[Stuart Sim] Lyotard and the Inhuman (Postmodern E(BookSee.org)

8/12/2019 [Stuart Sim] Lyotard and the Inhuman (Postmodern E(BookSee.org)

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P O S T M O D E R N E N C O U N T E R S

Ly o tard and theI n h u m a nStuart Sim

Series editor: Richard Appignanesi

I C O N B O O K S U KT O T E M B O O K S U S A


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Published in the UK in 200 1 Published in the USAin2001by Icon Books Ltd. Grange Road by Totem Books

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Text copyright 2001 Stuart SimThe author has asserted his moral rights.

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T h e D eath of the UniverseWe live in a universe with an expiry date.Between 4.5 billion and 6 billion years fromnow (estimates vary, but 6 billion appears to bethe upper limit), the sun will have suffered a'heat death' and life on earth will be over.Dramatic (and even melodramatic) though thismay sound on first hearing, in the early twenty-first cen tury few of us are likely to lose to o m uchsleep over such a projected scenario, given atim e-sp an that is all b u t un im agina ble to u s asindividuals surviving for only a few decadeseach. There seems little sense of urgency aboutsuch a prospect from where we now stand,and, for the time being at any rate, life goes onas normal .

One recent exception to such apathy aboutthe ultimate fate of the universe, however, wasthe philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard, whotowards the end of his life (he died in 1998)became somewhat obsessed with the topic,speculating in The Inhuman (1988) as to what


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the projected death of the sun might mean forthe condition of humankind now.1 'The humanrace is already in the grip of the necessity ofhaving to evacuate the solar system in 4.5billion years' , he informed us, attempting toinject a note of urgency into the debate. 2Lyotard is best known for the positive message of The Postmodern Condition (1979 ), anenquiry into the status of knowledge in latetwentieth-century culture, which announcedthe decline of oppressive 'grand narratives' - ineffect, ideologies - and the rise of a new culturalparadigm based on scepticism towards universal explanatory theories in general.3 Accordingto Lyotard, hu m anity now had the opp ortunityto pursue a myriad of 'little narratives' instead,returning political power to the individual andthreatening the power base of the authoritarianstate (and states in general are authoritarian tothe postmodernist thinker) . The postmodernera he pictured promised to be one of liberation from ideological servitude. In The


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LYOTARD A N D T H E I N H U M A N

of the human by advanced technology.4 Histask as a writer and philosopher, as he sees it,is to ensure that we 'bear witness' to such aprocess, so that techno-science does not succeed in imposing its programme on us bystealth - an outcome that, given the power andprestige enjoyed by techno-science in oursociety, is only too likely.5Th e feminist theo ris tD o n n a Haraway s remark that science is thereal game in town, the one we must play' ,ca ptu res the general perception w ell.6

Lyotard's reflections have a wider significanceth an the particular pro blem he is add ressing, an dthese do merit closer attention . W hether w e areaware of it or not, the inhuman has infiltratedour daily existence to a quite remarkable degree- in the sense of the supersession of the h u m anby the technological. For the remainder of thisstudy, we will con sider a range of arg um en ts onthe topic of the inhuman, running from criticssuch as Lyotard to enthusiasts such as the feminist theorists Donna Haraway and Sadie Plant,


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tak ing excursions into medical technology, co m puter technology, computer viruses, ArtificialIntelligence (AI), Artificial Life (AL), humanism and, finally, science-fictional narrative(William Gibson) along the way (see 'KeyIdeas' at the end of this book).The infiltration of the inhuman into oureveryday concerns demands such a wide rangeof reference. After engaging with the argum en ts, we may decide it is m ore app ro pr iate tofear, resist, welcome, actively encourage orperhaps just simply tolerate the inhuman; butone thing is certain - we cannot avoid it.

Living w ith the Inhum anTo speak of infiltration is to be emotive, but itcan be defended. The inhuman is now with usin a variety of forms, and technology is encroaching ever further into our lives - even to th eextent of breaching the boundaries of ourphysical bodies on occasion. Bionic man (orw om an ) is no longer the fanciful no tion it m ay


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once have seemed as the basis for variousscreen narratives or comic-book tales.

Medical science has long since introduced theinhuman into the human (think of heart pacem ak ers , to take an unco ntroversial , and w idelyused, example of the conjunction of man andmachine, or kidney dialysis machines), and thatis a trend that can only intensify as medicaltechnology becomes all the more sophisticated.Then there are life-support machines (in realitya complex of machines collectively taking overkey bodily functions when these lapse). At leastin theory, these cou ld keep us 'alive' for decadesafter what in earlier times would have beenclassified as death pure and simple. Whethersomeone whose vital functions would ceasewithout such mechanical help is actually 'alive'in the normal understanding of the term haspro ve d to be an interesting question w ith m anyramifications - m oral and legal, for ex am ple -that are still avidly being explored by doctors,lawyers and philosophers alike.


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Add to this that computers now run vastareas of Western social existence, from home-heating systems through to airline flights andnuclear power stations, reducing the humandimension to the point where we can seemirrelevant to the operation of such systems.The vexed question of AI has to be confrontedin such cases, given there are computer systemsthat no longer have any need of humaninput, being self-sustaining - and even, in theirown p articu lar way, capa ble of repro du ction .Computer viruses, for example, have the abilityto transform themselves in a bewildering variety of ways that certainly hint at both intelligence and reproductive capacity.

When Lyotard rails against techno-science, itis really AI that he is targeting: that is the areawhere the main problems lie for defenders ofthe human. AI raises the spectre of anotheradvanced life-form contesting our dominationof the planet and its resources - at which pointthe nature of the inhuman becomes, in every


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sense of the word, very much a 'live' issue forall of us. No one could be impartial if such aconflict came to pass. Living with the inhuman,as we do now, is one thing; being subordinatedto its will would be quite something else.

The Death of Humanism?Humanism may be seen as one of thosephenomena that , l ike motherhood and worldpeace, no one could possibly raise substantialobjections to - or if they did, only for the purposes of being thought iconoclastic. How couldone not be in favour of furthering the cause ofthe human race, and, in particular, providing acontext for individual self-expression and self-realisation? Yet if poststructuralism and postmodernism are to be believed, we now live in apost-humanist world.

None of the major theorists in those movements - iconoclasts to a person, it should benoted - has much good to say of humanism,which is identified in their minds with modern-

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T H E DEATH O F H U M A N I S M ?

ity and hence held to be respo ns ible for m ost ofour current cultural ills. For such thinkers,humanism equals the 'Enlightenment project',with its cult of reason and belief in perpetualm aterial progress , and, as su ch , is som ething tobe rejected in our much more circumspect,postmodern, culture. Pessimism has nowestablished a strong hold on the postmodernmind, to replace the unbounded optimismassociated with the modern, and human limitations are more readily acknowledged than inthe recent cultural past. Reason alone is nolonger seen to be our eternal saviour.

