (thus, genetics) unit. In this worldview the structure of ideas about the world is not necessarily the same as the structure of their subject matter, resulting in, again, a representation of the human that privileges the mind over the body and highlights mental acumen over embodied and situated performance. For Katherine Hayles, the contemporary arrangement can only be interpreted as one that privileges information over materiality: This separation allows the construction of a hierarchy in which information is give the dominant position and materiality runs a distant second. As though we had learned nothing from Derrida about supplementarity, embodiment continues to be discussed as if it were a supplement to be purged from the dominant term of information, an accident of evolution we are now in a position to correct. (1999a, p. 12).

In current representations of the mind-body split many of the more dominant popular texts, such as those of Moravec (1988, 1989), Kelly (1994), and Kurzweil (1999), argue that the human ‘mind’ is no longer the self-referencing, autonomous, thinking seat of consciousness, but merely a highly complex information processing unit that runs on hardware supplied by the human brain. In this vision, the entire human body has evolved merely to nourish, protect, transport, and otherwise do the bidding of the brain. Other representations, such as that of Stelarc (1997) and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 183 Grey (1989, 1995), extend the Cartesian vision of the machine-body by arguing that the human body is itself a prosthesis and as such it has always been an artificial device amenable to replacement or repair through other extraneous forms of technological prosthetics, orthotics, pharmaceutics, and so forth. Advanced technologies, particularly those afforded by telecommunications and computational networks become, in this representation of the human, additional prostheses that are, ultimately, capable of extending the radius of action of the human organism (Figueroa-Sarriera, 1995, p. 131). In other words, through such representations the human ‘self’ becomes an information system that resides in a form of prosthetic embodiment. For Katherine Hayles, this is the theoretical arrangement that constitutes the posthuman: What is the posthuman? First, the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that begun before we were born. Fourth, and most importantly, by these and other means, the posthuman view configures human beings so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals. (1999a, p. 2-3)

Such a representation of the human, I argue, is in keeping with current evolution theories that similarly favour the cybernetic arrangement or patterning of information. In this chapter I argue that information (or informatics or informationalism) has emerged as the dominant metaphor of the current gestalt, and that, through the application of considered sympathetic evolution metaphors, those representations that seek to explain and justify the position of the human in the broader ‘natural’ environment continue to do so in light of information-based theories and ideas. The implications of such a construct run deep, and here I direct my attention towards the ability information has to reduce or distil all manner of systems to abstract codified representations. I argue that such structures are themselves metaphors, supplementary discourses that position and represent nature and the natural world, environments and ecosystems, embodied organisms, human consciousness and individuality, cognition, and communication as information patterns in cybernetic systems. And while the role of these metaphors mirrors the role of metaphor I outlined in Chapter Two, their function is further

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 184 complicated by the amenability of information-based structures to the principles of cybernetics, a science dedicated to the command, control and communication of information. In Chapter Five I discussed Donna Haraway’s concept of ‘informatics of domination’ showing that, for Haraway, the rendering of the world into the ‘common language’ of information robs objects, spaces, and bodies of their subjectivity and transfers control to cybernetic systems in which “the key operation is determining the rates, directions, and probabilities of flow” ([1985] 1991, pp. 163- 164). In other words, the reduction of the world to a form of information that is exposed to the rules and logic of cybernetics means that human embodiment, nature or natural systems, and technology can no longer be constituted or accepted as the most dominant realm of subjective power. Rather, information itself becomes the defining force that positions, constitutes, represents, sustains, empowers, and imprisons subjects. And it is by means of such information channels that the politics of fragmentation, decentralisation, dispersion, access, control, regulation, and interaction become increasingly manifest through the ‘decisions’ of cybernetic circuitry.

In this context, the information that constitutes the human subject is seen to have an ‘existence’ of its own. And like other forms of abstract information, such human-based or human-oriented information can also be reorganised, reformulated, and recontextualised according to the laws of the system in which it is currently being represented. This, in turn, can have very real effects upon the actual human subject for whom the information represents. That is to say, while many of the forms of human based information are in themselves immaterial, they are not without material and often embodied strata. Any malignant manipulation or misrepresentation of these forms of human information may alter the direction or flow of that information through a given system. And at the ‘embodied’ end of the human, the individual subject may find themselves similarly misdirected, yet often powerless to the overriding circuitry of the controlling system. Perhaps of even greater importance are the ramifications of information that is not represented, and as many instances of human informatic representation present only a partial or incomplete image of the subject, cybernetic decisions may be based on the meaning of information that may or may not be present. As I show below, such partial informatic representation leaves unseen or incomplete representations open to subjective interpretation. Indeed, as Carolyn Marvin argues, “information cannot be said to exist at all unless it has meaning, and meaning is established only in social relationships with cultural reference and value” (Marvin in Balsamo, 1993, p. 682), suggesting that the individual subject may find itself cybernetically arranged and processed regardless of its understanding or interpretation of its own information, as the interpretation of that information is conducted through processes prefigured or programmed in advance that may ultimately privilege one position or side of a binary (1/0) structure. In his discussion of the value of human informatics, Sol Yurick (1985) acknowledges the potential for imbalance that is inherent within any movement of ‘utility’ information. He writes that “this would merely be an

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 185 amusing game if people weren’t being forced to use and live through information processing and communications technology”, arguing that often “those who have no access to, no participation in, this newly imposed world, […] are out of the world’s new information economy, doomed to obsolescence and death” (1985, p. 2-3). Throughout this chapter I argue that information, as it is discussed here, can be seen equated to the power-knowledge nexus Foucault has written of in his discussions on discourse. However, I show that information, as a discourse construed as digitised 1’s and 0’s, is amenable to technological interference and manipulation in ways that knowledge is not.

Hayles writes that early cybernetics positioned information in a way that it could be calculated and treated with the same value, regardless of the contexts in which it was embedded. Cybernetics divorced information from meaning in order for the simplified manipulation required for engineering considerations. The outcome, Hayles argues, was that it allowed information to be conceptualised “as if it were an entity that can flow unchanged between different material substrates”, resulting in “an ideology in which a reified concept of information is treated as if it were fully commensurate with the complexities of human thought” (1999a, p. 54). Hayles argues that attention should be drawn towards embodiment and embodied forms, suggesting that cognition, thought, action, narrative, and experience are phenomena peculiar to anything other than embodied, experiential forms: Information […] cannot exist apart from the embodiment that brings it into being as a material entity in the world; and embodiment is always instantiated, local, and specific. Embodiment can be destroyed, but it cannot be replicated, once the specific form constituting it is gone, no amount of massaging data will bring it back. This observation is as true of the planet as it is of an individual life-form. As we rush to explore the new vistas that cyberspace has made available for colonisation, let us remember the fragility of a material world that cannot be replaced. (1999a, p. 49)

Yet Hayles’s argument seems to be reiterating the erroneous claim (made by early cyberneticians such as Weiner and Bateson) that embodied, analogue systems are somehow more ‘real’, more ‘natural’, more ‘important’ and therefore somehow ‘superior’ to disembodied, decontextualised information. For cybernetics, one of the most fundamental distinctions in any representational system is between that of analogue and digital representation. Within analogue systems there is a measure of reciprocity between information and its representation, as any change that occurs to the one will impact upon the structure of the other. Analogue representations of information, therefore, require the embodiment and thus contextualisation of information. The representations of information within digital systems, on the other hand are always based on physically arbitrary symbols (words, numbers, letters, symbols), and require

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 186 little more than a code table (for example, the Morse code alphabet, the genetic code, a dictionary, a code-key), and a set of rules (grammars, syntax, and other relations of symbolic logic) (Eglash, 1995, pp. 18-19). However, rather than defining information as that which is produced only through the reduction or distillation of an embodied form, information should be seen as a constructive component through which new and original arrangements can be formed. Information becomes, in this manner, the additive element in a complex system, and it is this quality that grants digital information a real and involved vitality that ultimately extends embodiment and materiality.

This exemplifies the argument I have stated in this thesis in that information is seen here as an element within a complex system that behaves autopoietically. That is, within an informational environment the interaction of information with information shows a tendency to produce more information. The conceptualisation of information within an evolution framework also shows the reciprocal nature of evolution metaphors as it continues to redefine contemporary evolution theory. Indeed, much emphasis within the current economic post-industrial gestalt is placed upon ‘containerless’ ideas or ‘weightless’ information (Coyle, 1999; Howkins, 2001; Leadbeater, 2000a, 2000b, 2004). And there is much evidence to suggest that such economic relationships show that information can, indeed, exist ‘outside’ of embodiment and that it need not, as Hayles suggests, be always instantiated, local, and specific. As information is shown to be manipulable, networkable, compressible, and dense (Flew, 2002, p. 11), it can be seen that the information that constitutes a piece of software, design, music, or image is often not dependent on space or time. In addition, the impartiality that such data often enjoys suggests a level of impunity that defies any form of specificity. This also suggests that, through constructive informatics, embodiment need not always be instantiated. That is, informatics has shown us that disembodied content can simultaneously exist in different strata (i-pod, computer, camera, Internet, mobilephone), different time and space coordinates (multiple locations, delayed transmission, information archives) and under different contexts (accessibility, security, utility value). For such forms of constructed information, wherein the ‘abstract’ is essentially the ‘real’, questions familiar to posthumanism such as “where does the body begin and end?”, “does representation equate with embodiment?”, and “does information reside on the screen, the hard drive, or the network?” suggest that the representation and contextualisation of posthuman information is of equal (at times even greater) importance than human biological and material instantiation.

Sol Yurick (1985) outlines the basic structure of modern cybernetic communications suggesting that social information flows, data systems, and communication exchanges are now constituted by a synchronous yet dichotomous system of telematics and informatics. For Yurick, telematics are the physical components that constitute the realm of communication. Telematics obviously

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 187 includes modern electronic communication components such as mainframes, personal computers, palm pilots, cathode ray tubes, printers, copiers, automated bank teller machines, antennae, cooper wire and optic fibre, robots, calculators, remote-sensor devices, integrated chips, software, diagnostic equipment, telephony, mass-data-storage, tapes, discs, television, digital converters, modems, radio, satellites, microwave relays, cable, and switching and routing systems. These telematic objects exist alongside ‘traditional’ print media and other physical objects that carry some form of communicative intent, such as clothing, designed objects, and architecture (1985, p. 3). Not content with a ‘media technology’ definition, Yurick extends his definition of telematics, noting that traditional cybernetic theory ultimately rests on two conjoined realms of communicative meaning – ‘information’, and the physical ‘manifestation’ of that information. Drawing on this, Yurick is able to declare that all physical objects – from Automobiles to Elephants to Tupperware to Lemongrass – are telematic components. And the sole purpose and function of any telematic device, argues Yurick, is to carry informatic messages. Thus, for Yurick, every physical object is telemetric, and every non-physical or intangible object is informatics. And within this framework that Yurick presents, ‘value’ – in global economic, human, social, and cultural terms – is accounted for only through the informatic content of any economic or utility object (p. 3). Thus, informatics should be understood in terms separate from and beyond any material, biological, technological, cultural, social, and economic impact and significance of the telemetric componentry. That is, for Yurick, information is always separate from the framework in which it exists.

From within this framework, Yurick argues that the coupling of a telematics devoted to gathering, generating, storing, and transmitting data with individual, personal informatics should provide enough data to simulate a ‘digital reflection’ of the human subject. Writing in 1985, Yurick could not entirely foresee the plethora of additional data-gathering technologies that have since become available. Nevertheless, his conjecture is that statutory and corporate records such as birth, death, marital, taxation, educational, property, credit, employment, governmental, citizenship, criminal, welfare, military, vehicular, and other demographic records, along with personal information gleaned from the likes of purchase history, organisational affiliations, internet and email usage history, internet ‘cookies’, user statistics and log books, key-stroke dynamics, global positioning systems, occupational tachometers, radio frequency identification devices, smart cards, van Eck monitoring, spyware, bots, autonomous agents, and data-trails, combined with biometric data provided from medico-physical machines such as computerised axial tomography scanners, stress-analysers, lie detectors, electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram tests, advanced micro phonology and voice-recognition devices, face- recognition devices, iris and retina recognition devices, DNA databanks, positron emission tomography scanners, magnetic resonance imaging technologies, massive millimetre wave detectors, forward looking infrared and other thermal imagery, skin spectroscopy, immunology

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 188 records, and handwriting and signature dynamics, should provide enough data to simulate a representative image of a subjective being (1985, p. 135). That is, any technology or technique that is capable of assigning a symbolic representation to an instantiated, embodied subject encourages the assumption that the biological human is, essentially, an informational entity. Since 1985, the proliferation of computational technologies has, obviously, increased the overall scale and scope of such digital representations.

Indeed, the development and proliferation of advanced computational technologies throughout the twentieth century has seen an increased use of computers in the storage and retrieval of all forms of informatic data, along with an increased ability for cross-referencing, computation and analysis. The use of Personal Computers (PCs) worldwide has grown from 4.8 million users (or 1.07/1000 people) in 1980, 105 million users (or 20.0/1000 people) in 1990, 553 million users (or 90.4/1000 people) in 2000, 938 million users (or 145.0/1000 people) in 2005, and is predicted to reach 1,600-1,650 million users or 196-203/1000 people by 2010. Overall, this shows a 79.2 percent increase in the use of PCs in 30 years1 (eTForecasts, 2005, ¶ 1-7). Conservative estimates likewise suggest that the number of artificial computing devices (microprocessors) by now exceeds the number of natural computing devices (brains) (Laszlo, 1994, p. 16).

In terms of gathering and storage of individual personalised symbolic information, the growth of computation has seen a burgeoning increase in sophisticated databanks (Clarke, 1994, p. 118). In many instances, these devices are fully automated programs interfaced with global communications networks, and in terms of speed and scale, they are capable of computations far beyond the scope of normal human information processing. These computers often do not require (and increasingly, do not allow) operational intervention by humans beyond that which is preformed by means of a user interface: many large scale institutions – notably financial, economic, and governmental institutions – have completely delegated informatic transactions to computational devices (Laszlo, 1994, p. 13). Typically, the role of human intervention is limited to participation during the initial program design, and beyond that, to routine maintenance and the occasional troubleshooting. Erwin Laszlo argues that the integrated systems that now dominate our techno-social landscapes could not be returned to human control or “switched off” without dramatic consequences, such as a stock market meltdown, informatic and material traffic gridlock, and the loss of resource supplies (1994, p. 14). While this does sound like the killer clock-radios, imploding pacemakers, and unmilked cows that the ‘Y2K virus’ threatened in 1999, Laszlo, writing in 1994 (before the massive adoption and domestification of Internet services) suggests that in Germany alone “it would take 7 million persons to carry out the computational workload of the automated banking system” (1994, p. 14). The last fifteen years has also seen a

1 This data does not take into account the growth of other large-scale or personal-portable computational devices.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 189 growth in distributed computing environments that allow individuals to reach beyond their personal and portable computers to access information available through electronic networks, databanks, and mainframe computers. And through the elevation of telecommunications networks, digitised information storage, and computational calculation and processing, many of the tasks that required human intellect have been transferred to computational and telecommunications devices. The growth of the computational network has been well documented (see for example Estabrooks, 1995; Castells, 1996; 2001; Hearn, Mandeville & Anthony, 1998; Dijk, 1999). Nevertheless, as Laszlo stresses, the enormous capacity of the telecommunications system to carry information is astonishing: To appreciate its dimensions, one can best compare it with messages transmitted by humans. A literate individual who speaks and writes a relatively large number of words every day produces a total “message unit” of approximately 650 million words in a lifetime. An integrated worldwide telecommunication system operating at 100 gigabits per second and relayed by six space satellites could transmit the total annual message units of humanity in about four weeks. (1994, p. 16)

Yoneji Masuda, who famously headed a research institute that in 1972 assembled a national plan for Japan entitled ‘The plan for an information society – A national goal toward the year 2000’, wrote that unlike material goods, information does not disappear by being consumed. Rather, the utility value of information is amplified indefinitely by the constant addition of new information to the existing information. “People will continue to utilise information which they and others have created even after it has been used” (Masuda, 1985, p. 629). And while this information does not ‘disappear’, it is estimated that the world produces between 1 and 2 exabytes (1018 bytes) of new and unique information per year, roughly 250 megabytes for every human on earth (Brouwer, Mulder & Charlton, 2003, p. 18). The following Table 4. shows the worldwide production of original content circa 1999, stored digitally using standard compression methods. All units are in terabytes (1012 bytes). It does not include the 11,285 terabytes of unique information produced in email, or 73 terabytes of unique information produced in usenet groups respectively (Brouwer, Mulder & Charlton, 2003, p. 21). I include this table to highlight the growing amount of information available, and in the terms I have outlined in this thesis I stress that the continuous growth or evolution of unique information within an informational environment reconfigures the overall structural arrangement of that environment. This will, as I suggested above, accommodate the autopoietic emergence of more information into this environment. However, as I have also outlined in my discussion of the human-technology symbiosis, recognising this information as a technology itself, and therefore a part of the symbiosis, yields a changing environment from which new technologies and techniques may also emerge. I argue in this chapter that the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 190 that is, an Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent, emerges in order to colonise this new environmental niche.

