The
Future of the Web of the Future
Is our Web truly the best one of the possible Webs ?
Hidetaka Ishida (The University of Tokyo)
I’m
concerned by the question of the Web, also via the question of the Book and the
Library, because of my humanist
formation but more recently I was “Librarian of the university ” responsible
for Hybrid Library Project. In this regard I will talk about Jorge Louis Borges
as librarian and meta-literature.
I’m
also interested in Art and Esthetics in New media. To interrogate the media
condition for the critique of media condition, I think it is fundamental to
think with media artists, so it is my method to think with artists the
condition of our media experience. So in this regard I will illustrate my talk with
a little help of my privileged artist Fujihata Masaki’s media art works. This
is to conceive the media art as creation
and critique of the media condition.
Last
but not least, who talk about Leibniz about Borges can hardly ignore the China as
topoi with theses authors. Why and how functions this heterotopic China for the
Occidental or Universal Reason? This point
will be also alluded in my talk.
I titled my talk today “The future of the web of the future : Is our
Web truly the best one of possible Webs ?”. If the title is paronomatic, the
subtitle is a bit esoteric, connoting “Le meilleur des mondes possibles” from
Leibniz. But there is no enigma. I think another Web of the future must be
possible and the actual one is far from be the best. Proof ? The election of the
next US President for example ! Leibniz was wondering “If Cesar didn’t pass the
Rubicon …”, and us now we are obliged to question : “If Trump wasn’t elected US
President … ”, etc. This latest tragic example of the question of possible worlds was largely due – of
course indirectly -- to the Digitally Mediated
Universe today and the question of the best of possible webs. I try to address these
questions in my talk in 5 moments.
Ｉ Monadology
I
just begun to talk on Computer and Web in Leibnizian terminology. With Charateristica Universalis and Ars Combinatoria that were a universal Semiotics
and Grammatology borrowing from Chinese binary system of Yijing, and also with invention of his Caliculating
Machine, Leibniz is the archeological father of Computational Reason.
Leibniz was also vocational Librarian, conceiving an encyclopedia which
will effectively realize with Diderot and d’Alembert, and designing an
Universal Library project too.
It
is not oversimplification to say that our digital knowledge environment today
is realization of the Leibniz’ Project. We all are monads of this Universe called World Wide Web. In symbiosis with
computer terminal, with IP address, each user as monad, never identical one another,
enters in this Universe, that each monad expresses from her proper and singular
point of view. Monad closed to herself is nonetheless related each other by
universal network, one move even minimal and imperceptible can not not influence
all constellation of monads: one can not not communicate in this Universe.
I
don’t enter in details of Monadology here, I just underscore that the famous
formulation on the monad “without door nor window” could be read as
architectural illustration, or allegory, of media environment of the Baroque
Age for the Mind-Brain-Body problem. Gilles Deleuze in his famous book on
Leibniz Le Pli, Leibniz et le baroque
(The Fold, Leibniz and the baroque), illustrated
this by a allegory of “Baroque House”. The
structure of the monade is configured in a mediated dispositive of two floors
levels of baroque house: the lower floor, pierced with small holes of the fives senses lets enter and filter
lights of the external world, these lights are mediated and introduced
indirectly towards the upper floor that has no windows. It is a dark room or
chamber decorated only with a stretched canvas diversified by folds, as if it were a living dermis or
cerebral membranes. The perception is filtered by the sensitive organs in first
level, and only lights are introduced in the inside of the monadic structure
with textile or membrane for projection of Representations and
production-vibrations of innate Ideas.
This allegory of the Baroque House illustrated by Deleuze explicates, for us media theorists, the media condition
for Leibnizian Monadology. This is a optical media dispositive which permits
the Monad to constitute herself in transcendental interiority “without window” but
in communication with the universe. As we know, the optical technique like
perspective, camera obscura, mirror room, anamorphosis, etc, composed the media
condition of the baroque age, which made possible a monadic individuation closed to herself nonetheless expressing from
proper point of view the universe by vibration of innate folds.
A quite
analogous constellation of media condition can be found in our contemporary
digital media environment, as we can observe in the treatment of optical problematique in
Fujihata’s works. In our digitalized technical environment, a GPS panoramic
vision could replace a perspective; a “non optical image” can be generated by
laser beam scanning; an anamorphosis is obtained by computer rendering; an
“unreflexive mirror” can be placed in
virtual world, etc. The media condition for the fives senses, so for the
esthetic level, is not of course the same, but the artistic activity can be
interpreted also in a quite analogous problematique of individuation by and
through media technological environment. I think we can define the monad, following Deleuze as “unity of individuation containing in power
(puissance) an infinite multiplicity”. In digital environment, our semiotic
life takes place in perpetual interface; I theorize this relation by a schema named
“double semiotic pyramid”, which I have no time to explain, but you can see the
upper level of human semiosis is always already doubled by the lower level of
information processing.