H um an ism is also taken to equal advancedcapitalism, political repression, the destructionof most of the planet's renewable resources,and grand narratives - Marxism, l iberaldemocracy or capitalism, for example - thatdemand our submission to their will. For some,it also equals the mental set that sanctionedevents such as the Holocaust, where domination over one's environment, and desire for

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' rational solutions' to perceived social 'problems' , were taken to logical and horrific conclusions. The philosopher Theodor Adorno, animportant influence on the poststructuralistan d po stmo dernist m ove m ents, is famed forhis remark that '[t]o write poetry afterAuschwitz is barbaric ' - the point being thatwe could only be appalled at where the exercise of reason had led us in this instance. 7

Post-humanism takes its lead from sentimentslike this. Lyotard regards such 'rationality' asendemic to capitalism, which he conceives as a'monad' - meaning it is a self-contained entityoblivious to everything except its own interests . 'W hen the po in t is to extend the capac itiesof the monad', he claims, ' i t seems reasonableto abandon, or even actively to destroy, thoseparts of the human race which appear superfluous, useless for that goal. For example, thepo pu lat ion s of the T hir d W orld.'8

While humanism may have started as amovement to l iberate humankind from the

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dead weight of tradition, it has declined into atradition itself, so the story goes, oppressinghumankind in i ts turn. It is therefore to beresisted and undermined wherever possible. Asfar as poststructuralism and postmodernismare concerned, humanism is dead - and goodriddance too, seems to be the general reaction.Time to reassess where we are go ing culturally:'Why do we have to save money and time tothe point where this imperative seems like thelaw of our l ives?' , Lyotard demands, dramatising the point that we have internalised thedynamics of modernity into our very being, asif that were the only possible way to behave.9M ode rnity an d hum anism co nspire to be a particularly sophisticated form of social brainwashing.

Humanism is so generally reviled in theoretical circles these days that it is all too easy toforget its good points - and it most certainlyhad these. Its championship of reason constituted a principled challenge to the rule of

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supersti t ion, and those who exploited superstition for their own ideological ends (organisedreligion being one outstanding example of thatprocess in action).

The Holocaust is not the only possible outcome for such a programme, as certain thinkerswould seem to be implying in their critiques ofthe humanist legacy. When we criticise theEnlightenment project for its failings, we mightjust wonder what kind of society we would beliving in now had it never taken place. Pre-Enlightenment European society was notexactly kind to the individual, whom it kept ina state of more or less permanent subjection.At the very least, the emphasis on reasonenabled some individuals (more and more astime went on) to escape the clutches of arbitrary authority and develop their abilities morethan they would otherwise have been allowedto do.

Humanism has its weaknesses, as even itsmost fervent supporters must concede, but its

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historical record is not necessarily as bad as itis sometimes made out to be. To reduce it to a'monad in expansion' is to do it a considerabledisservice.10

The Rise of InhumanismPost-humanism implies a very different attitudetowards the individual. This shift of perspectivecan take many different forms. One possiblemove is into w h at we might call ' inh um an ism ':a deliberate blurring of the lines betweenhuman beings and machines, going well pastthe point of current medical procedures.

Inhumanism calls for a reassessment of thesignificance of the human, and a realignment ofour relationship to technology. It is just such aprocess that Lyotard, for all his post-humanistbias, was so afraid of, and which he wasrepeatedly w arn in g us against in his late career.The more we consider the point, however, themore we are forced to recognise that inhumanism is now an integral part of our lives. The

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relat ionship between human and machine hasaltered dramatically in recent decades. Whereonce that relat ionship was one of dominationwith humans firmly in control, increasingly ithas become one of co-operation - and evensometimes of domination from the machineside (particularly so when it comes to the moresophisticated forms of AI).

How far we are willing to allow the latterphenomenon to continue developing is aninteresting moral dilemma - arguably the mostimportant moral di lemma of our age. Harawaymight argue that ' the machine is us' , and evencelebrate this supposed state of affairs, butmany will be deeply worried at such aprospect.11 Thus we find Lyotard wondering,'W ha t if w hat is p ro p er to hum ankind w ereto be inhabited by the inhuman?'.1 2

It is a question that goes right to the heart ofwhat i t means to be human and our vision ofour place in the universal scheme. Locating theboundaries of the 'proper ' is an activity with

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implications for all of the human race, as is thequestion of whether these boundaries can be,or even should be, policed. Even AI enthusiastscan see problems arising, with Hugo de Garis,looking ahead to the creation of super-AIentities called 'artilects' , predicting that '[t]heissues of massive intelligence will dominateglobal politics in the next century'.1 3

It is a dilemma that faces us more and moreas technology makes ever greater inroads intoour lives. As noted earlier, we live in a culturethat is almost totally dependent on computersfor the operation of its various systems. Thinkof the fears that were around in the 1990s overa possible millennium meltdown of the computer system at large (the Y2K - year 2000 -problem), which would have left us almosthelpless.

Doomsday scenarios were postulated in therun-up to the event itself: planes falling out ofthe sky; the collapse of all public utilities, leading to looting and perhaps the breakdown of

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pu blic order and ou r p olitical systems; th e m al functioning of nuclear power stations, withcatastrophic consequences for the planet 's ecology ; epidemics th a t co uld not be check ed -and a host of other such scare stories.

In the event, the worst-case scenario did notoccur and we breathed a collective sigh ofrelief; but no one had any very clear idea as tothe best course of action to take if it had(except, as some of the more hysterical voicescou nselled, to hide aw ay w ith a cache of tinn edfood, some bottled water and a gun to protectoneself from looters).

It became apparent from the Y2K situationjust how much of our autonomy we had cededto our computer systems, and that i t was morea case of them controlling us than the otherway around. Without computers we no longerseemed to have the basis for a properly functio n in g civil society, an d if Y2K has been safelynegotiated that does not mean we shall be anythe less vulnerable to system breakdown if it

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ever does occur on a significant scale. In fact,as technology attains new levels of sophistication, we shall most likely become even morevulnerable than ever.

Lyotard summed up the dilemma we face inthis regard quite neatly when he pointed outone of the lessons we learn from catastrophetheory: it is not true that uncertainty (lack ofcontrol) decreases as accuracy goes up: it goesup as well. '

14 In oth er w ord s, the m ore efficientcomputers become, the more we rely on their

operation for the systems we depend on to runour daily lives, then the more we are at theirmercy. Anyone whose computer has ever'crashed' will know just what this can mean atthe local level; magnify this and full-scalesocial disaster looms.

There is little evidence of any concertedmovement away from computer dependence,especially now that Y2K has proved to be anon-problem. And as evidence of just how vulnerable we are becoming, as this book was

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being written the so-called 'love bug' virus wascreating havoc among the world's e-mail syst ems . 'It's a very effective virus. It's one of themost aggressive and nastiest I've ever seen. Itmanifests itself almost everywhere in the computer ' , said an industry spokesperson of an'entity ' that managed to shut down 10 per centof the world's e-mail servers within a day, causing billions of dollars of damage as it spread.15

Doomsday scenarios are not hard to imaginegiven such events, and no doubt even nastierand more aggressive viruses are waiting in thewings to appear in due course (perhaps evenbefore this book is published). The battle forcontrol of cyberspace has already begun inearnest.

Medical technology sets us a host of interesting problems concerning the inhuman. We mentioned heart pacemakers and kidney dialysismachines earlier, but few will see these as posing acute moral dilemmas. Their use is now sowidespread that they have become an accepted

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p ar t of ou r lives - alth ou gh how far do w n th a tline we can travel while still respecting 'what is

p ro p er to hu m an kin d ' is an open quest ion.Life-support machines will become progres

sively more successful in replicating the body'ssystems in years to come - as, no doubt, willthe processes involved in keeping prematurebabies alive at even earlier stages of gestationthan at present (23 weeks being the currentthreshold for likely survival). Artificial organshave already made their appearance and willprobably become standard practice before toolong (although how effective they may be inthe longer term is another issue).