Table 4. Worldwide production of original content, c1999

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 191

It should also be stated that in addition to this human produced or procured information is a bourgeoning number of machine-generated messages. Indeed, the quantity of such machine- generated messages (such as network and routing protocols, access, authorisation, and authenticity protocols, data monitoring, analysing and reporting tools, along with filtering, monitoring, blocking, and copy-protecting technologies) increases at a far greater rate than the flow of messages generated by humans (Biosot, 1995, pp. 5-10). Adding to this amalgam of machine-generated information is the additional input provided by sensory machines reporting or acting on recognised responses to stimuli. My discussion below turns to the data generated by these automated, continuous, often remotely located and in situ monitoring mechanisms that (in addition to processing and transmission) are often coupled with intelligent control systems that adapt to this information and respond accordingly. Here, I would suggest that the overall structure of both human and non-human generated information constitutes in effect a ‘datasphere’ – an environment of data that, as Yurick would suggest, overlays everything. This highlights again the ecological metaphor that, I have argued, is prevalent in contemporary evolution theory.

In this thesis I position the datasphere as the informatic abstraction of Vernadsky’s biosphere and Teilhard’s noosphere that I outlined in my discussion of contemporary evolution theory in Chapter Three. The datasphere is here conceptualised as a new exogenetic arrangement in which everything object is able to be represented as data. Where the biosphere is conceptualised as ‘containing’ all biological ecosystems and organic life, and the noosphere is conceptualised as ‘containing’ both biological life and sociological relationships, the datasphere is conceptualised as ‘containing’ the informatic patterns and formations that are constitutively associated with all Earthly life and action. Like life in the biosphere or the noosphere, within the datasphere we are often only aware of that which is most obvious: those immediate systems in which we are currently engaged. Our experience of the datasphere is achieved only through a reflection of the myriad of micro-functions that unfold within it; its existence becomes most obvious when its functions falter. And as information is itself a dynamic phenomenon subject to the push and pull of supply and demand, the datasphere can also be seen to exhibit self- organising properties similar to those of the biosphere. In this regard, information tends to form around clusters, or micro-systems, such as that which is seen as constituting personal information, financial information, locational information, historical, biological, medical, scientific, public, private, restricted, open, preferential, social, useful, and useless information. Manuel Castells (1996) writes that the momentum of information exchange within the datasphere is towards ever greater complexity and diversity as rules are created and changed in a relentless process of deliberate actions and unique interactions. Thus, the datasphere does not move towards its closure as a system, but towards its openness as a multi-edged network. I argue

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 192 below that, as evolution theory has demonstrated, from such dynamic environmental arrangements new ‘species’ will continue to emerge that are better adapted to this environment.

The study of memetics has shown that under the organising principles of the datasphere, information itself may be seen as that which is alive. Memetics – itself a metaphor that draws on biological terms and mechanisms to explain social and cultural phenomenon – suggests that information that is transmitted in culture by means of media is analogous to the transmission through sexual reproduction of the biological gene: memes are those units of transmitted information that are subject to selection biases at a given level of hierarchical organisation of culture (Wilkins, 1998, ¶ 61). Richard Dawkins (1976), who has written extensively on memes, defines them as units of cultural transmission that “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (p. 142) Francis Heylighen extends this definition, suggesting that memes are cognitive or behavioural patterns that can be transmitted from one individual, or host, to another one (Heylighen, 2001, ¶ 3). While in the field of memetics the study of ‘information’ is usually associated with meaningful enunciations, here I argue that the concept of memetics can be applied in explaining the transmission and reception of informatic data within informational environments. I have argued above that increasingly packets of human and non-human generated information are exchanged between both human and non-human, suggesting that these exchanges effectively add to the overall information structure. This information very rarely has a spontaneous, unsupported, or unconnected moment of rupture. Information is almost always information about something (often, as I have argued, it is information about information itself) even when it is information about nothing (in other words, noise). The contextualisation of this data effectively turns an otherwise intangible mass of abstract signifiers into an identifiable and communicable structure. Any actor (human or non-human) that contextualises information in such a way takes on a role similar to that of a memetic engineer. Heylighen argues that a memetic engineer devises memes through a thoughtful and determined process of ‘meme- splicing’ (‘mix and match’ of existing memes) or ‘meme-synthesis’ (combination of existing memes), with the conscious intent of positioning, marking, naming, and signifying individual, group, and social norms (see Heylighen, 2001). While this process is itself similar to the processes of technological innovation I outlined in Chapter Four, I argue below that the role of the memetic engineer can also be seen performed in the actions of Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents that sort, sieve, calculate, process, and compute information into some form of utility meaning.

Drawing on his background in biology, Dawkins has argued that the behaviour of memes is such that they may be deemed alive:

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 193 [M]emes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitise my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitise the genetic mechanism of a host cell … [T]he meme for, say, ‘belief in life after death’ is actually realised physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous system of individual men the world over. (1976, p. 193-194). Dawkins argues that memes operate in a way that is similar to his concept of selfish genes – that is, they seek replication of themselves in order to ensure continued transmission. To this end, Dawkins observed three characteristics needed for memetic success. These are 1) Copying-fidelity: the more faithful the copy, the more intact the initial meme will remain after several cycles. 2) Fecundity: the faster the rate of copying, the more the meme will spread. 3) Longevity: the longer the meme survives, the more copies will be made. (1976) These three characteristics are entirely compatible with the configuration of digitised information. That is 1) Copy-fidelity: digitised data can provide an immeasurable number of faithful copies 2) Fecundity: high speed telecommunications networks and computer processors ensure high rate of copying. (This is particularly evident in the example of internet worms and viruses2.) 3) Longevity: massive media storage facilities and compression tools allow for the long term storage of very large amounts of data. For Dawkins, the rightful place for memes is the human brain; that is, while memes are not instantiated in any exclusive physical system, it is in the neurological structures of the human brain that memes are generated, enunciated, received, recontextualised, selected, mutated,

2 To date, the Sapphire worm remains the fastest computer worm in history. Beginning its spread shortly before 05:30 UTC 25 January 2003, the Sapphire worm doubled in size every 8.5 seconds and infected 90 percent of vulnerable hosts (computers connected to the internet running Microsoft’s SQL Server or MSDE 2000) within 10 mins. The worm conducted a random scan of vulnerable computers for IP addresses that would then be targeted for infection. Using this technique, it would eventually find all susceptible hosts. The worm achieved its full scanning rate (over 55 million scans per second) after approximately 3 minutes. After this, growth slowed because the network did not have enough bandwidth to support it, and because the worm spends more time and effort retrying random addresses that it has already managed to infect. The Sapphire worm infected at least 75,000 hosts, causing network outages and casual consequences such as cancelled airline flights, interference with elections, and ATM failures. Approximately 2.38 percent of network hosts in Australia were infected, including the South Australian government, and the University of South Australia (Brouwer, Mulder, & Charlton, 2003, p. 32-37).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 194 stored, and transmitted. I suggest that in the informational space of computation the action occurs in the telemetric circuitry, silicon microprocessors, and codified programs.

The last aspect of memetics I address in this discussion is based on Dawkins original understanding of memes as containers for ideas, ideologies, and behavioural patterns. In his discussion of Dawkins’s theory, John Wilkins argues that while memes do not control human behaviour (including human mental and cognitive behaviours), they do bias and constrain it to a norm of reaction. For this reason, then, we need to treat memes objectively: Behavioural regularities indicate that something objective has been spread, and even if the underlying memes cannot be formulated in some universal logical language, the structure of memes can still be identified in the same way as Mendelian genes and molecular sequences, through the use of consensus maps and by noting when their absence or presence makes a difference. (Wilkins, 1998, ¶ 61) Returning to the biological mechanisms of genetics on which the metaphor of memetics is based, one can assume that if such a meme can be isolated, then, like its genetic equivalent, it can be purposefully replicated, manipulated, modified, removed, and replaced. I argue throughout this chapter that the computational technologies conducive to such labour are already well established. Here, however, I wish to remind the reader of the discursive power available to those memetic engineers, both human and non-human, that have access to such malleable information. I argue that any manipulation – additive or subtractive – of personalised data cannot occur without initiating reconfigurations throughout the ‘ecology’ of that particular information cluster. And as this discussion shows, the power-biases contained within bytes of digital information have, as I have argued in Chapter Four and above in this chapter, potential to enforce action beyond the informatic environment.

As a result of new computational technologies, the gathering of personalised information has become both more intensive and more extensive and in many instances more intrusive and exclusive. Such symbolic personalised data is also representative of the data long sought by those wishing to establish a dependable form of personal identification. Traditionally, three social groups have expressed a desire to establish such clusters of personalised symbolic information: government, for whom personal identification establishes nationhood, citizenship, and civic stature or a subset such as immigrants and refugees; law enforcement agencies, for whom personal identification establishes a stable and reliable means of universal classification; and industry, for whom such personal identifiers would enhance security and protection on the one hand and provide unimpeded access to suitable commercial markets on the other. To this end, one technology that is emerging at the more refined and highly sophisticated end of information gathering is the United States Military operated Total Information Awareness system. In 2002,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 195 the United States Office of Information Awareness (under director Admiral John Dexter, former United States National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan) received an initial $US137 million to develop the Total Information Awareness system (Singel, 2002, ¶ 5). The-five year goal of the Office of Information Awareness is to produce a technology capable of dealing in petabytes (1015) of information that will, theoretically, be able to combine every United States citizen’s social security records, bank records, tax records, driver’s licence information, credit- card purchase information, medical data, phone, and email records in one centralised database that could be trawled for any signature of ‘suspicious’ activity (Borin, 2002, ¶ 1-6; Poindexter, 2002, 1-19). Citing the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution,3 Democrat Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to suspend the activity of the Total Information Awareness program pending a Congressional review of privacy issues involved. Following this, the Office of Information Awareness changed the name of the program to the Terrorism Information Awareness Program, and emphasised that the program was not designed to compile dossiers on all United States citizens, but to gather information on terrorist networks (Taipale, 2003, pp.39-50). It is not surprising then that in recent years a fourth group has emerged expressing an equal interest in such personalised symbolic information: the individual, for whom the protection of personal welfare, identity, and privacy are paramount. As Mike Ruggles suggests, the managing and coordinating of private information contributes to a sense of individual autonomy and independence, a balance between individual identity and social interaction (1993, p. 31). In many ways, the protection of information is a desperate response to the plethora of instances in which the individual is required to disclose personal information. Indeed, the individual often does not have a choice as to when or to whom personal information is disclosed. In many instances, such as the filing of taxation, social security, or immigration documents, the disclosure of information is a legal requirement. While in other cases, a commercial service (such as Internet access, air travel, car hire) cannot be accessed without supplying the service provider with some personal details, such as name, location or address, telephone number, and a form of photographic and/or numeric identification (for example, student or staff identification, credit account details, drivers licence, passport). In addition, many other ‘everyday’ commercial and marketing instances (for example, surveys, promotional offers, competition entries) require the voluntary surrender of personal information. Yet as Ruggles suggests, often the exchange of personalised information is completely involuntary as data-gatherers increasingly obtain information from a third party, such as an information broker, with whom the individual has had no contact, and with whom no contract has been formed (1993, p. 29). Yet if personal

3 The Constitution of the United States, Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 196 information is submitted to a recipient that turns out to be untrustworthy, individuals often have no way of tracking or knowing what happens to their information.

The increased commercial trade in personal information suggests that this form of data has become a valuable commercial property itself. Bylar’s Australia on Disc (2002), for example, was a compact-disc containing all 56 Australian national telephone directories, over 1.3 million business listings, over 6.9 million residential listings, over 170,000 fax numbers, over 52,000 email addresses, and over 68,000 web addresses “gleaned from a multiplicity of database sources, local, interstate and national publications, collaborated telemarketing, mail-out feedback, and client data ” that could be purchased in 2002 for $397 (RWS Computer Sales & Service, 2005, ¶ 3-4). Following an “unsuccessful court encounter with Telstra over copyright” and the restructuring of the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000) the product was withdrawn from the market in 2003 (RWS Computer Sales & Service, 2005, ¶ 3-4).

