{"id":25683,"date":"2019-04-08T04:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T03:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/?p=25683"},"modified":"2019-06-18T17:53:34","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T16:53:34","slug":"future-metaphysics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/future-metaphysics\/","title":{"rendered":"Future Metaphysics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The following passages are taken from my forthcoming book\u00a0<\/span><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Future Metaphysics\u00a0<\/span><\/i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">(Polity, 2019), that <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">attempts to restate the importance of the great metaphysical categories (substance and accident, form and matter, life and death, etc.) for the present and giving them an unexpected twist. What if the idea of accident, for instance, had to take into account the many new kinds of glitches, crashes and crises \u2014from finance to ecology, from technological catastrophes to social collapses\u2014 that permeate our culture and make everyday news? Can we keep on using this concept as it was traditionally meant to be used when risk and chance have become part of the very substance of our world, so rendering the distinction between substance and accident meaningless? <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">To what extent do we witness a return of theological (wishful) thinking in current Silicon Valley ideologies of trans-humanism, dematerialisation or immateriality? <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">And finally, with regard to the A*DESK topic of the month, could it be that we are living not just in a fundamentally new (digital) time, but time itself has changed its direction in view of the digital?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The book consists of a series of independent but connected longer aphorisms, of which here I present four.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"760\" height=\"570\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-25659\" src=\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/1.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-technology1-e1553010227965.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">AB-NORMALITIES, OR WHEN THE EXCEPTIONS ARE MORE CONSISTENT THAN THE RULE<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">In the age of the algorithm, misfortunes that were once accidental have become substantial. In the most diverse fields, we observe anomalies that have mutated to become (ab-)normal which bring a proper measure of instability to cybernetic systems (including those of social control) that were once famed for their ability to create order.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">This goes well beyond the idea of the \u201cglitch\u201d as a mode of accelerated production, celebrated in Silicon Valley circles under the motto \u201cMove fast and break things.\u201d As Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson write, \u201cIn practice, the programs written by hackers, spammers, virus writers, and those pornographers intent on redirecting our browsers to their content, have problematised the intended functionality and deployment of cybernetic systems.<b><sup>1\u00a0<\/sup><\/b>\u201d If up to 40 percent of all the e-mails we are now bombarded with are spam \u2014bringing with them pornographic content, viruses, etc.\u2014 then, we can hardly speak here of anomalies (in the sense of more or less insignificant deviations from the norm). Dealing with spam \u2014setting up mail filters, employing virus scanners, activating pop-up ad blockers, etc.\u2014 has become a \u201cnormal\u201d part of using the internet, an ab-normality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Just as spam and computer viruses are part of our everyday digital life, we must also understand the high-frequency derivative economy \u2014which operates under the paradigm of the digital\u2014 in terms of its \u201cglitches\u201d (just as we must understand our politics in terms of the supposed anomaly of the refugee). We are dealing here not with black sheep or Nassim Taleb\u2019s black swans, i.e. not with more or less improbable extreme events, but with what the volatility trader and market metaphysician Elie Ayache, in his book <i>The Blank Swan: The End of Probability,<\/i><b><sup>2<\/sup><\/b>\u00a0describes as a new normality. <b>Ab-normality.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"399\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-25662\" src=\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/2.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-the-age-of-wire.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">THEOLOGY OF DEMATERIALIZATION<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">There is no thinking outside <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">metaphysics<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">, no non-metaphysical thought. Instead there is a lot of bad or imprecise philosophical thinking, not only from professional academic philosophers, but also and especially, wherever metaphysical categories remain implicit and unreflected upon. As an example of the later, consider the many debates over digital technologies, which even in their choice of terminology betray suspicious metaphysical presuppositions. \u201cNetwork\u201d and, even more, \u201ccloud\u201d are two such deceptive or ideological concepts that obscure the material basis of all computation. N. Katherine Hayles has written a book about \u201chow information lost its body\u201d (<\/span><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">How We Became Posthuman<\/span><\/i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">),<b><sup>3<\/sup><\/b>\u00a0and Ed Finn has noted that: \u201cThe fact that algorithms must always be implemented to be used is actually their most significant feature. By occupying and defining that awkward middle ground, <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">algorithms\u00a0<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">and their human collaborators enact new roles as culture machines that unite ideology and practice, pure mathematics and impure humanity, logic and desire.