Do we become less than human if key partsof our bodies are not 'natural ' t issue? Howmany synthetic body parts can we toleratew itho ut losing 'w ha t is pro pe r to h um an kind' in the process? Will consciousness, forexample, be affected by a body containing significant amounts of non-natural t issue (perhaps even inside the brain), or dependent on

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computer regulation for its normal functioning? No one really knows the answers to suchquestions as yet, but the problem is alreadylooming large on the horizon and will have tobe co nf ronted eventually.

Possibly the most con tentious area in inhum an-ism is AI, which many scientists regard as constituting a recognisable life-form in its ownright. AI may need human input initially, butonce under way it can, and does, take on anexistence of its ow n, app aren tly indepen dent ofhuman concerns and with i ts own internaldynamic. As a case in point, the love bug'virus very soon started to mutate into morecomplex formulations that rendered it all themore difficult to track down and neutralise.Complexity theory would suggest that at a certain level of development, AI systems (likemost 'natural ' systems) could spontaneouslymutate, by means of 'emergent processes',so-ca lled, to higher levels of organisation -perhaps even to consciousness and self-

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consciousness. At that stage, we are talkingabout AL, with the existence of viruses reinforcing the notion of alternative life-forms (inthe sense of life consisting of a struggle forsurvival within an often hostile environment).We could then speak of 'what is p ro p er toinhumankind',with the interesting prospect, ofcourse, that this may well clash with what isproper to us as humans - or HL (Human Life)as we might style the latter.T he science w riter M ar k W ard has no ted tha t,

Artificial Life research encom passes softwaresimulations, robotics, protein electronics andeven attempts to re-create the Earth s first living organisms. It is less concerned with whatsomething is built of than w ith how it lives. Itis concerned w ith dynam ics and just how lifekeeps going.]6

A L may well have com pletely different im pe ratives to HL, and to dub it 'artificial' is to raise

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the quest ion of how we know, or can prove,that we are the only 'real ' , or even most highlydeveloped, life-form in the first place - not toment ion the t radi t ional human assumptionthat we are also the one with the greatestpotential for further development. Mark Ward,for one, argues that ' i t is wrong to think thatthere is something special about life in generalor humanity in particular ' , and tells us that hecan t wait' to see 'what fresh delights ALifewill bring into being over the next few years' .1 7

Welcome is clearly being extended here.Scientists in the discipline have been similarlyup beat ab ou t AL's pro spe cts - w itnessChristopher Langton's prophecy in 1989 thatAL will 'be genuine life - it w ill simply be m ad eof different stuff than the life that has evolvedhere on Earth' .1 8 If it is genuine, however, thatbrings us back to the possibility of a genuineconflict of interest between AL and HL - andnot everyone will be as sanguine about itsoutcome as Ward and Langton appear to be.

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R E S I S T I N G I N H U M A N I S M

Lyotard's is only one of several warning voicesin this regard.Resist ing Inhumanism:Jean-Frangois LyotardThe threat of inhumanism taxed Lyotard quiteconsiderably, to the p oin t where we m igh t evensee the glimmerings of a new form of humanism in his later w ritings. Th is new hu m an ism haslittle of the character of the old, with the latter'sconcern for self-realisation through dominationover the natural w orld , and is com mitted insteadto resisting the steady drift towards the inhumanthat Lyotard identifies in the culture aroundhim. The old humanism, for Lyotard, is a matter of conformity to approved cultural norms,and conformity involves a reduction of what ishu m an in us. T he m ere notion of co ns ens usalone is enough to arouse Lyotard's suspicion:Tt seems to me that the only consensus weought to be worrying about is one that wouldenco urage this heterogeneity or dis sen su s . '1 9

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Any reduction in 'difference' is a reduction inthe human to this thinker, whose dissentingtendencies run deep. If it is not becoming tooconvoluted, we could say that what Lyotard isprea chin g is an ant i- inhum anism , and it beginsto take on something of the character of amoral crusade in his hands. We resist becausewe must: the alternative is to surrender to thedesigns of the inhuman. Nothing less than thesurvival of humanity is at stake in this struggle.The Inhuman is a collection of loosely co nnected essays by Lyotard, whose overall trajectory is described by him as follows.

The suspicion they betray (in both senses of theword) is simple, although double: what ifhum an beings, in hum anisms sense, were inthe process of, constrained into, becom inginhum an (that s the first part)?And (the secondpart), what if what is proper to humankindwere to be inhabited by theinhuman?1

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Lyotard is careful t o discriminate betw eenthese two forms of the inhuman. In the firstcase the enemy is w h a t he calls 'de velo pm en t' -in effect, advanced capi ta l ism, with its seemingly endless appetite for expansion and technological innovation. In the second, it isAI-AL, with its colonising imperative - animperative that development does its best toexpedite.

Development has little regard for the interests of the individual, and Lyotard speakscaustically of the 'inhumanity of the system'which attempts to bend human beings to i tswill in the name of progress.21 Efficiency andenhanced performance are what drive development, its desire always being to save time (inproduction, delivery and so on). Lyotard,staunch anti-capitalist that he remainedthroughout his life, is deeply suspicious of thistrait: 'I do not like this haste. What it hurries,and crushes, is what after the fact I find that Ihave always tried, und er diverse head ing s -

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work, figural, heterogeneity, dissensus, event,thing - to reserve: the unharmonizable . '2 2Th ereis an obsessive goal-directedness to development that Lyotard finds deeply alien, and thatthe dissen ter in him a lways wishes to find w ay sto disrupt .Development has become an end in itself inthis reading, and its appropriation of science isdesigned to raise it to new levels of performative efficiency, the consequence of which willbe even greater power and higher profits. Norwill development ever be satisfied: it willalways want to push on to a higher level thanthe one it has already attained. If left unchecked, development will lead to a culturebased on inhuman principles - hence Lyotard'scall for mass resistance to its plans.

The model of the human that lies behind thisresistance is one based on reflection andresponse to events as they unfold, rather thanon the efficiency of the production system - thelatter being something that Lyotard also criti-

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cises in his be st-kn ow n w ork , The PostmodernCondition, in which he remarks: 'Technologyis therefore a game pertaining not to the true,the just, or the beautiful, etc., but to efficiency:a technical m o v e is good when it does better and/or expends less energy than another.'2'Morality disappears under such a regimen, andth a t is yet an o th er significant m ove aw ay fromthe realm of the human.

As noted, Lyotard's sympathies always liewith what the system cannot encompass: towit, 'work, figural, heterogeneity, dissensus,event, thing . . . the unharmon izable' - all synonyms in his writings for 'difference'. Arguably,the most important trait of the human thatinhumanism attempts to eradicate is just that,'difference'. Without difference, in Lyotard'sworld, we have lost the human. There is aninteresting echo in his views of the critique ofindustrialism offered by such nineteenth-centurycultural critics as Thomas Carlyle. In his essay'Signs of the Times' (1829), Carlyle bemoaned

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the subordination of human beings to the burgeoning Industrial Revolution' , with i ts tendency to reduce individuals to mere units, or'hands' as the t ime demeaningly came to referto them, in the service of the industrialmachine:Men are grown mechanical in head and heart,as well as in hand. . . . Their whole efforts,attachm ents, opinions, turn on mechanism,and are of a mechanical character. . . . Thisfaith in Mechanism, in the all-importance ofphysical things, is in every age the commonrefuge of Weakness and blind Discontent; ofall who believe, as many will ever do, thatmans true good lies without him, not within.14

Sentiments such as these tell us that 'developmental ' inhumanism has a long history, andwhile we might take heart from the fact that ithas never succeeded in eradicating dissentaltogether (as Lyotard's complaints prove), it

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also has to be admitted that it has become a farmore formidable opponent since Carlyle's time.Technology is simply more invasive in our day,reaching not just into our consciousness butinto our very bodies, and calling on a range ofextra-human powers that i t did not have when'Signs of the Times' was being written.

