What is cyberspace? Can one see it? Determine it? Measure it? The question may seem provocatively commonplace, yet the answer appears to be difficult. According to the official interpretation one can find somewhere between an encyclopedia and a self-presentation of cyberspace, in Wikipedia for instance, cyberspace is the virtual environment where communication between computer networks takes place. However, the words “virtual environment” do not explain anything. Rather, they complicate the answer. Or mislead. If something “virtual” is so decisive for the new capitalist model, this model tends clearly towards metaphysics.
A few months ago, in the second issue of cyborg (February 2015), we republished a well-known international text by Margaret Wertheim, titled the pearl gates of cyberspace. In that 1997 text, Wertheim made a correlation between cyberspace and religious metaphysics, quite bold for its constantly increasing “users”.
Although metaphysics (and not necessarily religious) holds a significant place in the general perception of what cyberspace is, it is not the only approach. And we would not consider it as a starting point. As cyborgmag, we are interested in something else: the political economy of cyberspace, as such. If someone wants to find a dominant constituent element in the new productive and consumer reality (under formation and continuous evolution), cyberspace is such an element. We cannot (and, above all, must not) conceive of cyberspace apart from the capitalist paradigm shift. Even if such a task requires us to improve and/or renew our analytical and intellectual tools.
Named from the combination of two words, governance and space, the cyberspace is perceived in the public sphere as “internet” – names that refer to a formal and (rather) above suspicion organizational form, that of the “network”. However, cyberspace is much more than a “web”. And the only idea for what a “web” is, is the spider’s web…
Cybernetics is the last thing on the minds of the hundreds of millions of ordinary users of cyberspace. It’s questionable whether it concerns even the various kinds of technical experts in the field at all. Somewhere, somehow, something will be taught about Norbert Wiener, at least as a reminder that he is the originator of the word/concept of cybernetics. However, the fact that within the development of sciences and technological applications, there emerged during and after World War II a specific proposition/suggestion (from Wiener, among others) for upgrading the fusion between the mechanical and the human (this constitutes cybernetics as an innovation) has now become archaeology. Perhaps because the cybernetic fusion proceeds normally, with impressive results. Yet it is this archaeology that brings cyberspace out of the haze of the “ideal” and places it at the center of capitalist materiality.
These as a brief hint for the first component of the compound name cybernetic space. As for the second? Formally, our sensory experiences are considered sufficient to conceive something like “space.” It may be a box, the material (not ideal) environment of any object, a room, a city, a mountain, the entire earth; with the help of appropriate representations, the solar system or the structure of atoms. However, no sensory experience of ours, and no historical or cultural shaping of our senses, can find (create) an answer to what cyber-space is; the fusion of mechanical and human with “terms of space.” Thus we find ourselves, as an animal species, in this impressively strange condition: after centuries of representations of natural or urban landscapes, after the representation of “space” through Euclidean and even Riemannian or/and Lobachevskian geometry1, we have reached the point of using some kind of “space” which we can neither describe nor represent.
Amazing inability, and moreover completely individual. Could this inability of ours be due to the fact that the fusion of mechanical and human, as it has been evolving over the past decades at an ever faster pace, does not occur in any “space” as we might conceive it, one-dimensional, two-dimensional or three-dimensional, but in a special concept of space, a political concept, a concept that can only be understood within capitalist political economy and its critique?
a parenthesis: the senses and the dominant paradigm as their organizer
It could shock whoever hasn’t noticed it, but our sensory experiences are not sufficient to determine either space or time. As higher mammals we have two eyes at a distance from each other, which allows us three-dimensional vision. We also have ears in opposite positions, which also contribute to our three-dimensional sense of space. Finally, we have sensitive nerves at our extremities that allow us to sense size, shape, and texture. But as beings who are producers (or citizens or consumers) of organized societies, as cultural beings, we have far more (or different from the above) perceptions and conceptions of space and time. In other words, both the “sense” of space and the “sense” of time are socially (or/and culturally) determined. They are less biologically determined senses and more acts defined socially and historically. This truth opens up the possibility of approaching cyberspace within capitalist political economy.
