sciencetechsoc

[sciencetechsoc]

Science Technology and Society

Table of Contents

Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison, Objectivity

Week 6 Response 

Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning

Week 7 Response

Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods

Week 9 Response

Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature

Week 10 Response

McKenzie Wark, Hacker Manifesto

Week 11 Response

Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming

Week 12 Response

Benjamin Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

Week 14  Response

Wendy Hui Kyoung Chun, Software and Memory: Programmed Visions

Week 15 Response

Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals

Week 16 Response

Final Presentation Infographic

Essay

Critical Review

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Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison, Objectivity

Week 6

Daston and Galison’s definition of objectivity revolves around the idea that there is some knowledge unmarked by any kind of prejudice from the knower. Throughout this book,  we go through a series of different kinds of understanding on objectivity and how the definition has evolved over time. From Descartes and Kant to the modern understanding of the word, we can say that there has been no consolidated understanding of the term. With this in mind, we can ask whether objectivity is really as essential as we claim it is, and whether it is even achievable.

During the lecture, Dr. Aaron said that he believes it is possible to reach objectivity, but I do not agree. Everything we see and observe is seen and observed by us, through our minds and eyes clouded by subjectivity. We cannot produce any kind of knowledge that is not colored by our subjective prejudices and biases. When studying about the laws of quantum mechanics, we learned that subatomic particles existed in an a priori manner, but when observed, the mere act of observing them changed their state, and so we cannot know their objective state. Similarly, we cannot observe something because the very act of observing it alters its state.

People in the past like Plato are talking about truth but they do not use the term truth to mean objectivity in the way we do now. The kind of objectivity that is being produced by scholars like Daston is at the level of analytical thinking because dialectical thinking is thinking where you are engaging with the sheer plurality, the multiplicity that is there in real reality because once you produce an image that process of becoming, which is spectral representations are here at this level. They are at the level of analysis. Dialectic is where you have all kinds of contradictions and conflicts popping up and you’re engaging with difference. So truth is there, but it has got nothing to do with imagery because for Plato when you talk about reality, that itself is split into the visible eye what is known as the realm of appearance and that which is intelligible.

For decades, social science has been considered inferior to natural and physical science, and because of that, social science has tried to incorporate elements of the hard sciences, such as objectivity. But we cannot really say whether objectivity can be attained through science, so then why must we place such an emphasis on the social sciences to achieve it?

If we cannot agree on what objectivity even is, nor on whether we can obtain it, then perhaps it is time to move past this concept and start thinking of other ways in which to produce substantial and important knowledge.

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Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning

Week 7

According to Euclidean geometry, when you draw a straight line it's going to pass through some location between two points A and B and its going to be a straight line. Euclidean geometry gives us a certain picture of the world and the reality in which we live. As for the quantum crowd, people like Karen Barad and  Isabelle Stengers and so on, they're living in what we call non-Euclidean geometry. This line between a and b could be really fuzzy and a and b also keep shifting. This physical reality in which we live is kind of curved and there are all kinds of really complicated interactions that are taking place. Its not a world of straight lines and fixed boundaries. For someone like Karen Barad, we have seen quantum physics and quantum mechanics and we've gone through Niels Bohr and Einstein but our thinking about the world might still be stuck in Euclidean geometry or in Newtonian physics.

For Karen Barad there is really no such thing as the law of causal necessity and cause and effect. What is the picture of the world and of real reality for the quantum crowd and especially for Karen Barad? For them, reality is like a mix, a soup; however, it's not like everything is identical to everything else. Here you've got the mind, your intentionality and its produced due to your interaction with other subjects. Intentionality is emerging in an inter-subjective space but not just that; we also live in a world where there is matter and the matter is also agential.  Matter is not devoid of agency. We've got our machines devices as well as this thing called nature, because one of the binaries that comes in from that picture is the nature/culture binary. The kind of world picture that emerges through Karen Barad  is that we are all in this sort of mix, in this mesh where we've got the people's minds and the individual's mind. The power of the mind is very important for Karen Barad. In this whole mix where our thought is mixed in with all these machines and devices and what we describe as nature(even though for Karen Barad there is no such thing as nature as something essential and out there) our thinking  and thought is something that  is very powerful and unique in the context of all of this mix. In her world discussion of futurality and ethics, ethics is precisely embedded in this whole mix because through our thinking, through our mind and through the concepts that we generate we can have an  impact on what is going to happen in the future but there is no necessity which proves that what we desire is actually going to happen. This is because in this mix we have absolute radical contingency- chance, this is a world governed by fate. So we can't predict what's going to happen. we can't avoid a nuclear bomb from being developed, which for Karen Barad, that's what Niels Bohr was trying to do. He was trying to distance himself but it's not necessary that what you intend to do is actually going turn out because there is so such contingency. But to say that in the mix of this absolute contingency there is no such thing as intentionality  is also wrong because there is intentionality, there is human consciousness. so when yout talk about diffractive thinking- thinking where you have differentiation and where you have thinking in terms of entanglement because our usual way of thinking is correlationist.we have this gap, this rift between the observer and the observed, the subject and the object. There is this radical dichotomy, this binary. For Karen Barad, we have to learn to start thinking in terms of these highly differentiated entanglements like the mind not really being in the body at all or the mind being enmeshed with all kinds of other phenomena.