&#8221;<b><sup>4<\/sup><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">All too often, however, the material platforms and materials used are concealed, as though there were such a thing as pure software without hardware. A compulsion to repeat antiquated metaphysical dualisms, not least that of form vs. matter or mind vs. matter, can be observed wherever the current state of technology is not accompanied by an appropriate level of philosophical reflection. We know the tendency in philosophy to eliminate anything material \u2014there is of course also the reverse <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">exclusion\u00a0<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">mechanism, with hardened materialists ruling out the significance of any and all immaterial or mental components\u2014 as \u201cidealism,\u201d beginning with Plato, but especially with the Neo-platonic (such as Plotinus), for whom all life (including material life) results from mental ideas. And today, numerous ideologues of the <\/span><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">algo-cathedral\u00a0<\/span><\/i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">(Ian Bogost),<b><sup>5<\/sup><\/b>\u00a0 whose spiritual fervour (for data) is scarcely less intense than that of medieval theologians, are repeating the very same idealistic symptoms without knowing it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"760\" height=\"604\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-25665\" src=\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/3.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-algorithms-e1553010400908.png\" alt=\"\" \/><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u201cOverlooking\u201d the material aspects of new technology is especially convenient for those who profit from the underlying material relations of power and exploitation. (The clearest objection comes from Friedrich Kittler, who several decades ago declared that <\/span><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">there is no software.)<\/span><\/i><b><sup><span lang=\"EN-GB\">6<\/span><\/sup><\/b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0What was true centuries ago \u2014in the ancient slaveholder society of Athens or in the religious Middle Ages\u2014 remains true in the age of neo-feudalistic monopoly capitalism under Google, Facebook, Amazon, &amp; co.: our ignorance with respect to the material foundations of the \u201ccloud\u201d or to what is misguidedly called <\/span><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">immaterial labor,\u00a0<\/span><\/i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">not only burdens every individual, but affects our society as a whole. Digital platforms, too, are only possible qua the exploitation of material resources: of nature (silicon for microchips, cobalt for lithium-ion batteries, etc.), of the physis of the people who dismantle, assemble, and install them, and finally of all those who use and consume them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The ideology of immateriality or dematerialisation is armchair philosophy in the service of those who currently rule. Here, as everywhere else, there <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">is\u00a0<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">a connection between what is metaphysically wrong and what is politically wrong. <b>Bad metaphysics always serves bad politics.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">GOOGLE NOW TOMORROW<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Time is money<\/span><\/i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">, goes the motto of money-minded modernity. Just-in-time production and delivery are the dreams of an industrial modernity that reacts immediately and exclusively to demand. Where the production of objects or goods is no longer concerned, as in the speculative finance industry, high-frequency traders spend billions for minimal time advantages, an edge of a few milliseconds made possible by high-speed fibreglass cable connections. And has not the company that epitomises the new digital economy cemented this fixation on ever shorter presents in the very title of one of its most advanced applications, Google Now?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">With its AdSense program and accompanying <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">algorithm<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">, Google has achieved what Ed Finn aptly refers to as \u201ccommoditizing the contemporary.\u201d<sup>7\u00a0<\/sup>The aim is to present us with the most precise and promising possible ads in our here and now using data obtained from us in the past (interests, preferences, locations, etc.). Standing behind this focus on the now, however, is no longer the present, but the very near future, a perverted version of what J.G. Ballard once promoted as\u00a0<\/span><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">science fiction for the next five minutes<\/span><\/i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">. Google Now \u201cpromises to organise not just the present but the near future temporalities of its users. It will suggest when to leave for the next meeting, factoring in traffic, creating an intimate, personal reminder system arbitraging public and private data.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">If we follow the title of Finn\u2019s book<sup>8\u00a0<\/sup><b><sup>\u00a0<\/sup><\/b>and ask \u201cwhat algorithms want,\u201d the answer is nothing other than what Google assumes to be our secret desire, namely to help us finally be able to not have to constantly decide (about) the present here and now. <b>Algorithms have since \u201ccross[ed] the threshold from prediction to determination, from modelling to building cultural structures.\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">It is only a small step from prediction to restriction. Or in the words of Google Now (and ever?): \u201cThe right information <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">at\u00a0<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">just the right time. See helpful cards with information that you need throughout your day, before you even ask.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"700\" height=\"513\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-25669\" src=\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/4.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-technology2.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/4.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-technology2.jpg 700w, https:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/4.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-technology2-546x400.jpg 546w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">PREDICTION \u2013 PREVENTION \u2013 PREEMPTION<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">It is high time to distinguish historic forms of control (i.e. efforts to control the future) from those digital ones that we encounter in the present and from the future. The question can be rendered in grammatical terms as the alternative between understanding \u201ccontrol of the future\u201d as a subjective genitive or as an objective genitive phrase, that is: whether we will control the future or whether the future will control us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">From the past, we are familiar with the concept of <b>prediction\u00a0<\/b>as prophesying what will happen, i.e. a basically neutral view from the present concerning a future that must be adapted to. <b>Prevention\u00a0<\/b>is more clearly determinate and at the same time more negative. Here a negative assessment and the will to avert what is to come go hand in hand. If we fear bad things will happen in the future, then we must change them or not allow them to occur in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"472\" height=\"412\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-25672\" src=\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/5.