The information provided by such a service is a valuable resource for those who are interested in ‘data-mining’, as searchable databases can be trawled in order to process individual personalised information for various commercial purposes. The cross-referencing of information that is made available through such an ‘ever-expanding’ yet ‘ever-tightening’ net of information enables data-miners to discover discernable trends and patterns that allow for pinpoint accuracy in any future form of data-matching. The process follows a relatively simple Boolean logic that classifies small packets of personalised information into pre-existing categories, for example ‘gender’, ‘age’, ‘income bracket’, and ‘location’. The data is then clustered into refined categories in order to provide useful summaries of the data: for example ‘professional women aged between 25 and 39 years of age living in the greater Sydney area’. This information can then in turn be searched for field links: for example, individuals in this cluster who have purchased a Ford motor vehicle in the last year. This refined information can then be used to model or map sequential patterns that may indicate revealing trends that predict future values of the data: for example, if it is found that 40% of Ford purchasers are unlikely to buy a Ford again, then this field information becomes a valuable future commodity for competing car markets. Ruggles writes that the supposed benefit of such data collection is that it offers a “more intensive gathering of information about consumers and their preferences, generating more timely and focused customer responses, stronger client relationships, greater degrees of market specialisation, and better service on the part of firms, thus increasing the level of coordination between production and consumption” (1993, p. 36). That is, through accessing such historical data, marketers supposedly gain a better picture of whom to target, where best to set up shop, and when best to phone.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 197 Such information constitutes a metaphor that in turn contributes to a coercive form of ‘soft’ panopticism – ‘consumerism’ as a form of social control – and while it differs from corporeal panoptic control, those individuals targeted for direct mail and other forms of personalised advertising are objects of an attempted channelling behaviour. It is an ‘inclusive’ rather than an ‘exclusive’ form of control that seduces participants through eligibility. It is also a form of prohibitive segregation, as the data generated through such processes are used not only to target persons for market specialisation, but to simultaneously dismiss consumers who are considered to be of little value, who generate possible risk, or who expose potential problems for the companies involved. Any form of personal or individual demographic profiling through data- mining and field matching controls invisible doors that permit access to or exclude participation from a multitude of events, ownership, experiences, and processes. Of data-profiling, David Lyon writes that “it sieves and sorts for the purpose of assessment, of judgement. It thus affects people’s lifestyle choices and their life-chances” (Lyon, 2003, p. 14.). This suggests that any commercial trade or business reliance on data-images does nothing but mitigate a situation whereby ‘credit-worthiness’ is actually taken as an index of personal worth and of grounds for social inclusion. Data-profiling extends the classic panoptic mechanisms of naming and placing and renders information in such a way that the individual is produced, organised, and legitimised through discursive practices that have quasi-Cartesian concomitants. That is to say, the individual is, in effect, an admixture of where they live, what they buy, what they own, what they drive, where they shop, what Internet sites they visit, and the sum of their credit data. They are locked into locations defined by telephone numbers, email addresses, and user IDs, all of which suggest a specific location that often has no tangible place. Data-profiling also shows that an individual’s personal data do not just ‘follow’ the individual and their actions. Rather, the individual’s data-profile precedes them, and before the individual (or the informatic representation of the individual) arrives anywhere, they have often already been measured, classified, and processed according to any pre-defined criteria that may be in place. An individual’s private health insurance premiums, for example, may be based on data generated through a mix of pharmaceutical companies, local chemists, demographic statistics, parental and familial health records, neighbourhood or workplace health trends, and historical records of health services accessed, and a higher or lower premium may be afforded to an individual based on their propensity to a certain disease regardless of the current status of their health and wellbeing. Nevertheless, the individual is often denied access to their data records, and may have no way of ensuring that that information is indeed accurate and up-to-date. The information sought through data-profiling is also highly ‘relational’. This shows that not only are you your credit rating, but you are your credit rating in comparison to a pre-defined rating criteria; not only are you the value of your house, but you are the value of your house as defined by other house and land values in your neighbourhood; and you are a citizen of a country and therefore share

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 198 that country’s history, political aspirations, economic fortunes, and legal definitions of citizenship, and so forth.

It can be argued then, that if or when the cybernetic management of such personalised information is sanctioned to represent or replace the individual subject, it strips the ‘self’ as it has been historical recognised – as bearer of rights and responsibilities whose destiny is forged under the control and ownership of the subject – of its full autonomy and vitality. Aligned in this way, information for the individual subject functions in a manner much like the internal fluid or inner force sought through nineteenth century ‘vitalism’, and the unimpeded flow of this information is seen to actually ‘maintain’ the individual. Indeed, many technical representations of the human body see it as a primarily textual vessel that transports the remainder of the informatic subject: The discursive part of the package, including meaning ascribed to the physical body, is produced by means of inscription, such as legal, medical, and psychological texts. Because so much of such an identity is discursive, it seems reasonable to call it a legible body – that is, textually mediated physicality. (Stone, 1995, p. 399) In many ways this is a logical progression from the poststructuralist ideology that the material body or the corporeal human is primarily a linguistic, logical, ideological, semiotic and/or discursive construction. In the work of Foucault the body is seen as a construct of various discursive systems, as outlined in his account of the sexualised body, the hospitalised body, the historical body, and so forth. Likewise, in the work of Derrida we see that even the subject’s self- consciousness is inscribed in language, and can only be positioned through the prosthesis of symbolic language. And, in the writing of Baurdrillard, we can see depictions of the abstracted, digitally rendered and symbolically represented human subject common to much postmodern thought: The human body, our body, seems superfluous in its proper expanse, in the complexity and multiplicity of its organs, of its tissue and functions, because today everything is concentrated in the brain and the genetic code, which alone sum up the operational definition of being. (1987, p. 18) In such poststructuralist accounts the biological body is seen as that which is ‘normalised’ within discursive culture, and we see that many of the habits, rituals, ideologies, and norms that surround and constitute human biological bodies (including sexual reproduction, birth, childhood, adolescence, sport and play, maturity, and death) are structures that are assembled and reconstituted mostly through discourse. And through the experience of the body, subjectivity is, as Catherine Belsey argues, “linguistically and discursively constructed and displaced across the range of discourses in which the concrete individual participates” (1980, p. 61).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 199 In Hayles’s (1999a) account, the posthuman appears when the location of being is relocated from the earlier humanistic notion of possessive and embodied individualism, to technique: particularly the technique of advanced computation and telecommunications that cybernetics inspires. The posthuman, she argues, is constituted by three interrelated discourses, concerning how information lost its body, how the cyborg was created as a technological artefact and cultural icon, and how the human as a social construct is giving way to the informational construction of the posthuman (1999a, p. 2). This suggests that, included alongside the plethora of embodied and disembodied substances and forms that range from the early astronautic version of the cyborg to large planetary scale cyborg enterprises (see Gray, Mentor, & Figueroa- Sarriera, 1995, p. 2) and the codified and semiotic structures I have outlined in this chapter like genetic code, locating coordinates, financial records, and vital statistics the posthuman is increasingly seen in those instances in which cognitive processes are distributed among non- human intelligent agents in the reduced form of digitised information and algorithmic computations. Nevertheless, all of these entities continue to address, through technology or technique, questions that are predominately focused around the ongoing fascination the human has with its own agency and subjectivity.

Norbert Wiener ([1950] 1954) discussed the dissolute substance of the physically embodied human, stating that the human was a form “more like a flame than a stone” (p. 102). Striped of substance, the human form, suggested Wiener, could be transmitted, modified and/or duplicated. Wiener argued that in the process of germ cell division it is ‘information’ that is transmitted from the original cell, and that that information is then able to successfully duplicate itself upon reception in the newly formed cell. And, argued Wiener, as we are able to duplicate and transmit information without loss of meaning or definition it should, at least theoretically, be possible to transmit a living organism, such as a human being: Let us then admit that the idea that one might conceivably travel by telegraph, in addition to travelling by train or airplane, is not intrinsically absurd, far as it may be from realisation. […] The fact that we cannot telegraph the pattern of a man from one place to another seems to be due to technical difficulties. The idea itself is highly plausible. ([1950] 1954, p. 103)

At its extreme, this notion allows commentators like Moravec (1988, 1989), More (1997a, 1997b, 2001, 2004) and Kurzweil (1999) to argue that the individual subject can be successfully rendered entirely through abstract signification as a form of digital code: “we see uploading as the last period of a posthuman synthesis, which means a transfer of the personality and the consciousness from the natural biological brain to synthetical non-biological machines” (More in Becker, 2000, p. 362). Moravec (1988) argues that human beings are essentially informational patterns, and that if those patterns can be replicated digitally, then all that it is that makes the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 200 human ‘human’ would have been captured. Moravec famously illustrates his idea by describing a situation in which an individual has their consciousness ‘uploaded’ into a computer. Once consciousness is removed from the constraints of the body and into a computational substrate, it becomes disembodied, and effectively immortal. It is free to move between different computational strata, and amenable to all the privileges afforded to other forms of digitised information: that is, human consciousness itself becomes, like digital information, manipulable, networkable, dense, and compressible (Flew, 2002, p. 11). This argument is restated by Ray Kurzweil (1999, pp. 127-133), who argues that by 2020 computers should be powerful enough4 that it should be possible to “scan and download a blueprint of every axon, dendrite, presynaptic vesicle, and neuronal cell body, thus creating a software-based facsimile of someone's brain” (Scientific American, 2003, ¶ 1). The question that must be answered here, is why? Katherine Hayles observes that this desire to re-create the human brain that already exists, is akin to the King’s mad cartographer Lewis Carroll imagines, who is satisfied only when he creates a map that covers the entire kingdom, reflecting its every detail in a scale of 1:1. (1999a, p. 60).

Hayles (1999b) notes that the idea of re-creating the human brain manages to cling to the notion that the human soul or mind is, indeed, the central locus of a subjective selfhood. And while in these accounts the human form of the fleshy body is deemed superfluous, human identity remains nevertheless in need of some form of symbolic representation, and therefore, even if it is in virtuality, a body. Hayles is accurate in her assessment that these texts are driven by a fear of death (1999b, p. 73), and like Wiener, who saw death as an inevitable force of entropic decay, the authors of these texts seek respite in new technologies. Indeed, the desire to transcend the human body in favour of a more durable and more abiding body that can be seen in the writings of Moravec (1988, 1989), Krocker (1992), More (1997a, 1997b, 2001, 2004), Kurzweil (1999), Stelarc (1997), and Broderick (1997, 1999) is the latest in a very long line of historical attempts to rationalise human mortality: For centuries men have wished to transcend the body they cannot control and direct, the one whose desires, emotions, bodily functions and bodily changes interfere with other more valued pursuits. Religion, science, and philosophy in the West have continuously, relentlessly disdained and devalued the fleshed body and its material needs and preoccupations (and associated it and them with women). To be able to escape it, at least experientially, and yet still be alive and alert, to make physical movements that have significant consequences, to do, learn, and create is truly a dream come true. And this is the ultimate design project: to imagine and create objects, spaces, bodies, movements and all relationships among them without ever having to consider any of the

4 Kurzweil’s argument for increased computer power is based on the continued realisation of ‘Moore’s Law’, see Chapter Four, n2.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 201 more tedious human needs for heat, light, air, food, sleep or elimination. The architect is finally free of the ‘tyranny of function’. (Franck, [1995] 2002, p. 242-243)

The great dream and promise of information is that it can be free from the material constraints that govern the mortal world. If we can become the information we have constructed, we, too, can soar free, immortal like the gods. (Hayles, 1999b, p. 75)

Actually, there won’t be mortality by the end of the twenty-first century. Not in the sense that we have known it. […] Up until now, our mortality was tied to the longevity of our hardware. When the hardware crashed, that was it. […] Our immortality will be a matter of being sufficiently careful to make frequent backups. If we’re careless about this, we’ll have to load an old backup copy and be doomed to repeat our recent past. (Kurzweil, 1999, p. 163)

In this section I have suggested that the human can be deconstructed and rendered as information, and that such human informatics have a utility purpose in and of itself. However, rather than seeking to immortalise the human in its informatic form I propose instead a version of the posthuman that exists outside of and as an extension of or supplement to the biological human. In the following section I discuss the input that terms and mechanisms borrowed from evolution theory and discourse that have provided, as I have argued in this thesis, input into the the field of computational intelligence. I show that computational intelligence is both reflected in and a reflection of contemporary evolution theory, and how this discourse in turn continues to justify and reflect the current social paradigm. Upon conclusion of this discussion I return again to the informatic human to begin its reconstruction through Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent technology.

Evolution theory and computational intelligence I have shown in this thesis that the development of the entire computational/telecommunications sector can be contextualised in a framework that draws on the metaphors of contemporary evolution theory, and that the metaphors that dominate this sector of society can also be seen in contemporary evolution theory. Together, these conceptual frameworks provide a metanarrative in which contemporary society is seen as a network of interdependent relations. This shows that the platforms, networks, and other ‘telematic’ supporting structures common to the computational/telecommunications field correspond to the spatial environments of ‘nature’. That

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 202 is, these technologies promote the gaps and niches or needs and desires that lead towards the further reorganisation and/or redevelopment of the ‘environment’. And this, of course, leads to continued ‘species’ mutation and adaptation. In the computational/telecommunications framework, new informatic species – in the form of operating systems and software – emerge, and in their struggle to survive accelerate the process of continued environmental change. Competition between and among these organisms is fierce, and those whose codified ‘genetic’ structure best performs according to the dictates of an apparent behaviour are best able to survive. However, a noted omission from this discussion is the role that the human plays in the design, development, and diffusion of these technologies and techniques. In biological terms, the development of such technologies is, at best, amenable to the controlled evolution of artificial selection, as the entire system has been designed and built according to the needs of the human user, and not by the random mutation of a specific technology. Yet as I argued in Chapter Four, the human-technology relationship is itself one of mutual symbiosis. And in this more expansive definition of organic evolution, the entire project of computational/telecommunications technology can be seen as one that follows the biological process, discussed in Chapter Three, of autopoietic unfolding. Autopoiesis, particularly as it is developed and described by Maturana, suggests that in the process of self-making, the collection, collation, storage, exchange, and utilisation of information (most notably information in an organic, material form) is a phenomenon that is common to all organisms (Maturana 1975, 1978; Maturana & Varela 1980). Indeed, organisms self-make according to how they arrange the information that constitutes their world. Thus, in the continuous self-making of the world, the focus of all individual and collective endeavour remains centred on the way that constitutive material and symbolic information is organised and positioned. However, the development of technologies and techniques that enable or enhance the pursuit of material information, and the further progression of matter into abstract, symbolic, rational informatic systems is a defining aspect of, and a phenomenon common only to the human species, human civilisation, human society and human culture.

The conversion of matter into information itself involves the constant creation, interpretation, and reinterpretation of symbolic languages. That is, the creation of alphabets, languages, and code structures, and sets of rules with assigned names, variables, and operators. Computational technologies greatly extend the scope, and enhance the level of interaction through which these processes of signification occur. That is to say, computational technology enables the human to overcome a perceived organic deficiency inherent to the species (see Chapter Four). Here, I argue that producing and projecting Artificial Intelligence entities in the form of autonomous agents into the world of immaterial information is, in this regard, an extension to the existing form of the human. However, unlike other telechiric or remotely operated interfaces that enable interaction between the human and forms of informatic representation, the Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent is one that is able to operate unaided. It is my contention then that many of

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 203 these entities are, therefore, able to be classified according to the terms and definitions I have outlined in this thesis as posthuman. Autonomous agents meet the criteria of the posthuman I have discussed in that they are entities without a recognisable form of human consciousness, in that they understand material instantiation only through available informational patterns, and in that they are able to move between and through telemetric platforms with relative impunity.

As I discussed in the Introduction to this thesis, my initial research into autonomous agents began with a study into the Artificial Intelligence systems that supply the operational rules and variables behind their logic, and to this end, I undertook the unit ITB742, ‘Principles of Artificial Intelligence’ through the Faculty of Information Technology – School of Software Engineering and Data Communications at Queensland University of Technology. Needless to say, an adequate taxonomy of the entire field of Artificial Intelligence is truly beyond the scope of this thesis, and I instead frame my discussion of Artificial Intelligence within the scope of this thesis by limiting my discussion towards the philosophies and ideas behind Artificial Intelligence that fit within my understanding of posthuman evolution and the version of the posthuman I present in this thesis, rather than the particular instances, structures, rules, and variables that operate these agents.

