Hume

A Paper given in the Force of Metadata Conference, 29th November, 2008, Goldsmiths, University of London. It explores the idea of relation in Hume’s philosophy, and points to the nature of the networks in semantic web, which characterize a new form of production.

The economy of the web has been termed “user generated content”, nevertheless it is misleading. Now metadata is taking over content and changes both the products and mode of production of the web. Taking the approach of Gilbert Simondon, this paper tries to analyse the web economy from the point of view of machines, especially the current development in information retrieval and the vision of Semantic Web, in two aspects: the production of networks and the networks of production. It tries to identify “relation” as the basic unit in these productions, and suggests a new way of understanding the current and future web economy by exploring David Hume’s theory of relations on the growth of complexity and recursion in algorithmic thinking.

Powerpoint of the presentation: production-of-networks

The study of digital object is part of my research, and it has been a while of thinking to write a systematic paper on digital object. The understanding of digital objects is crucial to our understanding of our relation with information technology.

A social and cultural understanding

There is not much literature on this topic, most of the early writings about digital objects points to library science, where books are the sole digital objects we have to consider. To speak of digital object, literally, it is object in the form of digitality. This seems to be the attitude of Matthew, as he writes:

“Every scanned liver, every library book in a database, every phone, person or every mapped asteroid is also a digital object…Under digitalization more generally, there is a widespread tendency for all objects, processes and qualities to become transduced by data-gathering, patterning and identification.”[1]

This seems to only explore the tendency of digitization qua the becoming of digital of objects. These are two different ideas, firstly in our society, as what Deleuze inspired cultural theorists tend to call the society of control, the operation of the society has to be based on cybernetic machines, which means, objects have to be digitalized to get into the network of control. Secondly the becoming digital, is not only this tendency of the material transformation, but also the idea of what things are, which is thoughts become digital. At this level of abstraction, we find the insufficiency of this understanding of digital objects for four reasons.

Firstly this digitalization only corresponds to a material transformation, for example a book is scanned as a digital book, but it remains as a sole object to be discovered, in order to be discovered it has to bear relations with the others, or in a Heideggerian terminology, being-in-the-world, while these relations which expressed by layers of metadata is encapsulated in digitization. Thus it is to say, becoming a digital object is not only a material transformation, the material has to be represented in the digital world, since it has to be represented to exist, in the sense of to be easily discovered.

Secondly, let’s imagine a digital photo taken by a Canon EOS 400D, it is right that the photo is digitalized. But then what is digitaized as a digital photo? If we carry out the digitalization as a transformation, then we will find it hard to answer this question. Since we have to distinguish between a scanned photo and a digital one. So digitality is already a default of thought in this sense. Digital object is a new category in our knowledge, which doesn’t bear a continuity to what we understand by object.

Thirdly, by point one and two, it doesn’t mean that there is no relation between a digital objects and the object it represent. For example we can say a digital object of a scanned Monalisa bears a relation to the Monalisa by Da Vinci, even though they are of different material, but in common sense we tend to call it a duplicate of Mona Lisa. The object is losing its materiality, since it is becoming a symbol, which acts as the connotation of Mona Lisa. And this seems to be a paradox which hinders us from understanding the singularity of digital objects, of its own existence, hence its temporality.

Fourthly, there is an interesting relation between the digital and the symbol, since they are converging. For example, a Facebook event, invitation and etc. This is still a process of digitalization, but we can see, it is not a transformation of materiality, it is not from being to being, instead it is from “nothing” to being, which corresponds to a materialization of the intangibility. This is also in contrast to the third point just illustrated, since it points to a different direction.

These four points, complicate the understanding of digital objects as object of digitization, and these are conceptual issues to think about the ontology of digital object. But it is far from defining what is a digital object, since we still bear a lot of difficulties which need to be further explored.

A technical understanding

But so far, we can grasp a basic form of a digital object, it may have a material part, for example a digital photo, video, or may not have it in the case of a facebook invitation; secondly it has a set of data describing its existence.

A technical definition of digital object may point to a similar form, but still it is very much insufficient to understand digital object in a broader context.

A digital object is a unit of information such as a story, a movie, an image, a videogame, a computer program, or any other digital work, that is encrypted and then “wrapped” inside a software “envelope.” Anyone receiving a copy of a digital object would be able to read the “wrapper.” Access to the encrypted contents would, however, be conditioned on acceptance of terms specified in the wrapper, such as payment of a royalty fee.