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-preemption.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/5.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-preemption.png 472w, https:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/5.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-preemption-458x400.png 458w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 472px) 100vw, 472px\" \/>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Preemption<\/span><\/b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u2014<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">which is precisely the opposite of preventive avoidance of a negative prophecy, although the two are often confused<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u2014<\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">follows yet another temporal logic. This small, largely overlooked difference can be seen with respect to the most well-known form of the preemptive, and the first to emerge into general consciousness. The preemptive warfare waged and first elevated to a state of ab-normality by the George W. Bush administration, contrary to the official rhetoric of prevention, has led not to peace, but rather precisely to the prophesied situation that it promised to prophylactically avoid. Or, to modify a quote from Karl Kraus on psychoanalysis: <b>The \u201cwar on terror\u201d is the political illness for which it regards itself as a cure.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"460\" height=\"840\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-25675\" src=\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/6.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-preemption2.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/6.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-preemption2.png 460w, https:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/6.Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-preemption2-219x400.png 219w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">All Drawings are\u00a0<span class=\"Citation\">from <\/span><\/span><span class=\"Citation\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">illustrator and visual essayist <\/span><\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.andreastoepfer.de\/\"><span class=\"Citation\">Andreas T\u00f6pfer<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"Citation\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">from <\/span><\/span><span class=\"Citation\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">which long lasting collaboration with Avanessian lead to the book <\/span><\/span><em><span class=\"Citation\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">Speculative Drawing\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em><span class=\"Citation\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">(Ed. Paradiso, 2018) to wich these images belong to.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><span class=\"Citation\"><b><sup><span lang=\"EN-GB\">1<\/span><\/sup><\/b><\/span><span class=\"Citation\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Parikka, Jussi; D. Sampson, Tony. \u201cON ANOMALOUS OBJECTS <\/span><\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">OF DIGITAL CULTURE. An Introduction.\u201d Academia.edu, 2015. Available online <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/208154\/The_Spam_Book_On_Porn_Viruses_and_Other_Anomalies_from_the_Dark_Side_of_Digital_Culture\">here<\/a><\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><b><sup><span lang=\"EN-GB\">2 <\/span><\/sup><\/b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Ayache, Elie (2010). <i>The Blank Swan: The End of Probability. <\/i>New Jersey: <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Wiley.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Standard\"><b><sup><span lang=\"EN-GB\">3 <\/span><\/sup><\/b><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Hayles, N. Katherine <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">(1999).<\/span><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">How We Became Posthuman. <a name=\"publisher\"><\/a>Chicago: University of Chicago Press<a name=\"publish-date\"><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><sup>4<\/sup>Finn, Ed (2017).<em>What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing<\/em><strong>. <\/strong>Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.<\/p>\n<p><sup>5<\/sup>Bogost, Ian. \u201cThe Cathedral of Computation.\u201d <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, 2015. Available online <a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/208154\/The_Spam_Book_On_Porn_Viruses_and_Other_Anomalies_from_the_Dark_Side_of_Digital_Culture\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><sup>6<\/sup>Kittler, Friedrich. \u201cThere is No Software\u201d. Ctheory, 1995. Available online <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctheory.net\/articles.aspx?id=74\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><sup>7<\/sup>Ed Finn, op. cit.<\/p>\n<p><sup>8<\/sup>Ibid.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following passages are taken from my forthcoming book\u00a0Future Metaphysics\u00a0(Polity, 2019), that attempts to restate the importance of the great metaphysical categories (substance and accident, form and matter, life and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2618,"featured_media":25658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5996],"tags":[],"coauthors":[6569],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Future Metaphysics &#8211; A*Desk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/future-metaphysics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Future Metaphysics &#8211; A*Desk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following passages are taken from my forthcoming book\u00a0Future Metaphysics\u00a0(Polity, 2019), that attempts to restate the importance of the great metaphysical categories (substance and accident, form and matter, life and...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/future-metaphysics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A*Desk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-04-08T03:00:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-06-18T16:53:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/0.Portada.-Andreas-T\u00f6pfer-paranoia-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1044\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"247\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Armen Avanessian\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Armen Avanessian\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/future-metaphysics\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/a-desk.org\/en\/magazine\/future-metaphysics\/\",\"name\":\"Future Metaphysics &#8211; 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