In Chapter Four I presented the argument made by technological apologists such as Gehlen ([1965] 2003) that all technologies and techniques seek, in some way, to displace perceived ‘deficiencies’ or extend or amplify natural human ‘abilities’. The prosthesis of technology is seen here to extend the scale and scope of human action within the environment. A similar claim can also be made addressing those technologies that seek to extend, amplify, and enhance human social and cultural abilities. Indeed, throughout human history the technologies of language, speech, script and writing, the mechanisation of writing, imagery technologies, and electronic communications have all helped to shape human thought, action, and communication (see Levinson, 1998). I start with the premise that computational technologies are no different: they also seek to extend, amplify, and enhance human abilities or displace perceived deficiencies in terms of computation. (Computers already outperform humans in terms of data storage and retrieval and sophisticated numerical computation.) It follows that the base aspiration of Artificial Intelligence endeavours is to likewise assist human intelligence. Contrary to some popular and base views, Artificial Intelligence does not seek to replace or out-compete human intelligence. The endeavour, like previous human-technological arrangements is, as I have argued in this thesis, one of symbiotic mutualism. The benefits a human-computer symbiosis could bring have been long recognised. In his paper ‘Man-computer Symbiosis’ (1960), J.C.R. Lidlicker saw the potential of a human and computational symbiotic intelligence, writing: Computing machines can do readily, well, and rapidly many things that are difficult or impossible for man, and men can do readily and well, though not rapidly, many things

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 204 that are difficult or impossible for computers. That suggests that a symbiotic cooperation, if successful in integrating the positive characteristics of men and computers, would be of great value. (p. 58) Extending this notion to Artificial Intelligence, the idea is that any commercial or industrial task that could benefit from even a limited degree of intelligence could, in principle, be performed better with the help of an Artificial Intelligence designed to execute ‘intelligent’ tasks with precision, speed, and reliability beyond human capabilities (Boden, 1985, p. 98).

In an attempt to present a cohesive definition of the term Artificial Intelligence, Marvin Minsky suggested that, at its heart, Artificial Intelligence could be defined as “the science of making machines do things that require intelligence if done by men” (1968, p. v). This definition asserts that intelligence is a scientifically describable ‘thing’ that ultimately provides an additional benefit to the organism that possesses it. The immediate problem that arises then is how one discerns an acceptable measure of intelligence, either artificial or natural. Intelligence has been variably described as a general mental adaptability to new tasks and conditions in life (Stern, 1914), the global capacity of an individual to comprehend, act purposefully, think reasonably, and deal successfully with the environment (Wechsler, 1944); and the capacity for recognising order and regularity in the coincidence, concurrence, and precedence of events (Hofstaetter, 1954). Nevertheless, even without a fixed definition, in most regards ‘human intelligence’ serves as the standard by which any form of intelligence is measured, no doubt an inheritance of previous paradigms by which the human was the measure of all things, both above and below in the great scale of being (see Chapter Two).

The impossible task of providing an acceptable universal definition of intelligence led Paul Churchland (1981, 1989, 1995) to argue that our concept of intelligence is itself a form of folk psychology, and that without the specialist understanding of the cognitive scientist or behavioural psychologist, most lay definitions of intelligence are unable to provide a useful description of the abilities that are associated with intelligence. J.P. Guilford (1967) attempts to break intelligence into one hundred and twenty specific abilities, clustered under three general headings: logical processes, the kinds of information processed, and the product of such processing. Another noted account comes from the psychologist Howard Gardner who, in presenting his theory of multiple intelligences, originally outlined seven kinds of intelligence (1983, pp. 73-277), before adding an eighth intelligence (1999, pp. 48-59) and hypothesising a ninth intelligence (1999, pp. 60-64). These intelligences are: • Linguistic intelligence – the ability to communicate and to understand vocabulary and syntax;

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 205 • Musical intelligence– the ability to learn, perform, comprehend or compose music; • Logical-Mathematical intelligence – the ability to understand logical problems and perform complex computations at will; • Spatial intelligence – the ability know where you are relative to fixed locations, or the ability to accomplish tasks requiring an understanding of three dimensional objects; • Bodily-Kinaesthetic intelligence – the ability to understand how physical bodies move and perform; • Intrapersonal intelligence – the ability to comprehend and understand one’s own consciousness; • Interpersonal intelligence – the ability to interact with others and understand other individuals behaviours; • Naturalist intelligence – the ability to understand the natural world, and identify and classify natural patterns such as weather, solar cycles, and seasons; and • Existential-spiritualist-moral intelligence – the ability to understand the place of the self and humankind in a larger frame of existence. (1983, pp. 73-277; 1999; pp. 47-97) Again, it must be stated that these are predominately human intelligences, and I include this list not to suggest that computational intelligence must mirror all nine, but that intelligence is itself a diverse and multi-faceted phenomenon. Ultimately, Gardner’s list emphasises intelligence as something that may be measured or understood in terms of comprehension and knowledge, rather than in terms of computational abilities.

Nevertheless, the initial goal of Artificial Intelligence was to build a machine with intelligence comparable to that of a human. This has been a persistent goal in Western philosophy (and mythology and popular culture) since antiquity, when it was conjectured that the structure of ideas about the world is not necessarily the same as the structure of their subject matter. As mental processes were recognised as something that obeyed their own laws, the mind and cognitive facilities came to be recognised as something that could be studied in and of themselves. It follows then that the formalisation and eventual mechanisation of cognitive facilities has likewise come to be recognised as an obvious direction for the philosophy of mind. The initial task was to be able to recognise intelligence in non-human machines. René Descartes ([1637] 1985) suggests a means for distinguishing thinking souls from unthinking automata. Since "it is not conceivable," he argues, that a machine "should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as even the dullest of men can do […] whatever has such ability evidently thinks” (Part V) ([1637] 1985, p. 140).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 206 In 1950 the British mathematician Alan Turing famously hypothesised his idea of an ‘imitation game’, a test of machine intelligence in which a human interviewer addresses questions to both a computer and a human being, without knowing which is which. Turing’s sole criterion for this test was for the machine to be able to talk (converse) convincingly: if the interviewer was unable to tell which interviewee was the computer on the basis of their answers then, Turing concludes, we should be warranted in concluding that the computer actually thinks (p. 441). While Turing’s computational accounts of the human mind are now widely recognised as being “unduly logical, fantastically embodied, emotionally attenuated, asocial, and puerile” (Wilson, 2002, p. 41), his test retains a mythological appeal in popular representations. Steven Shaviro notes that in a recent run of the Turing test organisers found that while twenty-eight percent of the participants believed the computational agent to be human, only sixty-two per cent were convinced that the human was, indeed, human. That leaves more people thinking a human being was a machine than the reverse (Shaviro, 1999, pp. 24-25). Ultimately, the trouble with such an approach to understanding intelligence is that it lends itself to the theological argument that thinking is a function of the immortal soul. This is usually formulated through the argument that an intelligent machine cannot do that which a human intelligence can. That is, a computational intelligence is judged on its inability to create original ideas, compose original music, express emotiveness or feeling, use intuition, understand hypothetical configurations, cope with imprecision, ambiguity, improbabilities, or heuristics, or, through a parallel argument based on the idea that a human does not think in binary mode or work only with information bytes. Yet as Rodney Brooks writes, such criticism is as unfair as one claiming that an elephant has no intelligence worth studying just because it does not play chess: We do not usually complain that a medical expert system, or an analogy program cannot climb real mountains. It is clear that their domain of expertise is somewhat more limited, and that their designers were careful to pick a well circumscribed domain in which to work. (Brooks, 1999, p. 128-129)

In the essay ‘Minds, brains, and programs’ (1980) John Searle presented his ‘Chinese room’ argument, a thought experiment in which a monolingual English speaking operator is locked inside a room with a large batch of Chinese writing. The operator is given a second batch of Chinese script along with a set of rules – in English – for correlating the symbols written on the second set of scripts with the symbols written on the first set. A third batch of Chinese symbols and more English instructions enable the operator to correlate elements of the third batch with elements of the first two batches and instruct the operator to “give back certain sorts of Chinese symbols with certain sorts of shapes in response”. The operator follows the rules and assembles the strings of characters before returning them to the interlocutors. Could the operator understand Chinese, they would understand that the interlocutors call the first batch a ‘script,’

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 207 the second batch ‘a story,’ the third batch ‘questions,’ and the operator’s replies ‘answers.’ Yet as the operator has no understanding of the meaning of the script, story, or questions supplied, they also have no idea of the answers they have supplied. The operator only understands the set of English rules, or the program. No matter how intelligent are the operator’s replies, it is a simulated intelligence, as the operator understands nothing (p. 418). Searle’s anecdote is an important reference for any discussion of Artificial Intelligence, and it implies, for the version of the posthuman that I have outlined in this thesis, that regardless of its information processing capabilities, the Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent cannot understand itself as ‘human’. Nevertheless, I do not see this as evidence of a failure to classify such an entity as posthuman, but instead state again that this is a radical ‘new’ direction for the human – an autonomous agent that fulfils certain mandates of the human without the heretofore requirements of ‘understanding’ or ‘consciousness’. Again, this is not a denial or suppression of that which is human, but an extension or supplementation thereof.

Searle argued that the Chinese room anecdote should be applied to other forms of computational intelligences, stating that it is a mistake to assume that machines can think: computational intelligence, he argues, produces comprehensible results without ever comprehending anything at all. And the distinction that can be made between human and machine in terms of ‘intelligence’ is one of syntax and semantics. In computational arrangements, all that matters is syntax; the original form (input) and the capacity (program) to change that form into another form (output). For the human subject, however, it is the underlying meaning that matters most. This does not mean that computational intelligence has failed. For human-computer symbiosis, computational intelligence is a great success, with one organism computing informational arrangements, and the other discerning the deeper meaning. It is an arrangement that Vannevar Bush, an early advocate of computational intelligence, would have applauded. Bush argued in 1945 that all index systems use a form of artificiality, in that they assign arbitrary symbols to objects in order to name, classify, and arrange them. The advantages classic index systems offer, he argued, include the ability of record keepers to assign a relevant permanency beyond the material life of the object, and that duplicate information could be easily provided without duplicating the material object. The disadvantage, however, is that complex rules are needed to gain access to the information, and that these rules usually have to be repeated for each and every new set of information sought. Bush argued that such a logical classification of information is an anathema to the associative way the human mind works: With one item in its grasp, [the human mind] snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. […] The speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 208 of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature. Man cannot hope to fully duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. (Bush, [1945] 2002, p. 36) Bush dubbed his vision for an artificial memory system the ‘Memex’: [A] device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanised so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. ([1945] 2002, p. 36) His idea for an artificial memory system was to be based on a system that combined the use associative trails with codified opinions, decisions, experience, rules, and laws: The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client’s interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient’s reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behaviour. The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilisation at a particular epoch. (Bush, [1945] 2002, p. 38).

Although it is not explicitly stated, this type of artificial memory system adopts the cybernetic approach to biological systems, in which a given system is purposefully analysed in order to reverse engineer the desired functions it exhibits. This is not to say that Bush envisioned the dismantling of the human brain to find where and how human memory worked. Rather, the knowledge of a human domain expert is analysed in order to constitute, in an artificial domain, problem solving strategies similar to those used by the expert. To this end, expert systems usually grow out of collaboration between a domain expert (such as a doctor, chemist, historian, engineer,) and a separate knowledge engineer or Artificial Intelligence specialist. Together, they implement the domain expert’s knowledge in a program that seems intelligent in its behaviour, refining and modifying the program through a process of problem solving and critical analysis (Luger, 2002, p. 20). Expert systems work best on simple analysis, as they have difficulty in capturing ‘deep’ knowledge of the problem domain, and thus in providing deep explanations to a given problem. The downside to such systems is that they can never be considered absolutely complete, and are only useful to the point where the information they contain can be considered

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 209 accurate and up-to-date. The performance of the system will only improve with ongoing attention from both domain expert and knowledge engineer (Luger, 2002, p. 21). I argue that, for the Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent presented in this thesis as a version of the posthuman, such an arrangement is an advantage. Autonomous agents act as an interpretive mechanism situated between human knowledge and meaning and symbolic information. The interactive space between the human and the autonomous agent is one in which communicative transactions do not need to be understand by the other party (indeed, they often cannot be understood by the other party). Each actor produces, in effect, a ‘Chinese script’ that the other comprehends and understands according to their own language: the computational intelligence has as tenuous a grasp on the language I speak as I have on the language the agent speaks. Katherine Hayles addresses this when she observes that the “situation of modern humans is akin to that of Searle in the Chinese room, for every day we participate in systems whose total cognitive capacity exceeds our individual knowledge” (1999a, p. 289), and what occurs behind the screen, or in a vast telephony network, or between satellite and transmission/reception is taken as a matter of faith, implied by the trust we place on such interpretative technologies. Autonomous agents, I argue, are another form of interpretative technology that use an effective rule-based system to bridge the gap between the human and various forms of digitised, symbolic information, that would be otherwise inaccessible to the human.

Roger Penrose (1989) argues that there are two main approaches to computational intelligence: ‘weak’ Artificial Intelligence and ‘strong’ Artificial Intelligence. The weak Artificial Intelligence argument suggests that while a machine may be able to simulate behaviour generally associated with human cognition, it can never actually experience such mental states itself. On the other hand, the strong Artificial Intelligence argument suggests that as all thinking is computation, a machine intelligence is indeed capable of cognitive states and that it is, therefore, possible to build a self-aware machine with real emotions and consciousness. Developing his critique of Artificial Intelligence, Penrose (1994) argues that in the common and intuitive use of terms such as intelligence, consciousness, understanding, and awareness, it is generally accepted that ‘intelligence’ requires ‘understanding,’ and that ‘understanding’ requires ‘awareness’ and that ‘awareness’ requires ‘consciousness’ (1994, pp. 36-39). The degree to which an observer is prepared to ascribe ‘intelligence’ to a computational program depends upon the observer’s beliefs and understandings of human intelligence. Penrose suggests Artificial Intelligence can be assessed according to four differing criteria based on an understanding of human intelligence: 1) All thinking is computation; in particular, feelings of conscious awareness are evoked merely by the carrying out of appropriate computations. It follows, therefore, that a computational intelligence could be created to execute similar computations.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 210 2) Awareness is a feature of the brain’s physical action, and whereas any physical action can be simulated computationally, computational simulation cannot by itself evoke awareness. 3) Appropriate physical action of the brain evokes awareness, but this physical action cannot ever be properly simulated computationally. 4) Awareness cannot be explained by physical, computational, or any other scientific terms. (1994, p. 13). The first viewpoint is regarded by some, such as Moravec (1988, 1989), More (1997a, 1997b, 2001, 2004) and Minsky (1985), as the only viewpoint that a considered and scientific attitude allows. It conflates computational intelligence with human consciousness, arguing that all human mental and neurological faculties and qualities – thinking, feeling, intelligence, understanding, consciousness – are, at core, comparable to algorithmic computation; that is, human cognition is ultimately a series of prescribed rules for dealing with incoming sensory data, and the summed execution of these rules. On the other hand, the last point, Penrose argues, is “that of the mystic” (p. 13), and it is generally accepted in rational discourse that questions of the mind cannot be regarded as being completely beyond the realm of science. The middle two views accept the relationship between sensory perception and cognition, but regard cognition as an ‘emergent property’ that occurs only whenever a sufficient degree of complication is involved in the computation that is being performed. In these middle views, intelligence is perceived as having naturally evolved in (or, in mythic sentiment, was bestowed upon) humans and other living organisms. Secondary and tertiary intelligent behaviours, such as social organisation, cooperative resource strategies, ritual behaviour and habit, courtship, and so forth are seen as having been formed and reformed through communicative interaction and the exchange of ideas and emotions. This suggests that an entity in possession of a modicum of common sense (for example, keeping away from sharp, hot, or rapidly falling heavy objects), value judgment, understanding of truth, or ethical appraisal would display a level of intelligence far beyond the scope of that of simple algorithm, and that intelligence is reflected in the collective behaviours of interacting individuals or social agents. This suggests that, contrary to the beliefs of evolutionary psychologists or genetic behaviouralists I discuss in Chapter Three, intelligence is rooted in culture and society and therefore it is an emergent property (Luger, 2002, p. 15). However, this definition also delimits intelligence as “an emergent property of living organisms,” and thus denies intelligence to other nonliving organisms.

