The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems

摘要

The Work of Gulture in the of Cybernetic Systems Age 4 7Tt t. computer is more than an objectl it is also an icon and a metaphor that suggests I new ways of thinking about ourselves and our environment, new ways of construct- -ling images of what it means to be human and to live in a humanoid world. Cyberne- tic systems include an entire array of machines and apparatuses that exhibit computational power. Such systems contain a dynamic, even if limited, quotient of intelligence. Telephone networks, communication satellites. radar systems. programmable laser vide- odiscs, robots, biogenetically engineered cells, rocket guidance systems, videotex networks all exhibit a capacity to process information and execute actions. They are all 'cyber- netic'in that they are self-regulating mechanisms or systems within predefined limits and in relation to predefined tasks. Just as the camera has come to symbolise the entirety of the photographic and cinematic processes. the computer has come to symbolise the entire spectrum of networks, systems, and devices that exemplify cybernetic or "automated but intelligent" behaviour. This essay traverses a field of inquiry which Walter Benjamin has crossed before me. most notably in his 1936 essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". My intention. in fact, is to carry Benjamin's inquiry forward and to ask how cybernetic systems, symbolised by the computer, represent a set of transformations in our concep- tion of and relation to self and reality of a magnitude commensurate with the transformations in the conception of and relation to self and reality wrought by mechanical reproduction and symbolised by the camera. This intention necessarily encounters the dilemma of a profound ambivalence directed toward that which constitutes rrur imaginary Other. in this case, not a mothering parent but those systems of artificial intelligence we have set out to examine here. Such ambivalence certainly permeates Benjamin's essay and is, at best, dialectical, at worst, simply contradictory. Put more positively, those systems against which we test and measure the boundaries of our own identity require subjection to a double hermeneutic of suspicion and revelation in which we must acknowledge the negative. currently dominant tendency toward control, and the positive, more latent potential toward collectivity.' lt will be in terms of law that the dominance of control over collectivity can be most vividly analysed.