Embodiment As a Guard Against Transparent Technologies
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Svein Sando, Cand. Theol.
Assistant Professor at Queen Maud's College for Early Childhood
Education, Thoning Owesens gate 18, N-7044 Trondheim,
Norway
Outline
Communication technologies (ICT) strive to be regarded as
transparent in the respect that the technology presents
itself as a mean to immediacy. This transparency is
experienced from the user, but judged from an external
position; the communication is not immediate but
remediated. The relation between people using ICT is a
relation between disembodied persons, but the transparency
tends to make the users believe that they are embodied.
Disembodiment is ethically problematic because our
restraint in offending each other is partly tuned by bodily
presence. Close sensible relations between people reveal
our vulnerability and thus make us bashful against each
other. This bashfulness and restraint is a guard against
offending each other. Bashfulness presupposes embodiment.
The significance of embodiment as ethical important is
underpinned from a Christian point of view by the
importance of incarnation in Christian theology. It is an
incarnate embodied God that is wounded on the cross, and by
that act brings atonement for sin.
Books written by David Rothenberg, Jay Bolter, Richard
Grusin, Hubert Dreyfus and Knud Løgstrup inspired me
to write this paper.
Essay
Three books have made me think on some technologies as
transparent tools in which we think we grasp the
surrounding realities as real, and that this transparency,
if it exists, is ethically problematic because of the
disembodiment it often imply. I will first present the
three books, and finally discuss their ethical implications
from both a common and a theological point of view.
Three contributions
David Rothenberg: "Hand's End" (1995)
Technology is the totality of artifacts and methods
humankind has created to shape our relations to the world
that surrounds us, modifying it into something that can be
used and manipulated to submit to our needs and desires.
The world changes as we learn to see it in new ways. And
the way we see the world depends on how we use it.
(Rothenberg p.xii)
Technology seems to be the most important interface in
which we deal with out surroundings. This interface works
both ways. We react upon nature through technology and
great part of our understanding and interpretation of the
nature are delivered to us through technology, at least in
a high-tech society as the contemporary Western. Man is
equipped with senses and limbs as a "natural" interface.
Increasingly, however, we direct this natural interface
towards technology, and less towards the nature as it is.
A theory of technology will be outlined here as an
extension of humanity, examining how the use of
tools tries to realize human intentions, while transforming
these intentions in the process. ... technology never
simply does what we tell it to, but modifies our notions of
what is possible and desirable. (Rothenberg p.xiv)
Technology exists in the tension between what mankind wish
and what is possible. Technology is at the frontier of
experience. Technological experiences give insight in what
is possible. The frontier, however, is not at all static,
but is moved by means of an ever-changing technology. This
is what most people call 'progress'.
Rothenberg's book is about "nature as technology reveals it
to us" (p. xvi). Nature is thus interpreted by man through
technology as a sort of spectacles. Ordinary spectacles are
transparent. A fairly recent development of spectacles is
contact lenses. These are almost invisible and unsensed, at
least if they work properly and intended.
Contact lenses thus serve as a double metaphor here: they
are physically transparent and they are used as a mean of
sensing the surroundings.
Inspired by Rothenberg, I think one can say that at least
some technologies aims at transparency. They are not
transparent in a physically matter like contact lenses, but
in such way that the user seems to neglect the technology
itself. Instead she focuses on how "technology reveals
nature to us", to put in the words of Rothenberg. This
transparency is especially noticeable in the electronic
medias. Bolter and Grusin explicitly discuss this in the
book "Remediation":
Jay David Bolter & Richard Grusin: "Remediation.
Understanding New Media" (1999)
… the goal of virtual reality is to foster in the
viewer a sense of presence: the viewer should forget that
she is in fact wearing a computer interface and accept the
graphic image that it offers as her own visual world.
(Bolter & Grusin p.22)
Bolter & Grusin says, however, that this wish for
transparency has been part of the media technology for a
long time. Albrecht Dürer noted that 'perspective'
means to "see through" (p.24). The visual artists until the
19th century, when the photography changed their
working conditions, aimed at reproducing the nature in a
way that man through the technology of painting, could be
mentally moved "into" picture, not unlike virtual reality
(VR) today.
The modern media, like TV, VR and "ordinary" computer
games, seems to regard the transparent unmediated
(re)presentation as both possible and wanted:
… computer graphics experts, computer users, and the
vast audience for popular film and television continue to
assume that unmediated presentation is the ultimate goal of
visual representation and to believe that technological
progress toward that goal is being made. (p.30)
Hubert Dreyfus: "On the Internett" (2001)
The philosopher Hubert Dreyfus discusses the problems of
transparency of ICT in his new book "On the Internet". He
is very sceptical to the vision held by some Internet
enthusiasts that our future lives may be lived to a great
part in cyberspace where the goal is disembodiment and
ubiquity. Contrary, he finds that embodiment (widely
understood) to be important to withstand "loss of the
ability to recognize relevance", reduced ability to
"acquire skills", "loss of a sense of the reality of people
and things", and a "life without meaning" (Dreyfus p.7).
