OK; I’ll try and blog at least one talk. Kate Hayles “The Storyteller, the INtelligent Machine, and the Manager: Complex Somethings of something and data.” (such a long title, and changed from the program, so I didn’t get it all. Hayles has a new book out this month: My Mother Was a Computer
Digital Subjects and Literary Texts
The internet is a cognitive system: cognisphere:
Cognition can happen inside (endogenic) or outside (exogenic) our bodies. Much cognition in the cognisphere is machine-related and not conscious.
Natural language has as its addressee only humans. Code has two addressees: humans and intelligent machinens. But most code is inaccessible to most users. Only a couple of dozen humans on the planet can read binary code with any fluency, so there is always a level of code that is all but inaccessible to humans.
Conscious is to the Unconscious as Language is to Code. Code is the unconscious of language.
With computer-mediated communication we have a new connection, not just between the conscious and the unconscious, but also between the traumatic aconscious to the technological nonconscious. (This is going really fast, I really don’t know what these terms mean). The technological nonconscious, which has existed since the first artefacts, has now become cognitive
which opens up new ways of something.
Code provides a resource for representing trauma.
Example: Gibson’s Pattern Recognitiono.
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jess
Oh good, this is better than my notes.
I think all the traumatic aconscious stuff was peripheral to the main point, which was that code is the unconscious of language (which sounds pretty familiar after reading My Mother Was a Computer). The technological nonconscious is the code and the intelligent machines, AFAICT.
Jill
LOL. If that was better than your notes at least it means more people than I had trouble keeping up, cos my notes aren’t that great now I look at them again! It all sounded very convincing while she was saying it – except I’m not sure I’m convinced about all those difference unconsciouses, but then I haven’t yet read the book.
Jess`
The book’s very interesting, and don’t worry, I haven’t encountered half of those consciousnesses/nonconsciousnesses yet. The conscious/technological nonconscious interaction and the analogies (and contrasts) between language and code are more the subject of the book. I’m not done, but it’s not coming off nearly as Freud-spattered as the talk seemed to be.
Eric
Kate Hayles book sounds very interesting. BTW I think you meant Gibson’s Pattern Recognition (http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/0399149864). Excellent blog – I enjoy reading it.
clivado
I think thay book is very interesting. I read your blog about a year, keep a good work.
Regards Clivado
JoseAngel
Code = unconscious? That may work as an image for certain rhetorical purposes, or poetic ones as in Gibson’s novel; but I should mistrust any such sweeping analogies, which involve concentrating on some faintly similar relationships and ignoring the differences… which are of course more prominent than the common elements!