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Bruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods

Week 9

The moment we enter a liberal arts institution and the moment we start reading some books we start critiquing everything. According to Bruno Latour, we need to get out of that iconoclastic mode of thinking altogether. Critique, for Bruno Latour, has run out of space.

 One of the usual binaries that we are given when people talk about science and religion and the so-called conflict between science and religion is that we are told that science informs and religion transforms. This is a kind of binary that Bruno takes on and he says both science and religion are transformative experiences but the direction and flow of that transformation is going to determine the difference between science and religion. One of the things we learn growing up is that religion takes you into the transcendental sphere. Bruno says that in fact if you're going to talk about the practice or the activity which engages you with the invisible then it is science, as in, fiction. Another kind of cliché that gets thrown around is that science is about matters of fact  and religion is about fiction, as in, its all created and made up. For Bruno Latour neither science nor religion are about matters of fact.. Another kind of dichotomy that gets thrown around is that science is constructed by human beings and religion is something that is given to us from above. Bruno Latour would say that both science and religion are constructed and real at the same time. This is where the notion of factish comes into play. Science  is constructed, scientific objectivity is a construct but it doesn't make it any less real. It is simultaneously constructed and real just like religion. So what is it that religion does? Religion brings us into the present. Religion gives us the kind of transformative experience  where it gives us  this sense of reverence for the ordinary, for the everyday. Science is what takes you beyond your immediate surroundings. it is when we are thinking about the cosmos, about nature and the world that exists outside the human mind.

 Bruno Latour says religion has a very important role to play for the sciences. If we look at the icon painting of the Virgin Mary and an image of gravity waves which shift space and time, we don't have fact on either side. The scientists at Caltech who are making these images are not saying that they are fact. This just an approximation, a result which helps you gain insight into a problem that Einstein identified . When the Portuguese merchants and voyagers encountered the ‘Gold Coast Blacks’ on the West Coast of Africa, they were covered with amulets of the saints and the Virgin Mary themselves. However the Portuguese colonizers who claimed to view the world as more objectively than the people they had encountered somehow could not understand why the Africans had made these idols out of clay and worshipped them. These Gold Coast natives were continuously mocked by the Portuguese about this method of worship, but the natives maintained that these manmade dolls were gods. Bruno says that neither those Africans nor the Portugese making all of their religious icons are actually making a claim to any factual reality. Both the Painting of the virgin Mary and the image of the gravity waves have  a transformative purpose but the direction in which the transformation moves is different between science and religion. Science is towards creating what Bruno describes as a chain of objectivity that extends upwards and religion is for giving you a sense of reverence for our everyday relations with the word.

 What is this idea of a factish? Why are factishes important. For the Europeans, when they took those idol like objects from the Africans  and when they took them to the museums those objects were rendered completely meaningless because they are factishes and factishes mean anything at all as long as they are embedded in a particular kind of network of relations. What you have in this network of relations is flux and flow. So we take this object out of the network and this object becomes completely meaningless. We shouldn't take up these representations as being static or fixed. All of these icons mean something when they are in this relational framework. We need to distinguish between the use of factish as singular/plural and of factish as a way of thinking about the world in which we live. Factish is a mode of thinking of collectives in all of their relational manifestations and relational richness. For Bruno Latour, the thing that has happened with the project of modernity is that it is a project that bifurcates nature, culture, human, nonhuman, material, spiritual, secular, religious but also fetish and fact. The Portugese in Africa say to the natives that what they have  constructed is simply a fetish and it has nothing to do with any kind of transcendental reality but our religion is factual. For Bruno Latour, factish as a notion, as an idea and concept enables one to get away from all of those dichotomies and binaries within the project and we learn to think precisely in hybrids, networks and collectives. How one thing fits in with another, how networks are formed, how hybrids change and transform and so on. Thinking in terms of factish is thinking that takes you away from belief in belief and critical iconoclastic thinking.

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Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature

Week 10

When I think of cyborgs, the images that immediately come to my mind are those of Tetsuo Shima and his bionic arm from the film Akira or of Major Motoko Kusanagi  from Ghost in The Shell. The general understanding of a cyborg is that it is a person who is aided by or is dependent on a machine for their survival like iron man or Long John silver from Treasure Planet. We tend to think of cyborgs as hybrids created by literally physically merging man and machine. However, after going through this week's reading, I realised that my definition of a cyborg was very reductionist.  

Donna Haraway introduced a new way of thinking about the concept of cyborgs in this reading. Her understanding of a cyborg is 'a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of a machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of function’. If I have understood her definition correctly, it would be safe to assume that every human being is a cyborg. We don't need technological implants or robotic limbs to be classified as cyborgs. Just the fact that we are all dependent on technology in some form or the other, makes us cyborgs. 

