This point became increasingly clear while I was reading Bruno Latour’s latest book, Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory (2005, Oxford University Press). Latour is critical of the way in which the concept of the social has become a sort of “black box” which we use, perhaps out of laziness, to bracket all sorts of connections that should be explored in more detail. His goal in this introduction to ANT (actor-network theory) is therefore to “redefine the notion of social by going back to its original meaning and making it able to trace connections again” (p. 1).

Tracing connections? What does that mean? According to Latour, the social designates “a type of connection between things that are not themselves social” (p. 5, italics in original). Examining the social is, therefore, the tracing of associations between things, or ‘actors’ in the vocabulary of actor-network theory. These things or actors can be human as well as non-human:

A new vaccine is being marketed, a new job description is offered, a new political movement is being created, a new planetary system is discovered, a new law is voted, a new catastrophe occurs. In each instance, we have to reshuffle our conceptions of what was associated together because the previous definition has been made somewhat irrelevant. We are no longer sure about what ‘we’ means; we seem to be bound by ‘ties’ that don’t look like regular social ties. (p. 6)

Actors are constantly on the move, ‘networking’ with other actors, creating associations. One of the main precepts of ANT is to get off the soap box of the know-it-all theorist and follow the actors, “grant them back the ability to make up their own theories of what the social is made of” (p. 11). In the context of ANT, the social is defined not as “a special domain, a specific realm, or a particular sort of thing,” such as Social Software, “but only as a very peculiar moment of re-association and reassembling” (p. 7).

This is directly in opposition to the kind of normative critiques that assume a singular model of what the social should look like. For instance, new technologies are often condemned because they are seen as somehow corrupting The Social (for more on this, see my draft on Social Agency). These critiques rarely specify the composition of the social (it is enough to conjure up the term), but nonetheless they lament any attempt to redefine it. According to Latour, those who treat the social as a black box “have simply confused what they should explain with the explanation. They begin with society or other social aggregates, whereas one should end with them” (p. 8). In other words, one should not take social aggregates as points of departure, but as what needs to be explained in the first place. Unfortunately, by sticking the word social in front of the word software, we tend to revert to a social determinism in which it is assumed that the software does the bidding of something called The Social, something no longer in need of explanation, so that instead we can focus on what ‘cool’ things the software can do.

So what is the alternative that ANT proposes? What tools can ANT provide for those of us who want not just to deconstruct the social in Social Software, but re-construct and re-assemble it? [Apparently, deconstruction is soooo 1990's: "Dispersion, destruction, and deconstruction are not the goals to be achieved but what needs to be overcome. It's much more important to check what are the new institutions, procedures, and concepts able to collect and to reconnect the social" (p. 11).]

Latour describes three steps which are treated in each part of the book: deployment, stabilization, and composition: “We first have to learn how to deploy controversies so as to gauge the number of new participants in any future assemblage (Part I); then we have to be able to follow how the actors themselves stabilize those uncertainties by building formats, standards, and metrologics (Part II); and finally, we want to see how the assemblages thus gathered can renew our sense of being in the same collective” (p. 249).

This probably won’t make much sense if you haven’t read the book, but basically these steps help us move beyond reified and empty definitions of the social:

…the question of the social emerges when the ties in which one is entangled begin to unravel; the social is further detected through the surprising movements from one association to the next; those movements can either be suspended or resumed; when they are prematurely suspended, the social as normally construed is bound together with already accepted participants called ’social actors’ who are members of a ’society’; when the movement toward collection is resumed, it traces the social as associations through many non-social entities which might become participants later; if pursued systematically, this tracking may end up in a shared definition of a common world, what I have called a collective; but if there are no procedures to render it common, it may fail to be assembled… [S]ociology is best defined as the discipline where participants explicitly engage in the reassembling of the collective. (p. 247)

In short, the goal is to be able to notice new actors and new arrangements of actors, to be able to trace the connections between those actors and the local and the global (”in spite of so much ‘globalonney’, globalization circulates along minuscule rails resulting in some glorified form of provincialism” p . 190), and to be able to ask the following question: how do we end up with a shared definition of a common world, a world to be shared among all the actors?

