Computers and the Self: a Dialectic of Enlightenment?

By: norm.friesen@ualberta.ca
April 30, 1999

Computers are the externalization and objectification of the inner self, in terms of both its intellect and emotion. Emotionally, the computer screen provides a place for the projection of our emotions and fantasies ñin the context of the chat rooms and virtual reality experiences available via the Internet and elsewhere. Intellectually, computers can embody rich patterns of mental association and the structures of symbolic logic ñin the form of hypermedia interfaces and complex programming routines. The expression and externalization of the self that computers so effectively facilitate is usually described by educators and others in positive and even utopian terms, as facilitating learning, productivity and self-actualization. However, in this paper, I will examine the ignored downside of this relationship between self and computer, between human subject and technological object. Referring to Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimerís landmark essay, the Dialectic of Enlightenment, I will argue that every instance of the selfís externalization is paid for by a degradation of the selfís autonomy and reality. Again referring to Adorno, I will conclude by underscoring the importance of those aspects of education antithetical to the externalization of the self occurring through technology.

As such, this paper will not offer a critique of any one instance or example of the use of computer technology in education. Instead it will present a critique of this technology per se. As Greg Kearsley in "Educational Technology: A Critique of Pure Reason" (1998) puts it, this paper will argue that "The real problem with educational technology is not that it doesn't always work, but that it is employed in the context of dysfunctional ontology." It is not, in other words, a question of how best to use the externalizing and objectifying power of the computer, but to better understand its effects on the self.

Perhaps more than any other writer, Sherry Turkle has drawn educatorsí attention to how the computer screen provides a place for the projection or externalization of our subjective lives. She describes the central thesis of her popular and influential book, Life on the Screen (1997), as follows:

Throughout the book, the computer screen serves as a locus where subject and object interpenetrate. In its glowing surface, Turkle sees a space where that which is otherwise experienced internally and subjectively takes on a form that is objective, external and increasingly public in nature. Intimate emotions, erotic and intellectual fantasies, and various incarnations of the self can be externalized and "projected" through the manifold, ever-changing windows and avatars appearing on the screen. Of course, for Turkle, the computer screen serves merely as a synecdoche or metaphor for the prodigious power of the computer and the Internet to facilitate various types of simulation and communication. Of these, Turkle makes the most frequent mention of chat rooms, and role-playing or simulation games. The use of this type of software and media involves a unique and potent mixture of make-believe or dissimulation, and psychological and affective immediacy. Such a mixture provides, Turkle explains, a free space (or a "time-out") for psychological release, experimentation and personal development.

Writing from the rather different perspective of visual aesthetics and theories of multimedia art forms, Lev Manovich describes the interpenetration of the subject and the object, computer and self, in slightly different terms. He concentrates on the hypertext or hypermedia environment of the Web and CD-ROM based interactivity, and relates it to a variety of mental activities:

Mental processes of reflection, problem solving, memory and association are externalized, equated with following a link, moving to a new image, choosing a new scene or a text. In fact, the very principle of new media -- links -- objectifies the process of human thinking which involves connecting ideas, images, memories. Now, with interactive media, instead of looking at a painting and mentally following our own private associations to other images, memories, ideas, we are asked to click on the image on the screen in order to go to another image on the screen, and so on. (1997)

The intellectual or mental processes of association, recollection and reverie are given objective form through the hypertext and hypermedia links of the Web or a multimedia CD-ROM.

Thus externalized in the links, images, avatars and virtual reality environments of the digital world, the self is described by these scholars as constructing its thought patterns and identity increasingly through the pliable and manipulable but objective forms made available through the computer. Selfhood as we understand it is increasingly tied to larger programs, systems and networks; identity is increasingly constituted through the technological objects that exist around the subject. As these technologies become increasingly pervasive and unobtrusive ñfor example, in the form of wireless networks and hand-held computersó so will these relationships and the selfís externalization. As the self is externalized, emptied or hollowed out of the interiority that once constituted it, it becomes increasingly defined through the objective world around it.

However, in order for this externalization to occur, subjectivity must in effect be translated into the terms that can be processed by and communicated across telecommunication networks, computer systems and sub-systems, and lines of software programming code. As mentioned before, Turkleís writing simply points to the screen as the site of this translation or interpenetration between subject and computer. Manovich briefly discusses some of the issues emerging from this translation process (and his discussion will be considered later). However, neither of these authors provides a sustained consideration of what may be lost as subjectivity is externalized and reconstituted through the computer.

To try to understand and explain this loss here, it is important to consider the operation or the internal modalities of the computer into which subjectivity is translated. A diversity of scholars and writers all characterize these internal modalities in a surprisingly similar way. They concur that the computer exemplifies before all else the instrumental rationality of the western Enlightenment, specifically, as that rationality is formalized in the "scientific method" in this same time period. Terry Winograd, himself a computer scientist, characterizes the computer as a powerful "embodiment" of the "ërationalisticí orientation [that] is deeply embedded in our modern Western culture" (1992).