Autopoietic theories, on the other hand, suggest that intelligence can also be seen reflected in the behaviour of any interacting semi-autonomous agent (Maturana, 1978, p. 82). This more

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 211 expansive and inclusive definition suggests that intelligence takes place when any individual component of a larger collective pursues a certain goal within a given environment autonomously and ‘shares’ the experience (through systemic feedback) collectively. Through the adoption of this definition, one is able to address the question of whether a material object can actually evoke intelligence, or whether the platform of life is necessary for an emergent form of intelligence? An autopoietic approach to intelligence suggests that, in self-making, a created intelligence need not necessarily mirror human intelligence in scope or form. This notion contributes towards my own understanding and use of the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in this thesis in which I argue that, for the version of the posthuman I present, intelligent computational activity is necessary but a genuine human understanding or conscious awareness is not. That is to say, in this instance of the posthuman the simulation of intelligence without understanding or consciousness may be enough to grant it a level of autonomy and agency familiar to the earlier definitions of the human I have discussed.

Rather than attempting to define intelligence itself, this approach asks what kind of relationship exists between intelligence, organism, and system, and where does that intelligence reside – in the system that delivers it, in the structures that enable and support the system, in the mechanisms of control and access, or in the functional output? (Goulden & McGroary, 2003, p. 46). This form of non-organic emergent intelligence controls intelligent systems that perform useful functions driven by desired goals and current knowledge, process information to achieve objectives, learn by example or experience, and adapt cognitive functions in response to perceived environmental changes. Intelligence of this kind is the goal sought by a computer science that seeks programs capable of performing unaided, creatively, and unpredictably: that is, Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents. In this criteria of intelligence, agents must demonstrate an ability to solve given problems, respond to various situations with a degree of flexibility, predict certain future variables and adapt accordingly, take advantage of unexpected and fortuitous circumstances, make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages, recognise the relative importance of different elements of a situation, find similarities between situations despite differences that may separate them, and be able to draw distinctions between situations or variables despite similarities that may relate to them (Sitte, 2006, pp. 19-22). Such biologically-based models of intelligence take their inspiration from evolutionary processes in which organisms adapt to their surroundings. Darwinian evolution shows that everything nature has managed to achieve – from the intricate biochemistry of individual cells to the enormous complexity of the entire biosphere – has been accomplished through processes of adaptation, mutation, and selection. The branches of computational intelligence devoted to genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming strive to mechanise or synthesise similar evolutionary processes digitally (showing again the reciprocity between these social discourses). George Luger writes that rather than modelling intelligence through the retro-engineering of existing

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 212 systems, the evolutionary approach to computational intelligence attempts to produce populations of competing candidate solutions in order to drive them to ever-better solutions through pathways that are identified by the agents themselves: Poor candidate solutions tend to die out, while those that show the promise for solving a problem survive and reproduce by constructing new solutions out of components of their successful parents. (2002, p. 15) This is not surprising in an informational world where, as I argue above, everything – including the basis of biological life – is reconfigured as being composed of digital information. The question for computer scientists working in this field is “if organic life can be represented as informational code, why shouldn’t informational code exhibit many of the same qualities as organic life?”

This metaphor exchange is exemplified by computer viruses. Computer viruses extend the analogy between computation and biological life by suggesting that computer code is itself a form of embodiment susceptible to the types of infection and disease that are common to biological life. The constitutive metaphors that surround computer viruses are likewise loaded with assumptions drawn from their biological counterparts. Computers become ‘permeable’ objects subject to instances of ‘uncleanliness’, ‘promiscuity’, ‘foreign contact’, ‘viral insecurity’, ‘transmission’, ‘interception’, ‘immune system deficiency’, ‘contagiousness’, ‘quarantine’, and ‘treatment’, and as such, they carry the meanings and bias usually associated with biological viral disease (see Haraway, 1979; Lupton, [1995] 2000). Donna Haraway (1979) writes that lay understandings of viral disease are themselves usually a dualistic construct, a site of informatic struggle between hard-facts and myths. On the one hand, the information produced through evidence-based scientific research of molecular biology accounts for the existence of viruses, antibodies, infection rates, transmission routes, symptoms of disease, and treatment response. On the other, there is the understanding of viral disease as it is produced through myths, ignorance, emotive response, media and other socio-cultural representations. When it comes to an understanding of computational virus, the assumption is generally that viral contamination means corruption and loss. There is an overriding fear that through unclean computational processes the user has a potential to lose ‘pure’ composition. The discourse of viral contamination is almost never constructed in such a way as to suggest the potential for new fusions between, or new combinations of, established codified structures, and nor does it welcome the complex outcomes such rearrangements may present, regardless of the positive impact viruses may have had throughout human biological and social history (see Chapter Three).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 213 Steven Levy (1992) suggests that as a discursive field, evolutionary programming and genetic algorithms grew out of computer simulated experiments in evolutionary biology, in which biological researchers employed computers to simulate the conditions under which self- organising processes occur in the biophysical world (1992, pp. 3-10). The more thematic area of Artificial Life is devoted to the creation of completely synthetic creatures (Grand, 2000, p. 7). That is, Artificial Life strives to generate active and autonomous computer agents using a ‘bottom-up’ evolutionary approach. The idea behind the process of Artificial Life is relatively simple. Certain structures within computational programs are reproduced through combination (equivalent to sexual reproduction). A certain percentage of the fittest ‘individuals’ are copied unaltered into the next generation. This ensures that the ‘best’ or ‘fittest’ individuals are at least as fit as those of the previous generation. A smaller percent of the programs undergo a form of mutation (addition or subtraction of structural elements) in the hope that a random modification of a relatively fit program will lead to overall species improvement. In evolutionary terms, the initial Artificial Life entity would be given (‘inherit’) its code (‘genetic’) structure from its human programmer, along with the full, partial, or delimited abilities to grow, move, and reproduce. From this point, the Artificial Life form would behave much like other ‘living’ variants, in that it may ‘mate’ to reproduce and recombine its ‘genetic’ material in order to constitute a new generation of computational object. This process would produce discrete packets of computer codes (sometimes referred to as ‘creatures’) which, although they were originally human- created, would be endowed with an inherent capacity to recreate themselves spontaneously. Through the electronic equivalent of natural selection some variants of the synthetic organisms would die as others thrived, while mutation continued to add to the overall genetic variability (Levy, 1992, pp. 5-6; Koza, Keane, & Streeter, 2003, pp. 52-60).

The idea of a bottom-up approach to intelligence – beginning with a few simple local rules and allowing complexity to emerge spontaneously – is a movement towards a form of computational intelligence that is truly emergent. Hayles (1999a) suggests that it may also radically reconfigure our current understanding of intelligence, in that it suggests that human intelligence is merely a chance event: an accident of biological brain evolution, in which the mind is merely an epiphenomenon. However, it is an approach that also allows designers to create components or systems that have distinctly anthropomorphic structures built in from the start. The simple strategies, goals, and desires that drive these systems rendered as commands such as ‘seek’, ‘collect’, ‘collate’, and ‘analyse’ are ideas formed entirely in human understanding and cognition. Indeed, some of these strategies are forces that – if we are to subscribe to the beliefs of evolutionary psychology – formed hundreds of thousands of years ago in response to environmental conditions that are vastly different to the environments such agents find themselves in, and we should question the continued worth of these strategies today. If the mechanisms that promote competition between species (such as strategies of subversion and

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 214 cooperation or the exploitation of environmental conditions, other organisms, and species members) are programmed into these agents, one must question whether they are behaving in a truly evolutionary manner (selecting the best possible adaptation to immediate environmental conditions) or as agents of selective evolution? This question supports my discussion of the role evolution metaphors play in reflecting, interpreting, reinforcing, and justifying contemporary socio-cultural alliances and arrangements, and I argue that any discourse that suggests such agents ‘naturally’ behave this way is effectively justifying their actions within the broader informational gestalt through the lens of biological evolution.

Manuel de Landa (1998) argues that the emergent properties of computational agents need not mirror their biological equivalents. De Landa argues that as biological evolution has itself been limited by the contingencies of history, agents can teach us much about evolutionary paths that were not historically followed (p. 80). To date, the main criteria for success within Artificial Life have been based on the computational entity’s capacity to evolve (the process of fitness reproduction and random mutation), and not on its ability to successfully adapt to new environments. De Landa suggests that the exercise of Artificial Life can only be considered successful if novel properties, unimagined by the designer, emerge spontaneously (p. 80). I argue that in order for Artificial Life to be deemed successful, criteria beyond the ‘capacity to evolve’ must be met. In Chapter Four I argued that evolutionary theories (artificial or natural) show that new species will adapt towards newly formed or found niches, rather than creating niches in light of their specific needs. Here, I extend this to accommodate a set of criteria by which Artificial Life autonomous agents should be assessed:

1) Complexity and diversity The agent must be seen to respond to the changing shape of the overall informational ecology, along with the individual and collective technologies and technological structures that support it and the general objectives of the larger social collective in which it operates. Programmers must remember that within the information ecology in which the agent operates it is the relationship between the various elements rather than the individual elements themselves that determine the overall shape and stability of the system. Agents must, therefore, be able to take advantage of newly formed ecological niches in order to ensure the continued diversity that is necessary for the health of the overall system, and to eliminate the entropic force of a central controlling factor. Agents must be capable of evolving into new taxonomies or computational species in response to perceived environmental changes. Any change within the system should, therefore, elicit appropriate structural changes within the agent. This is particularly crucial in those systems marked by strong human-agent interdependencies (such as the recommender systems I discuss below).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 215 The use of agents must eventually determine the structure and shape of the ecology in which they operate. As agents interact with agents, the rate of data exchange will increase. The burgeoning exchange of information that occurs between social infrastructural entities (governmental, economic, social, cultural, environmental interests) proposes additional levels of informatic complexity. The application of agent technologies replete with functioning evolutionary mechanisms can, I argue, coordinate the exchange of this information in a meaningful and useful way.

2) Mutation and variation Agents must have the opportunity to generate mutation (either by means of reproductive exchange and crossover or small scale random errors replication) through which fresh variation is offered for selection. This will ensure the continued generation of new forms, structures, and features. Evolutionary mutations must be serendipitous, and should not be programmed in a way that may anticipate the perceived needs of the agent or information ecology and must confer both potential advantage and potential disadvantage to both agent and information ecology. Likewise, variation must be capable of further replication. Mutations, in other words, cannot be the result of a purposeful and rational process but must occur as a result of a mutation trigger, such as a notable variance in the technological or social environment, increased levels of certain types of information, viral contamination, resource scarcity and competition, and new ecological opportunities.

3) Selection Unchecked, agent mutation and variation would increase at a pace as high as the generation of new forms would allow. However, the forces of selection provide a limit to such variety. Agents are programmed in order to solve certain objective problems, such as replication, and finding information. Agents whose variations are better suited to solving these problems are preferentially selected as having the best chance of survival. Thus, there must be selective competition between and within numerous agent technologies within a given environment. As in biological evolution, in Artificial Life there must be no causal relationship between the generation of mutations and the process of selection. Selection should be determined by the differential adaptation of an agent’s componential structure to its environment, with only the most useful structural information being replicated accurately.

4) Competition Competition between agents is the key motivation in the overall ‘struggle’ to survive. Competition within an environment should be discordant rather than harmonious, and be punctuated by

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 216 strategies of subversion, cooperation, and exploitation as competing agents attempt to differentiate themselves from their rivals. These different interests will generate variations by gradually or incremental improving, updating, refining, extending the properties of existing agent structures.

5) Fitness Biology has shown that it is not necessarily the absolute fittest that survive. In both natural and artificial evolution, ‘tolerably fit’ is enough to increase the rate of selection (Hodgson, 1993, p. 94). Agents must be capable of stable survival and have a capacity for future reproduction under the changing constraints of the environments (internal and external) in which they operate. Within the agent environment, agents must have quantifiable and communicable benefits; have a potential form of performative superiority over similar agent structures; be adapted to a genuine utility need; and, be compatible with the various conditions (perceived values, needs, desires) of the external environment in which they originated.

Throughout this thesis I have argued that the symbiotic binding of the mechanical and the biological that is seen in human-technology relationships continues to produce hybrids of ever greater complexity. Through the project of Artificial Life, informatic patterns that resemble and display qualities usually associated with life move into the non-organic compounds of silicon, copper- and optic- wired networks, and, increasingly, the many telemetric structures that transmit and receive informatic patterns. There is, of course, some degree of hyperbole surrounding the various projects of Artificial Life. Much of this is formed in conjunction with a prejudicial bias towards ‘intelligence’ as being that which can only be properly defined in the terms and discourse of human intelligence, knowledge, cognition, awareness, and wisdom, and a definition of evolution as being that which is subject to slow and invisible diffuse forces. Artificial Life must overcome such biases through a campaign that promotes its value as a simple technological tool; an appropriate technique for responding to rapidly changing environments of increased diversity and complexity. To this end, I again promote the evolution literacy I presented in Chapter Four, to show that researchers, designers, developers, and marketers can purposefully manipulate existing environments in order to advance the role of these technologies. The widespread acceptance and use of these agents would, in return, ensure greater complexity in information based environments and their associated consumer markets.

In this section I have suggested that the human can be deconstructed and rendered as information, and that such human informatics have a utility purpose in and of itself. I have also outlined a computational intelligence that, having formed under the influence of evolutionary ideas, principles, and mechanisms, may emerge as a distinct and discrete form of intelligence

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 217 that is similar to, but not the same, as human intelligence. In the following section I discuss how this information, in conjunction with evolved computational intelligence, has given rise to autonomous agent technologies. I argue that in a process of supplementation these agent technologies can be seen as a technology that fulfils the predefined dictates of the posthuman.

Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents All organisms interpret information by identifying patterns and accessing them in terms of similarities, differences, and changes in state. Traditional Artificial Intelligence is based upon the premise that if we can adequately identify, describe, and explain the rules and processes that we use in the collection, collation, and comprehension of informational patterns to computational machines, then we can design and program codified systems through which computers can also learn to correctly identify patterns and implement the appropriate rules in order to interpret them. While emergent Artificial Intelligence is based upon the premise that such an intelligence should be able to create its own rules and processes, the outcome is, nevertheless, the same. In strict computational terms, the number crunching abilities of modern computers mean that many of the tasks associated with information processing are now able to be performed by computational machines in ways that far exceed human capabilities and capacities.

Here, I address the role of autonomous agent technology or ‘bots’, which are discrete software ‘packets’ cable of performing complex computational tasks. Bots operate through a set of predefined algorithmic parameters and boundaries, such as the specification of a context, a declaration of input and output variables, or a declaration of constraints on variables, and use a language compatible to simple Boolean rule statements such as ‘do’, ‘achieve’, ‘finish’, ‘end’, ‘start’, ‘run’, ‘evaluate’, ‘forward’, ‘monitor’, ‘subscribe’, ‘delete’, ‘block’, or ‘find’. (Sycara, Klusch, Widoff & Lu, 1999, pp. 9-10). In the confusion that surrounds the uses and functions of agent technologies, the term ‘bot’ has come to stand as a catchall word used to describe everything from a simple logon or user prompt script (for example, “Save changes, Yes/No”; Remember password, Yes/No”), through those bots that organise and remember various user personalisation and/or behaviours (for example, the recommender systems common to ecommerce sites such as Amazon.com or Ebay), to highly complex programs that are designed to execute the computations of required information based tasks that most humans would find impossible (Leonard, 1996, p. 8). Many of the programs mistakenly thought of as bots, however, are applets: programs that are downloaded as the result of a user action and executed from beginning to end on the one host. Bots and agents, on the other hand, are programs that can migrate from host to host in a network, to places and at times of their own choosing. They are

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 218 also able to save their current state before they are transported to a new host where they are restored, allowing the program to continue where it left off (Kotz & Gray, p. 7).

