ANOPTIKON (DeepL translation).docx
Highlights
Mystery
Words are lacking to describe such feelings to those who have not experienced them. It is difficult to talk about it because it seems almost intimate. There is also the fear of being seen as naive or enlightened. But in the end, those who, like me, have experienced it cannot help but share their experience. A primary school teacher [72] testifies years later (2011). It refers to an “introspection on trade with ourselves, with ourselves, with others that we are, on how we are, on what we are, on what we are. ”
Mystery
there is a new opportunity in the PG to feel our radical ignorance and to share this impression.
Technological Sublime
One point that had not been anticipated (or hoped for) in the thought experience was the excitement, enthusiasm, and even fervor that participants often show during the experiences. Some said (and still say) that they feel that a kind of spirit hangs over the group and its image.
Earthquake
“The brain, the human body, peoples and all of humanity are, in their own unique way, an immense collective “antennae”, whose primary mission is to capture the diffuse signs of creative intelligence. ”
Earthquake
Philippe Quéau,
Sublime
the sublime is a “feeling of joy mixed with fear that suddenly gives men the impression of being connected to the cosmos”
Sublime
With a humor that can be perceived as singular, I began to present the PG as an “automatic theophany machine”, a machine to see God automatically.
Time perspective
In 1987, in the course of a conversation about the mystery in me, a corner of the veil suddenly came up. I described to my friend Charles Lenay [81] the technical functioning of the PG , in particular the role of its central server. It occurred to him that the device resembled the spatial perspective of the Renaissance.
Time perspective
Yes, it’s true, I thought to myself, the waiter plays a role that seems similar to that of the vanishing point of paintings painted “in perspective”. All the information converges towards it and it is he who redistributes it to the collective of spectators who are also the actors of the device.
High frequency
In the 1980s, the stock markets were not very computerized. Their time flight points could go unnoticed. Today, high-frequency “trading” operators are trying to get as close as possible to the server centers of the stock exchanges to gain a few nanoseconds in transactions driven by algorithms they inject into them. They rent buildings to house their machines in the immediate vicinity of the time leakage points and the optical fibers that connect them. Every meter counts, so human operators who are a little further away are mechanically disqualified.
High frequency
Since the 2007 subprime crisis, the focus has been on regulating high-frequency trading practices, which are accused of amplifying trends and precipitating crises. The escape points, on the other hand, remain invisible, hidden in unmarked but highly guarded buildings, like totems surrounded by impassable taboos.
High frequency
architects did not wait for the invention of the spatial/optical perspective to produce the geometric layouts of the commercial, military, political or religious buildings they were commissioned to design. They did it from Ancient Greece and even before that. The spatial perspective has only taken up the principles of their geometric constructions but has added a key point, located at infinity, which makes it possible not to produce plans for the construction of buildings, but to represent them.
High frequency
Similarly, we have been implementing artificial networks since the invention of the Chappe telegraph, and even much earlier if we consider the logistics of horse messengers and post offices organized around capitals or palaces. The temporal perspectives that we are implementing with this type of centralized network are only becoming evident today, as they are coming up against what Paul Virilio calls “the wall of time [86]
High frequency
In all areas of human activity (political, financial, media, military, etc.), the emergence of “real time” creates an instability similar to an acoustic feedback effect that threatens to destroy everything; that is, a positive feedback loop that reinforces instability to a breaking point.
Information bomb
I was beginning to develop the anoptical perspective approach (which Paul Virilio didn’t want to hear anything about [87] ): if the computer networks we build invariably become disaster machines, it is because the nature of the temporal perspectives they implement is not yet conscious, let alone assumed (the totems and taboos I mentioned above).
Information bomb
We are making time perspectives at every turn, but we deny the radical unknowledge that reigns at the heart of their construction. We don’t know the nature of it or the rules.