Doing this is essentially the work of tracing a network. However, as Latour points out, tracing a network is not the same as describing something that has the shape of a network:

Network is a concept, not a thing out there. It is a tool to help describe something, not what is being described… [Y]ou can provide an actor-network account of topics which have in no way the shape of a network—a symphony, a piece of legislation, a rock from the moon, an engraving. Conversely, you may well write about technical networks—television, e-mails, satellites, salesforce—without at any point providing an actor-network account. (p. 131)

The use of the social black box as a meta-explanation was a nice way in modernity to privilege the role of some actors (mostly human) over others (mostly non-human, but including also the ‘barbaric’ others). Now, the gate has been opened and the sacred city of the Social is under siege by all sorts of actors, human as well as objects. The result is, of course, chaotic assemblages. But this is not so bad, because we are not dealing with chaos in the sense of the complete absence of political agency. On the contrary:

The feeling of crisis I perceive to be at the center of the social sciences should now be registered in the following way: once you extend the range of entities [types of actors], the new associations do not form a livable assemblage. This is where politics again enters the scene if we care to define it as the intuition that associations are not enough, that they should also be composed in order to design one common world. (p. 259, my comments in brackets)

Which brings me back to Social Software. All this talk about the role of non-human actors does not translate into saying that we are surrendering our agency to the code (virtuality taking over reality, people forgetting how to behave socially, mass hysteria, and other such alarmist arguments). It is a delegation of agency, not a surrender. Like any delegation, it requires responsibility. But something new and productive can happen when we delegate to the code some of the job of tracing social associations, and we need not become the Borg in the process:

… information technologies allow us to trace the associations in a way that was impossible before. Not because they subvert the old concrete ‘humane’ society, turning us into formal cyborgs or ‘post human’ ghosts, but for exactly the opposite reason: they make visible what was before only present virtually. (p. 207)

As I try to show in my own work, the social is indeed something that keeps referring us back to the virtual. This was equally true for so-called ‘primitive human,’ who relied on non-human artifacts to keep virtual ancestors part of her social assemblages, as well as for so-called ‘modern human,’ who relies on software objects to keep virtual contemporaries part of her social assemblages. The power of Social Software lies in its ability to render apparent the complex, arduous and never ending work of building sociality, of actualizing the virtual, as Deleuze would say.

The trick is to walk slowly, like an ANT.

References

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Further Reading

http://bruno.latour.name/

Actor Network Resource

Tags

Bruno.Latour
social.software
technology
virtuality
social.sciences

There has been much talk in recent years about the use of simulations
and gaming in education, both for children and adults. The best
educational simulations and games —we are told— embody ‘active
learning’ (learning by doing, or the formation of knowledge through the
subjective cognitive experiences of the learner as opposed to the
passive consumption of information or facts). They also provide a safe
environment for testing problem-solving techniques without the risks
that we encounter in the ‘real’ world.

Talk about the use of simulations as a method of assessment is more
prevalent in the corporate training world than in K-12 education (see this example from Microsoft), but the application of simulations for testing seems to be an obvious one:

Simulations are expanding the computer-based testing horizon. They’re delivering benefits across the board that are ushering in the next generation of testing. Test-takers benefit from simulations because simulations assess skills, not just knowledge. Further, simulations provide a higher level of test security because the exam is not simply constructed with multiple-choice questions that may be memorized and exposed. (Wenck, 2005: Simulations: The Next Generation of Testing)

I would like to explore some of the implications of using simulations
as a means of assessment. While simulations are often presented as the
antithesis of old methods of evaluation, I would like to warn against
uses of simulations that merely replicate, with some modifications, the
norms of traditional testing. Specifically, I want to examine the way
in which both traditional testing and simulations shape the learning
process by normalizing values and creating expectations of how things
ought to work outside of the learning environment.

Any type of learning or assessment activity conditions in some way our understanding of the world. In other words, tests and simulations predispose us in a particular way towards reality. Testing that asks students to select a ‘best option’ (whether simple multiple choice quizzes or sophisticated computer simulations) can be seen as the last step in confirming that the learner has assimilated the worldviews suggested by the options in the test itself, and that she implicitly accepts the test as the only viable method for evaluating knowledge in that instance (from this perspective, it is inconsequential whether the student fails or passes the test, as long as she is exposed to the kinds of expectations that the test creates). I want to question what role technology plays in this process, specially in regards to simulations. But before doing that, I want to explore the notion that tests come with an attached worldview a bit further.