One of his arguments against telepresence through advanced
electronic communication as an adequate substitute for real
presence is lack of access to the whole physical context of
the other person. Disembodiment also makes touching of each
other impossible, and cannot be replaced by robotic
substitutes.
Studies of infant children suggest that physical contact
between the child and other humans is mandatory to normal
development. The body thus seems to be of more importance
to us that just being a container for our spirit or
intellect.
Some ethical issues on technology in general and ICT
especially
By the contributions of Rothenberg, Bolter and Grusin, it
seems to me that the new media technology offers a
possibility of making itself invisible in a way that we are
mislead to believe that immediacy is both possible and
desirable. This goal of transparency is ethically
problematic because the reality is filtered through
something we are supposed to believe are transparent, which
at best is only semitransparent.
On the other hand, technology represents a kind of reality
in it self (machines) which can be experienced, used,
evaluated etc. In this case, however, the focus is on the
technology as technique. In this case the transparency as
the ordinary user may experience (or ought to experience
from the viewpoint of the promoters of this technology),
becomes opaque.
This shift between transparency and opaque may be some of
the reasons why computer engineers seldom find their
products ethically problematic, while people who evaluate
the same technology in its transparent fashion do see such
problems. What is opaque is visible and attracts attention.
But the visible metal boxes, electronic circuits and
computer source codes on a paper or a screen is hardly
ethically challenging with a too close point of view. Even
if the constructors of a technology aims at the use of this
technology, what is at hand for the constructors is in
first hand this technology in its visible and ethically
less problematic fashion. The end user, however,
experiences the same technology in its transparent fashion
and have to live with all the ethically consequences which
are made possible by this technology.
It seems to me that a technology that strives to be
transparent is ethically dangerous because the ethical
focus is removed away from the technology and is at most
focused on the use of it by the end user or from other
external people. Moreover, transparency is ethically
problematic because such technologies do not bring us in an
immediate contact with reality and nature, but remediates
it often without making this clear.
Dreyfus gives an analysis of ICT that takes my view further
by using the concepts 'disembodiment' and 'embodiment'. The
concept 'transparent technology' is a way to describe the
technology from the user's point of view. The concept
'disembodiment' is an external perspective of it. The user
may think the ICT is so transparent that he can communicate
with other persons as if they were present, which is as if
they were embodied. However, from an external, analytic
point of view the transparency is false with respect of
embodiment. At the contrary, the person with whom one
communicates through ICT is disembodied. This figure
illustrates it:
Why is disembodiment ethically problematic? I will use the
rest of this paper to discuss this. I will to some extent
support my discussion on the ethics and the sensation
metaphysics of the Danish theologian and philosopher, prof.
Knud E. Løgstrup (1905-1981):
Løgstrup's bashfulness and restraint
In his metaphysics, Løgstrup uses the phenomenon
'restraint' (Da.: tilbageholdenhed) to say what Western
culture lacks in order to act ethically towards nature. In
replace of restraint, we conquer the nature in order to
meet our needs. 'Restraint' is described with words as
"shame and shyness, respect and recognition, bashfulness
and modesty" (Løgstrup 1995 p.44). The concept is
very similar to the concept 'bashfulness' (Da.:
bluferdighed), which he uses in his earlier writings on
ethics (Løgstrup 1991:29, 1966:53-66). Restraint is
combined with sensation in order to behave ethically. The
basic ethical phenomena like confidence are tuned by
sensing The Other and thus restrain one in being shameless.
Sensation of the embodiment of The Other is therefore
important in order to behave ethically towards one another.
Disembodied communication is therefore to some degree
ethically risky.
Theologically underpinned discussion
So far, I have argued without making any theological
claims. Let us se, however, with basis in Christian
theology, how we can extend our ethical analysis within
this framework.
Starting with the incarnation of the Son in Jesus Christ,
one ought to notice that God regards both creation and body
as a suitable container for our Saviour. Moreover,
salvation was fulfilled through a carnal sacrifice. The
creation of the world, the nature and humans included, was
in Gen 1 considered to be "very good" (NIV). Nature and
bodies then seem to play an important and positive
evaluated role in Christianity, despite Christians from
time to time having overemphasized the spirit and located
sin often primarily to the body. The reason for this may be
bad influence from neo-Platonism and Gnosticism.
