Date: Sat, 1 Apr 1995 21:54:01 -0800 (PST)
From: das Masslose <downss-AT-nevada.edu>
Subject: Re: human body transformation





Patrick wrote:

> Two thoughts:
> 
> 1)  certainly in some sense nanotechnology is an extension of other 
> technologies by which we move things around in the world, but if it is
> the case that humans and selves and all these other things are material
> objects, nano's power to manipulate such objects at the molecular level
> is levels of magnitude beyond cosmetics and current med tech.  It would
> allow for manipulation of any object at the level of what makes "it", "it".

I guess what I am trying to say has to do with "symmetry", to borrow a 
term from chaos theory. Hmmm...my thread of thinking on this is kind of 
lengthy, so bear with me if you will.

Expression is an attempt to possess (something), such as the self through 
the other. I believe it was Lacan who asserted that the self is the 
other, so we want to express/possess ourselves (though done in 
confusion). Couple this with symmetry (invariance under transformations); 
for example, the prehistoric possession of wood and bones as tools could 
have been an attempt as social status (I know that I'm running into 
shakey ground here over "consciousness" vs. "thought", etc., but humor me 
a moment). Now the imporatant shift from wood (bones) to stones indicates 
a greater desire for possession and a new character of mental persistance 
(I'll get to that character in a moment). but I don't think it was as 
much shift has it has been an on-going symmetry to seek out stronger 
materials, a desire amplified throughout "histroy" (certainy in 
modernism) for use in (mimesis) technologies. Okay, so that's what I mean 
by symmetry.

Simultaneously, out of the pain one experiences from non-identity (I'm 
getting this from Lyotard's _Inhuman_), early humans defined 
self-possession and went about possessing by physically "attacking one's 
own body" (_Technic and Human Development_, p.159-61): cosmitics, paint, 
peircings, etc.. Attacking the self, as a symmetry, is the desire to 
simulate the replace (_differance_?) the unknown other (the self, the 
world) with the transformed "post-self" or hyperreal. I think nano-tech 
is certainly many "levels of magnitude beyond cosmetics and current med 
tech", no doubt I agree, but I am speaking in terms of _why_ it may be 
happening, why there seems to be a desire (albeit perhaps not as much in 
some as others) for transformation in the first place. It seems to me, 
then, that humanism from the has, at least for several million years, has 
been about possessing (expressing, defining) the self by negating 
(displacing, replaceing) the self. And like the discourse of language, 
the very means we produce our sanity reners us insane. (I'm just playing 
this words here.)


Patrick wrote:

> 2)  The use of the term Self and the description of technology 
> (oppositionally, it seems) as "object" suggests a distinction between human
> and technology.  While there may be something to such a distinction now,
> the point in the SF nano novels is that at some point, there won't be.

I agree, there will be a time (if there isn't some now, in some way) when 
distinctions will blur into an (near) impossiblity. while mech tech and 
robotics and AI directly negate and simulate, expert systems mimic 
nervous systems and behavioral features of humans and other animals. IA 
(intelligence amplification tech) amplify the human mid by doing things 
that the human mind cannot do or has trouble doing. I think this sort of 
tech will become indispensable.

-som



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