We have become so reliant on technology that we're almost inseparable from it. This can be observed from the fact that we are never seen without our cell phones. A simple example, but it demonstrates how technology doesn't need to be physically integrated within our bodies, but it can also serve as an extension of us beyond our physical form. Cell phones actually function as external hard drives for our consciousness, keeping track of information like important dates, voices and records that our brain cannot normally accurately recall. Our kitchen appliances, exercise equipment, modes of transport, laptops and desktops, all of these are technological mediums and aids which help us function and carry out everyday activities. This is what makes us all cyborgs .

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McKenzie Wark, Hacker Manifesto

Week 11

To understand what McKenzie Wark is trying to say in his book we must first observe the relationships between two main factors; the hacker class and the abstractions they produce, as well as the vectoralist class and the way they commodify information. The term “hacker” is used in popular media to describe someone with malicious intent who attempts to break into systems using programming. For McKenzie Wark, hackers are those individuals who produce novel conceptions and perceptions hacked out of raw data. “Everything and anything is a code for the hacker to hack, be it "programming, language, poetic language, math, or music, curves or colourings”. What is created as a result of this hacking is known as an abstraction which McKenzie Wark defines as “the construction of different and unrelated matters into previously unrealized relations.” These abstractions are not always great or even good but they create the possibility for new information to enter the world in areas of science, philosophy, culture, art or “in any production of knowledge where data can be extracted from it.” Hackers can be people like you and me, students, teachers, artists, engineers, basically anyone who creates new ideas and new ways for people to do things or see the world.

Hackers need to use vectors, which are any mediums or channels for the creation and flow of knowledge and information, in order to produce these abstractions and share them with the world. However, things aren’t as easy as they sound. For McKenzie Wark, the key battle of our time is who controls those vectors. There are those who stand in the way of the hackers and prevent them from creating a world where information is freely available and widely abundant. Named for their control over vectors, the “vectoralist class” are the “modern day dotcom corporate giants, the transnational turbo-capitalist regime” who own the means of production and thus monopolize abstractions. They exercise this control by waging “an intensive struggle to dispossess hackers of their intellectual property”, enforced by a series of patent and copyright laws that are used to separate the hacker class from the fruits of their labor.

People like Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, are all members of the vectoralist class. These are not people who are out to change and transform the world in a way that there will be justice and fairness and equality among human beings and they are not here to genuinely empower people in general. They may try to project a very benevolent image by donating millions of dollars but that doesn’t change the fact that they hold massive amounts of wealth as well. However, the wealth is actually secondary. What is primary  is control over vectors. Now McKenzie Wark is trying to unite people against the vectoralist class by forming the hacker class Just like Karl Marx in the 19th Century was trying to organize people to form the class known as the proletariat. Class is preceded by class awareness and class consciousness. If we are not aware of our class then how can we recognize other people like us and organize ourselves into a revolutionary movement? The purpose of this book is a call for creation of class consciousness where McKenzie Wark is essentially saying “Hackers of the world unite.”

We’ve already transitioned into a world where the most contentious debates of our time are around property and intellectual property, i.e., patenting, copyrights, etc. Wark wants to change the terms of the debate, i.e., how we think about and evaluate intellectual property. We need to look at the big picture where we’ve got this massive class conflict that has emerged between the hacker and vectoralist classes. Intellectual property is not about money, it’s about power, about a class of people wanting to have absolute control over knowledge. This is known as the commodification of information; free information being appropriated by the vectoralist class.  It is what Peter Sunde, the founder of The Pirate Bay, meant when he said “The internet is broken.” To say that the internet is broken is to say that the internet was supposed to be a space where people all over the world could work collectively to produce knowledge. The problem is that there is too much control over the internet as to who has access to what information. According to Wark, free information should not be viewed as a product to be sold, rather, it is “a condition of the affective allocation of resources.” When the vectoralist class turn information into a commodity, it means we will only be able to see information as being produced by the vectoralist class because they are the ones whose profits are dependent on the “scarcity” of information. “When information becomes intellectual property we are bound to repeat the same commodity form, because this is what the market decrees.” Information wants to be free, but it is everywhere in chains. The Hacker challenges this whole intellectual property regime by speaking about creating something new in a collective.

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Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming

Week 12

Climate science as a phenomena where information and knowledge is being produced, has the potential to generate a kind of cooperative, collaborative togetherness among scientists, producers of knowledge and coders at a global level. One of the central insights that come out of this book is that climate science is global and cooperative because you've got production of data and models and theories taking place among people n various disciplines. However, what climate science needs theory. 

Climate science is science that requires infrastructural consciousness. Paul Edwards made a statement saying "Data are things." as in, they are things that are produced due to a variety of complex processes of labour and apparatuses. However, historically, the problem for climate science has been that no theory to understand how this data production actually exists. Paul Edwards goes on to say that Climate scientists are historians because they have to continuously dig up data that has already been assessed and analyzed before but every time they approach the data they come up with  a different set of interpretations of the data. They are building layers upon layers of interpretations of data and so much of it comes out of models, especially in the last century, which do not extract  the original information form an objective actuality or reality.