Testing as indoctrination

Testing normalizes attitudes towards the world. This is perhaps most visible in problem-based learning, where a situation from the ‘real’ world is used to measure skills learned in class. I am suggesting that the function of testing is not only skill evaluation, but the standardization of a worldview embedded in the test, making the situation represented in the problem seem natural. Consider the following example: Mahmood Mamdani (2004) relates how in the 1980’s and 1990’s the University of Nebraska, with a $50 million grant from USAID (a federal agency), developed textbooks for children in Afghanistan. Some of the test questions in thiese textbooks are worth looking at:

A third-grade mathematics textbook asks: “One group of maujahidin [guerrillas backed by the U.S., later to become the Taliban] attack 50 Russians soldiers. In that attack 20 Russians are killed. How many Russians fled?” A fourth-grade textbook ups the ante: “The speed of a Kalashnikov [a machine gun] bullet is 800 meters per second. If a Russian is at a distance of 3200 meters from a mujahid, and that mujahid aims at the Russian’s head, calculate how many seconds it will take for the bullet to strike the Russian in the forehead” (p. 137, my notes in brackets).

This example, I assume, is shocking to most of us because it is such a transparent attempt at indoctrination (although it might be less or more shocking depending on one’s knowledge of U.S. foreign policy). But what about the tests our students take everyday? What kind of indoctrination is going on there? The process might be too transparent for even the test designers to notice, but this does not mean our tests don’t have a worldview to push.

What do tests really measure?

Testing not only normalizes attitudes but, like I said earlier, it requires the implicit acceptance from the learner (and society) that the test is the most reliable method to measure how well knowledge can be applied in that instance. There is only one worse thing than flunking the test, and that is to refuse to take the test at all, as there are often no alternatives to certification. But are tests really an accurate indicator of competency?

There is currently a lot of debate over this point. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act (which, as with many policies of the current administration, does exactly the opposite of what its name suggests) has placed great importance on standardized testing as a way of determining the success rate of students, teachers, and schools. However, what administrators think the tests measure and what they actually measure (referred to as the validity of a test) might be two very different things. Unfortunately for students, this discrepancy is resulting in many of them being precisely ‘left behind.’

The measurement validity of a test is an extremely important concept. Measurement validity simply means whether a test provides useful information for a particular purpose. Said another way: Will the test accurately measure the test taker’s knowledge in the content area being tested? … If tests are going to be used to determine which students will advance and what subjects schools will teach, it is imperative that we understand how best to measure student learning and how the use of high-stakes testing will affect student drop-out rates, graduation rates, course content, levels of student anxiety, and teaching practices. (Appropriate Use of High-Stakes Testing in Our Nation’s Schools)

Of course, measurement validity is something that needs to be assessed for every test. But at the macro level, the issue is not only whether individual tests are valid or invalid, but also how the increasing emphasis on testing (an emerging culture of testing, so to speak) is creating an environment in which testing itself determines what students should learn. As W. James Popham (2001) describes:

Because today’s educators are under such intense pressure to raise their students’ scores on high-stakes tests [tests which determine whether a student advances to the next year, for example], we are witnessing a nationwide diminishment of curricular attention toward any subject that isn’t included on a high-stake test. As many beleaguered educators will comment, “If our job is to raise test scores, why waste time teaching content that’s not even tested?” (p. 19; my notes in brackets)

Enter the Simulation

This situation, which is bad enough as it is, may not be necessarily corrected by the use of simulations for assessment purposes, even while educators may think that by using simulations they are breaking from the shackles of traditional testing. This is because simulations are, after all, a form of testing. Simple simulations provide a limited number of options from which the user must choose. More advanced simulations provide more options, but all simulations —even those in which options are generated through some sort of AI algorithm— have a limited universe of options. Some of those options lead to outcomes that are more favorable than others. The goal of the person going through the simulation is to find which combination of choices, in response to the variables presented by the simulation, lead to the desired outcome.

Furthermore, simulations replicate the less obvious characteristics of traditional tests I have outlined so far:

• Simulations normalize attitudes. Even the most sophisticated simulations limit the number of possible responses, and in thus doing shape a view of the world in which the application of knowledge is limited to those responses.
• Simulations demand implicit acceptance as valid instruments. Whether a simulation meets the requirements of measurement validity or not is a moot point once it is being used as the main or only method of certification.
• Simulations determine curriculum and teaching practices. Instead of teaching to the test, teachers may begin teaching to the simulation.