Consider the claim that you can't sin or behave unethically
against bodiless or disembodied entities. Is it possible to
offend a pure idea? You can oppose it, but will that be
considered immorally, whatever hard you try to defeat an
idea? Hardly. There is, however, one Christian exception to
this, namely sin against The Holy Spirit (Marc 3.29) that
is explicitly named as non-forgivable sin. But since The
Holy Spirit is part of the trinity and since The Son is
incarnated with a body, then trinity is more than embodied.
This is however a special case. More interesting in our
context is to test the hypothesis for the case of
"ordinary" entities in this created world.
One counterexample might be to claim that you can offend my
person by offending my immaterial values or my ideas. I
will refute in saying that the offence of these values or
ideas will be sensed in my body. When I am offended, I feel
it with my psychosomatic body. To be hurt is sensed within
my embodiment.
Viewed from a theologically positions, this may be a hint
to understand why atonement for sin was only possible for
an incarnate God. I do not know how God feels being
offended, but I know that physically or psychic assault is
primary linked to my body, not my spirit. The spirit or
intellect may convey the offence, but it resides either in
my nerves or in my flesh.
If this holds, disembodied persons on the e.g. Internet are
more or less regarded as invulnerable because the possible
offender doesn't see any body to hurt. My ongoing research
on ICT-students seems to underpin a claim that it is a
lower threshold in offending faceless and bodiless peoples
on the Internet (chat, newsgroups, e-mail) than what
happens in a normal face-to-face discussion. The body is
important for us to prevent unethically actions. This way
of seeing it seems to be in agreement with the ethics of E.
Levinas, which claims that the face is a significant
barrier against evil acts. And of course, Løgstrup's
focus on bashfulness and restrain works in the same
direction.
Assuming this, technologies which either shields our bodies
out, or remediates it (and the created nature as well) in a
way that makes it less vulnerable, is ethically problematic
because one remove an important barrier against acting bad
against each other is removed. Vulnerability is probably by
most people considered to be something that we must handle
with care. The more vulnerable, the more careful handling.
Our own needs and tendency to conquer in order to meet
those needs must to some extent be put aside in meeting the
vulnerable. Løgstrup thinks we should expand our
normal attitude of restraint towards closely related
persons (which we know are vulnerable) even to the nature
as a whole (which in our culture by most are considered to
be free to conquer and explore). We sometimes use terms
like "wounds in the landscape" that shows that we should be
able to consider the nature as a whole to be embodied and
thus vulnerable and thus something we have ethical
obligations towards. Or to put it the other way around:
because the nature is material and embodied, it is
vulnerable and has status as ethical objects.
Technologies that reduce our feelings with the embodiment
of objects thus put those objects in an ethically more
risky position since embodiment and vulnerability act
together in making us more ethically observant and
responsible.
This does not mean that our dealing with transparent and
remediating technologies should all together cease, but
must at least be compensated with a greater understanding
and alertness when using such technologies, so that we do
not harm or offend the objects in which the technology puts
us at a distance to. Close embodied relations between
people are challenging, partly because it put restraint on
our acting, or at least ought to do so. Use of technologies
that increase the distance between people and make them
disembodied and at the same time communicable, may be a
temptation to not be committed to each other. In this
respect using ICT puts us in an ethical risky situation.
Literature
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin (2000)
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Remediation. Understanding new media. MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts & London
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Dreyfus, Hubert L. (2001)
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On the Internet. Routledge, London
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Løgstrup, Knud E. (1966)
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Kunst og etik. Gyldendal. København.
(1st ed. 1961) (Eng.: Art and Ethics)
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Løgstrup, Knud E. (1984)
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Ophav og omgivelse. Betragtninger over historie og
natur. Metafysik III, Gyldendal, København
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Løgstrup, Knud E. (1991)
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Den etiske fordring. Gyldendal.
København. (1st ed. 1956) (Eng.
translation: The Ethical Demand)
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Løgstrup, Knud E. (1995)
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Metaphysics. Volume II. Marquette University
Press, Milwaukee. (Translation by Russell L. Dees of
excerpts from "Ophav og omgivelse" [1984], "Vidde og
prægnans" [1976], "Kunst og erkendelse" [1976]
and "System og symbol" [1983])
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Rothenberg, David (1995)
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Hand's End. Technology and the Limits of
Nature. University of California Press. Berkeley,
Los Angeles, Oxford
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Notes
0) This paper was presented on the Ninth
European Conference on Science and Theology, Nijmegen
19.-24.3.2002, arranged by the The European Society for the Study
of Science And Theology
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