A very big concept in this book is that within the data, there is friction at the level of data metadata computation and organizations. This is why Paul Edwards is calling for a theory for climate science where the data production practices are actually studied and understood.

In this book, Paul Edwards uses the term "infrastructural globalism" and "infrastructural inversion". When we think of science we think in terms of theory but climate science is not a science that is built upon theory. Climate scientists rely instead on data and the infrastructure that is available for the production of data. There is where we can think in terms of Karen Barad's notion of intra-action. The model is not separate from the data, they are entangled. Climate science relies on the examination of infrastructure for its production and growth and flourishing.

Ultimately this is a political fight. In a connection to McKenzie Wark, there is this battle between the interest of capital and technology  where, for Paul Edwards, technology underlies the production of data that goes into climate science, is technology that has to be embraced. For McKenzie Wark, when we are understanding the world in which we live, our critique should not be on the technology that makes it possible for people to communicate and to transfer data points fro one kind of media to the other. There is tremendous emancipatory potential within technology and technological practices, provided, we can learn to fight against the capital. Capital is used in order to create ambiguities around the knowledge that is produced by climate scientists which point in the direction of there being global warming. 

What I found  intriguing was that those who we could call the "vectoralist class" in the case of climate science, such as George Bush, tried to contest the validity of climate change data. In 2004-2006, the president of the USA was involved in restricting scientists from giving interviews on climate change before taking authorization from the government. These people claim that Global warming is not a real issue and that it is a topic that even the climate scientists lack consensus and clarity on.

What is the cause of Global warming? Isn't there a nature that is prior to human action on Global warming? One key insight that from this book is that, this thing we call nature doesn't really exist anymore as something that is prior to human experience. We live in a world where nature is also a cyborg because the technological processes and activities and effects of techno-scientific labour have gotten into nature. Whatever nature used to be has been completely transformed. It is already deeply entangled and enmeshed with technological and scientific activities. The "Vast Machine" from the title of this book is precisely what you would otherwise regard as nature or climate because climate is no longer "natural". It is something that is produced and affected by techno-scientific activity.

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Benjamin Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

Week 14

Benjamin Bratton in his book proposes a model which is geographically designed according to the current circumstances of global computation. He defines the stack as ‘a portrait of the system we have but perhaps do not recognize, and an antecedent of a future territory’. He uses this as a concept to understand present geopolitics.

The stack is the highly differentiated global computing structure. it generates its own accidents and it generates its own forms of sovereignty because that is the machine which functions like a state.

Our usual understanding of geopolitics has to change because we've got this infrastructure in place and it is an accidental infrastructure. Nobody prepared for it;  it was unpredictable, undetermined, and unprecedented . Its taking on a certain shape and form and there is governance, it's an infrastructure in which the state form is struggling against alternative forms of sovereignty. An example of such an accidental structures is "Baidu". China banned Google which led to the formation of an alternate search engine called Baidu, a parallel structure added to the mega structure of the stack.

Usually when we think about the internet we think about it as this free and open space which is uncontrolled but for governance we think about actual governments. The idea that is emerging over here is that the stack is a non-anthropocenic infrastructure which is governable and that there is this battle underway to determine how it's going to be governed. This battle in some places is being fought between nation states but in other places like between the vectoralist class and the hacker class. Benjamin Bratton is writing this book because he's talking about the stack to come. He talks about how the planetary computing infrastructure that has been developed which is in place, it's an accidental infrastructure but in any case its usually influential and it has to be dismantled and replaced by another structure- a structure in which we've got more possibilities of cosmopolitan forms of governance and justice as well as awareness of the planet and its limits. The current infrastructure that is in place is following a trajectory of growth and development that is very corrosive for what we regard as the natural world and the environment.

Bratton is trying to explain how the planetary computing infrastructure is challenging the state form.  The computing system allows us to completely subvert the idea of nation states; it distorts the Westphalian idea and breaks the system or the mould of existing forms of sovereignty. The future in this sense, is open.

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Wendy Hui Kyoung Chun, Software and Memory: Programmed Visions

Week 15

“Without [computers, human and mechanical],” writes Chun, “there would be no government, no corporations, no schools, no global marketplace, or, at the very least, they would be difficult to operate...Computers, understood as networked software and hardware machines, are—or perhaps more precisely set the grounds for—neoliberal governmental technologies...not simply through the problems (population genetics, bioinformatics, nuclear weapons, state welfare, and climate) they make it possible to both pose and solve, but also through their very logos, their embodiment of logic.” 

To demonstrate this logic, Chun makes use of theories, historical accounts and technical explanations to help us understand software. “Understanding software as a thing means engaging its odd materializations and visualizations closely and refusing to reduce software to codes and algorithms—readily readable objects—by grappling with its simultaneous ambiguity and specificity.” Chun elaborates on and explains the differences between a myriad of computer terms such as software, firmware, hardware and wetware, source code, compiled code, and written instructions. She asks "What is a thing and how did software become one?"

