Is the Internet a proper philosophical Object?
Paul Mathias
Professor of Philosophy
Henry-IV Senior Secondary School, Paris
Is it proper, in the context of studies centered on the Internet, to examine and interpret the very being of the Web?
There are many ways to study the Internet. With the use of mathematical sciences, first of all, in particular those parts having to do with algorithms, the very basis of programming; from the point of view of the physical sciences as well, interest in communication flows and their measure, in an effort to anticipate needs for communications hardware. From the human sciences, sociology looks at usage and contributes to the optimization of services; psychology examines how the experience of various networks influences us, and helps in the assimilation of computer tools in our lives; anthropology, more generally, can find interest in groups, in micro-societies that form around networks, and thus uncover new configurations of sociability and culture.
What about philosophy? Without instruments for measure, incompetent at calculation, superficial or general in its anthropological pronouncements, it hardly seems useful for those who, from near or far, work in the fields of Internet development, for whom ontology, principles, being, metaphysics, even semantics, are obscure imaginings from a past we have outgrown. Is there room, in studies centered on the Internet, for a "diktyology", an examination and interpretation of the very being of the Web? Is is truly "appropriate" to consider the Internet to be a "philosophical Object"?
What is the meaning of the Internet?
But, as well, what is a "philosophical object" We could answer: It is a "philosophical perspective" on random objects, morals or nature, the living or man, but also the smug (le visqueux), for example, echoing an analysis first found in Sartre's Being and Nothingness. So naturally, the question arises: what then is a "philosophical perspective" on a random object? To which one could answer that it is a perspective which does not satisfy itself with explaining the manner in which an object is linked to others, as one would say of rain that it follows the formation of clouds; but which is concerned with the association itself and the possibilities there offered, as when one finds in a reading of Hume that causality covers over being and the meaning of things. In such an ordering of ideas, an exemplary philosophical question would resemble: "Why is there something rather than nothing?", which implies that one is not merely concerned with the current reality of things and their inter-connections, but also with the very reasons underlying their being and starting from the meaning of their existence.
Thus, and redundantly, the "philosophical" question with respect to the Internet, if such is possible, would be one mixing the current reality of the Internet with its "ontological meaning", and could be summarized as: "What is the meaning of the Internet?"
We all know what Internet is: a network of networks, an industrial and programming infrastructure, interconnected computers, then the Web,archives, electronic mail recipients etc. But do we know really what inversions it is capable of? Is it at all pertinent to describe and define the Internet as an indefinite multiplicity of interconnected machines? Is it useful to describe it physically and geographically? Thinking things over, it is perhaps not outrageous to consider that all said and done, cables and machines make up little more than cables and machines and not the Internet. For in truth, the Internet is what we make of it, not an infrastructure, not an incidental project, but that which we put together concurrently and we should add recurrently: the existence of Internet, its being properly so called, is nothing less than our achieved communications, recurrent and concurrent - information flows, the written human in transit.
In quest of a philosophy of the Internet, a diktyology is an ontology of the Internet, and the latter is a reflexion on whether it is reducible to pure human writing transfers. In other words, the Internet is meaning, its reality is that of limitless communication and scriptological transfers. Which is not saying precisely that we only write, but also quite certainly, whatever we do on those networks, we are doing as a form of writing, in "packages" travelling from one point to another of our communication universe at a speed close to that of light.
Meanings subject to Translation
Now, if it is granted that the Internet is meaning, what does the proposition "The Internet is meaning" itself mean? This is not a redundant question. It is obvious, in effect, that the Internet consists of a system of "meanings subject to translation". But also, what is the meaning of "meanings subject to translation", and what does it imply?
Assuredly there are socio-psychological implications: the feeling it allows of our own liberty, of speech or even of action, the assurance of being able to give to our thoughts the texture of the written word; or in another mental ordering the unhappy effects of being exposed to pornography or violence, to hate or disrespectful pronouncements, etc. But it is also clear that socio-psychological implications are not philosophy.
"Meanings subject to translation" is of interest to philosophy on at least three principle fronts.
Undecidability
First of all, with respect to the undecidability surrounding the significant or non-significant nature of such webbing (réticulaire) practices of writing and meaning production. When we speak it is by and large for determinate ends, either we want to communicate a thought, to ourselves or others, or we may merely wish to create or sustain links with certain companions. It can be as well to convert thought to action, as when we give orders. Yet if these usual ends are at play in this will to communicate inherent to Web practices, at play as well is a non-negotiable something else, an absence of ends, atelia. Why in effect take part in a communication system where voice has no effect, in the midst of which the written remains unreadable, in which the partner in conversation is at best a fictional projection, a "pseudo", indeed of a radical absence signified by the evanescent presence of an electronic address? The only readers of which one can really be sure in effect are robots, not men, by Internet archiving services such as Google or Yahoo, in pursuit of perfectly apparent commercial ends. We imagine then that we are publishing information or culture on the Internet while in fact the data we are pouring out gets lost in a veritable communications limbo. Which does not mean for all that that they have disappeared; rather, they are at rest in the abyss of the network - thus one speaks of a "Deep Web". What then is the meaning of "wanting to say" when essentially we are dealing with connection without communication, with meaning production without reproduction or assimilation of the meaning, with practices without a recognizable memory? In philosophical terms, assuredly one must admit that the Internet forces us to reconsider our ideas about "saying", "communicating" and ultimately "thinking".