Andrew Leonard (1997) defines bots – “the first indigenous species of cyberspace” – as a software version of a mechanical robot. And, like their mechanical equivalents, bots are guided by algorithmic rules of behaviour: “if this happens, do that”, “if that, then this”. Yet, writes Leonard, instead of clanking away on factory floors or playing soccer with each other in university computer-labs, software robots manoeuvre through the conceptualised space of informatic data, responding to various network protocols as they make their way through telemetric operating systems (p. 7). A truncation of the word ‘robot’, bots have been variably conceptualised as an invaluable tool that remains true to the ideal form of robots as labour- saving technology through to the slaves or indentured servants more familiar to the pessimistic etymology of the word robot itself. The word robot (coined by Czech playwright Karel Čapek in his 1920 play R.U.R.) is an adaptation of the Czech noun robota meaning compulsory or forced labour. In Čapek’s play the factory ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’ (the R.U.R. of the title) populates the world with artificial mechanised slaves, meant to relieve humans of the drudgery of work. Their intelligence expands and their numbers increase until eventually, a robot revolt destroys the human race (Menzel & D’Aluisio, 2000, p. 16).

In their current form, bots have emerged as an invaluable tool for the handling of enormous amounts of digitised information, particularly in those tasks that require the rapid finding, retrieving, processing, and interpreting of information. Most computer users already have an array of agents operating under the guise of digital proxies, personal identifiers stored on user hard-drives, user-preferences, automated scheduled tasks and reminders, and listservs. In this type of function, agents play an increasingly critical role in the organisation (in particular, the self-organisation) of everyday life. In many regards, bots act as human surrogates, and in instances where they are endowed with ‘user-friendly’ titles such as ‘personal assistant’, ‘agent’, or ‘digital broker’, they have been able to sublimate some human particulars, such as ‘decision making,’ ‘learning capacities,’ ‘self-governance,’ and ‘autonomy’ (Brown & Dugid, 2000, p. 39). In some ways this can be seen as a loss of human authority to computational machines, and many popular representations of Artificial Intelligence have dwelt upon this theme in presenting a dystopic view of computational intelligence. This theme is also addressed in Katherine Hayles more serious and weighty analysis: Until very recently, humans have been without peer in their ability to store, transmit, and manipulate information. Now they share that ability with intelligent machines. To foresee the future of this evolutionary path, we have only to ask which of these organisms, competing in many ways for the same evolutionary niche, has the information- processing capability to evolve more quickly. This conclusion makes clear […] why the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 219 computational universe should not be accepted uncritically. If the name of the game is processing information, it is only a matter of time until intelligent machines replace us as our evolutionary heirs. Whether we decide to fight them or join them by becoming computers ourselves, the days of the human race are numbered. (1999a, p. 243) However, the idea of such a competing or disparate relationship between humans and computational intelligence highlights a tautology that is applicable for all forms of autonomous computing: as all computers are programmed, anything a computer does is the consequence of programming and therefore not autonomous (Levinson 1997, p. 214). Computational intelligence, like all forms of technology, is never completely beyond the influence of other social and cultural forces (see Chapter Four). The hypothesis that a computational intelligence may be positioned as a central or determining force can be rejected in light of the rhetorical question I have highlighted previously: “what does this technology want?” I argue here that ultimately, the wants and needs of such an intelligence are both formed and programmed only by human- users.

In this thesis I have argued that in no instance can we recognise the relationship between the human and technology as one of competition or antagonistic rivalry. Rather, the relationship between the human and technology is one of symbiosis. Here, I show that intelligent machines will extend the existing symbiotic arrangement, continuing the historical evolutionary trajectory by moving both human and machine into newly formed niches together. I suggest that intelligent agents are positioned as an intermediating technology, suturing the already technologised realm of digitised and codified information and the technologically enabled material world of the human user into a new hybrid. This, I argue, shows a reduction of the space that exists between the human and technology while also highlighting the expansive or additive mechanism of evolution. That is, the introduction of autonomous agent technologies will generate greater complexity, resulting in new environmental niches that in turn promote evolutionary colonisation by newly evolved or hybrid species.

The burgeoning growth of information technologies has, obviously, occurred in conjunction with a massive expansion of human and non-human generated information: ubiquitous information has become cheaper to produce, distribute, process, disseminate, and manipulate. The growth in information available through information technologies initially led commentators such as Neil Postman to argue that the burgeoning amount of available information contributed to a loss of fundamental cultural values through the diminishing of social institutions, art, and cultural values that sustained the human subject for centuries. With so much information inundating us at so high a rate, most of it becomes incoherent and meaningless. We cannot absorb, process, and respond to such rapidly changing information: information appears indiscriminately, directed at

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 220 no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose (1992, p. 7). In a similar vein, psychologist Stanley Milgram’s study on the effects of increased informational input (1970) argued that an abundance of available information results in a form of analysis paralysis. People become desensitised or develop an impaired judgement, allocate less time to each informational input, disregard low-priority inputs, shift the burden of the information to another party, decrease benevolence, screen social responsibilities, create cognitive filtering devices to diminish the intensity of informational inputs, and create special social institutions to handle certain types of interactions. Elsewhere, David Shenk (1997) suggests that the resultant information glut has spawned new concerns regarding the quality, authenticity, reliability, management, protection of and access to this abundant information.

It can be argued, then, that in evolutionary terms the growth in information technologies has been relationally influenced by and influencing to the growth of available information. One ‘dependency’ that has arisen as a result of the reconstitution of ‘information’ and ‘technology’ landscapes is the need for a genuine technology that is concerned with the expert filtering or qualification of massive amounts of information. Consider, as an example, how one approaches the World Wide Web. Imagine trying to find a particular piece of information with no search or catalogue technologies available at all. Unless you knew the precise Uniform Resource Locator or Internet Protocol Address of the information, the only available option would be to guess the website address. This is a simple task for a web presence such as ‘qut.edu.au’, ‘abc.net.au’, or ‘Nintendo.com’, but a great deal harder for ‘http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=hjem.get2net.dk/descent/cljbot12.jpg&imgrefurl=htt p://hjem.get2net.dk/descent/acljbot2.html&h=162&w=284&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddescent%2B bot%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8’. Yet in 1992, there were no cataloguing facilities for the then 600 sites on the World Wide Web, and in order to navigate their way to the desired information users needed to accurately enter the full Uniform Resource Locator or Internet Protocol Address of these sites, or the pages of information contained therein. By 1993 enterprising html coders started posting ‘gophers’ in order to help users navigate the then 10,000 World Wide Web sites. These websites also provided users with (non-hyperlinked) lists of other available pages, usually grouped by category or topic. By 1995, start-up companies like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite and Infoseek had launched input driven search engines to help manage the World Wide Web’s 100,000+ sites. (While an evolutionary account could outline the Darwinian growth and demise of such companies, my attention is drawn to the new technologies that have been developed around them). With anywhere between 8 and 11.5 billion indexable websites (Gulli & Signorini, 2005, ¶ 2), and approximately 550 billion page- based documents (Bergman, 2001, ¶ 5), we can indeed be thankful for the array of search engines, personalised portals, datamaps, global directories, webrings, listserves, and other

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 221 forms of software that help filter ‘available’ information into ‘useful’ information. And this, of course is just the World Wide Web, the public face of the internet. Add to this the information contained within the various private, educational, governmental, public service intranets, databases, and digital archives, and the amount of information represented (as Table 4. shows above) becomes gargantuan.

The role of bots and autonomous agents in their online form is to help deal with the cascade of available information. And with nearly all major Internet sites now capable of hosting (and usually willing to host) some form of mobile agents (Kotz & Gray, 1999, p. 7), the ability to collate and process data inherent in the search-and-catalogue capabilities of agents has contributed enormously to their success. To this end, a variety of bots are employed in numerous differing instances, for example: • Bots that gather and collate information for further examination by human-users. Examples include the web robots, spiders, wanderers, data-miners and worms that apply sophisticated search techniques that are able to accurately match data and profile from multiple network searches and sources; the product-brokering bots and recommender scripts that alert users to the availability of particular items that, based on previous records, may be of interest to them; the merchant-brokering bots that roam the internet comparing prices for ‘best buy’ options, and the bots that keep track of finances and investment portfolios; the bots that monitor, filter and alert us to various news items from sources on the internet or an intranet, or search and track within specialised interest areas such as jobs, scholarships, and conferences. • Bots that communicate messages to human-users on behalf of another human or another agent. Examples include the annoybots that script and deliver massive amounts of unsolicited emails and newsgroup posting; the chatterbots that are designed for conversational interaction with human participants. • Bots that provide or avoid security, protection and authentication within an informational environment. Examples include the cancelbots and modbots that cancel and moderate unwarranted computational communications; the armies of defencebots that work to protect electronic communications from viruses or hacking; the taskbots, hackbots and spybots that gather information concerning the viewing, listening, shopping, and visiting behaviours of users for benign (marketing) or malicious (spying) purposes. • Bots that play a role in the self-organisation of the human-user’s social life. Examples include the mailbots that automatically filter email or perform other email upkeep functions; the contact bots that maintain address books and keep web directories up-to-date;

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 222 the userbots that help in the management of personal profiles and schedules, reminding us of our various appointments and time commitments. • Bots that network only with other bots in order to meet the dictates of the human-user. Examples include the ‘middle agent’ bots that help request these aforementioned agents to find providers in dynamic network environments; the bots that network with similar bots, recognising ‘kindred’ preferences between and among users; the bots that monitor physical objects for parameter anomalies, alerting users as required. • Bots that assist human-users in work based roles. Examples include the bots that manage decision support systems that, like other Artificial Intelligence expert systems, use case based reasoning to collate best outcome alternatives; the bots that manage crisis management/aversion systems, using simulations to glean the appropriate ‘best practice’ under a ‘worst case scenario’; the analysis agents that compare large amounts of data to identify or create logical informatic patterns, major themes, or obvious anomalies; the bots that train users in the uses and functions of various software applications as they work; the research assistant bots that conduct a range of bibliographic and formatting functions, or summarise text or data. (Leonard, 1996; Brown & Dugid, 2000; Odell, 2000).

While this list outlines the usefulness of bots, it is nevertheless important to remember that they are not without criticism. As with other employed agents, issues over security, authority, authenticity, and autonomy remain. As bots need to be able to move with impunity throughout the network, the security of bot, user, and network remains an issue. For every agent that is created to protect user information there is an agent that attempts to steal or maliciously modify that information, and the dynamic nature of information environments means what was a trusted agent yesterday may cause harm today. Another area of concern is in the authenticity and authorisation of bots. How, for example, can a website administrator ensure that a visiting bot is an authentic customer and not a competitor? On the other hand, how can users make sure that the information they receive is solicited, or that it is the most authentic or accurate match to their defined parameters? Their bot may have been excluded from the preferred site because that administrative bot thought it was a spy or another form of malicious agent. Indeed, to avoid any potential damage from bots, many website administrators employ bot exclusion protocols that protect their site through a denial of access to agent technologies. However, the use of exclusion protocols ultimately disadvantages both user and administrator in that the production of such an impassable gap in the system coverage of an agent will stop a potential visitor from ever accessing that service. Nevertheless, any autonomy without accountability raises problems, and the

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 223 question of where the responsibility for autonomous agent decisions, advice, and actions lies must be considered. As the name implies, an agent should act on behalf of somebody, and not of its own accord. So if, for example, a user’s agent is blocked through a robot exclusion protocol and some form of damage to the user results, does the responsibility lie with the user, the agent programmer, or the company that the exclusion protocol represents? (Brown & Dugid, 2000, p. 54) And despite their learning capabilities, bots generally rely on their ability to follow algorithmic logic. Humans, on the other hand, do not, and often break such rules of logic under certain circumstances, such as in the act of negotiating. Likewise, humans do not simply wait for X to happen before they commence Y. They may skip X and actively seek Y, or make a start on Y in anticipation of X. Nevertheless, in most instances it is, as Leonard argues, premature to condemn bots based on their mistakes: It is not yet time to blame bots for the sins they commit. As the submissive half of the cyborg-human-computer interface, bots are not responsible for their misdeeds. Humans are. (1997, p. 89)

Nevertheless, the general appeal of these agents is that they strive to suture together human- users and information in a way that makes IT-based labour seamless in application and interaction by simplifying the location, transportation, interpretation, and transformation of information between the diverse interests of various human-users and information-based applications. Like earlier labour-based technologies, the immediate value of agent technology lies in its ability to relieve the IT worker of increasingly excessive information-based work loads fraught with fatigue and tedium. Without subscribing to any utopian ideals, the vision for agent technology is that they can reduce or eliminate many of these repetitive IT tasks, reduce the risk of human-generated error, and enhance the outcome performances of complex data-based tasks. The main difference between an instance of agent technology and other forms of labour- saving software, however, is that agent technology is equipped with a form of computational intelligence. It is a computer program with a core knowledge-base and a set of definitive rules, as are, indeed, many other labour-reducing forms of software. However, the difference between a piece of software that blindly follows its algorithmic programming (do X when Y), is that agents have the capacity to learn and to adapt. Over time, an agent would come to acquire an appreciation of user ‘patterns’ (preferences, practices, habits). That is, an agent should: • Be able to be tailored to handle the specific needs and preferences of the user-profile; • Be able to be tailored to handle the dynamic properties of changing user-contexts; • Accommodate static profiles and dynamic contexts by exhibiting an element of functional and automatic adaptability, flexibility, and the capacity for continuous learning;

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 224 • Be able to gather, process, and interpret data in the same way its user does (the agent should ‘think’ like its user); • Be able to inform users and user-applications of new opportunities, occurrences of interest, and relevant context changes; • Keep watch for new and useful information that would otherwise have escaped the attention of the user and respond appropriately. (Leonard, 1996; Brown & Dugid, 2000; Odell, 2000; Luger, 2002; Aarts, 2003; Marzano, 2003; Dijkstra, Jonker, & van Gageldonk, 2003) In addition to this list, agents should be ‘situated’: embedded in the environment in which they operate. They may operate in this way with no knowledge or access to the larger domain, external networks, the extent or range of processors, or the physical elements of a given task (such as those found in mechanical robotics). Or, conversely, they may be highly aware of their environment, and thus capable of recognising the needs of the human-user in a variety of situational contexts (Marzano, 2003, p. 14). Agents are autonomous or semi-autonomous with each agent (or constitutive element of an agent) having certain user-defined responsibilities that are fulfilled independently. An agent should be able to adapt the presentation of content in regard to the situation and the environment in which it is used. This requires a degree of context awareness along with an ability to anticipate user intentions. In this manner, content would be targeted to the specific user, based on the current contextualisation and preferences (Dijkstra, Jonker, & van Gageldonk, 2003, p. 127).

Nevertheless, an agent may operate in a manner which displays very little or no knowledge of themselves, their users, or other agent technologies, and the results an agent produces may be forwarded directly to a user, or to an agent collective or community. As agents are interactional, they work well as a collective or cooperative, with each individual agent processing tasks particular to their knowledge, skills, and responsibilities in a coordinated and structured fashion. In this regard, agent intelligence is seen as a phenomenon resident in and emerging from a society of agents and is not the singular property of any individual agent (Luger, 2002, pp. 15- 16). The idea here is that while a single agent that does absolutely everything could be constructed, it would represent a bottleneck in terms of speed and reliability. Dividing the functions of an agent into sub-agents provides modularity, flexibility, modifiability, and extensibility. Rather than having one agent performing a defined request by visiting all suitable information domains, an agent could reproduce components of itself, facilitate the actions of these components, and delete these components when the task is fulfilled (Odell, 2000, p. 39).