There is another important aspect to this issue: teachers (most often) don’t design simulations, software companies do. Take, for instance, the following list of evaluation criteria for tests that Popham (2001) prescribes:

• Curricular Congruence. Would a student’s response to this item, along with others, contribute to a valid determination of whether the student has mastered the specific content standard the item is supposed to be measuring?
• Instructional Sensitivity. If a teacher is, with reasonable effectiveness, attempting to promote students’ mastery of the content standard that this item is supposed to measure, is it likely that most of the teacher’s students will be able to answer the item correctly?
• Out-of-School Factors. Is the item essentially free of content that would make a student’s socioeconomic status or inherited academic aptitudes the dominant influence on how the student will respond?
• Bias. Is the item free of content that might offend or unfairly penalize students because of personal characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status? (p. 94)

What opportunities might teachers have to make corrections to address these issues in simulations that they themselves have not created, and have no opportunity, copyright or skills to modify?

Rules of Reality: The tester’s mindset

If testing normalizes attitudes, why might this be a bad thing? My argument is that simulations perpetuate the mechanistic, reductionist and linear (cause-effect) thinking that traditional testing institutes. Problem solving (assessed through tests or simulations), requires the kind of mindset that Peter Bentley (2003, The meaning of code [PDF], in Ars Electronica 2003) associates with the skill of writing computer code: “Code is so literal, so unambiguous, that it takes a while to train a mind to think in the same way,” states Bentley, and I would argue that in fact this type of testing is part of the preparation for developing these particular skills:

You become used to breaking down problems into smaller, easier parts. It becomes natural to think in this way, whether working out how to build a robot, or how to climb down from a tree. Good programmers are natural problem-solvers, for this is how we write code. But code can also dehumanise a person. There is no subtlety, no humour, no scope for emotion in code. (Bentley, 2003)

Put simply, testing is a way to ‘leave behind’ those who cannot think like problem-solvers, or at least a particular kind of dehumanized problem solver. Can it really be that those meant to succeed in our educational systems are those that manage to unlearn subtlety, humor and emotion?

Reality Rules: Alternative use of simulations

I am not trying to suggest that there is no room in learning for computer simulations. Instead, I have so far warned against the use of simulations for testing purposes only. Now, I would like to take my argument a step further and suggest how I think simulations should be used in learning.

In essence, I believe that learners should be builders, not consumers of simulations. Students using simulation authoring software (like STELLA) may not be able to produce simulations as sophisticated as those sold by software companies, but the learning that happens in the process might be more meaningful. In fact, the point of having students build their own imperfect simulations is precisely that the simulations should fail. Why? Because simulations are approximations of reality, and in realizing how they fail to capture the complexity of reality, we arrive at a more meaningful understanding of it. Breaking down a problem into parts that can be simulated can indeed be a useful learning activity, but the learning process should not stop there. An assessment of how any collection of variables fails to approximate reality, and a discussion of why and how that is, should be the final and most important part of a simulation or game design activity.

[I would like to insert another comment about the perceived benefits of off-the-shelf simulations. These are often said to provide a 'safe environment' in which the learner can experiment with making decisions without costly consequences. This seems to me to be an expensive waste of time. What we should be teaching students is how to communicate better to create that 'safe environment' in real life. We are all asked to make difficult and important decisions that no amount of simulations can prepare us for. Instead of thinking of ourselves as individual actors making those decisions in isolation (just like we do in simulations), we should prepare individuals for participating in collaborative processes that difuse the danger of individualist decision making.]

Where to go from here? (technology and school change)

Most public schools are currently dealing with the problems of standardized high-stakes testing, and the use of simulations for testing is not yet an imminent threat. Corporate training and higher ed is probably where evaluative simulations are being used the most, but even there the cost of producing them has prevented widespread use. So why am I making such a big fuss?

I see evaluative simulations as a logical next step in the history of educational technology and testing. Part of the reason standardized testing has taken off the way it has is because technology greatly facilitates the administration and grading of tests, and the tabulation and aggregation of scores. An important consequence of this (as I hinted above) is that, as schools are made to do more with less resources, technology has been put at the service of testing, and assessment decisions have been taken out of teacher’s hands. Consequently, as we have seen, curricular decisions are made based on what the test covers. With simulations, decisions about teaching practices could be equally constrained (not just what should be taught, but how). Is it that hard to imagine a future where teachers of failing schools, as determined by the NCLB act, are stripped more and more of teaching responsibilities and become mere monitors of students sitting in front of government-approved simulations (developed by the same companies that now develop standardized tests)? Given the current emphasis on standardized testing, cost-savings and efficiency, I am afraid this is not such an outlandish scenario.

