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The Technology of Law and The Law of Technology - Part III

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 4/23/2006

Hi, Sam

Fortunately recovered from my technological injuries (computer´s malaise) and its blind laws and we can go on with our dialogue.

By the way, I have to say that interactive work is one of the best achievements of technology. Your exposition of "the quasi-identity of law and technology" cleared a blind spot in my vision. I was so focused on the contradictions that I couldn't see the similarities. And so it is. This is evident in warfare, for instance, where each new weapon (the Huns' step and powder are great examples) induces new rules of war (where is the Clausewitz of the nuclear chessboard?!

Indeed, your comparison takes us to higher considerations. If we adopt some of your conclusions, we can assert, conversely, that the "new rulers" are the technicians (confirming F.G. Jünger's prognosis). For if technology is law then its technicians are the legislators. This, then, is a great change of even greater consequences. Let us remember that philosophers have been the legislators in later centuries (laws were founded on philosophical principles). Another question, that I will explore deeply in the next letters is: who is the technician and which are his thoughts?

Setting aside this strange hypothesis, lets us see what is actually happening. Whether they have a pessimistic approach or an optimistic one, it seems that thinkers agree on the fact that technology has been the buzzword of the century. An all-encompassing wave that permeates all, even thought. The whole surface of the earth has been covered with a technological mantle, and not only the earth but the universe, the cosmos, is being cloaked by machines.

These machines and their technology abruptly altered the human atmosphere and its "tempo". The point of view is no longer human, or terrestrial but rather a cosmic one. Video technologies and real time interactions change, as McLuhan brilliantly observed 30 years ago, not only traditional law but its (habitual? last 2500+ years?) enclosing frame: the alphabetic language. This is precisely what most thinkers and intellectuals fail to see - while continuing to debate old things within the old frame. To affirm the identity of law and technology is indeed to erase the law - the law as we know it, in the historical sense - to return to tribal (mythical) law. Apparently, there is a contradiction between the ever increasing complexity of post-modern laws and this "tribalizing" effect but there is no discord between the two. The flow of language (hypertexts) means the flowing of the law - it reminds one of a pre-Socratic tribe studying "physis" in search of new myths to explain a constantly changing nature, to discover, with emotion and delight, forms, attractors emerging from that chaotic madness.

The distinctive mark of this law, the law of this great tribe, is the intensive use of images (and its numerical control and its purified hyper-rational/scientific method: statistical mechanics). The avalanche of video technologies, filming methods, digital processing, all this "new imagery" can be summarized in what Nobert Wiener once said:

"In Newton's times automatism was a clock-machinery with music and rigid statuettes spinning up over the lid. In the XIXth century the automaton is the glorified steam motor, that burns combustible fuel instead the glycogen of human muscles. The contemporary automaton opens doors with photoelectric cells, points nuclear weapons or solves differential equations."

This "wave of imagery" converts the law into a cybernetic process. It is also interesting to note, as I said in my previous letter, that "Cybernetics" (derived from a greek word: kybernetes: "pilots", steersmen), which can be fairly considered as the beast's mother, has for its subtitle the sentence "Control and communication in the Animal and the Machine". These controls are based on the real-time evaluation and comparison of photographic impressions, quanta of light (and information) measured by digital processes (mostly based on vision and less on sound and other sensa). It changes dramatically not only the traditional law but also the space such law works in, and finally leads not only to a return of the acoustic, tribal word but also to something else: a new grammar that should be better called PHOTOGRAMMAR. The further consequences of this change are not yet observable, but for those of our readers which still possess a consciousness of higher spiritual and poetic orders I would like to note a relationship: the predominance of vision is the nature of predators and birds of prey.

"Cybernetics" and the rest of Wiener's works provide us with the "original" documents (with the "Roseta Stone") of the new law of the new land. N. Wiener is without a doubt one of the most brilliant and powerful scientists and mathematicians of the XX century. Apart from his great contributions to mathematics, computing and other fields, the minor fact that he was deeply interested in Goethe´s "The Wizard´s Apprentice" (and the answers he came up with) demonstrates the profundity of his thought. We are faced with a serious, first class, thinker. At the centre of Cybernetics is one, at first view, simple mechanism: the feedback loop. In fact, this mechanism was known as early as the XVIII century. Watts' steam engine used a centrifugal regulator based on feedback. Also it has its roots in Hegel's and Fichte's (dialectic) thought and its refined version by the (hallucinatory) mathematical mind of C.S.Pierce. This mechanism is at the heart of all new systems of control and, by extension, of the new social organizations. It is what fashionable intellectuals (Giddens) call "reflexivity" and others "government at distance" or "tele-government" - as per the consumer's taste:-)

On a prosaic level this means a new way (law) of organization, a life in constant movement, changing, reflecting, adapting to new situations always at increasing complexity. On a superior level, if we want to provide an exact and complete "figure", a grammatically well defined prototype, the cybernetic revolution means entering a magical space, much alike that of Alice in Wonderland were laws appear and disappear from fantasy.

Especially interesting (and fascinating and striking) are Wiener´s opinions on the "law of the laws", that is to say, the auto-propagation (and self-learning) of machines. Wiener's writings on these matters provide us with a map of the technological future. But that is another tale altogether:-)

The end of my loop.

Time for your feedback:-)

best regards
roberto