Writing with Fernando Flores in Computers and Cognition, Winograd expresses the epistemological premises underlying modern rationality or the scientific method through the following three propositions: 1) that knowledge is achieved through formalized representations of real world phenomena; 2) that these representations take the form of systems of manipulable symbols or tokens; and 3) that these systems and representations can be used as a basis for predicting and ultimately controlling the behaviour of real world phenomena. "The essence of computation", as Winograd and Flores describe it, "lies in the correspondence between the manipulation of formal tokens and the attribution of a meaning to those tokens as representing elements in worlds of some kind" (1986).

Significantly, this makes the work of the programmer or systems analyst ñthe person responsible for the correspondence of these abstractions to their real-world counterpartsórather like that of the scientist. "The task of the systems analyst may indeed be considered to be essentially the same as that of the scientist in that [both involve the construction of] an abstract model of a real world domain of phenomenaÖ" to quote from the Software Engineerís Reference (as cited in Schefe, 1997). The key issue (or the "essence of computation", as Winograd and Flores would have it) then becomes the correspondence or relationship between these abstract, scientific models and the phenomena they would represent.

It is precisely this question of the veracity and general nature of such scientific models or representations that is considered at length by Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972). Writing in exile from fascist Germany during the Second World War, Adorno and Horkheimer characterize scientific knowledge as follows:

Its aim, they conclude, is "to wholly dominate [both] nature and humanity." Similarly, one can say that the designer of software reproduces or represents aspects of the subjective or objective realms only insofar as they are needed for the successful operation of a few hundred or thousand lines of code. In the context of a program like a mud or the palace, for example, the self is represented through a sprite or avatar, a set of program parameters and coordinates that can then be passed across a network, and through a programís various routines and subroutines. In each of these cases, the rich ambiguity of concrete human phenomena are isolated, decontextualized, and brought under the control of the simplified, abstract model of the computer program itself. In addition, they are further subjected to the restrictions of the bandwidth and the operational parameters imposed by the network and operating system environments.

In his online article, "Software und Aufklärung" (1997) Peter Schefe points out that in the natural sciences, abstract models or hypotheses must always be verified empirically. However, the representations made in a computer program, he emphasizes, are verified only in terms of their usability. This lack of validation gives rise to what Schefe calls a "verification-gap": a breach or rupture that separates the simplified abstract representation from its more complex phenomenal counterpart. There is certainly no more topical example of this gap than the so-called Y2K "bug" or "crisis". This rupture between abstract model and concrete reality threatens to materialize from the simple non-coincidence of two-digit representations of years with their four-digit "real world" counterparts. Just as the ultimate consequences of this discrepancy may be quite dire, so too may be the results of the non-coincidence of the subject and the computer in which it finds itself so compellingly reflected.

Using a vocabulary strikingly similar to that of Adorno and Horkheimer, Manovichís remarks on "totalitarian interactivity" help to shed light on similar instances of this non-coincidence of abstraction and subjectivity that it would represent. Speaking specifically of hypermedia art, Manovich describes the choices these "interactive" art forms provide to the user as being more akin to manipulation ñlike that occurring in behaviourist psychological experimentsóthan to the direct externalization or expression of the self. As mentioned earlier, Manovich sees the associative hypermedia "links" as mirroring mental associative processes. However, he emphasizes that by following these links, the user is not freely following his or her own associative connections, but is forced to identify with associations of the programmer or hypermedia developer. The abstract model of mental associations mirror those of the user only insofar as the user is willing to abandon his or her individuality and freedom, and "mistake the structure of somebody elseís mind for [the userís] own."

More commonplace examples of this same general principal are provided by the error messages, the paradoxically-titled "dialogue" boxes, and the installation wizards and other small "expert systems" that will be familiar to almost any computer user. The interactivity that these tools facilitate is based on an abstract model of an individualís thinking and wishes that works only within the narrowest of parameters. Warning screens telling Windows users that a floppy drive is unavailable, and providing only the choices "abort", "retry" or "fail" are obvious illustrations of the imposition of the logic and the terminology of the computer on the user-subject ñrather than any externalization of his/her subjectivity. Another example is presented by the sequential-procedural character of almost all tasks involved in computer use from booting up and logging on to copying and moving files ñprocedures that force so many beginners to initially jot down lists of steps for even the most basic chores. In this instance, human activity is again forced into the mold of the computerís algorithms, broken down into a series of steps that leave little room for creativity or informed decision-making. Additionally, hierarchies predominate on the levels of the computerís file, directory and network architectures, in the operation of its hardware and in the operators and objects of its software. Hierarchies, of course, are paradigmatically Enlightenment frameworks, and it is into these structures that the activities work and thinking of end users, administrators and programmers alike are forced.