Unfortunately, our fascination with technology may sometimes divert from our efforts to improve learning and change things at schools. To talk about computer simulations and video games in education is trendy. But all the talk of ‘everything bad is good for you’ seems to focus attention on the role of students as consumers, not producers. People in education who want to seem cutting edge feel obliged to make a nod to computer games and the increasing technological savvy of students. Indeed, there is much that is good about the new technologies, but this should not lead us to adopt an uncritical stance when it comes to incorporating technology into the learning process.

In a recent interview, Deneen Frazier Bowen talked about the results of a research project she undertook at Bell South:

Our report showed that although teachers increased their technology skills and technology integration in the curriculum, students saw no changes. For students, using more technology made no difference; the difference they sought was at the design and access levels. Teachers still designed the learning task and only provided access to those technologies with which they were comfortable. Students seek a change in process, not just the automation of a traditional one. (Morrison & Frazier Bowen, 2005, Taking a Journey with Today’s Digital Kids: An Interview with Deneen Frazier Bowen)

Simulations are not going to motivate students if all they do is replace traditional testing. Learning activities that involve building simulations or computer games can be a way to involve students in curricular design, but this type of activity needs to be contextualized by an analysis of how the simulations or games we create fail to approximate the complexity of reality. Only if this is achieved will we be preparing students for a more meaningful engagement with the world.

Offline References (all others hyperlinked within the text):

Mamdani, M. (2004). Good muslim, bad muslim: America, the cold war, and the roots of terror (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.

Popham, W. J. (2001). The truth about testing: An educator’s call to action. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Further Reading

MIT OpenCourseWare: Computer Games and Simulations for Investigation and Education

Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies: Simulation & Games for Education

See also my del.icio.us bookmarks on games and simulations.

Technorati Tags

simulations
testing
NCLB
learning

Anyone engaged in such research would probably find that our societies are not lacking in diversity. Every ethnicity, ideology, religion and fetish known to humankind is probably represented in cyberspace. But does this diversity translate into more tolerance? Given the general state of affairs in the world, the answer would seem to be resoundingly negative.

Some argue that the conflicts caused by the increased contact of dissimilar people can only be alleviated through more tolerant behavior. Thus, a keystone of modern democracy is that, despite differences of all kinds, citizens should exercise tolerance and agree that the one thing that unites us all is our desire to be governed justly and be treated equally.

On the one hand, I’m interested in exploring if technology can, by increasing the presence of diverse voices and facilitating dialogue, lead to increased understanding and tolerance. On the other hand, I’m also interested in the limits of tolerance as exercised by a society through hybrid mass-public media such as the internet.

Related to the latter line of inquiry, it seems to me that a major obstacle in working towards a genuine understanding of the Other is precisely our modern conceptualization of tolerance and freedom. Richard Hoggart, in his 1957 book The Uses of Literacy, described how freedom started to acquire a particularly authoritarian edge in the age of mass communications. Hoggart analyzed how print media served to construct an ‘Anything Goes’ culture in which freedom was attached to materialistic goals and consumption, excluding development of the Self and understanding of the Other in any meaningful way.

“[T]he concept of freedom may widen until it becomes the freedom not to ‘be’ anything at all, and certainly hardly to object to anything at all. A man is free not to choose, but if he uses his freedom to choose so as to be unlike the majority, he is likely to be called ‘narrow-minded’, ‘bigoted’, ‘dogmatic’, ‘intolerant’, ‘a busybody’, ‘undemocratic’… Tolerance becomes not so much a charitable allowance for human frailty and the difficulties of ordinary lives, as a weakness, a ceaseless leaking-away of the will-to-decide on matters outside the immediate touchable orbit.” (p.133)

Pressure to conform, as imposed by this brand of ‘freedom,’ prevents people from defining themselves in any moral way, and any expression of belief that contradicts any other belief results in accusations of hypocrisy or fanaticism. Thus, if one values freedom, it is best to not believe.