The most provocative essay of The Inhumanis 'Can Thought go on without a Body? ' ,which gives us a scenario where 'what isproper to humankind' does become colonised by the inhuman in the form of AI-AL.The essay is presented in the form of a dialogue between ' H e ' and 'She' . 'He' poses theheat death of the sun as 'the sole serious question to face humanity today', and suggests thatit reduces to one particular problem for resolut ion: 'How to make thought wi thout a bodypossible. '25

On the face of it, resolution would involve adevaluation of the physical that would beunacceptable to defenders of the h u m a n , as well

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as raising some profound questions as to whatwe understand by the term thought itself:human thought, or the rule-bound operat ionsof computer logic? For techno-science, however, it is simply a technical problem about devising the right kind of software to cope with theconditions in question, and, for 'He', the drivetowards resolution is already well under way:

This and this alone is what s at stake today intechnical and scientific research in every fieldfrom dietetics, neurophysiology, genetics andtissue synthesis to particle physics, astrophysics, electronics, information science andnuclear physics. Whatever the immediatestakes might appear to be: health, war, production, com munication. For the benefit ofhum ankind, as the saying goes.16

And just in case we think that, as an invented'character' , 'He' does not necessarily representthe author's views, Lyotard makes exactly the

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same point in his introduction to the collection: 'It is to take up this challenge that allresearch, whatever its sector of application, isbeing set up already in the so-called developedcountries. '2 7 Clearly, this has become an obsession of the author's - one that he returns topersistently over the course of The Inhuman.

For all that it might sound that way, we donot need to see the claim 'He ' is making as anexam ple of con spirac y theory. W h a t is beingargu ed is that techno-science, un der pressurefrom development, its paymaster, is overwhelmingly concerned with improving theoperational efficiency of technological systemssuch that the human becomes irrelevant to theprocess. Development simply wants to continue expanding indefinitely, and whateverrestricts that internal dynamic merely registersas a problem to be overcome by the achievement of ever greater levels of operational efficiency. Having transcended the human, withall its operational inadequacies, the only limit

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remaining to development 's continued expansion w ou ld be the dea th of the sun; so by im plication that limit is what techno-science isworking towards circumventing. Thought isof interest to development only in so far as itis necessary to guarantee its survival: nohumanist ideals lie behind this exercise inpreservation. As Lyotard points out elsewhereinThe Inhuman ( 'Representation, Presentation,Unpresentable ') , philosophers have a ' responsibility to thought' , and that is a relationshipthat goes well beyond the pragmatism of thetechno-scientists.28 Computers do not haveresponsibilities; they merely have tasks.

What 'He' does insist is that if thought canbe preserved, then it must be thought of thehuman rather than the computing type.Computer ' thought ' is logical, a matter ofresp on ding m echanically to a binary code (1 or0); human thought, on the other hand, tends todepend heavily on the use of analogy and intuition: 'It doesn't work with units of informa-

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tion (bits), but with intuitive, hypothetical configurations. It accepts imprecise, ambiguousdata that don't seem to be selected according topreestablished codes or readability.'29A nalogicalthought works on the basis of such moves as,' just as . . . so l ikewise . . . ' , or ' as if . . . then. . . ' , rather than the more restricted' if...then. . . ' o r' p is not non-p ' of binary coding.30

To be worth preserving at all , thought has tobe more than just logical reasoning of the computer program form; it has to carry the creative, and often seemingly anarchic, elementthat marks out the human variety. By comparison to human thought, computer thought isextremely rigid in its approach. Let's take themost mundane of examples: your local post-office will, in most cases, manage to delivera letter with a minor error in the address,whereas your e-mail system will return it toyou - 'delivery failed'. Human thought is simplymore flexible.

The nature of thought is something that

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Lyotard often reflects upon. In Peregrinations(1988), for example, he pictures thought ashaving the amorphousness , and indetermin-ability, of the process of cloud formation:

Thoughts are not the fruits of the earth. Theyare not registered by areas, except out ofhuman commodity. Thoughts are clouds. Theperiphery of thoughts is as immeasurable asthe fractal lines of Benoit M andelbrot. . . .Thoughts never stop changing their locationone with the other. W hen you feel like youhave penetrated far into their intimacy in analyzing either their so-called structure of genealogy or even post-structure, it is actually toolate or too soon?x

Nothing could be further from computer reasoning than such a hazy series of events as this,where there are no clear patterns to be discerned. Neither is there any sense of theremorseless linear progression that distinguishes

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com puter pro gram s. Th e movement of th ou gh thas a mysterious quality foreign to the entiretechnological exercise, based as this is ondelimited procedures that can endlessly berepeated - reiteration being the soul of technology. Capturing thought within such a rigidlyspecified framework as the latter looks to be isa doomed enterprise: technology deals in precision (or at the very least, the search for thegreatest precision possible in any given set ofcircumstances), whereas thought by its natureinstinctively resists precision and containment.We have what Lyotard calls a 'differend' atsuch junctures: a situatio n in w hich the systemsare seen to be incommensurable, such that onecannot legislate how the other should operate.32 Any attempt to legislate can only be atthe expense of the integrity of the other system,and can never be justified in Lyotard's ethicalscheme.

'She' is more sceptical of the likely success ofany project such as 'He' envisages, but just as

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determined to keep the human dimension atthe forefront of their deliberations on thetopic, particularly the fact of body:

[l]fs that body, both natural and artificial ,that will have to be carried far from earthbefore its destruction if we want the thoughtthat survives the solar explosion to be something more than a poor binarized ghost ofwhat it was beforehand**Thought for 'She' cannot be divorced frombodies: Thinking and suffering overlap', andthere is a 'pain of thinking' to be acknowledged.34 Computers neither suffer nor feelpain, and as Lyotard queries in another of TheInhuman^ essays, 'Som ething Like: C o m munica t ion . . . Wi thout Communica t ion ' :

W hat is a place, a moment, not anchored in theimmediate passion9of w hat happens? Is a computer in any way here and now? Can anything

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happen with it? Can anything happen to it? 35

A nother w ay of p uttin g this is to say th a t com puters neither recognise nor respect the fact ofdifference. Their concern is always with standardisation, and the elimination of any factorthat hinders the operational efficiency of thesystem. The drive is towards performance,and away from reflection and unconditionedresponse. Difference is anathema to the computer mode; whereas to Lyotard it is the verystuff of life, the element without which we losew ha t is most valuable to the h um an .

