gcraighobbs /201 /1107

11/07 - Emergence

The Quotidian Triviality of Artificial Complexity

(aka How to make love to a disembodied humanist)

• Mark C. Taylor's Emerging Complexity
• Sarah Kember's Autonomy and Artificality in Global Networks & Artifical Life

In the course of class discussion regarding the above two authors, I was intrigued by the degree to which participation and inclusion was lacking in our typically lively class dialectic. Myself included, it was apparent that many readers were unable to fully complete and/or comprehend the depth of dialogue in and around complexity, emergence, artificiality, and Artificial Life (ALife) existing within Sarah Kember's essays.

Having recently completed a close reading of Kember, and now able to put these essays in context, I am more adamant than ever that reading Mark C. Taylor's account of Emerging Complexity was a trivial, frustrating, and time-consuming precursor to an otherwise brilliant account of the same topics by Kember. I would suggest that - in this instance - juxtaposition fails to increase dialogic understanding, and that Taylor serves the tactical, rather than creative function of critique. Taylor's seemingly complex exposition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ALife ultimately introduced an as-of-yet redefined term into the complexity equation: confusion.

Taylor renders privileged, scientific epistemologies in precise detail. In a pedagogical petri dish, he gives agency to cultural arguments for the emergent and "digital" qualities of Chuck Close paintings, along the way espousing a linear history of AI and ALife apparently designed to enlighten the reader on matters of complexity and emergence.

Taylor's leap from painting to AI and ALife is an effort to reinforce the validity of cultural arguments by reinforcing them within the context of scientific complexity. In statements verging on the obvious he affirms the urgency of this effort. "As complexity grows, the need to understand the implications of its dynamics becomes urgent." Which is to demand urgency void of the situated knowledge necessary for agency (human autonomy), which might bother to ask the question, "Why?"

Once engaged in matters of complexity, the cultural references subside, and Taylor' essay begins to reveal an interesting schizophrenia. Though trivial, Taylor's pedagogical undertaking is not insignificant. He touches on the metaphysical desires inherent in the scientific enterprise, but neglects to mention their origins and implications to ALife research. He reveals the insistence by ALife researchers for synthetic (silicon) domains of scientific practice able to engage philosophically with matters of the biological, social, and cultural systems, yet bearing no responsibility to those environments or bodies outside of, and into which, it hopes to transmit its results.

Taylor articulates the terms of the AI/ALife discussion in a series of lists, statements, systems, flows, smoke and crystals padded with a copious chinking of knowledge statements leading to a few compelling concepts such as phase transitions, the hive mind, and bifurcation points.

Ultimately, Taylor's thesis rests on highly reductionist and suspect conclusions -

"With this understanding of the way in which complexity emerges through networking, we have solved one of the problems creating our current critical impasse. At then end of Chapter 2, I claimed that any adequate interpretation of emerging culture must be able to describe the nonlinear dynamics of systems that act as a whole but do not totalize."

Suspect are the words "our", "critical impasse", and "I claimed". Imbedded in Taylor's approach are presumptions of truth and beliefs which to this reader are not forgone conclusions. Which is to say I posses an intuitive mistrust of Taylor's epistemological approach not only to the topic of ALife, but also to science and culture in general. This mistrust is inexplicable, until now -

"One of the primary reasons for the critical emergency we are facing is the insistence of deconstructive critics that systems and structures inevitably totalize and thus necessarily exclude otherness and repress difference."

Until then, I had no idea Taylor was addressing matters of "critical emergency" in his essay. The term appears completely out of context. Interestingly, emergency is an etymological variation of emergence. However, an emergency implies urgency and danger, whereas emergence does not. It is this urgency to which Taylor refers earlier in his essay when the god-trick begins. Much like a direct marketing mandate, propagate the notion that an offer has urgency and the consumer acts.

But I can not act on Taylor's offer. I am new to complexity and emergence. My presence is this field is tentative, eager, and non-commital. I am a reader, and a potential subject of experimental practice and/ or pedagogical manipulation. And so I am wary of all claims of authority, power, and control. The only thing clear is that Taylor has lost the plot -

"After considering the logic of networking, it should be clear that systems and structures - be they biological, social, or cultural - are more diverse and complex than deconstructive critics realize."

• What logic of networking?
• Should be clear? Who should I assume you have convinced, because I am not.
• Who are the deconstructive critics to which you transparently refer?
• How can we infer what they do, or do not, realize?

Not much happens after Taylor's cover is blown. His load is released. Mind at ease. Complexity once profound yields to oppositional rhetorics. Taylor's involuntary nervous system engages in the call-and-response battle mechanism of western, male-dominated, creationist, reductionist, and disembodied humanist duality.

If given the opportunity, I would put into the hands of Mark C. Taylor a copy of Jean-Francois Lyotard's seminal 1979 text _The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge_ I would ask that Taylor read this text closely, and then revisit his knowledge statements and resulting epistemological assumptions.

Note: Give time constraints, and the degree to which Kember's essay engages this reader in matters of embodiment, situated knowledge, post-humanism, difference - its erasure and elision, Bakhtin's dialogic method, autopoiesis, bioethics, hubris, irony, functionalism, vitalism, naturalism, and bottom-up vs. top-down theories of ALife... Given all that, and more. I will redirect my analysis of Kember's writing toward my DANM 201 research paper, the topic of which is emodiment.