For the fact that both our perception of space and our perception of time are socially/culturally determined (and not those of the “wild” mammal), a few simple examples suffice. Even today it is common for someone to feel that “time is not passing” or that “time passed quickly” – this in societies with almost universal timekeeping. The history of clocks and timekeeping itself is instructive as to how the social conception and experience of time has changed (and not just once) over the last 3 centuries; the conception and experience of the day, of night, of the seasons… It is worth recalling here, leaving it uncommented for now, that the history of the public use of clocks and the generalization of timekeeping is part of the history of capitalism.
As for the perception of space, again the examples are countless. The exact same mountain slope is perceived differently by someone through a photograph (including digital ones), differently by a tourist moving by some vehicle, differently by a shepherd and differently by a modern fitness enthusiast hiker.
The French sociologist Henri Lefebvre, who documented in 1974 the idea that space is socially produced (and with this notion it is produced under the hegemony of a certain “model” of social organization), and does not simply exist in a physical sense, pointed out that until the Middle Ages, both space and time were local experiences, experiences of life in the countryside or in various cities. In the Renaissance (Lefebvre observes) systems of measurement and mathematical methods began to develop that could “break down” any space into “units,” which could then be represented on maps. This was a process of abstractions from the empirical relationship with spaces; and keep the word abstraction in mind. The first forms of abstract representations of space were maps, diagrams, and plans. According to Lefebvre, the evolution of the social production of space under capitalist hegemony eventually created a triple system within which we live and within which we conceptualize what “space” is, both as a concept and as reality: direct experience (within space and time), representation (of space and time), and representational spaces. These three processes are not in balance with each other. They are in intense contention, whether one realizes it or not. For example, it is possible (and happens on a large scale) for someone to experience the experience of representation as a “direct experience”: the customer of organized tourism does not live in a place but only in images of that place, selected images, either the images they had in mind before going there, or the images they immortalize on the spot. Another example, from the reverse perspective: the authorities of a city (Athens), who, on the occasion of organizing the Olympic Games, want to show visitors/tourists a certain image, will hide whatever is excessive, even with painted canvases over ruined buildings.
The general capitalist idea is that space is a field of abstractions, classifications, storage, and readjustments. What is useless (for capitalist exploitation) is removed. What is useful is classified and categorized. Everything is stored, especially what can be exploited. And concepts are readjusted—not only about space, but also about value, taste, etc. For example, in both the first and the second industrial revolution, the most significant space, the space/center of the corresponding capitalist models (organization of life), was the space-of-the-machine. The space within which the machine (first the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine) and all its components occupied the central position of the sacred. Such spaces were, of course, factories; but also the so-called “automobiles,” roads, and cities with their roads. One only needs to compare this model with that of the medieval city (and the central place that the square held in them) as a formation of the meaningful public, in order to confirm what we have already mentioned. Namely, that space is socially produced, under the “direction” of a dominant model of organizing life, labor, obedience, and discipline.
The cybernetic space could therefore be the reconstruction of the concepts of space and time (thus the reconstruction of social relations) under cybernetic command. The command of a specific machinic assemblage.
the abstract machine2
The above, necessarily brief, brings us closer to understanding cyberspace not as a new paradise but as a fundamental (though not unique) “pattern” of the new bioinformatic (capitalist) paradigm.
We have already observed that cyberspace cannot be represented, which is paradoxical at first glance for societies completely familiar with representations, for societies of the mature Spectacle. Cyberspace cannot be represented but includes, “accommodates,” serves every (digital) representation: this indeed places it in the position of God. On the other hand, the material and worldly, even if one keeps in mind Google’s facilities and their internal content (hundreds of thousands of hard drives interconnected into one massive super-disk), still does not provide a convincing representation of cyberspace. Because Google’s facilities are there, and there, and there (classic factory forms); but cyberspace is everywhere! Because Google’s facilities expand in a standard way, place by place, installation by installation, and are localized; but cyberspace constantly expands beyond the oversight of its users! Finally, because Google’s facilities have electronic circuits while cyberspace contains (mediated) relationships.
Again, then, the initial question: what is cyberspace?
Marx, in the 1st chapter of Das Kapital, speaking about labor, makes the distinction which at the time should have been considered groundbreaking: between concrete and abstract labor. The distinction was/is subtle in its conception, not difficult to understand, as long as one was/is attentive to the fact that the distinction concerned the perspective, that is, the position (and interest) from which labor is conceived. Concrete labor (Marx said) is that which must be done in order to create (to produce) something specific; for example, a loaf of bread, or setting the lunch table, or serving in a tavern. Abstract labor is any work viewed from the side of the employer, from the side of capital as a whole.