II Universal Library and WWW
As humanist
scholar, I have a hard time giving up the library. When I was librarian of
the university, I was told several times of the End of Book, the End of
Library. And my reply was categorical and hyperbolical.
We
have entered in the Hyper Gutenberg Galaxy and a huge Library is under
construction, which has dimension of Universe, as literally says the incipit of
Jorge Louis Borges’ the Library of Babel: “The universe (that others call the
Library)”). Deleuze said Borges is disciple of Leibniz. The Library of Babel
indeed just as the monadic room of Leibniz, has no window nor door, a pur
interior like the Studiolo of Florence.
Too see the continuity of the structure of
Library to WWW, we need just remember the history of Computer and Menemotechnology
since the middle of 20th century. The Memex (MEMory EXtender) by Vannevar
Bush, considered as a prototype of hypertext system was a sort of reading desk
for what one begun to call “knowledge base”. While the text became Hypertext,
the WWW by Tim Berners-Lee was invention for a world wide scientific writing
project for the CERN. Google has its origin in a new library project for
Stanford University. Page(Larry), what a providential patronymic, with Sergey
Brin, presented their doctoral thesis “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual
Web Search Engine” as result of research for “the Stanford Integrated Digital Library
Project”.
For
better understanding of the world universally mediated by the World Wide Web, it
is fundamental that we don’t overlook this continuity of the Library
problematique. Recently I wrote a chapter for a book about this question.
The
universal librarization going on is
absolutely systematic: Google is so vector of this librarization with its
search engine; Amazon is bookseller; Facebook is literally a book for
interfacial networking; Apple vender for book reader and slate for writing. So
the GAFA(Google Apple Facebook Amazon) All these so called Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse in the digital Age are book or more precisely “book” industries in
expansion. McLuhan and Media theorists were wrong, we didn’t exit the Gutenberg
Universe but entered the Hyper Gutenberg Universe. Now all products and
commodities are entering ontologically in bookish
categories. When you are asked “but Amazon sells any things now”, your
reply is “theses products and commodities became all books”; looking at people with smartphones or tablet terminal, you
say “yes, they all now reading with a sort of Greek style tablets”.
This is not a joke but a methodological hyperbole
to operate an epoché of our digital
condition. We are so digitalized in our natural
attitude that this thought experiment may give hint to think –
phaenomenologically “bracketing” the
natural attitude -- our digitalized lifeworld.
III Monadologic
Reduction
If we reduce
our digitally mediated universe of WWW to the Borgesian Universal Library
problematique, you obtain several digital
phenomena that are interesting themes of reflection. And this reduction
will be monadologic, because of the
monadologic constitution of the universe of the Universal Library. We can
wonder whether the slate type interface as that of ancient Greek reader and
nowadays I-Pad or Kindle readers are appropriate for reading the fold structure
of the book; one could ask monadologic implication of hypertext and hyperlink;
PageRank is a good example of monadology, relations of magnitude between gross
monads and small monads, etc, etc.
We can also get a cognitive benefit from artistic experience. The “Beyond Pages” of Fujihata is an installation with a
projected and interactive image of book, that is in my sense exactly a monadic cabinet of reading with a book
which is not exactly a book, I wrote an article about this piece titling “Ceci
n’est pas un livre /This is not a book”. His recent complete works so called “anarchive”
in form of AR book which is not a book
nor archive but in itself an interrogation about digital media condition of
book and archive: this “Book” envelop digital images documents which are read
through IPad interface which read markers of the paper book, but the paper book
with commentary and critical texts reads
in turn the digital images, etc, This is
a praxis of hybrid reading or Augmented Reading.
If
we are enclosed in our natural attitude in this digitalized universe, certain
types of artistic experimentation give us possibility to operate critique of
our media condition. Especially the Media Art (New Media Art) in case of these
works cited here are praxis of critique of media condition so that it becomes
even genuine production of new media, the Beyond
Pages is creation of e-book beyond existent e-book, the Anarchive is creation of digital archive
beyond existent digital archive.
IV Problems with the current WWW
We
all know that today we have many problems with our Web. In this universe, you
are enclosed, oriented and regulated in constant correlation with marketing technology (ex.
Amazon Recommendation); with relational technology, your interpersonal
relations are engineered by Facebook for example; Google ranking
algorithms, as Frederic Kaplan alerts
provoke the commodification of languages at a global scale by “linguistic
capitalism”; while being interface for individualization, a terminal like an
IPad is a tool to capture human attention, which could des-individuate her
psyche.