Information bomb
At this stage of the presentation, we begin to identify the nature of the temporal perspective 一 the first perspective of the anoptikon
Epilogue of Chapter II
The virtual reality installation and the entire Museum, which houses it, offer a new interpretation of the myth in the information age. According to this interpretation, the treasure is not made of money, but of something infinitely more precious than all the gold in the world: our common memory and our ability to build on it.
Summary of Chapter II
the centralized version of the Poetic Generator represents the archetype of the time perspective . This perspective builds our relationship to the world through a physically centralized network. It is the first anoptical perspective of the anoptikon .
Summary of Chapter II
1 - The collective interacts through a physical center . The information issued by the members of the collective is aggregated instantly at the central level in the form of an emerging value common to all.
Summary of Chapter II
2 - Each member of the collective interprets it and reacts by producing a new action. An intersubjective time specific to the collective emerges from this feedback loop, punctuated by the synchronization and desynchronization phases
Summary of Chapter II
3 - The dynamics of intersubjective time is unpredictable and unknowable. This lack of knowledge is a direct result of the center under whose cover the collective exchanges. This center is the vanishing point of the temporal perspective
Anoptical perspective - type II
4 - The temporal leakage point is homologous from the point of view of the person or persons who created the network or who maintain it from its center
BANG!
The real innovation came when, to continue its exploration, the PG had the chance to access an experimental network called ” Mbone ” ( Multicast backbone ), very different from the web in terms of quality. This network implemented a communication protocol called ” Multicast [91] ” prefiguring some of the functions of “IPv.6” (the Internet standard Version 6 in force today).
Multicast
the Internet as most people use it today is limited to the web , if not just Facebook, i.e. a tiny part of what is theoretically possible to achieve through networks.
Multicast
In particular, the web operates through a communication protocol called ” Unicast” [92] that only allows machine-to-machine communications, each with its own IP address. According to the Unicast protocol, when you want to communicate several machines together in real time, you have to set up a specific machine that switches between all the others. In short, a temporal flight point. That’s the kind of role Facebook plays today.
Multicast
The Multicast protocol is very different. It defines machine-independent “group IP addresses”, which are the digital equivalent of radio frequencies. As soon as the network authorizes this protocol, it is sufficient for users to set their personal machine to a common group address so that they can communicate with each other 一 like walkie-talkies set to the same frequency 一, without the intermediary of any other.
Black box
With the Mbone, a completely different topology of the Internet could have prevailed. Thanks to its Multicast protocol allowing symmetrical and peer-to-peer communication, neither Google, Facebook, nor the others would have existed in the form we know them. The Mbone was abandoned in favor of the Web, which some researchers predicted from the very beginning that it would mechanically produce the phenomena of technological, economic and political concentration that we observe today.
Black box
Why didn’t the Mbone develop? Because telecommunications operators, governments and technology providers have not seen their interest in it. The protocol was deemed “not scalable” . This means that operators did not know where to put their cash drawers, governments did not know where to put their black boxes, and technology providers found it too efficient, in other words, it did not require the investments they expected from the former.
Regression
Today, some governments dream of being a “platform state”, but they do not realize the technological abyss that separates them from the Net Giants in terms of centralized administration. Perhaps only the Chinese state that directly controls its network and its actors can claim to be one.
Regression
the Multicast protocol has not completely disappeared. It was simply buried somewhere in the IPv6 standard that is being deployed all over the Internet today. It is still potentially activatable, but telecommunication operators are careful not to make it accessible to the public.
Regression
this protocol is used for private or military applications that are [100] invisible to the general public
Regression
it is a degraded and artificially asymmetric form of Multicast that is used for ADSL television [101] now available in all households. As everyone can see, if it is possible to receive many TV programs in this way, it is never possible to transmit them yourself.
Regression
Obviously, in mobile networks, there is a center : the billing center . We will see that this is no coincidence. Distributed networks fundamentally question the nature of money [103] .