“The reasoning seems to be as follows: (1) The only value is freedom; (2) Therefore to have an open mind is the only firm line required; but (3) These people have suggested that some uses of freedom may be wrong; they have taken a moral line; and therefore, (4) They must be hypocrites; they are hiding something; they want freedom for themselves, but not for others. This is the other side of the coin which has ’sincerity’ on its face. If you accept total freedom, but do not advocate any ‘line’ of your own, you may come in for praise because your muddling through indicates that you are ’sincere, anyway’. Suggest a rule and you will attract the full weight of opprobrium for the greatest sin in the new catalogue, ‘hypocrisy’.” (p. 155)

This results in a society in which the very availability of ‘freedom’ weakens our ability to negotiate differences and draw boundaries. Are we better human beings for allowing ourselves to live in a society in which all beliefs, no matter how corrupt or perverted, are tolerated? Hoggart argues that real tolerance comes at a high cost.

“The tolerance of men [sic] who have some strength and are prepared, if necessary, to use it, is a meaningful tolerance; the tolerance of those whose muscles are flabby and spirits unwilling is simply a ‘don’t-hit-me’ masquerading as mature agreement. Genuine tolerance is a product of vigour, belief, a sense of the difficulty of truth and a respect for others; the new tolerance is weak and unwilling, a fear and resentment of challenge.” (p.134)

Finally, it is interesting to note how for Hoggart, centralization and technology went hand in hand as far as imposing this new ‘freedom.’ People in a mass society find freedom in the consumption of newer technologies, and the sense of belonging that they afford. However, although these technologies advertise new freedoms of expression and assembly, they may come at the cost of other freedoms in ways we may not have yet become fully aware of.

[T]he problem is acute and pressing–how that freedom may be kept as in any sense a meaningful thing whilst the processes of centralisation and technological development continue. This is a particularly intricate challenge because, even if substantial inner freedom were lost, the great new classless class would be unlikely to know it: its members would still regard themselves as free and be told that they were free.” (p.268)

Freedoms gained and exercised exclusively in virtuality fit totalitarian interests like a glove.

Blood, torture, death and horror might not be in the mind of people playfully experimenting with their identities online, but we must remember that the opposition to “the West” is indeed very much grounded on the rejection of its technology and the ways of being in the world that it affords. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly difficult for cultures to opt out or oppose this arrangement. Globalization tolerates diversity, but only within predefined notions of what it means to be different. When push comes to shove, “you’re either with us or against us.”

But are technology and virtuality inherently oppressive? Can they not be instruments of subversion, even while partly complicit in capitalism? To believe that technologies cannot be re-appropriated and subverted would be to yield the power of human creativity to the will of multinational corporations. Somewhere between Audrey Lorde’s belief that the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house, and Ani DiFranco’s opinion that every tool is a weapon if you hold it right, there must be a productive space for technology and virtuality within praxis.[3] If that is a possibility, we must begin by critiquing the unsustainable practices of virtuality: mainly, it’s refusal to “get real.”

Turkle devotes part of her chapter titled Virtuality and Its Discontents to examining individuals who use their fragmented selves to flee from reality. This move, although it originally promises the thrill of experimentation without serious consequences, most often results in an impoverished emotional and social life. The personal computer revolution, which “once conceptualized [the PC] as a tool to rebuild community, now tends to concentrate on building community inside a machine.” (p. 244) On the one hand, this can be seen as a logical outcome, given the context of postmodernism and global capital. On the other, this signifies an incomplete struggle to theorize applications of technology whose power to reintegrate the individual to the world surpass their power to alienate the individual from the world. Turkle hints at the nature of this challenge by asking: “Instead of solving real problems-both personal and social-are we choosing to live in unreal places?” (p. 244) Perhaps the choice is not as much ours as we would like to think; or perhaps we are implicated in this hegemonic bargain more than we would like to admit. However, Turkle also identifies the spirit necessary to move forward: “To the question, “Why must virtuality and real life compete-why can’t we have both?” the answer is of course that we will have both [whether we want to or not, it seems]. The more important question is “How can we get the best of both?”" (p. 238).