My
aim today is not to propose any remedy, but, with modesty, try to see how we can
formulate in continuity of reflexion on Library-WWW these difficult questions.
The
stake here is to show how make better
the individuation -- or in terms of G. Simondon and B. Stiegler -- the trans-individuation with WWW. In this
regard, the general theme of this symposium “Forces of reticulation”, I would
articulate it with this monadologic problematique. I remind the definition by
Deleuze of the monad “unity of
individuation containing in power (puissance) an infinite multiplicity”, that
is exactly the situation of the “psychic and collective individuation” of the
user in WWW. The “force of
reticulation” is in this context the “power(puissance)” contained as
multiplicity that each page envelops virtually in herself. We can concretely
conceive the situation in which a page in hypertext contains virtual
multiplicity of tags or folds for
links, by which the page envelops and develops other multiples pages linked
together. This is the logic of fold
of hypertext page.
In
this regard, I would like to submit three or four remarks on the hypertext to your reflection.
1)
That a page in hypertext is in power (puissance) is a well known banality, if you remember
the “Cent mille milliards de poèmes” by Raymond
Queneau. This banality diminish a little when we remember the epigraph : “Seule
une machine peut apprécier un
sonnet écrit par une autre machine (Only a machine can appreciate a sonnet
written by another machine) ” attributed to Alan
Turing.
2)
There was a very active period of discussion on hypertext in 1990’s. There was
an epistemological quid pro quo which
is rather frequent in theory. When theorists intensively discussed hypertext,
there was not yet hypertext transferred communication. When the WWW began to be
operating, that was a period that the development of WWW coincided with the
generalization of the GUI with Windows 95. Microsoft open the Windows while
that was contrary to the principle of monadology for which the monad has no
window nor door! And the GUI blinded the theory on hypertext and the hypertext
became quite unconscious in theory.
3)
More fundamentally, we must ask what is the problem with HTTP and HTML for the
ontology of the page. Because that is the very technological point where the
ontology of the book and that of the communication transferred by HTTP join. As
would say Turing, while a page written by a human can be read by another human,
once the same page is transformed in hypertext only a machine can “appreciate”
it.
And with HTML by Tim Berners-Lee, the hyperlink is one directional. A
link on one page transfers to another page. This is a logic of envelopment in leibnizien terms. The rapport is not
reciprocal. The page linked subsumes or envelops the page linking. That gave
principle of a Page Rank which is monadologic: a page-monad which envelope the
other is grosser than the other page-monad which hyperlinks toward it.
This uni-dimensional limitation of the hypertext is contested by Ted
Nelson’s Xanadu for whom the hypertext is much more radical and fundamentally
monadological in my sense. The envelopment must be reciprocal, each monad must
have possibility to subsume – so to envelop --
the developments of all other monads.
4)
There is another dimension of the problem of hypertext, concerning the terminal
and the interface. From the window of monitor screen to the slate of touch panel, our current interface is not
sufficiently elastic: there is no fold nor pleat. In the dialog Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement humain,
the question of the metaphor of the mind
opposes Locke and Leibniz. For Locke, as well known, the mind is a blank slate
in camera obscura, but Leibniz replaces this metaphor by a textile metaphor
with innate folds. If your mind is blank slate, the interface with an IPad
would be complete; you can write, sketch and erase your representations as you may think ! , the metaphor will be
perfectly cognitivist. But from the Leibnizien view, the textile metaphor will
be followed by a deconstructive déjà-vu repeating “il n’y a pas hors texte du texteé (there is no outside-text of text)”.
V “Le meilleur des webs possibles”
My
talk is not to reenter the anachronic debate of the last decade of the last
century.
To
think what is wrong with the current web, let’s return to the question of the
borgesian Universal Library. In this huge Library, it is said: “There is no combination of characters one
can make- dhcmrlchtdj, for example- that
the divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret
tongues does not hide a terrible significance”. This Universe “that others call
Library” is an enormous combinatory – Ars Combinatoria of Leibniz – in which
all combination cannot not have a sense with its singular possible world. The
multiplicity of infinite possible worlds necessitates the infinite expansion of
the universe.
In
this borgesian architecture, there is none “best of possible worlds”: all
combinations are compossible: with Adam not committing sin, Cesar not
passing Rubicon, Trump not elected, etc. etc. In this huge Library, you can finally find the
famous Chinese encyclopedia Celestial
Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge containing the ontology of 14 heteroclite
categories with which Michel Foucault open his Les Mots et les Choses (The Oder of Things).
