the movement of evolution
by
mailto:OLIVIER@%20cat.ustanne.ns.ca
Evolution is a strange, self-governing movement. Today, brought forward by
biological, cognitive and informational viruses, evolution questions the
movement of bodies. We are, I believe, in an age where humans, machines and
culture are called upon to create and produce new structures of
life.
Richard Dawkins has developed a theory which seems important
and pertinent to this analysis. This is the theory of memes. A meme is an "idea
virus",that is, essentially an independent piece of information travelling in
virtuality. Essentially, in order to communicate, living beings exchange memes.
But to exchange and process "idea viruses" is also what computers do.
This exchange of memes happens in what I would call a memescape. A
memescape is a geography of memes, it is an idea-landscape, where human memes
thrive, encounter and couple (culture is such a memescape). I would argue, too,
that a different kind of memescape is now emerging from our post-industrial
world. This new memescape is both electronic and organic; it is a territory
shared by both humans and informational machines. In this memescape, human and
computer memes interact, which creates the conditions for the emergence of a
different kind of phenomenology. Never before have we had to truly communicate
with the machine. In the electronic memescape, however, machines become
interlocutors, with whom true cognitive exchanges are made. I would argue that
not only is cyberspace such a memescape, but that today's media culture in
general (that is television, radio, faxes, etc.) is also that kind of a
memescape, for it is essentially alive through structures formed by ideas, both
human and non-human.
This encounter and coupling of memes creates, then,
something close to life, which I would call the cognitive cyborg. According to
Dawkins, as genes are replicators of biological life, memes are replicators of
cognitive life. Memes replicate culture. Thus, genes and memes are pieces of
information that give birth to what Dawkins calls "survival machines" (for
example, a human being would be a survival machine for some specific genes). My
point is that we are now on the verge of a new evolution, for memes are acting
like genes, creating cognitive survival machines, born out of computer and human
intelligence. Thus, today's survival machines are not exclusively biological
anymore. They are cybernetic, organic and cognitive, being formed by the
enmeshing of numerous intelligent structures (what Pierre Levy calls a cognitive
ecology, that is an ecology of all forms of intelligence, be they human,
computer, sociological, institutional, political, etc.). These cyber-organic
structures, I call cognitive cyborgs.What's worth thinking about is the fact
that survival machines tend to develop their own autonomy and their own ecology,
where they can reproduce and disseminate. The actions, reactions and mutations
of these cognitive survival machines is what forms our new evolution.
If
we accept this hypothesis, we must then treat cyberspace and the whole of
today's culture as we treat biological evolution. We are now into a meta level
of evolution, much faster than the first one (as memes take much less time than
genes to reproduce and disseminate), a level where the body becomes a survival
machine for memes. But it is a strange survival machine, for memes are
essentially viruses and viruses are moulders of metabolism. Thus a meme, like a
virus, imposes plasticity on its survival machines, be they organic or non
organic. Furthermore, viruses, like memes, are carriers of information. In fact,
viruses, both biological and informational, are the ultimate consequences of
communication for they can only spread through communication The point about
viruses is that they trigger plasticity in bodies. A virus forces a body (be it
biological, informational or artificial) to redefine itself, to change, to mold
itself to the virus' input. What the AIDS virus does, for example, is to provoke
a lethal plasticity of the human immune system. My point is that memes do act
the same way, forcing bodies to change, mold and become plastic. Thus, through
the memescape that is our culture, through the memescape in which we plunge
everyday, encountering many different sort of memes, our bodies are being
constantly challenged to become plastic What the cognitive cyborg is, then, is
the living cognitive structure, half-human, half-cybernetic, that causes
plasticity in the human shape. Furthermore, if we keep pursuing this same line
of thought, we must then reject the idea that the cyborg is the end result of
evolution. On the contrary, I believe it to be only a first step in a complete
new family of life structures.
In his book, Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay
Gould explains how a myriad of different life forms were tried in the organic
primeval soup. According to this scientist, the early years of life on earth
were the theatre of many more different life structures then we have today. For
Gould "nature" was experimenting with biological structures, of which only a few
survived, although many species were developed from them. We are today the
product of these structures.My hypothesis then states that what we are faced
with today is quite similar.(F)or I believe the memescape to be a "primeval
electronic soup", where a new evolution is taking place. This evolution, mainly
cognitive, uses both computer and human cognition as a springboard to many
different sorts of "life" forms. Many of these forms will perish; a few will
survive. We are, and this is my hypothesis, in a electronic primeval time where
many different cyborganic life forms are tried.
What would be the
phenomenology of this culture? I believe it to be movement: movement of ideas,
of living shapes, movement of societies and artistic endeavors, all encompassed
in the more general movement of man to machine and machine to man. To me, the
end product of these evolutionary electronic structures (cognitive cyborgs) is
not what defines this culture and this evolution. Movement is the actual
phenomenological centre. And it is in the human body (both physical and
cognitive) that this movement is now most visible. The human body is becoming
the actual essence of this new culture. On and in the body, society's
technological narrative and evolution is not only being written, but it is also
being nurtured and born. We are now searching for the extreme limit of
plasticity in a human shape (in the words of H.G.Wells), for plasticity is
movement, and out of this movement an understanding of our world will be found.
Through movement, the symbiosis of man and machines is made visible. As man
plunges into a non-material universe, where time, space and the laws of nature
are all subordinated to cybernetics, the machine itself plunges into our
cultural world. It is through the close analysis of this reciprocal movement
that we will arrive at an understanding of our world. Thus it is possible to
suggest, as Hans Moravec has done, that machines are becoming our "mind
children," for it is in our bodies that machines grab on to the material
universe. It is through our bodies that informational machines such as computers
are able to exist in the material universe. Our bodies are then becoming the
sacred text of informational machines.
A rapid evolution is upon us, an
evolution of minds and cultures, where bodies will be redefined as they become
doors unto different worlds for both the organic and the cybernetic. The body,
then, becomes the narrative upon which this evolution and culture will be
written and read. But as this phase of evolution is far from being completed, so
then the mutations of the human body are far from over. This, then, is quite an
exciting and frightening time, for I believe this physical and cultural
evolution to be as crucial to our self-definition as the development of writing
was so many centuries ago. Machines are not only tools anymore, they're becoming
interlocutors. They will then force us to reassess entire sections of our
understanding of the world. What is to become of our social contract, for
example, as machines plunge into our political, sociological and economical
realm? What is to become of art and emotion as machines not only force us to use
different tools, but also confront us with their own emotion? What is to become
of our spiritual life (our tectonic plates as Michel Serres puts it), if
spirituality becomes enmeshed in cybernetics? Those crucial questions are to be
confronted and answered as the human race plunges into a close relationship with
machines.
Will robots inherit the earth? asks Marvin Minsky in a recent
Scientific American article. Yes he emphatically answers. Let me suggests here
that robots will not inherit the earth anymore than we did. It's a new evolution
that will inherit the earth. An evolution into which constant movement between
human endeavors, machine presence, biological life and informational structures
will create different and strange forms of life.Thus the crucial question to
address is not where we're going, but how we're getting there, for hope and
despair have equal stakes in that long journey.