Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 18:01:18 +0100
Subject: Re: cyberbeing


Cologne, 03 January 1999

Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro schrieb:
> Dear Michael,
>
> thanks für Alec McHoul's terrific cyberbeing
> (URL: http://humpc61.murdoch.edu.au/cntinuum/VID/cybersein.html).
> The interpretation of cyberspace as 
> something like a tool (even considering the difference between _as_ and _as
> if_) is, on the one hand, questionable from a Heideggerian point of view.
> Technology _as_ a tool is, as you know, a partial view as far as one does
> not consider its overall ontological grasping or _casting_.

Readiness-to-hand too cannot be paraphrased as “socio-cultural being”, since 
this begs all the questions about what this latter means.

> On the other hand, Alec does a very convincing analysis of cyber-devices as
> part of our being-in-the-world in the sense of _as if_. But there is a
> difference, I think, between Cyberbeing in the sense of Stelarian cyborgs
> and the kind of everyday cyberactivity on the internet (and prefaced by
> radio, photography, telephone and TV). This has to do with the kind of
> relation we have with _assertions_  or with the _appropriation of the
> understanding_ (=deliberation).

Dasein’s dealings with equipment in everyday life come before any propositions 
made about this and that.

> Alec remarks that the _science_ Dasein generates is _propositional_, whereas
> the science proper to cyberbeing is _anything but_! But what?! An answer
> could be: it is not assertional but _spectral_ or _potential_. This is not
> the same, as printed propositions are potential too. Oral propositions can
> in some way be _spectral_ as far as we can _do_ something at a distance
> (Austin's illocutionary acts). 

Do you mean by spectrality action-at-a-distance? Potentiality is given by the 
way the truth of being opens up beings to Dasein. Cyberspace is situated in the 
openness of truth. As cyborgs we can grasp digital beings at a distance, whereas 
with propositions we bring things to presence in language. 

>But the kind of _spectrality_ through
> cyberspace is indeed _higher_. I mean, I can really - not _as if_- things at
> a distance (e-commerce for instance) and with a wide range of possibilities.
> The virtuality discourse is not appropriate for this as it suggests a kind
> of _irreality_ that does not fit into the possibilities of cyberbeing. I
> mean, the way we handle propositions is different in the printed world and
> in cyberspace.

I agree. There seems to be a bifurcation here between the as-if of simulation 
and the global reach of the internet. 

> Propositions are in cyberspace of the kind of ready-to-hand and
> present-at-hand. We do things with words/digits in a different way as we do
> things with oral or printed words. What's the difference? Well, the range of
> possibilities with regard to space, time and _recipients_ which are _actors_
> at the same time, and the way we move in the sphere of _symbols_ enables us
> to move at the same time (!) in the sphere of _things_ (_pragmata_). The
> modern division between _res cogitans_ and _res extensa_ becomes obsolete.

That is already the case with readiness-to-hand. The difference seems to be that 
there is no difference between the symbol and the digital being itself. One 
click and the thing itself presences. It’s a kind of haunting presence, 
dependent of course on all the hardware that enables these digital beings to 
appear and ultimately on the understanding of being that casts digital being. 

> So ungefaehr.

Ja. Me too. 

Michael
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