This synthesizing approach is also a requirement identified by Jameson. Writing about Marx’s lesson on how to think historical development and change, Jameson says,

Marx powerfully urges us to do the impossible, namely to think this development positively and negatively all at once; to achieve, in other words, a type of thinking that would be capable of grasping the demonstrably baleful features of capitalism along with its extraordinary and liberating dynamism simultaneously, within a single thought, and without attenuating any of the force of either judgment. We are, somehow, to lift our minds to a point at which it is possible to understand that capitalism is at one and the same time the best thing that has ever happened to the human race, and the worst. (¶ 92)

Likewise, we have no choice but to simultaneously admit that virtuality is the most dehumanizing thing we can experience, but also the only way to transcend postmodern alienation: if virtuality is a site for the fragmentation of the self to the point of anomie, it can also be, if we make it, a transitional space for psychological treatment that can be discarded once it fulfills its purpose, as Turkle demonstrates. Or, as I argue elsewhere[4], virtuality can help to revalorize what it previously devalued if we make its resolving moment the real. I will conclude by citing two specific examples of new models suggested by Jameson and Turkle to achieve this synthetic praxis.

Turkle suggests that a new form of social criticism and engagement with simulations is possible, beyond resignation or rejection. By making explicit the value assumptions, power distributions, and reductionist logic implicit in simulations, this new model of criticism would “take as its goal the development of simulations that actually help players challenge the model’s built-in assumptions. This new criticism would try to use simulation as a means of consciousness-raising. Understanding the assumptions that underlie simulation is a key element of political power.” (Turkle, p. 71).

Jameson, for his part, uses the metaphor of cartography to suggest that postmodern subjects need to draft new cognitive maps of their position vis-à-vis the world (in its full “global” complexity), much like citizens needs to mentally map and remap the city which they inhabit and through which they move. But these maps can not be unique (as in widely dissimilar) representations made by schizophrenic selves. New conceptual tools-the equivalent of the compass and the sextant-need to ensure that all maps bear a resemblance to the totality they are trying to represent. This representation of the subject’s Imaginary relationship to his or her Real conditions of existence, Jameson continues, “is exactly what the cognitive map is called upon to do, in the narrower framework of daily life in the physical city: to enable a situational representation on the part of the individual subject to that vaster and properly unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of the city’s structure as a whole.” (¶103) Thus, we would arrive at a postmodern virtuality that not only helps us to understand the new, complex global reality, but that would also serve as the map to plan our non-virtual involvement in that reality.

Notes

[3] I’m using here Markovic’s definition of praxis: A complex activity by which individuals, in collectivities, create culture, society, and create themselves as “species beings”, i.e., as human beings. The moments of praxis include self-determination (in contrast to coercion), intentionality (in contrast to reaction), sociality (in contrast to privatism), creativity (in contrast to sameness) and rationality (in contrast to blind chance). (Jameson MSE notes)

[4] http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2003/08/far_away_so_clo.html

References

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. [http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/jameson/]

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York, NY: Touchstone Books, 1995.

There is a prevalent trend to describe the human body, the self, and even our forms of organization using the imagery and terminology of computer systems. In other words, not only do we think of computers as more human, but we think of ourselves more like computers, and humanity more like a computer network. To Jameson, the narrative of a human-technological network that encompasses all is a distortion engendered by our inability to grasp the true nature of multinational capitalism: “The technology of contemporary society is therefore mesmerizing and fascinating, not so much in its own right, but because it seems to offer some privileged representational shorthand for grasping a network of power and control even more difficult for our minds and imaginations to grasp-namely the whole new decentered global network of the third stage of capital itself.” (¶ 77)

A central motif in this narrative, as we have just seen, is that of decentralization: the idea that the self is not bound to one particular identity, just as an open computer network is not hierarchically linked to one central unit. “We are encouraged to think of ourselves as fluid, emergent, decentralized, multiplicitous, flexible, and ever in process.” (Turkle, p. 263-264) Or in terms of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, the self is portrayed as “a realm of discourse rather than as a real thing or a permanent structure of the mind.”(p. 178) In computer terms, its “bottom-up distributed, parallel, and emergent models of mind have replaced top-down, information processing ones.” (p. 178)

To further elucidate this point, Turkle quotes Howard Rheingold:

With our relationships spread across the globe and our knowledge of other cultures relativizing our attitudes and depriving us of any norm, we “exist in a state of continuous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality.” (p. 257)

But if the decentered self requires the internet to support its multiple identities and realities, and the internet can only be maintained with the hardware and electricity provided by multinational corporations, then we must admit that the decentered self is partly complicit in the process of globalization. In other words, the discourse of the decentered self must acknowledge how it, as a product of postmodern culture, helps to perpetuate the centralized logic of capitalism. As Jameson argues, “every position on postmodernism in culture-whether apologia or stigmatization-is also at one and the same time, and necessarily, an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today.” (¶ 4)