Abstract labor is the capacity to work; more precisely, labor time indifferent to what will be produced, hence the capacity to work alienated from capital. According to this distinction of Mr. Karol, concrete labor creates, produces, use values. Conversely, abstract labor produces exchange values. And this is because abstract labor, that is, the abstraction from the purposefulness that the one performing the labor gives to their effort, is the capitalist norm.
Consequently, if we take Mr. Carol seriously (and we do), labor, the very same labor, any labor, is “dual in nature.” It is concrete from the worker’s perspective, insofar as it produces something socially useful, some use-value; and it is abstract from the perspective of the employer, from the perspective of capital, insofar as it constitutes a “factor of production” that creates commodities, that is, forms of exchange-value.
What do these have to do with cyberspace? Looking at the matter superficially, nothing. Marx did not deal with the possibility that “dual-nature” machines might exist (or come to exist). Logical, since the machines of his time (and anything that could possibly be predicted) had specific functionality. They did, as we would say, a specific job…
However, look at what we have before us (more accurately: we live more and more within) an abstract machine! The cyberspace (we say) is this: abstract machine. And both together: both machine (not with gears and pistons but with electronic circuits and signal transmission systems) and abstract. It is the most universal and generalized form of abstract machine, descendant and completion of telephone and electrical networks.
What is it that allows us to define cyberspace as an abstract machine? As for the mechanical part, we assume there are no doubts! The key characteristic, however, that corresponds to the adjective “abstract” (machine) is that it, indeed, does not produce something specific. It produces, contributes to production, mediates by formatting the many and the diverse. From what is called “information” to what is called “entertainment”; from what is called “communication”, or/and “sociality” to what is called “sexuality”; etc.
It would be correct and accurate to argue that the abstract machine – cyberspace “produces transactions”. It produces “exchanges” with specific form and specific materiality. Not simply “exchange values” as such, but rather general (electronic) exchangeability as form and as process, regardless of monetary (or non-monetary) equivalent. We will not deal with whether this general exchangeability is socially useful or not: it depends on how one defines “social utility”. What interests us here, primarily, is that with such a concept the machine – cyberspace can and should correctly be characterized as “abstract”. Abstract.
And yet we have not yet said anything about the most important aspects of this abstraction (which, in the broad public of users, is perceived as its opposite, as the “multifunctionality” of the machine). The first important aspect is ideological. This non-representable, or in other words, invisible machine (cyberspace) has, beyond its religious analogies, a fundamental analogy in the birth of political economy (capital). It is as close as it gets to the invisible hand (that regulates the market) according to Adam Smith’s ideas. Of course, Smith’s conception of the “invisible hand” that regulates the flows of goods and opposing interests in the market had theological origins; Smith brought divine providence down to the market. However, it attracted so much theoretical and empirical criticism that it essentially collapsed within the 19th century. It is therefore interesting that in the new bioinformatic paradigm, an indefinite idea of an “invisible hand” is created once again, this time electro-mechanical, which regulates (and assists in controlling; sometimes even prohibits) the circulation of everything, provided it is converted into digital forms/representations; of the “blood,” the “stimuli,” the nerves of the new capitalist body.
The second important aspect is the invisible surveillance that can be exercised (and is exercised) by the owners (or privileged users) of the abstract machine – cyberspace. The early pseudo-heroic periods with celebrations for the alleged “new space of freedom” have fortunately passed. We assume that no one doubts anymore that the extent of possibilities offered by this abstract machine, its use so to speak3, can be called “freedom” only conditionally, under certain conditions; and always under the shifting relativity of what is (or can be considered) “dangerous” and what is not; what is commercially exploitable or not.
Equally important, commonplace, minimally conscious, and directly related to how social relations are affected by the mechanical infrastructure of a given capitalist phase, is the fact that the generalized use of the abstract machine – cyberspace simultaneously constitutes, and in the same way, both what we would call “individualities” and what we would call “collectivities”.