In the past, we only had technological inventions like steam engines and clocks and it was these inventions that people used to form conceptions of the world they were living in. The difference between those inventions and the computers of today is that even though machines such as clocks were elaborate, their inner workings could still be understood if they were to be disassembles and reassembled. However, that is impossible to do with  computer. Although it is made up of actual chips and nuts and bolts, it also consists of intangible codes, neither of which are easy to take apart.  

Take the paintbrush or eraser tool in Photoshop for example. We may be able to view what's happening on our screens but then again, these tools are just metaphors.  “Who completely understands what one’s computer is actually doing at any given moment?” Chun asks. Who knows what lurks behind our cheery interfaces and the objects we click and manipulate? Nonetheless, this foggy recursion of “unknowability” is precisely why Chun believes software is such a fitting metaphor for our world. The combination of seen and unseen, the known and the unknown makes it a great metaphor for everything we think is invisible yet produces visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from beliefs to culture.

Computers can be thought of as are the lens we require in order to contemplate the vast and perplexing forces of economic, social and political power control our existence. “[Software’s] ghostly interfaces embody—conceptually, metaphorically, virtually—a way to navigate our increasingly complex world,” writes Chun.

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Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals

Week 16

In his book "Otaku: Japan's Database Animals, Azuma Hiroki is producing this theory of otaku culture which he claims has universal applications. The models he describes help us to understand the world in which we live today and understand the politics in our time because so much of our politics is still governed by grand narratives. Azuma is saying that we need to escape these narratives and  the reason for that is because we are living in a database. 

One way to understand the importance and significance of this analysis of otaku culture is to look at Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegelian thought. Kojève talked about what modes of existence were likely after the end of Hegelian history, and discovered the first one in America, which he termed a return to animality, i.e. the consumer behavior which lives in harmony with “nature” instead of struggling against it.  We've reached a point in history where that old desire to overcome nature or to master our own drives or our own wants, i.e. that whole struggle has come to an end because we live in a consumerist society. Kojève’ is saying that American society has become a society where people have become animals in the sense that they live to fulfill their basic desires and they are totally under the control of their wants. In a world of immense consumerism, that old struggle to master nature and to master nature within yourself and to engage in a battle with other people for the sake of ideology and for the sake of revolution has come to an end. This was further corroborated on by Francis Fukuyama in 1991 who said that there is no point in thinking about communist revolutions, socialist revolutions or any kind or revolutions for tht matter because now you have the market and on the market everyone is either a consumer or a user or a producer. You live your life and work hard in the market and that's all you need to worry about. This is where the grand narratives associated with modernity start crumbling. Even the grand narratives surrounding capitalism, i.e. of capitalism being a sign of progress, collapse because now even the idea of progress has come to an end.

The grand narratives of modernity all have an origin and this origin is determined and knowable through different kinds of ontological or metaphysical theories or programs. The origin can be determined and the grand narratives precisely revolve around or circulate around explaining what was there at the origin so on that basis we can figure out what is happening now. For example there are many religious discourses that have this idea that there is this origin and that at the origin xyz happened definitely and that from that xyz a series of events sprung up. At the origin point of progress, for example, you had human beings living in a state of nature then moving on to capitalism and industrialism and so on. Now what happens in the postmodern view, which is that they otaku have reached this realisation that there is no grand narrative and in place of the origin you have the database. there is no purity at the point of origin and no grand narrative to explain what happened at that point. So the fundamental reality is the database and the database is immensely differentiated but its not something that has a specific kind of centre or core. There's nothing underneath the database; no foundation. That's the reality. The deep inner layer of the database is the Freudian unconscious. It is not articulated but you want to work to articulate it. This is what pushes the kinds of various drives and desires we have and is what we would call the collective unconscious but it appears as an ephemeral kind of void. Why is this the grand non-narrative? According to various kinds of grand narratives, if you are trying to understand history or society or politics after a series of steps, going through genetic analysis you can reach the point of origin and determine it. That's what all kinds of theories that abide by the metaphysical ontological outlook say. However, the database is a non-narrative in the sense that there is nothing fixed or stable- it's all very fuzzy in the deeper layer.

This book is not just about computers or a specific subculture, rather, it really helps us understand our reality. The database requires one to move through it sideways because historical forms of ontology and metaphysics have this idea that one needs to go deep or that there is this interiority. In the database, information is not in a stack, it is not layer upon layer and there is no hierarchy. We live in a world of hyperflatness and we're all part of the database. There is nothing outside of the database. This flat model is a good model to understand reality because the other conceptual alternatives  like the depth model with its interiority and exteriority are completely breaking apart.

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Life Within The Database

Postmodernity Through The Lens of Otaku Culture 

Abstract

My generation is no stranger to the peculiar world of the otaku. We've been exposed to this Japanese subculture through the numerous anime, video games and trading card games that constituted a large part of our childhood. From initiating overzealous sparring matches after watching the latest episode of Akira Toriyama's "Dragon Ball Z", to splurging pocket money on a new set of pokemon cards for our collections or exploring uncharted lands in The Legend of Zelda games, all of us have at some point in our lives had a taste of what it's like to be an otaku.   Yet, instead of viewing these experiences in a positive light, society tends to look down on anyone who shows interest in or tries to identify with otaku culture.

