The Computational Fallacy

Author(s): Sanford Kwinter

Source: Thresholds , Spring 2003, No. 26, denatured (Spring 2003), pp. 90-92
Published by: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43876166

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Thresholds

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Sanford Kwinter

The Computational Fallacy

The "mechanical" and the "electronic," are by themselves Now the mechanical is thought to be primitive in perhaps
not paradigms and do not represent distinct, successive, two senses: First, its relationships of intelligence are
agonistic "ages" or irreducible worlds in collision. To based on rudimentary, visible associations of isolated ele-
continue to think of these in such worn and sterile ways ments that interact at a very reduced level of information
can have no other effect than to hide from ourselves their exchange. What this means is that in mechanical devices,
political dimensions. The mechanical and the electronic most qualitative information tends to be reduced or elimi-
(and most of what is denoted by these terms in present nated in favor of a very controlled, exclusive extraction of
usage) are in fact expressions of two continuous, interde- quantitative flows (rates of movement, measures, etc.).
pendent historical-ontological modalities: those of Matter Most elements in a mechanical complex have a single
(substance) and Intelligence (order, shape). function and a single set of relationships, so that most
of the embedded material intelligence is suppressed in
Every unit of intelligible matter in our technical or cultural favor of a single quality or dimension of expression. (It is
world, regardless how simple, is refined or organized to a here that the commonly confused terms "mechanical" and
degree sufficient at least to distinguish it from the random "mechanistic" find a justifiable convergence. The first term
and disordered background flux or noise of the natural means having to do with machines, the second means de-
world. (Of course, natural objects may possess this same terministic and reductionistic.)
property of refinement in proportion to how closely they
are formed and organized by the processes of life, pro- Second, the mechanical is said to be primitive in relation
cesses now commonly understood to extend beyond the to electronic processes, because the latter appear to mani-
merely organic.) In this sense such matter may be said to fest the same magical qualities of material intelligence
possess a greater or lesser amount of "embedded intel- found in fundamental, free, and unprocessed matter, a
ligence." One can understand by this a set of instructions set of qualities that can be summed up in a single word,
accumulated over the ages (through the application of self-control. "Control" here means simply the sustained
tools and controlled processes) and incorporated into this application of intelligent - or organizing - force over time.
matter as a kind of permanent and continually reactivated While the mechanical complex seems over-designed and
"memory" (either through shape, rhythm, or disposition therefore limited to very rigid and predetermined path-
as in a tool, or through purity or precise proportion as in ways of development (i.e., no development at all), archaic
the relationships of metals in an alloy and the properties and electronic matter-complexes are thought to be able to
derived therefrom). move and evolve in coherent yet unpredetermined ways.
Their manifest intelligence is both multispectral and free-
All matter, even totally disorganized matter, possesses form or "complex."
some degree of active intelligence (what Diderot called
"sensitivity"), and the refinement of matter is always the The movement of all (advanced) technological societies
refinement of the intelligence embedded within it. When has been one from archaic matter intelligence (empirical,
different types of matter, or different orientations of in- qualitative, multispectral) to mechanical matter intelli-
telligence in matter, are brought together in a proper or gence (numerical, dissociated), but only incompletely and
sympathetic rhythm or proportion, an entirely new level each in its own way.
of intelligence is created. As the complexity of added and
engaged elements increases, one approaches, then arrives In the West, mechanical matter intelligence took on an
at, the "mechanical." almost religious status (as electronics is certainly achiev-

