…as a general observation: All of this (shared) online aspiration to reflexively self-validating identity-construction and participatory meaning-generation masks a howling vacuum of dissimulated subjectivity. We seek self-expression but no such endpoint exists, no epistemogical closure or certainty and (certainly) nothing even vaguely approximating to that monster-image of projected, illusory control that stares back at us from the abyss. The (logical necessity of a) presence of teleological absence and incompleteness imputes momentum into this system.
More specifically, cultural systems successfully self-propagate through the (largely unreflective and cultivated, malleable gullibility of a) medium of human minds by secreting themselves there in virtual, imaginary depths and intricate complexitites of entangled subjectivity, ideology, emotion; as partial copies and as the adaptively-recursive and indefinitely-extensible metamorphosis of an essentially homomorphic encryption that shapes and selfishly warps microcosms of the whole image (of itself) to it’s own unknowing objectives of blind self-replication, continuity.
This provides resilience (against catastrophe) and assurance of contextual tenure to the culture (and the concurrent, procedurally developmental technologies of behaviour, language, thought) to distribute itself in this way via something resembling holographic storage. It also, as an integrated system, shapes itself towards its own maximal algorithmic concision and continuity through (the transmission-medium of all of) us, even as it obscures itself by incorporating memory and processing in the same subjective entity and artefact of aspirational identity-construction; this is simultaneously the core enigma, the process and the epistemological blind-spot of Self.
Beyond rhetorical hyperbole and literary, philosophical or logical self-inflection – what of the adversarial essence of this (Other) hyper-inflating referential information space of Cyber? Everything is “in play”, agreed. This is an adversarialism that, while we recognise and experience it as that, is very likely an optimal holistic method and heuristic solution for generating novelty, surprise and a requisite information entropy through which this (computational) information and energy-processing system as a whole self-propagates, with variation. It is not new, per se, in essence or base set, kind and class of entity – it is only new in manner of expression, shape, form and flow of manifestation in or as contemporary information and communications technology. This is the genealogy and the causal rationale of adaptive evolution in and as cultural or technological information artefacts, and of their apotheosis in competition and conflict.
Cyber is the current phase transition-state of an indefinitely-extensible logical pattern of evolving information (and) complexity. There is absolutely no reason to assume that it is anywhere near the final iteration, nor indeed that any such final state or developmental boundary exists. This open-ended essence is both the strength and the weakness of Cyber and technology; it is where (and how) we might understand the information firestorm we find ourselves inhabiting, and that implicitly also inhabits us.
Daedelus Kite 