Communicative events between agents and agent components may be arranged in a variety of ways. Communication may be structured by adopting a flat two-way communicative structure, it

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 225 may be structured around the use of a human or agent facilitator, it may be structured using a specialised hierarchical architecture, or it may be structured using an open-network, nodal model, similar to that of the internet (Odell, 2000, p. 34). And as these agents or collections of agents respond to certain conditions, they should, over time, be able to build a repertoire of appropriate reactions, a memory through which an agent can remember that certain events tend to recur under certain circumstances, leading to an ability to predict and implement appropriate responses (Dijkstra, Jonker, & van Gageldonk, 2003, p. 127). Stephano Marzano, in his discussion on intelligent devices, argues that agent technology would be able to recognise us, notice our habits, learn our likes and dislikes, and adapt its behaviour and the services it offers us accordingly. It could generate new paradigms of relationships and behaviours at an individual and group level, as well as new likes and dislikes. And, by operating in a network that links us through the Internet and the rest of the world, it can combine information from disparate sources to supply us with what we need. [These] intelligence devices will also show their intelligence by communicating among themselves, and, as a system, communicating with us in the ways that are most natural to us – talking, gesturing, and showing. (Marzano, 2003, p. 9)

In order for an agent to be able to process context- and user-specific instances and preferences with content-related data, computational intelligences rely on highly accurate data-matching. One of the core elements of such data matching is information ascribed in the form of ‘metadata’. Metadata is stored information that functions as a node in a data network. Metadata is used to represent semantic relations between user and object, object and query, user profiles, and context specifics. ‘Content-related’ metadata remains static, and describes the underlying content in terms of features, concepts, creation data, distribution data, or other relevant information, and is mainly used for search and classification purposes. ‘User-related’ metadata is data that captures user preferences, profiles, stable characteristics, and dynamic behaviours and can be either static or dynamic. ‘Context-related’ metadata is data specific to the context in which the user operates (Aarts, Korst, & Verhaegh, 2003, pp. 124-125). The more accurately the metadata reflects an object, the greater the rate of success in data-matching. Indeed, the value of informatic data increases significantly when the right metadata is available (Dijkstra, Jonker, & van Gageldonk, 2003, p. 128).

The discourse of evolution suggests that as agents continue to interact with their environment, other agents, and human-users, new environmental niches will develop that will result, in turn, in a tighter degree of interconnectedness between agents, human-users, digitised information, and the external object-based world. To this end, software designers and computer engineers have worked on the development of intelligent devices that extend the reach of agents to external

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 226 devices. Where the first generation of ‘host-based’ agents trawled the internet using basic ‘fetch’ processing, agent protocol has already advanced enough to allow standalone mobile agents to negotiate with computers and other agents, and to self-replicate and design sub-agents to be employed to fulfil specific tasks. The continuous development of agent protocol suggests that independent and self-motivated agents will be able to activate and inhabit real-world devices and robotics in order to pursue defined goals beyond the realms of the software world (Murch & Johnson, 1999, pp. 5-18, pp. 179-185). Thus far, this has included the microprocessors of various electronic-device operation controls that, along with the other sensory technologies, enable intelligent devices to exist in non-networked environments. Increasingly, intelligent devices utilise a range of natural, artificial, cybernetic, electronic, microelectronic, and computational sensors that monitor mechanical (length, volume, and time-based derivatives including velocity, acceleration, mass flow, force, torque, inertia, pressure, acoustic wavelength, and intensity), electrical (voltage, current, charge, resistance, inductance, capacitance, polarisation, and electric field), magnetic (field intensity, flux density, and permeability), radiant (intensity, phase, wavelength, polarisation, reflectance, transmittance, and refractive index), and chemical (composition, concentration, reaction rate, pH, and oxidation) parameters. Such sensors are employed in the likes of writing tablets, track balls, clothing, cameras, and speech recognition devices and are designed to extend the size and scope of parameters (examples range from deep space satellite to microscopic monitory sensors), maximise sensitivity, maximise speed of response, and minimise human error and labour costs. Increasingly sophisticated, these intelligent devices convert analogue sensory input into digital values for further transformative or computational use. Clear, reliable, and useful signals are delivered to the host system using subsystem processes that may include excitation control, amplification, filtering and other forms of compensation for noise, interference, drift and non-linearity, and signal integrity checks. These processes would eliminate the need for every intelligent output device to have such a range of refined sensors: one input device with such a sensor would communicate their sensory information with a range of other devices (Aarts, 2003, pp. 172-173).

Examples of such devices include media output devices such as screens and speakers, remote- sensor operated surveillance devices, self-monitoring inventory and stock control machines, personal portable devices, ‘smart clothing’ that incorporates wearable technologies or that is constructed of smart fabrics and fibres (see Eves, Heerden, Mama, Marzano, & Traldi, 2000), robots, and a range of micro technologies adapted for the ‘smart home’, ‘smart car,’ and ‘smart fridge’. Through agent technology, intelligent devices will access a range of internet based services to accomplish predefined user and/or agent tasks, regardless of whether the human- knows that such access is taking place (Kotz & Gray, 1999, p. 8). And as these devices continue to become invisible, ubiquitous, seamless, and backgrounded, the continued adaptation and extension of a range of wireless applications likewise promises to dismantle the boundaries that

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 227 exist between network, agent, ‘external’ technology, and human-user. Nevertheless, the gendered assumptions inherent in such technology have not gone un-noted. Judy Wajcman (2004), for example, notes that the designers and producers of such smart technologies (most notably the technologically ‘smart’ home or car) have little interest in lived and everyday domestic relations: Home informatics is mainly concerned with the centralised control of heating, lighting, security, information, entertainment and energy consumption in a local network or 'house-brain'. Prototypes of the intelligent house tend to ignore the whole range of functions that come under the umbrella of housework. The target consumer is implicitly the technically interested and entertainment-oriented male, someone in the designer's own image. The smart house is a deeply masculine vision of a house, rather than a home […] The routine neglect of women's knowledge, experience and skills as a resource for technical innovation in the home is symptomatic of the gendered character of the process. (2004, p. 118)

As this thesis has shown, the introduction of technologies into a given socio-cultural environment will generate greater complexity, resulting in new environmental niches that in turn promote evolutionary colonisation by newly evolved or hybrid species. This suggests that the relationship between the human and agent technologies will extend the existing symbiotic arrangement and thus continue the historical evolutionary trajectory of both human and technology. In Chapter Four I argued that any relationship that exists between the human and technology cannot be deemed entirely causal in its structure or outcomes. Rather, the wide varieties of relational arrangements within the symbiosis suggest that the human and the technological follow a collaborative enterprise. That is, in an act of symbiotic accordance, both the human and technology behave in an autopoietic fashion, establishing a place for themselves and their symbiotic counterpart according to the unique wants or needs of the union. Thus regardless of the degree of centrality one or the other ‘species’ plays in the formation, administration, and operation (for example, the act of coding or programming, or, conversely, the act of collation and filtering) of the symbiotic relationship, one cannot conclude that the entire enterprise is one of direct determination on behalf of either. Nor, I argue, can it be seen as one of competition. Applied to agent technologies, the biological mechanisms seen in symbiosis as outlined by John Maynard Smith (1974) suggest that in no way can the development of these technologies be seen as a loss of human authority to a computational intelligence. In my discussion of symbiosis in Chapter Four I outlined the three symbiotic relationships as they were originally defined by Maynard Smith in the context of technological evolution. Here, I re-present these definitions in the context of Artificial Intelligence autonomous agent technologies:

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 228 • Commensalism, in which one species benefits and the other is neither harmed nor benefited. In the relationship between human and agent technology this relationship can be seen in the application of bots in information processing for human needs, the commensal sharing of information between the two species, and the provision of informatic data for agent needs. • Helotism, in which one species is treated as inferior or subjugated, or used in a relationship as if it were a slave. On the one hand, this relationship can be seen in the use of bots as a form of indentured labour. On the other, the delimiting use of agent technologies – what they can do that the human cannot, or what they cannot do that the human wants – can be seen to limit the relationship in some respects. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that either of these helot relationships goes so far as to position one species as predator and the other species as prey. • Mutualism, in which both species contribute to the overall well-being of the other. This relationship can be seen in many instances in which bots support their human-user as the human-users maintain the upkeep of their bots.

Therefore, while one species evolved in the biosphere millions of years ago, and the other species evolved in the datasphere during the last quarter of a century, it can be argued that the biological human and the synthetic agent are, in some regards, sutured together through their morphological similarity. Both species are information processing units, processing information and data received from their surrounding environments (data that are in one realm often ostensibly a variant of the other). While one species mines informatic data for concepts and percepts that are used in the formation of knowledge, the other mines informatic data for patterns amenable to the completion of predefined algorithmic formulations. Yet in the process, both navigate through their ‘information space’ of their respective environments (one perceptual, one conceptual) learning how to ‘make meaning’ from the information they receive as they go, and feeding that back to the other in a cybernetic fashion.

In light of the symbiotic arrangement it seems more obvious how the human stands to benefit from agent technology (such as decreased labour costs and time) than how the agent stands to benefit from the human-user. I am not suggesting that these bots should be encoded in a way that they would enjoy their life as a bot, wanting to grow and be emotionally and spiritually fulfilled. These are human concerns. But the appearance or illusion of such programming may be necessary in order to ease their acceptance by humans who, after all, have an historic habit of anthropomorphising technologies. Computational intelligences may, to this end, function in a way similar to the Bandai Tamagotchi toy: a device that exhibits behaviours and characteristics favourable to the prescribed user in return for continued upkeep and maintenance.

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 229

Frank Biocca (1997) discusses three levels of interactive ‘presence’ that exist between agent interfaces and human-users. Biocca argues that the development of such media interfaces follows an historic pattern he calls progressive embodiment. The first level is that of the third- person, a voyeuristic identification with the remote character and its prescribed attributes. This is an interaction through viewing, a media experience that is usually limited to identification. The second level is that of the second-person, a unique user experience of direct interaction through doing, such as avatar control in a computer game. The third level is that of first-person interaction with other intelligent, complex, expressive, animated beings. This, I argue, is the implicit goal in the interface design needed for autonomous agents. Typically, rather than presenting their findings in the symbolic form of informational data, bots tend to adopt familiar and anthropomorphised forms, usually as animated, stylised, or cartoon like characters. The adoption of these representative forms invokes reactions and responses in human users that would otherwise be faced with seemingly intangible and abstract bits of information: anthropomorphism, in this regard, functions as a metaphor. Much has been written on the role of virtual representation and avatars, around simulation (for example Flanagan, 1999) embodiment (for example Hayles, 1996, 1999b), representation (for example Bukatman, 1993; Morse, 1998), and identification (for example Flanagan 1999, 2002, 2003; Stone, 2000), and it is by means of the anthropomorphised interface of the avatar metaphor that autonomous agents suture the gap that exists between masses of codified information, computational intelligent interpretation, and the human-user. Indeed, in computational environments, the creation of the sensation of presence becomes an explicit design goal (Biocca, 1997), as such metaphors of embodiment are overlayed onto existing code-structures. Paul Levinson (1997) argues that the ‘illusion of presence’ is a product common to all communications media. Levinson argues that throughout their evolution, each new generation of media will generate a more compelling sense of ‘human’ presence, facilitating communication that is increasingly like the ways humans process information ‘naturally’ (prior to the advent of the given media). Thus, argues Levinson: Voices on the telephone replace the dots-and-dashes of telegraph; colour photography replaces black-and-white; and the fluid online written dialogue, more like speech than print, now is beginning to compete with older, paper media. That the older forms – telegraph, black-and-white photography, print on paper – were developed in the first place was due to the enormous extension across space and/or time, beyond our natural means of perception, that they provided. (1997, p. xvi).

And while an agent need not necessarily present a user-friendly anthropomorphised face to extend or enhance the interactive experience of the human-user, such an arrangement may be necessary as only a very small number of people are able to experience unmediated

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 230 communication with their computers. Data-writers, coders, programmers, geeks, and hackers may understand ‘what lies beneath’, but “for the larger part of society, an opaque interface seems to be the preferred mode of interaction” (Merrick & Woods Peter, 2002, ¶ 9). Most interaction with computers, from word processing, web browsing, image editing, and document sharing is conducted by means of interfaces that are user-focused, preformed point-and-click icon operations, and keyboard shortcuts. Without such representational ergonomics, most users would not be able to perform even the most basic of computational tasks. Merrick and Woods Peter argue that the useable graphic interface [R]educes the cognitive load of interaction and situates the machine as an agent that ‘serves up’ data in an easily consumable fashion. (Merrick and Woods Peter, 2002, ¶ 9) The authors continue, suggesting in effect a reverse anthropomorphism when they argue that such human-machine relations complicate and problematised human-users. At the same time, this opacity allows a sense of ‘mystery’ to remain beyond the screen - as with human to human interactions, we cannot presume to ‘know’ what lies beneath surfaces, thus we are freer to anthropomorphise our computers and their ‘thoughts’. (Merrick and Woods Peter, 2002, ¶ 9)

Bruno Latour writes that anthropomorphism generally occurs when we project or ascribe human properties that are not inherent in the technology, and that technologies are anthropomorphic in three ways: they have been made or shaped by humans; they usually substitute for (or extend, enhance) the actions of people; and they shape the human by prescribing what action can occur. In other words, all technology is always thoroughly anthropomorphised (1992, pp. 235- 236). Computational applications that exhibit human characteristics are likely to display (and are indeed accessed upon their ability to display) elements of intelligence, mobility, sensory information gathering (vision, sound, touch), memory capabilities, learning abilities, problem solving, information processing or thought, speech, and a limited range of emotions. Each of these is a human or human derived behaviour or characteristic that has been purposefully generated into a computational intelligence. Bots are, indeed, melded together through their functional utility. Their locus on the screen-surface belies the often fragmented and dispersed binary structure that lies underneath. The human-users may experience a collective of bots as one intelligent, autonomous, and personalised piece of software that displays some aspects of human behaviour as it shadows its human-user through all networked and wireless applications, taking care of many tasks of the everydayness of life in the information age. In this regard, the codified structure of bots can be seen as an animistic and/or animated architecture. An ‘animistic’ architecture suggests that bots have some form of internal logic or motivating force that guides their behaviour, while an ‘animated’ architecture enables bots to change their spatial representation and location (Novak, [1991] 2002, p. 153).

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 231

I have argued that, in a computational environment, Artificial Intelligence autonomous agents behave much like “organic beings in a state of nature” (Darwin, 1859] 1972) despite failing to meet any initial criteria in a generally accepted definition of ‘life’. Bots are made, not born; they have no neuronal instincts; they do not grow old or die; the do not sexually reproduce. However, as I have argued in this thesis, the technologies and techniques associated with biogenetics have reformulated our understanding of life in such a way that it may be suggested that all life is essentially ‘made’. And in an autopoietic fashion, agents can be seen to display independent ‘thought’ and action. And, as a piece of software, bots can be seen to date very quickly and are rapidly replaced by new generations. Bots can be deleted, often even by the actions of other bots. Clone bots make copies of themselves, and it is common for bots to swap parts of their codified structure in the creation of new bots. Like humans, bots have at their heart a fundamental structure represented as an abstract code. And like many of their biological counterparts, bots exhibit intelligent behaviour, processing information, learning from experience, and undertaking actions necessary in achieving their goal without human supervision or intercession and often with a high degree of flexibility.