The Unfinished, Transgression
On another level, secondly, philosophy takes an interest in the Internet as "meaning subject to translation", in the sense that the rules with which we are accustomed, the processes of regulation and policing, are not operative on these networks as in the world which for convenience we call "real", for the reason that these rules and processes are themselves in translation. Normally, a regulatory system entails two things:
a) It is clear what is forbidden - although who decides may be variable.
b) That there be a prescriptive and/or co-ercive enforcement.
Yet such a framework of practical rationality is not at work on the Internet.
a) The regulatory aspects of the Internet are still being developed and are thus incomplete.
b) The emerging regulatory systems on the Internet are in structural and not merely circumstantial conflict with the over-riding systems in the real world.
For example, let us consider the exchange of files on P2P, whose rules are as varied as the sites concerned, and are in open and manifest conflict with the "real" world and "rights". Further, in a similar vein, the interest of networks, speaking figuratively, is that all machines and software be "inter-operable", that is capable of "communicating" one with the other; the economic and hence legal interests of a number of software enterprises lies on the contrary in "proprietary" software and their heteronomous character. As a consequence, beyond the technical difficulties encountered by jurists in their accommodation efforts on the rights of networks and those of territories and enterprises, philosophy encounters the renewed question of what is a rule and what should be the procedures destined to give birth to these. Traditionally, one relied on argumentation protocols and an examination of their rationality; henceforth one should assume a plurality of rationalities and their competition, thus giving up on achieving norm governance on networks from a unique scheme of practical universality. Thus, given networks, and their specific process of development, it becomes the work of a philosophy of networks, a diktyology, to re-think the concept of rule as no longer a "norm of constraint"; but as a "transgression", the transgression of a rule no longer seen as a more or less accidental consequence of its existence, but rather as constituting the very matrix from which it is built-up.
Construction, De-construction
Finally, thirdly, "meaning subject to translation" touches on the "de-construction" and "re-construction" of the subject. Again, this is not the business of a psycho-sociological approach to the question, which is already in place in any event. The diktyological question of the Subject concerns the cognitive and practical framework determining its "presence" on networks - in consequence our subjectivity, to the extent that we are in effect operators of webbing communications. Let it be understood that our cognitive and /or socio-ethical practices tend to exist increasingly in terms of webbing communications. Which does not mean that we participate in knowledge(s) and morality in a de-materialized mode. Rather what is problematic is the ever-so-gradual dissipation of the frontier between material and immaterial, between "connection" and "de-connection". And it is not sufficient to overcome the difficulty to pretend to be able to "cut the contact", that is turn off a or many machines. For even there, the question remains: "Who cuts the contact?" The autonomous Subject? But what is this "subject"? The answer comes not from from a reference to Leibnitz-defined "conscious-ity" neither does it reside in Montaigne or Nietzche-evolved critiques of "self". The answer, which precisely isn't one, but becomes a question, is in a certain"that", not unconscious, but thing-like: the "Subject" - in truth the question of the Subject - is its webbing identification, still limited to a or some machines, soon extending to things which belong to it, to electronic archiving of its existence, to its infinite webbing (see RFID chips). Defining the "Subject in connection", is thus trying to think not of a substantial subjectivity or even a uniform logic, but a "pervasive" and transitional subjectivity, a subjectivity littered with meaning and non-meaning.
A professional approach to the Internet requires of its users that they apprehend the network in a utilitarian fashion and as a simple means of communication, whose usefulness resides essentially in maximizing transactions, making them more fluid, more secure. But considering the field of action of Internet, is at the same time an affirmation that there is a such and such determinate use for networks: commercial, pedagogical, recreational, etc. Here, we are postulating that the tool adapts to its uses, and reciprocally that the usages are formed by the possibilities of the tools. Yet this conceptual structure defining usage in no way applies to the Internet, because there is simply no way of knowing what one should adapt and towards what end.
In effect, if the hypothesis of Internet-defined as "meaning subject to translation" is pertinent, then it is not a question of knowing how to use it in an optimal fashion, but understanding how we determine ourselves as "beings in translation". And that, evidently, with respect to self-knowledge and a crystal-clear sense of our spiritual loneliness: an unmistakable presence for and in expression, but for whom "beginning, middle, and end, are but dreams and mists".
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