In his book, "Otaku: Japan's Database Animals", Hiroki Azuma provides us with a philosophical, and historical analysis of the characteristics and consequences of this intriguing  consumer subculture known as otaku culture.  This subculture not only reflects the transformations that postwar Japanese society had undergone but also goes on to mirror the metamorphosis of the nature of human behavior during the era of the post modern. He describes the rise of the otaku as a direct result of the warped conditions in Japan produced by the country’s rapid postwar modernization, its inability to cope with its loss in World War II, and America’s consequent cultural invasion. Azuma is of the view that the consumerist activities of otaku actually correspond to the postmodern consumption of culture in general. They abandon the search for depth and  meaning and instead hunt for instant gratification in a rather animalistic manner. For otaku, culture then is defined by a database of settings and character traits while the otaku themselves transform into “database animals". Otaku culture is greatly misunderstood and there is a schizophrenic attitude towards them, especially in Japan. despite the fact that otaku are the main contributors towards innovation in commercial products, the rise in consumption patterns, and popularisation cultural practices, they are treated as disruptive and viewed as the downfall of Japanese society itself. For Azuma however, otaku are not merely social outcasts who hole themselves up in their rooms and keep themselves occupied with their manic obsession with anime, manga and video games. Through his analysis of otaku culture we learn that his theories have universal applications and in order to subvert the current negative discourse on this subject, this paper shall take a closer look at how significant this subculture is when it comes to understanding the reality in which we live today.  

Origins of The Otaku

To understand the behavioural characteristics of otaku and later apply them to society at large,  we must first observe their emergence in the context of the conditions prevalent in postwar Japan.  The word “otaku” literally translates to ‘your home’ or ‘your family’, but in a very formal sense – one that identifies one not by personal relations but by a relationship to one’s territory. This territory resembles that of a snail-shell: stored inside are anime dvds, manga, figurines and all sorts of derivative fan works. Otaku carry their world with them to protect themselves; their association to a group maintains their emotional stability. They consciously choose fictional reality over social reality and even though "they generally possess the ability to distinguish fiction from reality”(Azuma, p.27), for them, fiction is simply more effective for their human relations. Otaku shut themselves in a hobby community. This behaviour can be observed as a reaction to there being no significant social causes or political goals for them to rally under, i.e. an absence of a grand narrative that unifies society. As social values and standards are dysfunctional, otaku feel the need to create alternative ideals and values. According to Azuma, this is "a postmodern characteristic because the process by which the coexistence of countless smaller standards replace the loss of the singular and vast social standard corresponds precisely to the “decline of the grand narrative” (Azuma, p.27) This tale of narrative decay is told by French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard as that of postmodernism. The postmodernists no longer have faith grand narratives such as Enlightenment where “man is essentially a rational being” or Marxism where "the history of man is class warfare”. Modernity may have been ruled by the grand narrative but postmodernity was traumatized by its collapse.

In Japan, grand narratives such as the shared experiences from World War II and  the destruction and rebuilding of the nation only functioned during the period from 1945 to1970. According to Pop artist Murakami Takashi, when student protests aimed at changing the nature of U.S.- Japan postwar relations failed and economic advancement was hindered by the oil shocks, it resulted in a severe decline of activity within the social sphere leaving disenfranchised youth no choice but to look for alternatives in fantasy. As the first generation of otaku, they channeled their hopes and dreams for a brighter future into science fiction where specters of these grand narratives were reincarnated. During the period from 1970 to 1995 is when anime with sophisticated narratives such as Space Battleship Yamato (1974-75) and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-80) became popular. Azuma calls this the "First Period of the Postmodern." 1995 onwards marks the "Era of Animals" when grand narratives had vanished entirely, even from the world of fiction, which is also coincidentally portrayed quite creatively by the Evangelion series which premiered in the same year.

Database Consumption

The otaku’s “construction of shells of themselves out of materials from “junk subcultures”(Azuma, p.28) is a behavior pattern that can fill the void left by the collapse of grand narratives. Here, God and society have been substituted with junk subculture. This may seem like a downgrade, but only from a modernist perspective. Despite this, the modernist continues to hold on to the grand narratives. Wouldn't he seem like the more deluded one in this case?

Lets sum up Azuma's  understanding of otaku history in relation to postmodernity: in the 1970s they lost the grand narrative, in the 1980s they began to construct and consume narratives, and in the 1990s they abandoned the construction of these narratives and thus began purely  consuming the database.

What is this notion of the database? Azuma explains this through models of the modern and postmodern world. In the modern model, there is an observable surface layer of the world and a deep inner layer that controls the surface layer. This deep inner layer is the grand narrative. Postmodernism doesn't believe in grand narratives which is why Azuma proposes a “database model” as a superior alternative to make sense of postmodernity. The collapse of the cold war structure and the dawn of the Internet best represent the transition from "narrative to database". The Internet is precisely a good example because it has no grand narrative beneath the surface however it isn't simply a cluster of webpages with nothing underneath. There are entire databases and coded elements that make up the deep inner layer and the coding and algorithms can be changed and influenced by the user depending on how they interact with the surface layer.  The Internet is but one vast database in which appears any number of worlds that differ depending on input.