90 Kwinter

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ing today) to the point of annihilating archaic matter thought, and wherever possible to expand the concept of
intelligence from public and social memory. Now the way the concrete and to extend the play of intuition into new
in which a society organizes its systems of intuition - its domains.
science, its philosophy, and its technics - is in every man-
ner a political one. The real and possible arrangements of To do this effectively it must remain within our power (con-
intelligence and matter in nature are one thing (and likely ceptual and political) to refuse the advent, not so much
unlimited), yet how we represent these possibilities to our- of the specific machines and techniques of contemporary
selves is another. To speak of a mechanical paradigm of development, but of the broader systems of rationality
material qualities and perceptible functions and to oppose in which they come packaged or for which they serve as
this to an electronic one of immaterial processes and pure Trojan horses.
intelligence is absurd and dangerous. Absurd, because de-
spite what cyberspace gladhanders may think, there can Communications networks, computers, microprocessor
clearly be no shape or order (Intelligence) without matter, control systems are socially toxic entities, I would argue,
even if this matter is comprised of nothing more than pure primarily when used correctly , that is, in their capacity
photons (cinema, retinal laser projection) or molecular to routinize interactions with people and processes in in-
acoustic resonance (music), etc., and dangerous, because creasingly engineered, confined, and deterministic spaces.
such clichés do little more than render us stupid and doc- It is our duty and mandate to refuse this new, pseudo-
ile in the face of disfiguring yet well-camouflaged social material space entirely, and to follow the "minor," archaic
and historical processes. path through the microchip; that is, to make the electronic
world work for us to reimpart the rich indeterminacy and
What is at stake today has nothing to do with the eclipse magic of matter out of the arid, cruel, and numericalized
of a material or mechanical world by an increasingly elec- world of the reductionist-mechanical and the disciplinary-
tronic one, but rather the emergence of a new regime of electronic.
"subjection" that uses the undeniable allure of an archaic
revival (a return to matter, complexity, and free develop- No computer on earth can match the processing power
ment) to facilitate a repressive reorganization of social of even the most simple natural system, be it of water
space as well as a mastery of the very conceptual lexicon molecules on a warm rock, a rudimentary enzyme system,
with which this reorganization will be thought through. or the movement of leaves in the wind. The most power-
More bluntly: what is taking place today under the guise ful and challenging use of the computer (aside from the
of such "rational" historical process is the systematic obvious benefits of automated number crunching in purely
formation of a new subjectivity - a new type of man, to numerical domains such as accounting) is in learning how
use Nietzsche's expression - whose matter/intelligence to make a simple organization (the computer) model what
variables are being re-engineered and finely calibrated to is intrinsic about a more complex, infinitely entailed orga-
fit those of a new machinic workplace-society into which nization (the natural or real system).
s/he is to be seamlessly integrated.
Implicit here is the idea of learning how to make matter
It is therefore disconcerting to observe the direction of model matter, or how to study natural or "wild" Intelligence
much discussion in the design world today around the in a contained but active, refining domain. In this use the
advent of new telecommunications technologies, comput- computer becomes metallurgical substance, it extends the
erization, and software-driven milieus. These developments exploratory evolutionary process of differentiation and re-
are either extolled as "exciting," "new," and "full of new finement by inventing new levels of order and shape. The
freedoms and possibilities" (by those blissfully uncon- computer and its software together can form a Matter/
cerned that much of what is being so celebrated is but an Intelligence unit of a very primitive but useful kind. But
extension of all that is oldest and most repressive in our to do this, the computer, in the triad Nature-Mind-Com-
political and corporeal history), or else are seen as posing puter, must play only the appropriate intermediary role of
an unavoidable or even welcome challenge to an already interface between Nature and Mind. This would be in clear
weakened or near-obsolete domain of cultural practice, contradistinction to what is more often the case today,
namely the slow, grave, viscous world of matter. where computational environments provide a customary
but imperceptible experiential envelope from which Nature
The routine disdain heaped on matter by both these points (and all nondeterministic unfolding) is excluded and within
of view is in fact focused ideologically on an officially which the activity horizon of Mind is insidiously confined.
distorted notion of the mechanical - made now to mean We must not believe the narcotizing hype that an emerging
anything that is concrete and available to intuition. electronic
Our world is poised to liberate us from a mechanical
task today I would argue, is to resist these pathways one, ofnor even that there exists an electronosphere funda-

Kwinter 91

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mentally discontinuous from the mechanoshpere that has During the Renaissance, specific movements and struc-
formed us till now. tures of astronomical and microscopic scale were for the
first time brought into the purview of human thought and
It is true that an important transition is taking place: perception, and in the process certain forms of historical
mechanical relations are being dramatically transferred to tyranny became forever impossible. Today the computer
new and different levels - like the little ball in a scam art-
offers the possibility of apprehending developmental
ist's shell game - but they are certainly not disappearing.
patterns of extraordinary and unprecedented depth and
What is more, this transition state is an unstable one, and
abstraction, offering tantalizing glimpses of the very
one of the possible arms on history's bifurcation diagram freeform structure of time itself (chaos, complexity, self-
(the one that does not lead smoothly to the total routiniza-
organization).
tion and economic subsumption of the human organism)
leads at once to the possibility of multiple new ecologiesJust as Lucretius's hydraulic hypothesis in his ancient
of human existence as well as to the dark, possibly unfath-
Treatise On Nature once proposed to free humans from the
omable mysteries of nature itself. capriciousness and prejudices of the gods, so this new
tool - among all the horrors to which it is already giving
What we need today is twofold: On the one hand, resis- place - may well bear the potential to unlock the door on
the universal laws that govern the appearance and destruc-
tance - we need to direct our theoretical activity away from
simple-minded clichés in order to conceptualize the propertion of form, and in so doing to free us from the multiple
materiality of the electronic with its brutal effect on both
tyranny of determinism and from the poverty of a linear,
human energy and the physical environment; and on the numerical world. Yet there should be no illusions: the pos-
other hand, productive affirmation - to actively press com-
sibilities for such a scenario are almost already foreclosed,
putation toward its deep rootedness in the archaic world and
of it will certainly not come to pass with anything short
natural intelligence, which means at the very least to of usea colossal, sustained, and collective act of human will.
computation just as the early moderns used the telescope It is we, the engineers of human environment and activity,
and the microscope, to engage aspects of nature whosewho bear the burden to ensure a properly human pleading
logic and pattern had previously remained ungraspable in this struggle for our fate.
because they were lodged at too great a remove from the
modalities of human sense and intuition.

92 Kwinter

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