[-empyre-] II (

[Jonathan Marshall]

Alan writes:

>> No, but neither does it mean that every ill defined binary is useful
>> everywhere...

>I don't think these terms are as ill-defined as you think and obviously
>most people find them useful.

but that does not help define them... :)

>> However, i'm not really sure if you are implying that the virtual is the
>> digital? Or that digital coding is the only kind of coding? or the only
>> important coding?

>Not important or not important, but coding implies the digital; this is
>why there are potential wells, protections, built into data, all the way
>back to the bullae and envelopes. 

I'm not sure here, why does protection necessarily imply digitality?

>Or another way to think about it -
>inscription is difference, analog is fissured, the same. I think that
>coding is always digital at its core or kernel; for example, bandwidth is
>defined, symbols are separated from each other, and so forth. All of this
>in real life wears down, sloughs, corrodes, decays - what Kristeva is on
>about in Powers of Horror when she talks about the abject.

indeed but all kinds of coding can decay. We don't even have to specify that it is coding
everything of a certain complexity decays, wears down etc....

Its one reason why i would say the real is not inert, that it undermines itself and reconstitutes itself continually.

>> But are you 'virtual' if you have a prosthetic heart monitor, or are on
>> a mobile?
>
>Precisely - I can't answer this because the term is too vague to me.

Ok. I had thought you are wanting the 'virtual' as the question you asked was:

"On the other hand, your notion of 'online' as fundamental loses more and more meaning 
every day to me, since it's getting harder to define - is a prosthetic 
heart monitor or time that may report, like an rfid, online?"

in which case then virtual and online both fail to describe the commonality between things which may not have much in common....

>> I prefer to be more specific about the situation that i am in or writing
>> about.

>Then you don't need the word 'online' perhaps at all.

If i am writing about life online then why not?
that is an attempt at being specific....

>what I mean is that if you have a system that, for example,
>a = a as the only axiom, then you don't get vary far re: paradox.

i agree that complexity helps. but with a=a it depends. is the system completely closed, is there nothing looking at it (which is not a)?
does it say anything? is it meaningful? does it undermine itself because the only way a can equal a is if there are non a's it cannot equal?

>>> AI is a human social product at the moment

>Actually, I might argue against that. I'd say it's a manufacture,

which is  social, and depends upon a history of software writing and a history of theorising, and of interactions between people and people and machines and so on.

> I'm not sure I'd apply AI as a human social product - unless you might apply
>the same to infants - which you might well do, but I wouldn't -

infants who have no social interaction at all die. so i'd say that they are social.

That might be fundamental to being human, and to the way we suffer.

jon

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