For all the claims made for computers as analternative life-form, therefore, they fail tomeet the requirements that Lyotard sets forthat condit ion. 'Thinking machines ' cannot besaid to be thinking in any human sense of theterm . For one th in g , they are just to o efficientand performance-orientated, lacking the sheerunpredictability (and in computing terms,unreliability) of thought in its human, cloud-

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like, form. 'In what we call thinking the mindisn't d ire ct ed bu t suspen ded. You do n't giveit rules. You teach it to receive.'36 Computers ,on the othe r h an d, areso directed , and lack theelement of rule-defying creativity - or, forthat matter, sheer bloody-minded contrariness -that is built into the fabric of the human.Without such creativity, Lyotard is contending,' thinking' cannot occur. Computers fail thelife-form test in his view, and in consequencewe should actively be countering all attemptsto blur the l ine between them and the human.

Whether more recent developments in ALwould also fail this test is, however, anotherquestion again, and we might well identifysomething approximating to creativity in suchcases. T he sheer adaptability of c om pu terviruses, for example, could be said to arguecreativity - of the malicious variety, anyway.Thus the following can be said of the 'love bug'virus: 'Once embedded in a host computer, thevirus can download more dangerous software

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from a remote website, rename files andredirect internet browsers. '3 7 At least in termsof effects, we have u np red ictab ility here: it cannot be specified beforehand what the 'lovebu g's' exact trajectory is go ing to b e. The viru shas taken on something of the character of the'trickster' figure of popular myth and legend.

'She 'allow s the possibility that machines couldbecome sophisticated enough in their technologyto experience suffering, but suspects that theywill not be given that opportunity by theirdesigners, since 'suffering doesn't have a goodreputation in the technological megalopolis ' .38In other words, anything that impacts adverselyon performance will be avoided by techno-science: system efficiency is all in this context.Neither emotion nor sensation can have anyplace in such a world, and another highly significant differend declaresitself.

'She ' identifies an even more intractableproblem for any programme at tempting toreplace humans by thinking-machines - that of

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gender. Here again, difference has to beacknowledged: The human body has a gender.It 's an accepted proposition that sexual difference is a paradigm of an incompleteness of notjust bodies, bu t m ind s too. '3 9

Sexual difference is something we carry deepw ithin u s, no m att er how m uch we m igh t try toclose the gap between the sexes in our everydaylives (by insisting on equal treatment, equalopportunity and so on). Techno-science is justas suspicious of this difference as it is of allothers, especially since this particular onetakes us into the highly unpredictable worldof desire.

Desire can only complicate the issue fortechno-science; yet 'She' insists that desire willhave to be built into thinking-machines, if theyare to have any pretensions whatsoever to produce thought as opposed to merely mechanicaloperations - no matter how complex theseoperations may turn out in practice to be.

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So: the intelligence you re preparing to survivethe solar explosion will have to carry that forcewithin it on its interstellar voyage. Your thinking machines will have to be nourished not juston radiation but on the irremediable differendof gender*0

One can imagine how unwelcome the prospectof having to gender machines would be to thetechno-scientific community - and not justunwelcome, but from their systems-orientatedpoint of view, totally unnecessary.

Overall, the essay is fairly negative about theprospect of thought going on without a body(although conceding the objective possibility),and both ' H e ' and 'She ' place quite formidablebarriers in the way of the techno-scientific project. In terms of its current ethos anyway, sucha project seems determined to bypass all thoseelements that constitute human thought. ForAI truly to become AL of a type that couldacceptably replace the hu m a n , it w ould hav e to

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take on board not just suffering and gender buta commitment to difference too. The generaltenor of The Inhuman is that techno-science istemperamentally unable to make any suchcommitment; that i t would represent a constraint on its power that it could never willinglyconcede. Efficiency, that most critical of factorsto the techno-scientific regime, could onlydecline.

What techno-science strives for is completecontrol stretching on into the future, and thatmeans not just the elimination of difference,but, as Lyotard points out in Time Today',also the elimination of time.

[\]f one wants to control a process, the bestway of so doing is to subordinate the present towhat is (still) called the future , since in theseconditions the future will be com pletely predetermined and the present itself will ceaseopening onto an uncertain and contingentafterwards .41

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C E L E B R A T I N G I N H U M A N I S M

A predetermined future means that we havelost the human yet again, since the unpredictability of future 'events' is a preconditionfor thought . Without events to respond to,there would be no context for thought at all,and that is w h a t Ly otard m ost fears th e techn o-scientific project is trying to bring about. Themessage is clear: thought should not be separated from body; and if it ever is, then it must bein some way that replicates the experience ofbeing within a body (and a gendered body atthat) - with all the disadvantages this wouldhave for development's long-term objectives.

Celebrating Inhumanism:Donna HarawayFar from rejecting the encroachment ofinhumanism into our dai ly l ives, Harawayembraces the project with considerable enthusiasm, treating it as a means of furthering thecause of feminism. Although alive to its possible dangers, inhumanism is nevertheless appro-

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priated by Haraway for her gender-redefiningproject, the a rg um en t being tha t the boundarybetween science-fiction and social reality is anoptical illusion. . . . the bo und ary betweenphysical and non-physical is very imprecisefor us.'42For Haraway, the figure of the cyborg is theway to break out of the trap of gender, and,indeed, to engage in the 'reinvention of nature'such that a whole new set of relationships canemerge between humans and their world.4 3

A cyborg, as she tells us in the 'CyborgManifesto' chapter of her highly controversialbook Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991), is'a hybrid of m achin e and o rgan ism ', and it is acondition much to be desired, particularlywhen it comes to women.44 'The cyborg is acreature in a post-gender world' , Harawaydeclares, leading her to conclude: 'I wouldrathe r be a cyb org th an a goddess. '45

Goddesses belong to a world where mencontrol women by turning them into sexual

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of gender that Lyotard wishes to preserve) athing of the past.

Science-fictional though it may sound (andHaraway does acknowledge that she hasdrawn inspiration from this quarter), thecyborg concept is, she insists, already with usin various guises, whether we are aware ofit or not. Modern medical technology, forexample, involves 'couplings between organismand machine' , the end-product of which iscyborgs.46 Modern industr ial production andm odern w ar, to o , are cyborg op erat io ns , wheremankind and machinery are forced into closepartnership; and, indeed, as far as Haraway isconcerned:

By the late twentieth century, our time, amythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized andfabricated hybrids of machine and organism;in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is ourontology; it gives us our politics.* 1

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Not only have some of Lyotard's worst fearsapparently com e to pass, but also w e a re invitedto celebrate the fact as a positive developmentfor humanity - if approached in the right spirit.Machines are described in glowing terms byHaraway that make them seem highly desirable as pa rtne rs in a new m ode of be ing:

Modern machines are quintessentially microelectronic devices . . . Our best machines aremade of sunshine; they are all light and cleanbecause they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, andthese machines are eminently portable, mobile. . . People are nowhere near so fluid, beingboth material and opaque. Cyborgs are ether,quintessence**

Technology has rarely sounded more seductivetha n this - or m ore w orthy of im itation.Human beings, in contrast, register as ill-designed for the tasks facing them, and in need

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of the boost in power and presence thatmachine existence would seem to offer.

For all the fulsome praise, however, there is adownside to be noted to the new technology,w hich, H ar aw ay adm its, could lead to new andmore effective forms of political domination -especially so if left in the hands of capitalisttechno-science (on this issue, anyway, shewould appear to be on the same wavelength asLy otard). Th is p rosp ect shou ld give us pausefor thought: the cyborg myth' , she points out,' is about transgressed boundaries, potentfusions, and dangerous possibilities' .49

If there are dan gers, however, they are dangersthat Haraway is more than willing to live with,given the subversive implications of cyborgismas a way of ex istence. W here Lyotard advo catesresistance to the spread of inhumanism,Haraway calls for subversion from within,such that the technology of inhumanism isusurped for the purposes of a radical politics.