An example of this is the way websites like Youtube, Spotify and Netflix use predictive algorithms to give you suggestions from the database based on certain elements that appeal to you. If you've shown interest in horror movies for example, Netflix might recommend any movies within its database that fall into the same genre.

Until 1989, the world was organized by ideology, but now the image of the "net" as the matrix for cultural multiplicity is prevailing. "Such a "databaseification" of the world is supported economically by globalization and technologically by the spread of information technology."(Azuma, p.181)

It is interesting to note that media theorist Lev Manovich also has similar ideas about the database where he says it is "a new way to structure our experience of ourselves and of the world. Indeed, if after the death of God (Nietzsche), the end of grand Narratives of Enlightenment (Lyotard), and the arrival of the Web (Tim Berners-Lee), the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database." (Manovich, p.219)

For postmodern otaku, it goes without saying that  grand narratives or fiction that consisted of world building, such as Gundam, were no longer desirable. The age of narrative consumption had come to an end and was replaced by the age of database consumption. Otaku were more interested in shows like Evangelion and "required settings to empathize with the story’s protagonist, to draw erotic illustrations of the heroine, and to build enormous robot figures but beyond that they seldom immersed themselves into the world of the works."(Azuma, p.37)

Hiroki Azuma argues in his book that otaku don’t consume a work just as a narrative; they also take it apart and focus on its individual elements. These can be characters, settings, art style, or the sound track. As consumers, they are curious about how the work is created and desire to pick it apart, element by element, and reconstruct something new. This is a postmodern phenomenon not just unique to otaku—it happens all across the globe. For example, this behaviour can be observed in the remixing culture of hip-hop music.

The elements mentioned above are known as moe elements which are "developed to effectively stimulate the moe(feeling of affection towards something) of the consumers" (Azuma, p.44). For simulacra to be successful, it must be properly composed of moe elements from the database. Azuma mentions Digiko as a result of sampling and merging popular elements from otaku culture. Simulacra must possess trending moe elements otherwise it will be weeded out from the market and disappear.  

Animalisation VS Snobbery

Azuma poses a question in his book:

"If, in postmodernity, the notion of transcendence is in decline, what becomes of the humanity of human beings?"

To answer this question we must search for the meaning of the rise of database consumption within a broad world historical view, rather than an exclusively Japanese one. According to Hegel, History is the process of struggle that takes place between “the Human” and “the Other” which propels us towards knowledge, liberty, and civilization. He is of the opinion that this process came to an end at the start of the 19th century for Europe, i.e. the emergence of modern society was the end of History. What Azuma finds interesting here though aren’t Hegel’s ideas, but rather a footnote to Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegelian thought. Kojève talked about what modes of existence were likely after the end of Hegelian history, and discovered the first one in America, which he termed a return to animality, i.e. the consumer behavior which lives in harmony with “nature” instead of struggling against it.

“After the end of History, men would construct their edifices and works of art as birds build their nests and spiders spin their webs, would perform musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas, would play like young animals, and would indulge in love like adult beasts.”(Azuma, p.68)

What he is trying to say is that, once all our base desires are fulfilled, we become a classless society where we are like “animals”. Because we're living in harmony with nature, we stop separating ourselves from nature, and ultimately, cease to be men.

However, In Japan, Kojeve encountered another posthistorical mode of Being, i.e. "snobbery". Snobbery denies nature based on formalized values (e.g. seppuku). This posthistorical snobbery can be seen in the rise of otaku culture. In Azuma's opinion, there was a sort of narcissistic egotism in Japan in the 1980s which seeped into the otaku subculture during the 1990s. A pseudo-Japan was created in response to the defeat of traditional Japanese culture. Anime fuses the east and the west together. Sailor Mars, named after planet and Roman war god, hotheaded and modern, yet a traditional shrine maiden, is a great example of how this looks. This is why "Japanese-ness" is so forced in anime and manga – it’s a cultural snobbery that's different from the animal.

Animality and snobbery are the two choices post grand narrative, however, Azuma says the role of snobbery was only a phase. Otaku today have shifted from snobbery to the animal. This is clear from the fact that his database consumption of moe elements is similar to drug addiction rather than a pastime.

Navigating through the database

What is the significance of otaku culture and what is it they tell us that is important to understand our culture politics? For Hiroki Azuma, the philosophy and thinking of the future can be understood through otaku culture. Though otaku are shunned and mistakenly thought of as social rejects who do not conform, cannot communicate, fail to be men and lose touch with reality (Galbraith, p.210),  we could definitely learn a thing or two from them about understanding the reality we live in. Azuma convincingly argues that otaku are not just a site where one might deconstruct Japanese culture. They are the reason for the emergence of a new database structure. Otaku perform a deconstructive movement, i.e. a "radical flattening of hierarchies"(Azuma, p.177) as well as offer a new area for the execution of social control. Azuma's approach is not to celebrate the otaku subculture but to explore, by participating and evaluating, what might successfully constitute counter movement within subculture circulation.