Capitalism’s obsession with the new and the latest is reflected quite transparently in the flourishing of ever-new modes of identity formation facilitated by ever-new waves of electronic commodities. Turkle’s book is replete with examples of people who construct one or more alternative selves online: this process at best serves a psychotherapeutic function, but at worst merely represents new modes of consumerism and instant gratification. The following passage by Jameson helps to put this phenomenon in perspective, if instead of “aesthetic production” we read “the production of a decentered identity:”

What has happened is that aesthetic production [the production of a decentered identity] today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes) [identities], at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic [virtual reality] innovation and experimentation… Yet this is the point at which we must remind the reader of the obvious, namely that this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world: in this sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death and horror. (Jameson, ¶ 9)

Ironically, the postmodern desire to make the idea of the self less totalitarian can only be actualized through the totalitarian mechanics of capitalism. But confronted with that reality, do we choose to throw the postmodern baby out with the bath water?

References

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. [http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/jameson/]

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York, NY: Touchstone Books, 1995.

If the politics of virtuality means democracy online and apathy offline, there is reason for concern.
-Sherry Turkle, Life On The Screen.

Frederic Jameson’s essay, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, describes the ethos of its time. Published in 1984, the work provides a detailed analysis of the social and political implications of postmodernism, and predicts the continuation of a trend already well in progress in the 1980’s: the further fragmentation of the self. Jameson’s predictions are validated and updated in Sherry Turkle’s book Life on the Screen (Touchstone Press, 1995), published a decade later. Where Jameson looks at art, literature and architecture in the 1980’s, Turkle looks at virtuality and the online world in the 1990’s for evidence of the postmodern decentralization of the self, and what its sustainable and unsustainable consequences might be.

Turkle argues that computers, by their very nature, help us realize the implications of postmodernism in our daily lives: “Computers embody postmodern theory and bring it down to earth,” she argues, by introducing into our common experiences “ideas about the instability of meanings and the lack of universal and knowable truths.” (p. 18) Virtual Reality, in particular, embodies a postmodern approach by serving as a site for alternative enactments of the self. As I will argue later, these alternative enactments are complex: they are representations of the self at once implicated in the politics and economics of multinational capitalism on the one hand and in an evolution towards new forms of political involvement on the other. But first, we should analyze what Jameson calls the constitutive features of postmodernism, and how virtuality relates to them.

Depthlessness and Simulacrum

There are two particular features of postmodernism described by Jameson that bear on Turkle’s examination of virtuality: depthlessness and simulacrum.

Jameson characterized the move from modernism to postmodernism as a move from affect to effect, from emotional engagement to slick superficiality.[1] “[D]epth is replaced by surface, or by multiple surfaces.” (¶ 24) Whereas in modernism the object[2] serves “as a clue or a symptom for some vaster reality which replaces it as its ultimate truth” (¶ 19), in postmodernism it is merely a commodified fetish, beyond hermeneutical explanation because hermeneutics itself has been discredited. In this context, the difference between the real and the simulacrum (a copy without an original, a pseudo-event) becomes inconsequential. The simulacrum’s function “lies in what Sartre would have called the derealization of the whole surrounding world of everyday reality.” (¶ 66) The simulacrum, produced and reproduced with technology, is therefore symptomatic of the shift from a time-bound experience of the world to a fragmented, space-bound experience.

The fragmentation of the self-as characterized by the derealization of the world, the waning of historicity and time, and the inability to represent our own experience-seems to reach full expression in the phenomenon of virtuality. Turkle identifies three ways in which virtuality can skew the self’s experience of the real: first, it can “make denatured and artificial experiences seem real” (p. 236); second, it “makes the fake seem more compelling than the real” (p. 237); and third, it “may be so compelling that we believe that within it we’ve achieved more than we have.” (p. 238). However, Turkle recognizes that virtuality represents both risks and opportunities:

The seductiveness of simulation does not mean that it is a bad thing or something to be avoided at all cost, but it does mean that simulation carries certain risks. It is not retrograde to say that if we value certain aspects of life off the screen, we may need to do something to protect them. (p. 236)

In order to protect “life off the screen,” we need to explore not only the psychological implications of the electronically-facilitated decentralized self, but its political implications as well.

Notes

[1] Note on affect from the MSE resources.
[2] Jameson refers specifically to the art object, but I think his observations can be generalized.

References

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. [http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/jameson/]

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York, NY: Touchstone Books, 1995.