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into its own as a concept - particularly so asregards issues of identity. Haraway starts fromthe position that,

There is nothing about being female that naturally binds women. There is not even such astate as being female , itself a highly com plexcategory constructed in contested sexualscientific discourses and other social practices.Gender, race, or class consciousness is anachievem ent forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

This is in essence a restatement of the FrenchExistentialist writer and novelist Simone deBeauvoir's famous observation in The SecondSex (1949) that 'one is not born, but ratherbecomes, a woman' , a l though Haraway proceeds to draw much more radical conclusionsfrom that state of affairs than her feminist predecessor does.5 1 For Haraway it opens up the

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possibility of 'recrafting' our bodies to becomecyborgs, creatures that undermine the powerstructures on which gender inequality isbased .The cyborg ' ,sheclaim s, is akindofdisassembled and reassembled, postmodern collectiveand personalself.Thisis the self feminists mustcode. '52 Human na ture is not a given set ofcharacteristics with which we are stuck for alltime; rather, it isconstructed - and if it isconstructed, it can be taken apart and reconstructed in other ways (thesame can besaid fornature in thewider sense).

Cyborgism holdsout awo r ld of promise forfeminists, if, as Haraway insists they must bewilling to do,they agreeto embrace the breakdown of clean distinctions between organismand machine and similar distinctions structuring the Western self .53We are to conceiveofourselves as open-ended projects rather thanfinished entities, actively seeking new formsand newways of beinginorder to subvertthecultural normsof ourtime.

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with machines to increase their power andrange of operation:Intense pleasure in skill, machine skill, ceasesto be a sin, but an aspect of embodiment. Themachine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. The machine is us,our processes, an aspect of our embodiment,,56

For women this can be a radical step to take,given that female embodiment has traditionallybeen identified with nurturing and the maternal instinct; to reject this model is to reject oneof the founding assumptions of Western culture. Gender identity is no longer to be treatedas fixed, therefore, striking a blow not justagainst patriarchy but against totalising theories in general.

While this is also Lyotard s conclusion, it isreached here by what would be for him analien route. One can hardly imagine Lyotardagreeing with the proposition that 'science is

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culture ' .5 7 There will be no demonisation oftechnology in a cyborg world: on the contrary,'the machine is us'.

Inhumanism and the Internet:Sadie PlantAlong with Haraway, Sadie Plant is anotherfeminist theorist to enthuse about the conjunction of women and technology, as her bookZeros + Ones (1997) makes clear. One of themain objectives of that study is to demonstratethat women have been far more deeply implicated in the development of modern technology, particularly information technology, thanhas been generally recognised. Not only haswomen's contribution to the field of information technology (early computers onwards)been suppressed, but also that technology perhaps better expresses the female character thanthe male (Plant can be something of an essen-tialist thinker in this regard).

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Since the industrial revolution, and with everysubsequent phase of technological change, ithas been the case that the more sophisticatedthe machines, the more female the workforcebecomes. . . . Women have been ahead of therace for all their working lives, poised to meetthese changes long before they arrived, asthough they always had been working in afuture which their male counterparts had onlyjust begun toglimpse.This is a process, Plant contends, that hasbecome even more pronounced with the development of such radical new forms of information technology as the Internet.

The Net exerts a particular attraction forfeminists like Plant, in that it features no overall system of control or notion of hierarchy -both of the latter being characteristics of patriarchy that feminists invariably are concernedto contest . 'No central hub or command structure has constructed it , and its emergence has

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been that of a parasite, rather than an organizing host.'59

Given that significant absence, the Netbecomes a space where gender power relationscan be challenged: as in Haraway, the conjunction of woman and machine holds out thepromise of radical subversion of the existingsocio-political order. Women have a specialaffinity with the Net, in Plant's view, since theyhave a history of being the workforce of newinform ation techn olog y as it w as introd uc ed -take, for example, switchboard operators,typists and co m pu ter op erators.

A culture change with immense implicationsfor gender relations could be observed happening throughout the twentieth century: ifhandwrit ing had been manual and male,typewriting was fingerprinting: fast, tactile,digital, and female. '6 0 Male clerks disappeared;female typists became the new office norm.New information technology encouraged theconstruct ion of new networks outside the

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established patriarchal company structures,and the Net, accessed significantly enough bythe typewriter keyboard, has proceeded tomultiply such opportunities to a previouslyunimaginable degree.

Once again, the notion that we are alreadyliving in a cyborg world comes to the fore - asdoes the contention that women make the bestcybo rgs . W omen h av e, in fact, been cy bo rgs forsome time now without realising it or, morepertinently, the degree of power with whichbeing a cyborg endows them: 'H a r d w a r e , software, wetware - before their beginnings andbeyond their ends, women have been the simulators, assemblers, and programmers of thedigital machines', therefore there is no need forthem to remain under masculine domination.6 1

The Net has been instrumental in breakingd o w n tradit ional gend er roles, the phen omenon dubbed 'genderquake ' .6 2 Plant is inno doubt that this is the most significant cultural event of our times and that, by taking

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advantage of the Net's 'sprawling, anarchicmesh of links', it can be rendered even moreradical.63

The main reason that thinkers such asH araw ay an d Plant have been so keen to developan inhumanist version of feminism is the perceived masculine bias of old-style humanism.The notion that 'man is the measure of allthings' has all too often been taken quite literally, with women being severely marginalisedin terms of the main power structures, and thebeh avioural n orm s proceeding from these, ofour culture (a point made forcefully bySimonede Beauvoir). Modern humanism's message isto be extracted almost exclusively from thework of 'Dead White European Males' in thisrespect. As H ar aw ay rem arks: 'H um an ity is amodernist figure; and this humanity has ageneric face, a universal shape. Humanity'sface has been the face of man. Feminist humanity must ha ve an oth er shap e. '6 4

Certainly, the Enlightenment project and59


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modernity have been heavily male-dominatedphenomena, as has, in general , the world oftechno-science (while there have been individual exceptions to this rule, the overall ethos ofthe la tter field is un de nia bly m asculine). O n ceagain, as with postmodernism, it is a case ofthe negative aspects of humanism beingemphasised and taken to define the whole, as ifhuman i sm in essence were authori tarian inbias - and in particular in this case, masculineauthoritarian. One can certainly challenge this,while nevertheless appreciating the depth ofthe frustration on the female side that has ledto such att i tudes being adopted.

The Inhuman as Narrat ive:Wil l iam GibsonAs one of its early reviewers proclaimed,William Gibson's novel Neuromancer (1984 ,original A merican ed ition), the future as nightmare' , is a striking attempt to explore what i tmight be like for humans to enter into cyber-

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space and tackle AI in its own domain and onits own term s.6 5

Gibson theorises a world where hackers caninsert their own consciousness into computersystems ('jacking in'), and once inside try tofind ways around the system's defences, matching human intelligence against artificial as theygo. A hacker colleague of the hero, Case, dieswhile engaged in such an expedition, leavinghis consciousness intact within cyberspacewith no body to return to (the 'Flatliner'):

Wait a sec/ Case said. Are you sentient, ornotVWell, it feels like I am, kid, but Vm really

just a bunch of RO M . It s one of them, ah,philosophical questions, I guess . . . The uglylaughter sensation rattled down Case s spine.But I ain t likely to write you no poem, if you

follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain tno way human. 66

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Here we have ' thought wi thout a body' ,although it seems a less than desirable state tobe in, with the Flatliner (Dixie) asking to beerased after Case has completed his ownassignment in cyberspace.

