[FRIAM] Future Generating Machines...

[jon zingale]

One thing that strikes me about the three stages of society outlined in
the thesis (sovereign, disciplinary, control) is that they exist as a
chain of generalizations. A prototype of each preceding term is included
in the latter, paralleling what an algebraist might call exact, each
earlier stage appearing as the kernel for each later stage. Perhaps
this exactness quality is most clearly shown when we look at the effect
each societal type has on its subjects (administering death is a type of
discipline, administering discipline is a type of control). It is this
quality of expanding generalization which gives the appearance of *always
existing*. To some extent, I do think it is fair to say that while the
idea of a ring took until the 19th century to be *uncovered*, they existed
from the time the ancient Arabs produced the integers. OTOH, the relation
here can be misunderstood as being one of determination. It was not the
case that humans inevitably would uncover the idea of a ring. Instead,
once the integers were invented it became the case that humans *ought*
to arrive at the idea of a ring, that is, the invention of the integers
*anticipates* the idea of a ring, not necessarily determining its arrival.

Some kinds of complexity, à la the Noetherians, arise simply as a matter
of degree. We on this list, seem most familiar with this kind of complexity,
emergence far from equilibrium, parameterized changes in the stability
of phase spaces, etc... If it were at all clear, as the Noetherians have
hoped for going back to Laplace, that we simply need to know the starting
configuration of the universe and then to calculate, then all would be
solved and our gum flapping would simply be just that. But until the
day that such a model was proved to be the reality, it appears to me that
demanding such a conclusion is an anxiety-driven compulsion to reduce the
richness of one's own experience to automata, a perverse longing for a
religion rooted in a Kantian notion of space-time.

One can make the assertion that there are no utopias nor dystopias.
Fine, but this move to identify opposites has always been a problematic
rhetorical move, one that has been analyzed to death by individuals more
motivated than I. The take-home for me is that once utopia and dystopia
are abstracted, to a logical domain of pure presences and pure absences,
we can substitute any opposites what-so-ever and immediately forget that
a problem was ever presented. My bold claim is that nowhere in a theory
of least action will we recover what ought to be, nowhere will we find
morality, ethics, or a satisfying theory of emergence. Having nothing to
say about a problem is not the absence of a problem.

For others, others that imagine things can be that rather than this,
it may be non-trivial to speak of the human spirit, to speak of desire,
and to find their way to the creation (even if only in one's self) of
authentically new kinds. It is for these individuals that the question
of eschatology is interesting, and why not, death is interesting.
One can certainly ask, what in the thesis is it the death of?



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