Other attempts
Since the late 1990s, some independent actors have felt the need to exchange in peer-to-peer exchanges. Without even knowing about the existence of Multicast for most of them, they developed software [104] simulating some of its functions on the basis of the Unicast network. Internet users have seized it to massively exchange copyrighted files (music, movies, commercial software). This has triggered surveillance and a “pirate” hunt to eliminate this type of sharing.
Other attempts
States seeking legitimacy have taken over the role of Internet policeman. This practically means that they have acted as they have often done, using public resources to safeguard private interests.
Other attempts
However, these private interests have become increasingly monopolistic to the point of threatening the sovereignty of States.
Galileoes
Similarly, Bitcoin-type software, developed in the 2010’s, can be seen as attempts to create peer-to-peer functions, this time in the monetary domain, on a network that remains desperately Unicast.
Galileoes
Bitcoin and its derivatives are no less destabilizing for the status quo of the network’s players. We will see that if Bitcoin has become a real speculative Far-West recovered by powerful actors, other crypto-currencies question once again the idea of developing an exchange protocol as a common good [105] .
Invention
It seems that we can only see the things we already know. The color blue, for example, was long ignored by the ancient Japanese, Chinese, Hebrews and Greeks. The Egyptians would have been the first to create a specific word for this color when they started producing a blue pigment. Even today, the Himbas of Namibia do not have a word for blue and they have difficulty distinguishing it. On the other hand, they have all kinds of words to describe the shades of green [18] .
Invention
“Some 600 years ago[…] with the invention of perspective, landscape painting became the norm for the perception of what surrounds us. …] It no longer seems to fit the perception of a world that has been disrupted by new communication technologies.”
Selection
It is customary to describe the invention of the optical perspective as the transition from a hierarchical representation of the world, following symbolic and religious dogmas, to a geometrical representation. The optical perspective, as a “symbolic form” [22] , seems to have marked a renewal of science and technology and established a new relationship to the world for the following centuries.
Networks
Observing the path of the PG probe through the networks leads me to believe that a process similar to the discovery of optical perspective is at work today, since the beginnings of telecommunications about two centuries ago. Networks, and the technical objects that are increasingly connected to them, seem to be the seat of invisible perspectives that shape our imaginations, behaviors and organizations.
Networks
In just a few decades, anoptical perspectives could disrupt our worldview installed since the emergence of optical perspective six centuries ago.
Networks
everything happens as if we were making blue pigment at every turn without having yet realized that it is blue.
Thought experiment
As soon as we open our eyes to the world as a baby, we are able to respond to our mother’s facial expressions and start a conversation with her.
Thought experiment
we dance with the world and the world is the result of our dance, for better or for worse.
Board games
The PG probe raises the question of immediate, total and reciprocal visibility, which is in a way the promise of science and technology in general, and telecommunications networks in particular. Thus, the visibility organized by the PM could lead to a new questioning of the invisibility of our relationships and the collective unconscious. In any case, this is what the anoptikon theory sketch will attempt to do here.
Social networks
The case of the Reddit/place [28] game illustrates the similarities and differences with the PG . They may seem subtle but they are in fact decisive. In Reddit/place, it is also about creating a collective image. Each participant can choose a pixel wherever they want and manipulate it as they see fit. However, the pixel chosen by one can also be chosen by another who can immediately change his color. Unlike the PG , no participant is therefore able to identify his personal trace beyond a few seconds. This leads to a kind of competition for the control of the overall image. To emerge victorious from this competition, the only solution is to form coalitions with other participants in order to agree to control part of the image and create this or that pattern. Of course, the Reddit platform offers its forum system as a support for such coalitions.
Social networks
As analyzed by several researchers who took this game as a subject for study [29] , the graphical result of the game place is simply a reflection of the social structure imposed by the Reddit platform. Moreover, many participants are in fact only robots manipulated by the game’s publisher without the knowledge of human players [30] .
Social networks
The case of Reddit/place is emblematic of the strategies of commercial online gaming and social networking platforms. They propose to users to act in universes constrained by more or less opaque rules that are obviously dictated by their interests. More and more observers are suing them for taking advantage of very subtle and often insidious forms of free digital work [31] ( digital labor ).