What Gibson pictures is a bitter strugglefor control over the cyberspace environment,with the relationship between man and AIevolving into one of mutual hostility.Difference here is sharply felt, and just assharply resisted by AI systems, which refuse tocountenance any intervention at all in theiraffairs. The hostility of the various AIs thatCase and Dixie are trying to outsmart is welldocumented, given that one of them has leftDixie a mere construct . As the latter wrylypo ints ou t, there is no reason not to eng age in abattle of wits with AIs, 'Not unless you got amorbid fear of death'.6 7

A I,it is clear, has no sense of shared va lues orkinship with the human world - and most certainly no concept of the sanctity of human life.

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H um anism is not a concept th a t AIs recognise.The major struggle taking place in

Neuromancer is to prevent A Is from developing into fully fledged ALs, at which point theywould have passed beyond the point of anyhuman control, and turned into truly formidable adversaries for humanity. The majorculprit is the system 'Win te rmute ' , which isalready beginning to draw human beings likeCase and his associates into its sphere of influence, and to manipulate them for its own ends.Wintermute is trying to escape the restrictionsthat humans have constructed around AIs,thus taking control of its own destiny - as onewould expect AL, with its monad-like quality,to want to do ultimately. For human beings,however, that is a frightening prospect; as wellas one th a t, even in the sh or t tim e since G ibsonwrote Neuromancer, has m oved significantlycloser to reality. We await the day of the'artilect' with some trepidation.

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Humanism Post-humanism andInhumanismFor all the diatribes launched against it bythe poststructuralist and postmodernist movements, hu m anism remains with us - an d is likelyto continue to do so in some form, its problematical aspects notwithstanding. Like motherhood and world peace, it still has the capacityto promote a positive reflex response frommost of the population of the West - if not thetheoretical community, who have conditionedthemselves to seeing only its nega tive aspects.

Having said that, we do in many respectsnow live in a post-humanist world, wherehumanist ideals can no longer be accepted in anuncritical m anner. Sometimes, as we kno w , thoseideals can have unwanted side effects - such asthe marginalisation of women or the exploitation of no n-W estern races, for ex am ple .

More to the point, we live in a world whereinhumanism is becoming harder and harder tocounter; a world where what is proper to

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humankind is becoming ever more contestedand difficult to protect. Yet, as we have seen,not everyone feels this need be regarded as anegative development for humanity, and thestage is set for an interesting debate betweenthe proponents of humanism, post-humanism,inhumanism and anti- inhumanism, that wil lno doubt run and run, given that the stakesinvolved are so high. By no means have thearguments for fear, resistance, welcome, activeencouragement and plain tolerance towardsthe cause of inhumanism been exhausted as yet.

The importance of Lyotard for this debate isthat, by his anti-inhumanist stance, he holdsout the possibili ty of a post-humanist humanism, where, at the very least, the wilder claims,as well as the more disturbing visions of thefuture, of techno-science are to be treated witha high degree of scepticism. While one canreadily understand the rationale behind thedevelopment of a feminist inhumanism (patriarchal prejudice almost invites such an extreme

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N O T E S

Notes1. For a discussion of the topic of the'endof history' ingeneral, see author's earlier contribution to the'Postmodern Encounters' series, Derrida and the Endof H istory. Cambridge: Icon Books, 1999.2. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflectionson Time., tra ns. Geoffrey Bennington and RachelBowlby.Oxford: Blackwell, 1991,p . 64.3. For a study ofLyotard'slife and w orks , see author'sModern Cultural Theorists: Jean-Francois Lyotard.Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall, 1996.4. Lyotard, The Inhuman, p. 7.5. Ibid.6. D onn a J.Haraway,Simians,Cyborgs, and W omen:The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge,1991,p. 184.7. Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms: Cultural Criticismand Society, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber.London: Neville Spearman, 1967, p. 34.8. Lyotard, The Inhuman,pp. 76 -7 .9. Ibid., p . 67 .10. Ibid.11. Haraway,Simians, Cyborgs,p. 180.12. Lyotard, The Inhuman,p. 2.13. Roderick Simpson, 'The Brain Builder' (interview

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wi th Hu g o d e Ga r i s ) , Wired, 5 December 1997 ,p p . 2 3 4 - 5 .1 4 . Jean-FrancoisLyo tard, The Postmodern Condition:A Report on Knowledge, tran s. Geoff B enning ton andBr ian Massumi . Manches te r : Manches te r Univers i tyPress, 1984 , p . 56 .15. Love bug v i rus c rea tes wor ldwide chaos ' , TheGuardian, 5 M a y 20 00 , p . 1.16. M a r k W a r d , Virtual Organisms: The StartlingWorld of Artificial Life. London : Macmi l lan , 1999 ,p . 8.17. Ibid. , p p . 7 , ix.18 . C hris top he r G. Lang ton , 'Ar t if icia l Life', inChris topher G. Langton (ed.) ,Artificial Life. Red wo o dCity, CA : Ad dison-W esley, 19 89 , p p . 1- 47 (p. 33 ) .19. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Peregrinations: Law , Form ,Event. New York: Columbia Universi ty Press , 1988,p . 44.2 0 . Lyota rd , The Inhuman, p . 2 .2 1 . Ibid.2 2 . Ibid., p . 4 .2 3 . Lyota rd , The Postmodern Condition, p. 4 4 .2 4 . T h o m a s C a r l y l e , Works (vols . 1-30), vol . 27.New York : AMS Press , 1 9 6 9 , p p . 6 3 , 8 0 .2 5 . Lyota rd , The Inhuman, pp . 9 , 1 3 .2 6 . Ibid., p . 12 .2 7 . Ibid., p. 7 .

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28. Ibid., p . 128.29. Ibid., p . 15 .30. Ibid., p . 16.31. Lyotard,Peregrinations,p. 5.32. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Differend:Phrases in Dispute, trans. George Van Den Abbeele.Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988.33. Lyotard, The Inhuman,p. 17.34. Ibid., pp . 1 8 ,1 9 .35. Ibid., p . 118.36. Ibid.,p . 19.37. Guardian,op. cit., p. 1.38. Lyotard, The Inhuman, p. 20 .39. Ibid.40. Ibid., p . 22.41 . Ibid., p . 65 .42. Haraway,Simians, Cyborgs,p p . 14 9, 153.43 . Ibid., p . 1.44. Ibid., p . 14 9.45. Ibid., pp . 150,181.46. Ibid., p . 150 .47. Ibid.48. Ibid., p . 15 3.49. Ibid., p . 154 .50. Ibid., p . 15 5.51. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans.

