Arkady Dragomoshchenko. World of Mercury

World of Mercury
Arkady Dragomoshchenko

Publication date: March 30, 2000

The metaphor of Hermes Trismegistus, which likened God to an intelligible sphere, the center of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere, is a metaphor that has undergone many subtle changes in the choice of one of the objects of “comparison,” as well as in the minds of the authors who subsequently interpreted it, and has not lost it to this day. actuality in the presentation to the imagination of an incomprehensible figure of that which cannot be associated with any sensory experience. In the series of similar phenomena there are safely: “infinity”, “immortality”, “universe”, etc.

Alas, we continue to unconsciously move our fingers when we begin to add or subtract. Sometimes we involuntarily imagine apples or travelers wandering from the studiuma to the punctum. Sometimes we listen to a poet and find that we cannot help but ask: “What is this about?”

Of course, consciousness in its pure form does not seem to exist, appearing only at the moment of action (activation) and focus on an object. Philosophers say that a thing and consciousness create each other. This process is not subject to the measures of time, therefore the word “creation” in the present neighborhood acquires a connotation of obvious dubiousness.

The question arises, what happens to consciousness when it turns to things, the existence of which is rather determined by certain agreements, conventions, rules of general circulation, regardless of the “pictures” depicting them? Let's leave unicorns, dragons, fairies, photons, presidents and other small things and turn to things much greater than their image.

One of these, in my opinion, is the Internet, “world wide web”, “world wide web”, “world wide web” - naming can be as long as desired. It seems that it makes no sense to talk about the technological history of this phenomenon, just as it makes no sense to resort to the above-mentioned metaphor for a greater impression. There are more than enough materials devoted to this side of the matter. It is much more significant to note that in the concept of the Internet, expressed not so much in terms of communication, information integrity, short expediency of various kinds (politics, trade, financial management, etc. with inevitable derivative functions), but in the idea of ​​appropriating the “now”, “ of the present,” in the idea of ​​appropriating the right to set times and manage deadlines, there is a shadow of previous projects: “Tower of Babel,” “single brain,” “world language,” “endless life,” “immortal art”—in a word, pure accumulation, acquisition .

Irreversible waste, catastrophic loss, defining the sacred aspect in the act of crime by a person on his own threshold within the a priori non-existent boundaries of the Internet, is a meaningless enterprise. On the other hand, the very word web (“web”) more than openly refers to a different nature of the representation of time, its ateleology, nonlinearity, and constant self-reproduction:

Time is patchy, sporadic. It hardens like a crystal or disappears like steam. Time is an incomprehensible multiplicity, everywhere saturated with connections, everywhere avoiding an instantaneous “imprint.” Time is not a flow that can be divided into smaller branches, although sometimes it can become one of these, flowing in another direction, but let's say this: it is a community without a sum , the focus of scattered fluctuations. It is not a condition, although it may become one on the verge of an outbreak.
(Michel Serres. Genesis)

It is not surprising that sometimes very paradoxical places appear in the wheel of the Internet. Here, for example, is the Virtual Cemetery “New Literary Bridges” - an online version of Valery Savchuk’s action, first held in the Borey gallery in 1994 and aimed at reviving the genre of autoepitaph. “The virtual nature of the project,” writes its curator Valery Kononikhin, “initially provoked implementation on the Internet” (the syllable is not touched). This is what happened on the eve of 2000, transferring the community of St. Petersburg intellectuals to the cyberspace of the World Wide Web."

“Cemeteries, like people, die. After Manevich was buried on the Literary Bridges, then Novoselov, for current writers they died.” And further: “The nomadism of cultural boundaries deprives him (a person) of certainty. And only after death does he gain it, occupying the place in the cemetery assigned by his nationality, religion, and property status.” (V. Savchuk)

In other words, it “occupies a place” in an environment where the concepts of “limit”, “border”, and even more so “place” lose their last inherent intelligibility... A strange peace, although, to be fair, the company there was pleasant. But, as they say, it’s too late to rush around.

Here are a few autoepitaphs to choose from...

• Olga Suslova (philosopher, psychoanalyst): THE COMMA IS NOT THE END YET.
• Alexander Sekatsky (philosopher): ANYONE WHO ENTERS MY POSITION WILL UNDERSTAND ME.
• Elena Dolgikh (critic, journalist): DON’T EXHAUST YOURSELF SEARCHING FOR MEANING (Remark by V. Savchuk - “We are more tempted by your veins of evil”).
• Sergei Fokin (philosopher, translator): DON’T TALK TOO MUCH (Remark from a fan (sic!) - “By translating himself, he translated her”).
• Alexey Kostroma (artist): IT’S BETTER TO LYE FOREVER THAN STAND FOREVER.
• Valery Lukka (artist): I SEE NOTHING.

And here on the “face” of the site there are links to other, similar network projects:

Of course, the plot of computer “non-mortality” enjoys undiminished popularity, since it makes it possible to thematize some related things that seem to belong to areas of other interests. Three stories offer themselves to me - I can only hope that they will not slip away due to poor “connection”.

A few months ago, in one of the oldest on-line magazines CTHEORY , at almost the same time, several reviews appeared on the book by Katherine Hayles "How Be Came Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics", which in translation is probably , might sound like this: “How we become posthuman : virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and computer science.” And that will be completely wrong. Since “humanity” and “humanism” (that is, the project of “liberating man for himself and establishing a system of values ​​\u200b\u200bof which he himself forms the center”) are obviously different in the spectrum of meanings, and in order to avoid inevitable ambiguity, I will quote the epigraph that preceded the book by Catherine Hayles :

First of all, we must understand that the human form - including human desire and its external manifestations - can radically change, which requires revision. It is necessary to understand that five hundred years of humanism are coming to an end, while humanism itself is turning into something that we are helplessly forced to call “post-humanism.”
(Ihab Hassan, "Prometheus as Performer: Towards a Posthumanist Culture).

The book is not so much about the history of cybernetics, starting from the year 45 [although a lot of attention is paid to the “three waves” - “cybernetics and homeostasis” (from the 45th to the 60th year), “reflexivity” (from the 60th th to the 85th year), “virtuality” (from the 85th year to the present day)], how much about the forms and possibilities of interaction between embodied forms of subjectivity and arguments in favor of disembodiment in a cybernetic perspective. Thus, the term “posthuman” for K. Hayles represents a point of view in which priorities in relation to material concretization are given to information patterns, from which it follows that embodiment in a biological substrate (in particular, in the human body) can be considered as a deviation (if not a catastrophe) in history, rather than as a predetermination of life itself. Within the framework of the posthuman concept, the human body is again seen as the original prosthesis , the mastery of which we begin to learn from birth, and, therefore, changing its configuration, expanding functionality, or completely replacing the body with another prosthesis is nothing more than a continuation of the process designated by our birth, and what is lost in this horizon any total demarcation between bodily existence and computer simulation, cyber mechanism and biological organism. In a word, we are talking about how information loses the body or conquers it in a new quality.

This can be confirmed by the remarkable material on Sergei Lynov’s article about Kevin Warwick :

The device, implanted in Warwick's arm, interacted with sensors installed here and there in the university's smart building. When Warwick appeared, a lot of pleasant things happened - the doors swung open, the lights turned on, the computer said “Hello” to him, reported the number of messages received by e-mail, downloaded all the programs necessary for the pioneer’s work, etc., etc...."

There are also links to Kevin Warwick's own website. But is it worth rushing... isn’t it, it’s better to think about something else, in the full sense of the word, in the sense in which this word defines “I”. But this is already the beginning of the next story. The third, the one that, like a drop of mercury, managed to escape the present remarks.