[-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?

[Alexander Wilson]

 I’m sorry John and Anais about not responding to your comments. I receive
the “digest” version of the list, and was referring to the online archive
for responses. But it seems your messages got truncated there, so I had not
read them:
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=633&sid=7b7e89f94e2207fdfad45ef1b62ac026



Anyway, there is a similar idea that comes up in both of your posts. John
refers to the model and its varying effectiveness from context to context,
and may be of greater or lesser quality. Anais, referring to Galloway,
Thacker and Wark, noted that the programming language used to construct
mathematical objects like Omega, does have an effect on the result. This is
true, and I did hint at this in my comments.  Arriving at any model does
require a procedure. This is why I suggested the “bit” comes into existence
post-procedure or post algorithm. There is a primacy of the process or
procedure. In this I appreciate ecological theorist Robert Ulanowicz’s
arguments for what he calls “Process Ecology,” somewhat indebted to
Whitehead’s Process Philosophy. He suggests that the fundamental unit or
building block in the universe is not the atom, not the substance or
material, but the process: a configuration of influences. In the same way,
I think the process, the procedure, comes before the individualized unit of
information, the bit. Indeed, he suggests, using Elsasser’s statistical
work in biology, that the universe is not a homogeneous isometric field of
deterministic causality. There are limits to our scientific capacity to
resolve the details of complex systems, formal constraints incurred by
virtue of statistical considerations. The crucial move is here is that it
“ontologizes” the notion of contingency, displacing the human observer from
the central position of privileged observer.  The chance event is thus
given its own ontological status; it is no longer merely an effect of the
“limits of observation”. It interrupts the deterministic course of
causality within the real, despite human observation. I do appreciate the
metaphysic Ulanowicz proposes: there are holes in the “fabric of
causality”. To this effect he suggests replacing the common “fabric”
metaphor, with that of the sponge: causality is populated with exceptions,
holes, of every scale, offering the influx of radical contingency. There is
something in this very close to Meillassoux’s argument.



This brings me to Anais’ worthy critique of the feedback loop. Can we
conceive the recursive process from the point of view of ontogenesis? Well,
process ecology certainly does suggest that we can. In fact I feel it gets
us very close to what Simondon was striving at: his anti-hylemorphic stance
was geared against both substance and form. In a sense, he was positing
process itself, individuation, as the primary primary “building block”. The
interesting thing in process ecology is that it gives us a precise way of
characterizing different kinds of individuation, as well as metastabilizing
forces. Simondon was influenced by cybernetics and thermodynamics the whole
way, and I think the feedback process is implicit in his discourse on
individuation: the metastability of individuation is much like a dynamic
equilibrium.



I think Anais is right that the technical object in Simondon (its
continuity of ontogenetic formation through transduction) doesn’t translate
well to the digital domain. This I think is for reasons already brought up
in the discussion. In a sense I have been displacing the common critique of
the digital as being devoid of “continuity” or “materiality” to a critique
of the digital as being devoid of process. In a sense amenable to views
expressed in K. Hayles and M. B. Hansen, namely that the emergence of the
digital has brought the question of “embodiment” into full light, I believe
the digital has given “process” its full importance. As Anais suggests,
openness is key to unlimited process. And in the closure of the procedural
abstraction, where an algorithm selects only that which it is “pro-grammed”
to see, there is somehow no possibility of deviation. However, the digital,
as people like Chaitin and Wolfram continually repeat, is the realm of the
prefect copy: it is therefore possible in the digital realm to repeat a
certain specific algorithmic procedure with precision, as well as possible
to make a specific change in the procedure, say, by adding another line in
a script, without changing the rest of the program. In the continuous
realm, it is difficult to see how to change the procedure: in the
continuous mathematics of topology, for example, a topological form is
malleable in different ways (a coffee cup is topologically identical to a
donut); the only way to really change the space is by some sort of
“catastrophe” (Thom). A topological “break” needs to take place, which
amounts to changing the connectivity of the points in the system, adding
holes or erasing them. A digital-like break or cut, is required for the
topology to change. This is why I want to be clear that I am not opposing
the discrete and continuous so much as the break and the process.



Anais, I think, is right to suggest the operative potential of the digital
has something to do with human reality. Though I would avoid a return to
anthropocentric interpretations, there is no denying that the digital is
one of the most important human innovations. The concept of turing
universality, especially, epitomizes the significance of the digital: it
allows all but the most trivial digital systems to “virtualize” any
computation, implying that simulated digital worlds may be nested within
others. If we go back to the idea of the map and the territory, one system
is always decoding another. Here I am shifting the analogy to a that of
Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus:  a milieu is always decoding
another. This decoding already constitutes the emergence of the digital,
though only implicitly. In between different milieus, we have an ecology of
transcodings, giving the typical rhythms of the ecosystem. Each milieu is
partially closed, and this closure allows for the decoding of the outside:
decoding is a selection, a suppression or neutralization of differences
within the milieu. Turing universality generalizes the decoding, unleashes
its vast potential, stemming from the motility of the objectified object of
information (the bit). But if it is true that the open contingency of
process is outside the digital, it seems that Anais is right if we replace
the human with the question of observation, in the sense that the potential
of the digital ultimately falls upon the interface of a given milieu with
its relative outside.



Anais, I would you explain the “timeware view of science” you allude to? I
am not sure I understand the concept, and would very much like to.



​Best,
Alexander​
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