Within the non-linear environments of networked information, the ceaseless creation and recontextualisation of vectors and nodes constantly rearranges the composite shape of the system, often in sudden and unexpected ways. The constant rearrangement of this environment results in the production of new informational spaces or niches. In this chapter I have argued that software agents, as an emergent form of computational intelligence, are capable of learning and adapting to such environmental changes. This may, in turn, entice new mutations within existing agent ‘species’, or the colonisation of such spaces by newly generated species or autopoietic hybrids and cross-breeds. These agents may be unsuccessful and suffer extinction, or they may thrive and swell in number. Either way, they will rearrange the environments in which they operate, producing new spaces and thus continuing the overall process of evolution. I have argued that the role these agents play extends beyond the realm of networked information, and into the world of human-technology symbiosis. In this arrangement, humans and technology will provide the conditions necessary for agent evolution as the continued supply and demand of information would operate as both mutation trigger and selection mechanism.

Yet as these agents are a form of technology themselves, and therefore part of the human- technology symbiosis, it should also be expected that these agents will impact upon the environments in which we operate, creating new spaces both real and conceptual for human colonisation. That is to say, bots, through their manipulation of digitised information, can have an impact on the object based real-world in which human action occurs. The ability of agent technology to recognise individual human-users, understand user preferences in a variety of

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 232 contexts, and adapt their performance accordingly means that agents would, even at an initial level, be able to generate and facilitate new user-centred patterns. This, I argue, would encourage and foster new behavioural patterns and new collaborative relationships between human-users and other human and non-human entities, at individual, familial, social, cultural, national, and global levels. These relationships would go beyond mere technological gadgetry, adopting a global approach to the management of technologised networks and systems. Across the entire social spectrum, from biological reproduction, through education, governance, and work, from buying, brokering, bidding and selling, and right through to the management of aged and invalid care, agent technology could facilitate all manner of load balancing, logistics support, process and traffic control, failure anticipation and recovery, surveillance and monitoring, communication, information synthesis, interest matching, customisation, and deep personalisation (Odell, 2000, p. 20).

Such opportunity carries a large responsibility and, as Marzano argues, it is the responsibility of current generations to ensure that the evolutionary trajectory these agents adopt is in accord with the shared future of all life – organic and inorganic, human and non-human – that resides upon this planet: As a global society, we have a collective duty to those who come after us to ensure that this new concept, which could mean so much to humanity, is guided consciously along paths that (as far as we can judge) are responsible. It would be easy to let it just drift and evolve aimlessly. Yet conventions, once established, are very hard to change. Let us take the trouble now to take out an ‘insurance policy’ for future generations. Let us make sure through reflection upon the issues, wide discussion and collaborative experimentation, that the conventions and concepts that evolve within [this technology] can stand the test of time (Marzano, 2003, p. 11). To this end I have proposed in this thesis an evolution literacy, which would serve here as something of a ‘check-list’, through which researchers, designers, developers, and marketers could model, map, and measure the impact of agent technologies on global information environments prior to their diffusion and adoption. Mechanisms, institutional discourses, pedagogies, and rules like this would ensure that agent technology remains at least amiable, useful, and committed to the human-technology symbiosis, including a range of implied and stated meanings that form a variety of fixed, flexible, and alternative viewpoints. Nevertheless, even with such conventions and principles, agents must ultimately answer that overriding question that is for and of themselves: what does technology want?

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 233 Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 234 Conclusion

The ultimate goal of our species is omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience: the ability to be everywhere, to do everything and to know everything. Stefano Marzano (2001) New nomads, p. xx

This thesis has shown the posthuman to be a discursive construct that has emerged in response to earlier claims of an essentialist or universal human or human nature. Through an analysis of historical evolution theory I have shown the human to be a construct not only of social, psychological, anthropological, historical, sexual, racial language and discourse, but also of the language and discourse of biological evolution and technological development. Through the use of metaphor, evolution theories reflect contemporary social ideologies and institutions. In turn, these ideologies and institutions use metaphors appropriated from evolution theories to determine, normalise, and justify their relational positions within social realms. The reciprocal process by which evolution theory is both a ‘product of’ and a ‘producing force’ constitutes a metanarrative by means of which the human is able to establish the place and role of both human and non-human objects within an otherwise unscripted world. Periodically, the accepted definition and meaning of evolution is redressed in the light of contemporaneous social and cultural change. Contemporary evolution theory is thus reconfigured to reflect parts of the world as codified informatic systems of associated computational network logic in which the behaviour of participants is predefined according to an evolved or programmed structure. Working from within the discourse of contemporary evolution theories, I have outlined a version of the posthuman as an Artificial Intelligence computational programme or autonomous agent that is configured as an exosomatic supplement to and an extension of the biological human.

Contemporary evolution theory is configured to suggest that change within a given environment only promotes further change, leading to environments of ever greater evolutionary complexity. I have shown in this thesis that technological innovation and development can also be discussed using terms and mechanisms appropriated from the discourse of contemporary evolution. Positioned in this way, technological systems constitute holistic environments, and any change within or to this environment will likewise encourage further evolutionary complexity within the system. In addition to this, I have outlined the symbiosis that exists within human-technology relationships, arguing that the symbiosis is itself an evolutionary phenomenon. This shows that

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 235 any innovation, development, and change to the symbiosis will also lead to greater evolutionary complexity, and ultimately, a continuation in the evolution of the symbiosis.

It is in this manner that the discourse of evolution highlights the improbability of one form or version of the posthuman emerging as a definitive and absolute evolutionary successor to the biological human. Rather, competing discourses, institutional and organisational practices and material activities, and instrumental policies continue to define the posthuman as a construct of various social and historical configurations of nature, embodiment, technology, and culture. Each new definition or version of the posthuman opens a range of new possibilities and opportunities within and for posthuman evolution. The result is a posthuman figure based on the axiom that, in the absence of an essential human and in light of an environment increasingly complicated by technology, there can be few restrictions or limitations on how the posthuman can be configured in future representations. Therefore, this thesis participates in a discussion through which other configurations of the posthuman might also emerge, including a large and varied range of genetically engineered biological entities, cyborgs and cyborg entities, robots and robotic devices, and computational informatic beings. As I have suggested, each new posthuman entity included here would also contribute to the reorganisation and rearrangement of human- technology relations, creating new opportunities for further colonisation by new technologies and techniques, new organisational and institutional practices and material activities, new instrumental policies, new economic and market opportunities, and new posthuman configurations. And as this process would proceed in an autocatalytic and autopoietic fashion, it follows, then, that as there is no one particular and definitive form or version of the posthuman, there can also be no one particular and definitive form or version of the Artificial Intelligence computational programme or autonomous agent as it is defined and presented in this thesis. Indeed, in presenting this version of the posthuman I have outlined a conceptual arrangement in which such agents, functioning within a given virtual information environment, will continue to autopoietically ‘self-make’ in response to new environmental opportunities. It follows too, that as autonomous agents are themselves a form of technology, their continued development will ultimately contribute to the overarching arrangement of the human-technology symbiosis.

Until very recently, humans have been without peer in their ability to store, transmit, and manipulate information. Now, they share that ability with intelligent machines. In their current form, agents have emerged as an invaluable tool for the handling of enormous amounts of digitised information, particularly in those tasks that require the rapid finding, retrieving, processing, and interpretation of information. Information processing agent operation occurs anywhere the human interacts with digital information. In other words, the spaces in which agents would operate can be found at any junction or vector in which information is produced, collected, collated, transmitted, received, or interpreted. This will see a wide variety of agent

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 236 shapes and structures, as agents continue to migrate from discrete host-based platform operations to diverse and complex mobile and network applications that range from simple computational decisions, such as scheduled and routine maintenance operations and the collection and collation of predefined data-structures, through to complex operations in which variables depend upon environment and context awareness and analysis, such as simulated and actualised decision-making. In future applications, agents will be independent and self- motivated and able to activate and inhabit real-world devices and robotics in order to pursue defined goals beyond the realms of the software world. Examples of such devices include a wide range of media output devices, most commonly found in discussions around ‘smart’ buildings and other such ‘smart’ media and domestic appliances. Further applications would be found in military, education, and healthcare media devices that monitor environments, objects, and subjects (input), and respond accordingly (output).

The effect of human/agent action will be most obvious in the informational space in which human and agent meet, and in operating in this informational space agents will reconfigure packets of information according to the dictates of their own operational variables. While much of this information will be machine generated, the vast bulk will be human-derived or human-oriented. However, I have also suggested that in reconfiguring the information environment in which they operate agents will be capable of reconfiguring real world objects and relations. In doing so, they may impinge upon certain configurations that are valued within the human subject. What happens when values and attributes that have traditionally ‘belonged’ to the human subject are deemed to be at odds with newly configured environments, economic incentives, and operational variables of autonomous agents? If agents are programmed in order to preference human values at the sake of agent incentives will their outputs affect the overall symbiosis for better or worse? The foremost question that must be addressed concerns the implications agents will have in the object world of the biological human and other non-human actors.

One implication that can be drawn from the reduction of the world to a form of information that is exposed to the rules and logic of cybernetics is that the human can no longer be constituted or accepted as the most dominant actor/producer of subjective power-based decisions. In this regard, ‘informationalism’ can be equated to the power-knowledge nexus Michel Foucault has written of in his discussions on discourse. That is, information itself can be seen as a defining force that positions, constitutes, represents, sustains, empowers, or imprisons subjects. However, information – a discourse that is ultimately construed as digitised representative 1’s and 0’s – is amenable to technological interference and manipulation, which suggests that human-based or human-oriented information might be reorganised, reformulated, and recontextualised according to the machine-based laws of the system in which it is currently being represented. And this, in turn, can have very real effects upon the actual and embodied

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 237 human subject for whom the information acts. Any malignant manipulation, partial or incomplete representations, or misrepresentations of such human information may alter the direction or flow of that information through a given system. And the interpretation of that information may be conducted through processes prefigured or programmed in advance to privilege one position or side of a particular binary (1/0) structure. In order to accommodate agent action within the object world, agents and agent operations must be contextualised within the conceptual space of the human-technology symbiosis. This can be achieved by forcing the question, within the symbiotic union, what does technology want?

In order to address this question I believe a conceptual and discursive space must be created in which assumptions about ‘success’ are measured according to the terms and mechanisms of evolution as they have been presented in this thesis. This suggests that we must be cautious in determining success in innovations that propel the quest for a more ‘efficient’ form of human automation, and stand committed to the axiom that ‘faster’, ‘bigger’, ‘harder’, ‘finer’ does not necessarily procure a formula for wellbeing amongst human and non-human actors. Such measures are ultimately value-laden and steadfastly focused on human outcomes and concerns, and as such they delimit agent action to that which is human. In order to grant agents a posthuman status, I argue that the success of autonomous agents must not (unlike other historical accounts of technological innovation) be measured in terms of increased competency, effectiveness, proficiency, productivity, or complexity. Instead, a position must be established in which autonomous agents are able to convince the human that they have a genuine utility value within the human-technology symbiosis. To this end, autonomous agents and humans must be capable of negotiating the relationship that exists between them. While such a negotiation is inherently political (and therefore, inherently human-focused) an evolution literacy would extend the discussion beyond human/agent componentry, and into the discursive space of the overarching symbiotic arrangement I have outlined in this thesis. The colonisation of newly formed environmental niches would therefore be negotiated according to outcomes that contributed to the symbiosis, and the shared history and culture of humans and agents would ultimately contribute to the success of such negotiations. Indeed, whenever a human micro- culture ‘launches’ an autonomous agent it is effectively advocating increased human-agent communication within a technological system. And while the action and interaction of humans, agents, and operational environments (informational or object-world based) would result in the production of new discursive arrangements that may or may not be completely amenable to the two actors, any divergence between humans and agents should not be lamented or rectified, but seen as a phenomenon that promotes greater complexity and cross-cultural interaction within the symbiosis. This suggests that any communication between the agent realm and its human users would result in a tighter interconnectedness between the two realms, leading only to greater complexity within the micro-ecologies that surround and constitute the overarching

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 238 human-technology symbiosis. Such rearrangements would, in turn, deliver additional benefits within intrapersonal, interpersonal, economic, social, and cultural realms.

Therefore, the very first step to measuring the success of autonomous agents is to develop a dialogue in which both actors can participate. To this end, code structures that draw on established symbolic and semiotic representations can be erected in order to distinguish and differentiate between the biological, the social, and the technological. These would be configured in such a way as to provide a structure of governance with clear definitions and guidelines regarding the obligations and requirements of both humans and agents, and would include new protocols, guidelines, policies, and laws that were explicitly designed around suitable code structures. (Existing examples of such governance devices include the processes and procedures that concern digital surveillance, encryption, filtering, protection, and client authentication). However, in nearly all such situations, agents identify, define, and process data according to parameters in which differentials can often not be accounted for and accommodated. That is, the statistical portraits provided by data-matching technologies and techniques rely on accurate input of statutory, corporate, demographic, and consumer variables that can never capture the individual subject in its entirety. This suggests that a seamless cross- cultural interaction would occur only when agents were involved in the production of new discourses. To this end, agents must be configured in such as way that their functional processes (for example, processing sensory input, computational decision-making, and the creation, collation, and broadcasting of information) can be recognised as an act of communication and discourse production: agent action must be read as an act of enunciation.

In the human/agent relationship, computational decision-making and subsequent discourse- production would therefore occur at three distinct categorical levels. In the first instance, agents would provide high levels of computational aid to human cognitive processes. Here, the human would retain control of the outcomes of a particular action, and the agent technology would merely extend human decision-making capabilities by enhancing human computational facilities. In the second instance, agents would make decisions according to predefined human mandates. Here, action could occur in absence of the human subject, but only insofar as the human had allowed such action to take place. In the third instance, agents would make decisions and undertake actions autonomously and unbeknownst to the human. Here, computational agents are left to act in complete absence of the human-subject, undertaking autonomous decision- making according to predefined or emergent and self-defined goals. However, it is important to recognise that while the relocation of logical structures and decision-making procedures from the human mind to computational devices echoes the historical belief that the human mind is mere computation or a ‘thinking machine’, the use of agent technology would not, I have argued, seek to supplant or supersede human cognitive action. Rather, in an act of supplementation,

Mapping posthuman discourse and the evolution of living informatics 239 human/agent interaction would contribute to a complex discourse within the symbiosis, encouraging new behavioural patterns and new collaborative relationships between human- users and other human and non-human entities at individual, familial, social, cultural, national, and global levels. At any point within this social spectrum, from biological reproduction, through education, labour practices, social governance, and the management of aged and invalid care, agent technology could facilitate all manner of computational and communicational processes, in both information and object-based operational worlds. An agent could, therefore, be based in any setting in which the human-subject interacts with information. In each instance, agent action would be defined as an enunciative site, or an act of discourse production. Agent action would, therefore, constitute a new theoretical or material space within the human-technology symbiosis. This space would lead to continued opportunities for new agent technologies and human-based techniques in an increasingly autocatalytic and autopoietic fashion. The opportunities available to human observers and participants to contribute, guide, or direct the colonisation of this new conceptual space by agent technologies would ensure that agent technologies would remain amiable to human relations, and, in turn, ensure that new creative and economic spaces were made available for further human social and cultural enhancement.

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