In these and other types of structures and human-computer interactions, rationalist, Enlightenment paradigms and patterns predominate down to the minutiae of the computerís operation, existing independently of the content or the purposes for which that computer is being put to use. The user is subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) "forced", as Winograd and Flores explain, "Öinto the narrow mold provided by [the computerís] limited formalized domain" (1986).

Because of the subtle penetration of this formalization and instrumentalized rationality to every level of the computerís operation, it can be said to inculcate itself into the subject, and repeatedly have its authority tacitly but powerfully affirmed. Winograd and Flores also see this imposition of the computerís narrow strictures on the self as working to remake the subject in the image of the computer. Instead of the computer serving as the externalization of the self, the self is made into an object of the computer.

The interpenetration of subject and object occurring between the self and the computer is no unidirectional process, which simply affirms and extends the subjectís ability for self-expression and selfñactualization. Instead, every externalization of the self via the computer is paid for through the increasing confinement of the self in the limited, formalized strictures of the computer. Paradoxically, the computer opens up a realm of self-expression and self-actualization only if we first accept the rigid restrictions and limitations it imposes as a precondition, only if we are ready to abandon our autonomy and independence on a different but no less real level.

In the process of this reciprocal interpenetration of self and computer, that which cannot be made a part of the regime of the computerís instrumental rationality is forgotten, ignored, or whatís worse, is actively excluded or eradicated. "Enlightenment" according to Horkheimer and Adorno, "excises the incommensurable" (1972). What cannot be forced to fit the abstract symbol systems of enlightenment schemes of computation is discarded. As a corollary, that which is "different" from, but can be forced into these schemes is accordingly re-shaped, distorted and "equalized" --forced into verisimilitude with the symbol systems of instrumental rationality. These processes of excision, distortion and equalization are a significant part of what Adorno and Horkheimer refer to as the "dialectic of enlightenment."

Significantly, it may very well be that which excised and equalized in this dialectic of enlightenment ñthat which is ultimately irreducible to the symbol systems, hierarchies, bits, and binary terms of computer systemsó is what constitutes the "core of experience", as Adorno puts it elsewhere. It is something that cannot be abstracted or represented formally. It is what Adorno, writing in Minima Moralia, refers to as a "surplusÖin freedom of contact or in autonomy of things."

"Under the law of pure functionality" to paraphrase Adorno, the subject, like all other phenomena, is made to "assume a form that limits" its actions "to mere operation". "No surplus either in freedom of conduct or in autonomy of thingsÖ[is able] to survive as the core of experience." This surplus, Adorno concludes, is simply "consumed in the moment of action." The possibility of experiencing this irreducible surplus --that which cannot be contained within the confines of instrumentality or functionalityó is thus precisely what Adorno emphasizes is needed for real experience ñand by extension, for learning. To protect this "core of experience", education must guard and foster precisely those aspects of the subjectivity that are not absorbed in the interpenetration of the subject and the computer-object.

By way of conclusion, it is important to emphasize that one of the most salient and ubiquitous of these irreducible aspects of subjectivity is language. As Winograd and Flores observe, the computer (and by extension, any abstract, formalized symbol system) exists outside of the rich ambiguities and contextual complexities of language. Computers "cannot themselves enter into language" (1986). Although technological discourse would still seek to refer to computer mediated human language as mere "data" or "information", the difficulties natural language still poses to human-computer interaction would seem to confirm its ultimate irreducibility to such terms. Precisely in the sense that computers cannot use or understand it, language forms context-specific networks of interrelationship, obligation and commitment between its users. And it is these networks that education must seek to cultivate and sustain.

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia : Reflections From Damaged Life. Translator E.F.N. Jephcott. London: Verso, 1974.

Agamben, Giorgio. Infancy and History : the Destruction of Experience. Translator Liz Herron. London: Verso, 1993.

Heim, Michael. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1993.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translator John Cumming. New York: Continuum Publishing, 1972.

Kearsley, Greg. "Educational Technology: A Critique of Pure Reason." Educational Technology Magazine (1998): 8.

Manovich, Lev. "From the Externalization of the Psyche to the Implantation of Technology." Mind Revolution : Interface Brain/Computer. Editor Florian Rstzer. Munich: Akademie zum Dritten Jahrtausend, 1995. 90-100.

Manovich, Lev. On Totalitarian Interactivity : Notes From the Enemy of the People. 1997. Web Page. URL: http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~manovich/text/totalitarian.html.

Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1996.

Schefe, Peter. "Software und Aufklaerung." Telepolis (1997). URL: http://www.ix.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/2157/1.html

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen : Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1995.

Winograd, Terry. "Computers and Rationality: the Myths and Realities." Minds, Brains and Computers : Perspectives in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. Editor R. Morelli. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1992. 152-67.

Winograd, Terry, and Fernando Flores. Understanding Computers : a New Foundation for Design. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1986.

©Academic Technologies for Learning, 1999
http://www.atl.ualberta.ca
atl.ps@ualberta.ca