A digital object therefore has two parts: a wrapper, and contents. Of course, the words “wrapper” and “contents” are used metaphorically here: inside the computer, the whole package is a string of bits. It is convenient to talk about digital objects at a higher, more conceptual level. [2]

In fact, the metadata part becomes more important both in our context and discussion. Since metadata also implies understanding of the object per se. It is found on this understanding that we are able to talk about the intersubjectivity. So we find a significant difference between a digital object and its counter part, the objects we encounter in our life, which is the materiality of the digital object, or in a more strict terminology, the sensual representation of the digital object, is not the all of it. This also hold for object, firstly the internal composition of the object, for example the molecular structure is not present as sense data, secondly the thing-in-itself remain unknown in the Katian sense, which is the object still bear the transcendence of existence. (but from a phenomenologist point of view, the thing-in-it-self is already there) In the case of digital object, its composition is transparent to us, the thing-in-itself remained unexplored not because of its scientifically unknown, instead I think it takes another form as we used to speculate in objects, which has to be further explored later. And it is the metadata which defines what an object is besides of its composition, here we find the overlapping of two ideas which defines what a digital object, and it is under this synthesis, gives existence to it. But here I by no means refer this model to the form and matter, since we nevertheless find interactions between the content and metadata, instead I think Deleuze and Guattari’s rephrase of content and expression is a much better option to conceptualize these two parts. (If the whole issue is taken into an analysis of Logic, it will tend to be apparent that the expression has a significant role in our definition of digital objects) We also find an interesting relation between the temporality of the metadata part and the digital part, which characterize the evolution of digital objects. For example the metadata format of MPEG is actually a response to the technical progress of video making, at the same time, the metadata format also partly define the protocols. But in both of the progress, there is something in common, which is the granularity of expression. For example a digital photo is able to present more details due to the improvement in resolution as well as the sensitivity of the sensors, and the metadata embedded is able to describe more precisely what it is about, for example the geo-location (this is especially true in photo taking enabled mobile phone with GPS receiver)

Speaking of personal experience (I need to have a look at the technical documents later), when I was writing HTML, to embed a picture into web page, what has to be inputted is the link, at most the “alt” information indicating what the picture is about. Years after, when xml becomes popular, the metadata of a photo becomes more and more structured, for example author and date can be embedded, but this remains a practice for people with technical knowledge. Now after the wide discussion of ontology driven semantic web, Semantic meanings are granted based on the process of standardization and some computer program is able to do logical reasoning over these descriptions and thus enhance the findablity and sharability of objects.

The notion of ontology also marks a hidden history of digital object, which is its ground in philosophy and then the philosophy of artificial intelligence. But my analysis aims to go beyond this, and back to the basic understanding of logic and objectivity, and tries to develop a new concept of digital object.

Technics also constitute the “already there”, a term used by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, but I think the “already there” for Heidegger is broader, since the already there is not only technical, it is the setting of Dasein’s falleness. But there is side of technics, plays a major part in the “already there”.

Stiegler also explores from Plato, the myth of the titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus, the forgetting of Epimetheus (his fault in forgetting distributing skills to the mortals) which set the default of origin of human. In this sense, the default of human beings, is their necessity to produce technics.

The Platonic idea of hypomnesis plays an important part in Stiegler’s theory, the necessity to remember the truth which ever lost in the reincarnations, as Plato shows in Socrates’s dialogue with Meno, is also the necessity of production of differance, as a process of deferral, of temporality, as well as death in Heidegger’s thoughts.

Then we may witness the necessity of forgetting in our age, the over population of the mnenotechnology, which not able leaves traces of our being, but also narrow down the possibility of deferral, which is to say make differences.

I remember last month, when I was in a W3C workshop on the future of social networking, Julien Pye from Vodafone, compares hyperthymesia with social networking, and points out the necessity of forgetting. If we follow the logic of Stiegler, especially his take on Plato’s pharmakon nature of technicity, it is easy to claim that hypomnesis is itself a pharmakon, which is both able to cure and poison. But I think we need to further differentiate the idea of pharmakon in this case. Firstly technics as the tertiary memory, refers to the trace of a past which belongs to me but I never live; secondly the content/products of technics, which constitute a past which belong to me and I still have to live with. So technics, in this sense, is not about remembering, but there is a necessity of forgetting, in the sense, is that I demand such a forgetting.

This necessity of forgetting, is at the same time, ethical, also therapeutic. Ethical in the sense that forgetting is an important part of social, to be social you have to forget things. It is also therapeutic, since firstly it is also a necessity of remembering, secondly, active forgetting as Nietzsche says can be something positive. I am taking this therapeutic idea from Foucault’s technology of the self.

I think, technics, as the third memory has to be rethought in this context, in which, we also demand forgetting.