At first glance and in a superficial approach, one would say nothing new. After all, the “individual,” which has not always existed in human societies in the sense and with the connotations we know today, is primarily a collective/social creation of bourgeois ideology. However, this conclusion of “nothing new” is mistaken; it is a familiar rejection of the radical changes that occur during a Paradigm Shift.
To begin with, the most obvious: the formation of individualities and collectivities is mechanically mediated, in front of the pc, the tablet, the smartphone; in front of the tangible i.e. endpoints of the abstract machine and through them. This necessarily implies an entirely new arrangement / classification / organization of the fluid, variable, indefinite and even random states that were formerly called curiosity, interest, need, desire, taste, indifference, disgust, etc. The user of the abstract machine prefers to ignore it, but if all of the above had not been standardized and reorganized in the form of algorithms, this abstract machine would not be able to serve them. Curiosity, interest, need, taste, desire, indifference would remain in their expression subjective, and not subsumed under a general model of exchangeable values. Standardization and reorganization have become and continue to be feasible through a dual method: abstraction (of the most exploitable characteristics of these formerly fluid states) and control over them.
But there is more to it. This mechanically mediated assemblage of individuations and collectives could not be made once and for all, once and for always. The new bioinformatic capitalist paradigm is dynamic, voraciously dynamic. Individuations and collectives must be created and dissolved rapidly; they must be reconstructed on a somewhat different basis and then dissolved again: it is this particular fluidity, this restlessness of the intensive, constructed, and above all controlled (ongoing) differentiation/homogenization that displaces and cancels out the dangerous (and potentially not always predictable) primary fluidity of social relations in late capitalism, allowing the abstract machine – cybernetic space to function, in the sense of the general and ongoing production of interchangeability. To put it differently: the health of the abstract machine – cybernetic space lies in the frequent transformation of its users (and their needs) into patterns predictable or reducible to electro-mechanical mediation.
Various researchers of the customs and habits (of the users) of the abstract machine – cyberspace note that despite the available pluralism (within or outside quotation marks) users are generally looking there for their Same. They seek confirmation of their identity through the electronic discovery of their similars. This is a form of collective identity formation that shows a static search for some stable ground – a Euclidean place to remember the past of social conceptions of space. However, one only needs to see the nature and aggressive characteristics of the frictions when different collective identities of this kind come into some kind of electronic contact, to realize that more or less all are possessed by a kind of uncertainty, by an anxiety of rejection. This manifests itself with (initially) verbal violence against the (electronically) different.
Sociologists of the system attribute the generalized prevalence of anxiety (in various forms) at this stage of capitalist model change (even though they don’t call it that) to the widespread use of computers. In our opinion, the truth is different: the generalization of the use of the abstract machine – cyberspace shapes a specific (new) form of anxiety / anxiety relief. And this happens because a broader environment of designed intensity and instability is created.
The abstract machine – cybernetic space is of the ideal type that would fit what has been called (by the autonomists in Italy) a social factory. This unusual machine, by old measures, mediates, formats, organizes, dissolves, and recomposes, mechanically ordering that which, in its entirety, complexity, and variability, could be considered chaotic: social relations. Going a bit further, we would say that the abstract machine – cybernetic space also functions as a “strange attractor”4: it gives substance to some notion of procedural, functional equilibrium, without it being clear which exact nonlinear states are evolving there.
It follows from this approach that the question of the form of cyberspace, the question of whether one can define or represent it through classical spatial concepts, is of little significance. Just as abstract labor, as analyzed by Marx, so too is the abstract machine “of zero form”; since form belongs to the order of the concrete. The abstract machine – cyberspace can only be understood and analyzed as a process. This means that the synthetic -space is deceptive if one tries to grasp its meaning outside the political economy of capital and its critique.
Ziggy Stardust
cyborg #04 – 10/2015
- Non-Euclidean geometries. The first parabolic, the second elliptical. ↩︎
- The term abstract machine has been used in various ways. Perhaps the most notable (and at the same time the most inaccessible) is by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in “Capitalism and Schizophrenia – Anti-Oedipus”. Our approach here has little and distant relation to that one. ↩︎
- The use of it can indeed be specific, but such a thing usually requires great self-discipline. The abstract use of the abstract machine is called “surfing”… ↩︎
- Basic concept of chaos theory. ↩︎