<nettime> RE: What is this thing that I call Doug?

[Simon Bayly <sibayly@freeuk.com>]

re: the Doug Rushkoff interview posted to nettime. I don't know this
man's work at all, but found his comments about the self, intentionality
and identity most bizarre - kind of like someone approaching this area
of philosophy with an almost wilful ignorance of...hmmm... pretty much
all philosophy on the subject since Kant!

> what is the thing that I call Doug?
>

The "what" is the problem here for me. Why is it not "who"?  If it was
"who" then "thing" would obviously not do either  (who is the
thing=?)... and then the sense unravels.  How can a "thing" have pure
intention (see below)? I don't care for semantic pedantry in general,
but in this instance it appears the appropriate lever.

snip>

> And that pretty well gets us down to the very biggest questions people in
> this discussion and discussions like it for centuries have been asking. What
> is life? What is consciousness?
>

OK, wade in there!

> And I'd answer it's pure intention - and
> that studying media helps us distinguish between intentionality and its many
> manifestations.
>

Saying that consciousness (subjectivity, selfhood, whatever) is pure
intention is pretty much an untenable position from  any current
philosophical point of view and would be seen by many as at best devoid
of any meaning, and at worst as ethically and politically "dangerous".

snip>

> And it occurred to me that everything is media.
> Everything outside my own awareness - whatever it is I call "me" - is some
> mediation of me. That is, until it gets to you. Everything between the thing
> that I'm calling Doug and the thing that you're calling John is media.
>

This is hard to credit at all. Rushkoff's  "media" as the means of
exchange between you and me sets up a world of subjects who are objects
for each other, going around sending messages, which are received or not
received, or get corrupted along the way. Presumably, the ideal here
would be a maximal efficiency of communication eliminating any "noise"
that might generate "confusion" about the message -  "This message
delivered direct from my mind to yours!" (TM). No-one believes this
models actuality. Do they?

This is a person, a self,  conceived entirely as thing, as machine, a
data-processing device. Do you know any actual humans who fit this
description? See Alphonso Lingis' "The Community of Those Who Have
Nothing in Common" or "The Imperative" for a more up-to-date and
informed take on subjectivity and communication.  See Kant, see
Heidegger, see Spinoza, see most artists, see anyone really......

> Do I want to use a
> coercive sales technique that I learned watching the Gap's instructional
> videos? I'll win a bonus or a T-shirt if I can make this person buy a belt
> along with his jeans, and I'll get in trouble if I don't make enough 3-item
> sales... but I can tell he doesn't have that much money. We all experience
> these moments of doubt, these moments of hesitation when our true
> sensibility emerges.
>

OK, now something important seeps in by accident. Rushkoff's notional
Gap worker faces  Kant's categorical imperative! S/he finds that "What I
have to do" (acknowledge the other in his/her "otherness" outside of any
economy) is imposed independently of my wants and desires (in this case,
to make the sale, be a good employee, make enough money for myself,
cater to my self-interest and survival).

This is the basis of ethics, no? Kant (and pretty much all major
philosophy Western or Eastern) indicates that the categorical imperative
(or something like it) is the ground for any notion of selfhood (or in
his hardcore version, any idea of anything at all). The mind
primordially "knows" or rather,  feels the force of, the imperative and
THEN sets out to formulate data into representations of a law-regulated
nature, etc. In this light, something like "pure intention", with which
Rushkoff seems to mean also the realm of pure reflection and cogitation
as opposed to "instinct" or "spontenaity", is a philosphical abstraction
that has no meaningful relation to the phenomena (human behaviour and
thinking).

What's my real point here? Essentially, that the "cutting edge" of
techno-discourse about redefined notions of subjectivity, identity, the
body, community, etc. is blunted by its often naive and uninformed
misappropriation of ideas that have actually been worked out/on to some
degree of sophistication in good 'ole traditional academic discourses
(that are de facto suspect from point-of-view of "the counterculture",
because they existed before the Internet or computers and therefore are
not worth wasting time getting familiar with). Rushkoff evidences this
with his tales of how wierded out he was when he found his righteous
techno-radicalism got chewed up and digested good and proper by
corporate USA. His subsequent realignment appears almost banal in its "
pure intention", let alone its intelllectual rigour.

My, perhaps optimistic belief, is that we should demand more, much more
from our Professors of Media Culture in Interactive Telecommunications
Programs, wherever they may be.


Simon Bayly
London, UK.



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