A radically new approach
Cellular death appears to be the result of a process of learning and self-organization [40] .
Galileoes
Vinton Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet said: ” Multicast opens the next chapters in the evolution of the Internet as a revolutionary catalyst for the information age. ” [106] Very soon after, we understood from the reactions of telecommunications operators, governments and technology providers that the Multicast protocol would instead be abandoned
Galileoes
As early as 1995, Van Jacobson had already declared: “How to kill the Internet? It’s easy. It’s easy. All you have to do is invent the Web . ”
Galileoes
aware of this: “The Web has become an engine of inequity and division influenced by powerful forces that use it for their own agendas. ”
Galileoes
No one seems to remember that the Mbone worked perfectly; that it was potentially capable of connecting people instantly, without any intermediaries, to do all kinds of amazing things
Real time
Since time immemorial, humans have gathered around physical centers to which they give a symbolic character: raised stones, burning fireplaces, decorated caves, village squares, totems, palaces, sacred places, etc.
Real time
I suspected that our cognition incorporates, undoubtedly for a long time, the unknowable at the heart of our relationships.
Real time
communication does not imply communion, i. e. a kind of fusion of points of view
Natural synchronization
mirror neurons [126] “. These cerebral motor cortex networks show similar behaviors when we perform a certain action and when we pay attention to someone else performing the same action. However, the mystery deepened in 2010, when the brain activity of several people interacting with each other was simultaneously recorded [127] . We can see that there is synchronization, especially at the level of alpha waves. This synchrony concerns not only the small group of mirror neurons but many areas of the brain.
Natural synchronization
Following Guillaume Dumas, we can summarize this research by saying that the biological functions of our brain are constantly shaped by internal reflection and external feedback [135] .
Rabbits - ducks
As for internal reflection, we have little choice; our neurons do what they can. Where we are acting is obviously on the external feedback
Note
How poor
Fruits or vegetables
“The universe seems to like to talk to itself faster than light but forbids us to exceed this speed. ”
Fruits or vegetables
Research conducted using completely different approaches than previous ones suggests that the phenomenon of synchrony between brain networks could be of a quantum nature. This is what researchers in the field of “quantum cognition” suggest.
Fruits or vegetables
In 1988, James Hampton, a Stanford cognitive science researcher, asked his students the following questions: 1) What is the best example of a fruit for you? 2) What is the best example of a vegetable for you? 3) What is the best example of a fruit OR vegetable for you? Among the answers to question 1, “apple” largely dominated all other fruits. In question 2, the dominant answer was “broccoli”, ahead of few other vegetables. Question 3 received very varied responses. The top and tied for first place were “tomato”, “sweet potato”, “coconut”, and “broccoli”. Then we found “olive”, “pepper”, “mushroom”, etc. Hampton found that strangely enough, the apple had disappeared even though it had all the favours in question 1. Broccoli settled at the top of question 3 when it had just come close to the top of question 2. Other fruits or vegetables that were barely mentioned in 1 and 2, such as olives for example, emerged and established themselves in 3. The results seem strange. They do not fit with set theory and its operators of union and intersection. To explain them, Hampton and his colleagues made assumptions about the psychological functioning of operations such as conjunction (logical AND) and disjunction (logical OR) and finally found that they involve complex phenomena involved in our choices, decisions and value judgments.
Fruits or vegetables
A completely different interpretation of this type of experiment is being developed by researchers in the field of quantum cognition. They consider that the words “apple”, “broccoli”, “olive”, etc. are concepts that translate real elements with their own kind of life and interact within us according to quantum processes. These concepts are like the semantic particles of our language.
Emerging time
At one point, we needed the word blue to translate a certain visual impression. From then on, “blue” began to act as a process/instrument for measuring what is blue. It has allowed us to distinguish what is and what is not