On
the other hand, with our current Universal Library alias WWW, the architecture
is quite the same. But was introduced an enormous asymmetry between the human
finitude and the infinite power of machine as that was remarked by Turing about
the sonnet.
To illustrate the problem, let’s return to a
very recent example.
In
US Presidential Campaign, it was remarked that “Fact Checkers Proved That 91% of
the Things Donald Trump Says were False”. The question of fiduciality, I think, can be asked in terms of Leibnizian compossibility question. I have no time
to enter in concrete examination of the case in terms of Leibniz’s modal metaphysics.
I try to say how we could formulate this question by transforming Leibniz’s perspective
to apply it to the Trump’s case or anything else.
Trump
is an example, I guess, similar for example to Sextus Tarquinius in Leibniz’s Theodicy, personage known by his perfidy
and the rape of Lucretia, finally entailing the fall of the kingship. The case
is so similar.
The
great difference with the Theodicy,
consists in that we have no more the God: in democracy, the decision is not
divine but self-organizing of monadologic universe. Each monad expresses thus
the universe from her proper point of view, founded in visions of her proper
possible worlds. The reticulation in this regard is self-organizing process of infinite
multiplicity and the verdict of vote decides finally the “best” of possible
worlds.
My
concern is not the “best of possible worlds” but the “best of possible webs”. The
two layers of question, level of world and level of medium, are different but it
is also true that anyone knows more than more their inextricability.
In
Leibniz’s system, the possible worlds system is pyramidal. At the top, the best
world and below different possible worlds. The best world is that whose
compossibility subsumes all possible
worlds. The preetablished harmonie (l’harmonie préétablie) has been abolished in our world, many possible worlds are mixed and configurated
in the universe of mediation, of which more than more the Web is the master platform.
In the world where the flows of information is so huge and so rapid, you cannot
control all 91 percent of lies that constellate assembly of multiple visions of
possible worlds. I think the Tag cloud (word
cloud, or weighted list in visual design) represents well this changing
configuration of the universe expressed. And if from this informationally self-organized
constellation the triumph of the possible world of liar is elected, if by his sophistic and not sophisticate media performativity
he obtained the same ontological transformation by which Cesar passed the
Rubicon, that is due to the constellation reflecting the instantaneous
convergence of possible worlds of clouds of monads each of them expressing from
her point of view the universe.
To
return to the question about the architecture of the Web, I think that not
exclusively the WWW but all media condition today are responsible for this incoherent election of possible worlds.
But what is wrong with the hypertext transfer protocol and hypertext markup
language in current general condition ?
The
WWW means that all pages of all books in the universe were decomposed and
reduced to huge number of hypertext networks that only machine can read.
The
question of the Chinese heterotopia reappears in this WWW of Babel. The
ontology of the Chinese Encyclopedia
is possible in this universe, not as an odd nor a paradoxical table of
ontological categories. But as shows the Tag
cloud, we can imagine the heteroclite
as intelligent expression of the collective intelligence. If Trump was
not a name, but an apparently incoherent Tag
cloud of monades expressing from their proper point of view the Universe. In
the WWW of Babel, we are constantly in the Chinese garden of Forking paths. And
with the Google translate, we are always in the Chinese room of John Searle.
For
our ontological troubles and confusions are also these of automatic
interconnections and interrelation of these infinite possible worlds of
hypertext transfer networks. The question is not only of the Understanding for selection
of possible worlds. Certainly there is the finitude of the human (la “finitude
de l’homme” according Pascal) ; machines operate with almost speed of light as
Google Search engine and they store with infinite memory. The human is
infinitely slow in his reasoning, infinitely small and short in his memory and
inference. Monads are absorbed in flows of information, which never cease to
fluctuate and bifurcate.
Pascal
said the human is a “Roseau pensant/ Thinking reed” vis-à-vis the abyss of the
Universe. We are in analogous situation, with our monadology. But Pascal said
also ““Les hommes sont si nécessairement fous, que ce serait être fou, par
un autre tour de folie, de n'être pas fou.”/"Men are so necessarily mad,
that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness."
We
must not desperate because a human can be also extended by media causing
madness, today I couldn’t talk about this rather optimistic side of
reticulation of the human, because I was so preoccupied by the Trump’s
election.
Just
modifying slightly the pascalien formula, I have habit to say nonetheless in
this infinite Universe of Machine, we must become, by a sort of counter-Design
of digital media environment, a “Réseau Pensant/ Thinking Network ”. We became mad
because of our technological reticulation, but by an innovative and
technological invention of another form of madness it will be possible not to
be mad and to “trump” this madness.
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