In a nutshell, Azuma’s “database” model is enormously useful in understanding socio-cultural relations with almost anything. We can use it to make statements like, “Anime fandom/the internet is a great example of this database model. As the world becomes more postmodern, other industries will begin to follow suit. This drive towards postmodernism will be a point of all consumerist interactions moving forward, and can be seen behind drives such as postnationalism and the way cultural flows are functioning.

It may seem like a bunch of colourful characters on the surface but otaku culture is immensely significant because it talks about channeling desires through the database and ultimately about creating a new kind of politics. These politics cannot be created through the superstructure, i.e. the existing forms or parliamentary democracy and the market structure and so on, rather, it has to come from within the database and that's the goal of the Hiroki Azuma's new book "General Will 2.0: Rousseau, Freud, Google" where he says the collective consciousness is in fact the database.

With the phenomenon of hyperflatness, otaku teach us sideways movement through the database. Based upon where we are situated in the database, we can draw different kinds of insights. This, for Azuma, is our reality, i.e. we live our lives in the database. The point is to try to shift positions within the database and look at it from different angles. It doesn't have depth, it's a model for reality in which there is no distinction between what is interior or what is exterior, what is hidden or apparent what is seen or unseen. Anything that can be seen is there in term of visual representations provided we are willing to engage in analysis. This is the task of politics now. We are now in a reality where all symbols have lost their symbolic efficiency and the power to produce meaning. Here we can learn something from the otaku who have a deep distrust in all symbolic manifestations. For otaku a symbol could mean anything depending on how you mix it up with the elements of the database, which is the most interesting application of the database in my opinion. An example of this is how otaku have portrayed ISIS as a harmless moe girl using moe elements from the database in order to defang Daesh.

The only contradiction I see is that the tale of the grand narrative collapsing and humans becoming database animals is a grand narrative in itself. Azuma's theories are broad and universal, however, isn't postmodernity supposed to reject these very characteristics? Although Hiroki Azuma constructed a convenient lens for looking at postmodernity, I can't help but feel that he became a little too attached to it to recognize the contradiction of using it as a grand narrative.

[sciencetechsoc]

Critical Review

When I first heard of this course I imagined it would be similar to a more detailed version of the last section in our "What is Modernity" course about modernity and ecology where we learnt about the anthropocene and the dominion of nature. However, This course proved o be so much more than that. It required us to grapple with diverse subject matter; medical ethics, right to information, quantum uncertainty, intellectual property, gender and race relations, science fiction and the Internet. We've read about theories related to climate change and sciences as well as the role and impact of the scientific community on society. We had also transcended into a philosophical conversation with Latour and an anthropological one with Donna Harraway. The list is endless. Though what I found most intriguing was being able to find abstract linkages between all these idea and concepts. These links would just pop into my head all of a sudden like "Hey, doesn't the way otaku create derivative works, making them available to the public, make the otaku part of the "hacker class" that McKenzie Wark talked about? The first three weeks were quite enjoyable because Rebecca Skloot presented her findings in the form of a gripping narrative, but we were soon to realise that this was the calm before the storm as the readings from week 4 onwards became denser and more intellectually demanding. I don't think I can specifically highlight the readings, ideas, and perspectives I could apply outside of this course, because in my opinion, all of them can be shed light on something or the other. However, an author who really changed how I imagine society is Hiroki Azuma. Although, because of the way the course was structured with everything being a bit haphazard towards the end, what with presentations and reading days in the mix, we only got one day to talk about his book in class. It was a shame since it was the one reading I resonated with the most since I think of myself as an otaku too. In my opinion Hiroki Azuma, through his analysis on otaku culture and the concept of database consumption, provides a comprehensive way to understand our world. Bruno Latour and his Network theory also helped me understand how my actions are affected by and affect the world around me. As a design student I thought about all the implications this might have; how this affectation influenced my work and how my work was received by my clients. This led me to think "how I should go about creating designs that could improve my skills and the quality of my work while enriching the user's experience of it at the same time? McKenzie Wark, in his Hackers Manifesto talking about the Hacker class and the Vectoralist class, said that Hackers can be people like you and me, students, teachers, artists, engineers, designers, basically anyone who creates new ideas and new ways for people to do things or see the world. By conceptualizing design as a hack and the designer as a hacker I felt like I was a part of something much bigger.

However, I feel the course made explicit connections with social development and policy, engineering, and even computer science but not as many overt ones for communication and design. There were no readings on how design and art are linked to science and technology. This really should be addressed because in the absence of a section on art and film in relation to science, the majority of CND students are left to imagine  their own linkages without having a strong base to start their trajectory. It seems as if the course was constructed keeping mostly the SDP and SSE programs in mind. Many of us had no prior base in the sciences so most of the concepts rooted in hard science like quantum physics went right over our heads and were unable to grasp the idea behind those readings. Since this is a core course for everyone, a suggestion on my part would to structure the course in such a way that it does not give any programs an advantage over any other and should be easy to understand for everyone.