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H .M . Pashley. Harmondsw orth: Penguin, 1972, p. 2 95 .52. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs,p . 163.53. Ibid., p. 174.54. Ibid., p. 177.55. Ibid., p. 178.56. Ibid., p. 180.57. Ibid., p . 230 .58. Sadie Plant, Zeros + Ones: Digital Women+ theNew Technoculture. London: Fourth Estate, 1997,pp.39, 4 3 .59. Ibid., p . 49 .60. Ibid., p . 118.61. Ibid., p . 37 .62. Ibid., p . 38 .63. Ibid., p. 173.64. Donna J. Haraway, Ecce Homo, Ain't (Ar'n't)I a Woman, and Inappropriate/dO thers: The Human ina Post-Humanist Landscape', in Judith Butler andJoan W. Scott (eds), Fem inists Theorize the Political.New York and London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 86-100(p.86).65. See the cover of William Gibson,Neuro-mancer.London: HarperCollins, 1993.66. Ibid., pp. 158-9.67. Ibid., p. 139.68. Haraway,Simians, Cyborgs,p . 4.

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B I B L I O G R A P H Y

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Columbia University Press, 1988.The Postmodern Condition: A Report onKnowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian

Massumi. Manchester : Manchester Universi tyPress, 1984.

Plant, Sadie, Zeros + Ones: Digital W omen + theNew Technoculture. London: Fourth Estate, 1997.

Sim, Stuart, (ed.), The Critical Dictionary ofPostmodern Thought. C am bridge : Icon Books,1998.

Derrida and the End of History. Cambridge:Icon Books, 1999.

Modern Cultural Theorists: Jean-FrancoisLyotard. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall , 1996.

Simpson, Roderick, 'The Brain Builder' , Wired, 5December 1 9 9 7 , p p. 23 4- 5 .

Ward, Mark , Virtual Organisms: The StartlingWorld of Artificial Life.London: Macmillan,1999.

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K E Y I D E A S

Key IdeasArti f ic ia l Intelligence Al)AI takes two main forms: systems that attempt toreplicate human intelligence by means of a centralprocessing mechanism standing in for the brain,and systems that ' learn' as they go, developing evergreater capacity for adaptability to new situations(as in the case of 'neural nets'). The more sophisticated the latter becomes, the more it takes on thecharacteristics of Artificial Life AL).Arti f ic ia lLife AL)AL can refer to either robots or computer programs. In each case, the requirement is that the'organism' becomes independent of human control,and 'evolves' in some recognisable manner.Evolution can be seen in programs such as the'Game of Life' , where we can observe new 'organisms' come into being from the relatively simplestate (and set of rules) in operation at the program'sstart. Although the player can set the initial state ofthe 'Game' (specifying some 'live' and 'dead' cellson the game's infinite square grid), once it is underw ay he or she ha s no m ore input a nd the cells evolve

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into an ar ray of different 'species'.As the sciencewri ter Mark Ward has no ted , the game's criticalfeature is tha t it is 'capable of producing an evergrowing pat tern ' (Virtual Organisms, p. 91).

Art i lectsTheAItheor is t Hu go de Garis's term for massivelymore powerful AIsystems, w hic hcan bethoughtofas 'Artificial Intellects'. When developed, these willfar outstrip human intellects, and become covetedresources - to the point, de Garis predicts, of triggering political conflict.

Co m plexity TheoryComplexity represents the next generationof physical theory tochaos,and emp hasisestheroleof self-organisa t ion insystems- ranging from the h u m a nthrough to the entire universe. Systems are seen tobe capable of evolution, and of achieving higherlevels of development through spontaneous self-organisation. According to complexity theorists,emergent processes within systems are all tha t areneeded to explain the occurrence of such phenomena ,theoccurrenceofwhich isw idespread.

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K E Y I D E A S

CyberspaceThe 'space' in which computer programs operate,where the Inte rne t is located, an d ac ros s which youre-mail is transmitted. The term was coined by thescience-fiction author William Gibson in his novelNeuromancer, w hich envisages a w orld w herehuman beings can enter this 'virtual ' space andmatch their wits against Als. To qu o te The CriticalDictionary of Postmodern Thought, cyberspace 'isa non -space th at is everywhere a nd yet no w he re'( 'Cyberspace' entry, p. 219).

CyborgDonna Haraway's conception of a form of beingcombining the human and the technological. Thepo int of such a cons truc t is to b re ak free of genderconstraints, and of a social context where womenare often regarded as biologically inferior beings tomen. Cyborgs harness the power of machines toproblematise such notions, as well as overcomingthe limitations of the human body. Moreover, suchclose co-operation exists between humans andmachines in the contemporary world, that Harawaycon tends t h a t cybo rg society is alre ad y a reality.

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DevelopmentJean-Francois Lyotard's term for advanced capitalism (and such high-profile aspects of this phenomenon as the multinationals) , whose sole concernis with expansion of its operations. Such expansiondemands continual improvement of the system'sproductive efficiency, hence the appropriation oftechno-science in its cause.

Enlightenment ProjectThe name given to the cultural movement thatbegan in the eighteenth century, whose aim was toemphasise the role of reason in human affairs (earliergenerations of historians often referred to it as the'Age of Reason'). Such ideas underpin modernity,with its cult of progress based on the application ofhuman reason to the task of dominating the environment around us, and thereby improving the humanlot materially. Since the advent of postmodernism(and such aspects of that phenomenon as the emergence of the green movement') this cultural ethoshas come under increasing attack, although it is stilldeeply engrained in our thinking in the 'developed'countries - not least among the professional political class.

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K E Y I D E A S

Heat DeathA star such as ou r sun (a 'dw arf G star' so-called),goes through a life-cycle that involves it becominghotter and hotter until it burns out - the phenomenon known as 'heat death' . According to current projections, this should happen somewherebetween 4.5 billion and 6 billion years from now,although life will m ost likely have disa pp eare d fromearth long before that point as a result of the sun'sincreasing heat making conditions intolerable. Heatdeath is a con sequ ence of the secon d law of thermodynamics, which asserts that closed systems (suchas the universe) naturally gravitate towards a stateof maximum entropy, or equilibrium, as the heatgiven off by objects within them dissipates throughout the entire system. The process, whereby hotflows to cold, is irreversible, and our sun is goingthrough it.

HumanismHumanism has a long history that can be tracedback at least as far as classical Greece. In its modernformulation, it is essentially a product of theRenaissance, which involved an increasing interestin the individual and his or her capacity for self-

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development: 'man as the measure of all things'and so on. Humanism lies at the heart of theEnlightenment Project and modernity as a culturalphenomenon, and, as such, has come in for heavycrit icism from the postmodern movement.

InhumanismInhumanism is a blanket term designed to cover allthose cases where the human dimension is eclipsedby the technolog ical, or taken to be subsidiary to it insome way. To be an inhumanist is to be in favour ofblurring the division between man and machine, asin the case of Donna Haraway's cyborg construct .

Post-humanismThe state many theorists claim that we are now in,where humanist values are no longer taken to bethe norm and are even openly contested. A post-humanist society regards humanist ideals with scepticism, and is prone to see their negative side only(for example, the Holocaust as a logical extensionof the humanist desire to find rational 'solutions' toall perceived social and political 'problems').

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Techno-scienceA term used by Jean-Frangois Lyotard in TheInhuman to describe the ran ge of forces co m m ittedto extending the domain of technology at theexpen se of hum anity and its values. Th e hand ofdevelopment (advanced capitalism, the multinationals) can be detected behind such an imperative, the main concern of which is to exertdomination over an increasingly hostile environment by a massive increase in system efficiency.

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cknowledgementsM y thanksto DrH elene Brandonforadviceonthe medical examples used in thecourseof theargument .

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