A stick is good for keeping things at a distance. It expands the radius in which one can touch something else—an object or body—without being touched oneself. It’s a long-range weapon and instrument enabling objects located at a distance to be manipulated and brought near, as needed. The equals sign in mathematical equations is a doubly arranged stick. It keeps unformed, uncalculated, and incalculable elements of the world distant and, at the same time, connects them to the body. It enables an as-yet chaotic, undissolved welter of objects to be manipulated and made commensurate with the physical world. More still, it furnishes a measure for metricating the universe and setting its elements into a standing relationship. As such, it is an instrument of power.
This kind of relationship between objects is no longer guaranteed in the digital dimension. Even if it seems otherwise, we no longer encounter the things of the world. They are no longer on the other side, behind the screen. In a theater, we already sit between the projector and the projection surface. In digital space, it’s impossible to keep things at bay. We’re in the thick of it—given over to Brownian motion. The formula x = xn means that we have been absorbed into multiplying, proliferating reproduction—a swarm. In the digital realm, space is no longer perspectival or arranged along fixed lines; it’s immersive. In fact, we now inhabit the digital world in the truest sense—perhaps as we dwelled in space before we became human, before the stick was discovered. We sway in the swarm. The distance between us and material things either proves infinitely vast and impossible to bridge with any message, or it proves infinitely slight—as if it had vanished.
Here, in data space, we are the things themselves. No distance, no object, no contradiction exists. And so, insofar as we are like the things themselves—that is, disintegrated and reintegrated at one and the same time—we can entertain any relationship with them whatsoever. They can become big or small; theoretically, they may be scaled arbitrarily. As such, the Boolean formula signifies distribution that removes the world. Near and far have been superimposed, and we must endure the ambiguity and ambivalence that this entails: intimate life in long-distance relationships.
When we sit in front of a screen, our body stays outside. Mentally, we are behind the screen—up on the data cloud, out in data space. Viewed from this perspective, the world of things appears bizarre, slow, and refractory—somehow odd. Mentally, we occupy a fluid, digital realm, but our body inhabits a world where the treachery of the object, a certain physical objectionability, prevails. This state of affairs has consequences. Our inner thoughts, which are already fluid, are shifting more and more to the digital sphere. Photos, posts, messages, blogs, and emails are now what convey our sense of being, not our bodies. As such, inwardness no longer occupies the core of our physical existence; it has been outsourced into the cloud. Indeed, the body itself is increasingly being transferred into the sphere of data by way of its various functions. Blood pressure information, blood sugar levels, urine concentration, fertility calculations, and cybersex are moving physical sensation—once considered the inalienable core of individuality—into the realm of data. What’s left?
When interiority abandons the body as a site of residence and wanders off into data space, it becomes what it always already was: virtual. After all, the world within is where desires are administrated. Proper management is called virtue, virtus. It involves mastering and moderating appetites: not repression so much as tactical and strategic deployment, an economy of restraint and targeted release. But it takes some room to restrain desires and still keep them alive: it takes the inner world. Inasmuch as interiority shifts to data space, where it can be more readily administrated—and especially by third parties (which is why institutions have always sought to gain power over it)—the body is set free. Now, the body no longer stands as the fortress of interiority. It has become the projection surface for the soul. Since the inner world is drifting off into the realm of data, the body is turning into the site where relics of psychic space manifest themselves. Tattoos and piercings—tribal designs, spiderwebs, mythological animals, souvenirs, snakes, dragons, ornamental patterns, and so on—fill up the junk room of the psyche and spill outside, onto the body. In a certain sense, this represents an act of resistance: if the inner world is becoming commensurate with data, at least the body can avoid the same fate. That said, such practices amount to weak, apotropaic magic against the ghosts of interiority now inhabiting the data dimension. In fact, the ghosts of the machine are haunting the body and making it, aesthetically and functionally, into another machine. Cosmetic operations, body shaping, and fitness regimes serve to smooth out unsightly remainders of the past. The body is being pulled to pieces.
Such optimization measures represent administrative actions now that the body has been fired from the position of safeguarding interiority. Once it is no longer governed by inner forces—once it has been liberated from the soul—the body can be reformatted as a product: smooth surfaces, ideal proportions, compatible features, and customized design. Indeed, it turns into a surface where the digital machine writes its code. The body becomes writing, a digital medium; it no longer expresses individuality so much as the potentiality of x’s alterity evacuated to the power of n. Alter ego: the real me.
To the extent that the individual collapses when personal boundaries dissolve and stretch out into the realm of infinite possibility (xn), it becomes necessary to compensate for the lack that results. A fitting match is required: the Other as a prosthesis for one’s own self—a means of achieving narcissistic self-control. Here, online dating services enter the equation. They both contribute to, and operate by means of, interiority drifting off into the realm of data. By comparing profiles, dating sites claim to determine romantic and spiritual kinship between people (in other words, the compatibility of their inner worlds). But in fact, the actual purpose involves transferring the logic of shopping and commodity aesthetics to human relations. As a customer, the user may benefit from greater selection, but as an object of desire she or he also has to apply the laws of the market to him- or herself.
Insofar as one measures oneself according to a social imago (that is, the images of femininity and masculinity conveyed by Hollywood and advertising), one is obliged to “pimp” one’s own vita as much as possible and adjust the image to a desirable role model. As such, tinkering with one’s profile represents a form of self-fashioning like devising an artificial surrogate (an avatar). For anyone who signs up with a supposedly serious agency—say, one that caters to academics and financially robust elites—it proves impossible to avoid describing one’s personality in terms of patterns, drawing up a catalog of qualities and features, and following schematic logic when assessing oneself and others. When the inner world is cataloged and inventoried like this, a kind of database psychology emerges. Now, inwardness amounts to a seal of approval or a price tag.
Thus, it is no accident that there are dating services like Adopte un Mec or Shop a Man, which make commodity aesthetics—the experience of shopping—the rule of the game. There are top-shelf models and dead weight; market value is determined on the basis of customers’ voting behavior. Indeed, the object of desire is no longer obscure at all; instead, it dissolves into a statistical quantity (which can, in turn, function as a second-order attractor, fueling both desirability and self-promotion). Another response—which is just as unsurprising—involves applications like Tinder and BangWithFriends. Here, virtualization assumes even greater dimensions: a swipe on the touchscreen does away with the laborious matter of psychology altogether. Decisions occur quickly. If interest is “reciprocated,” further contact can be made. Formerly, such encounters meant running the risk of rejection (and corresponding embarrassment). The trick of these applications is to make a match only after both parties have demonstrated interest. In a certain way, risk-free assignations give rise to behavior that would not occur in the real world.
Whatever law dating sites obey, they establish forms of communication corresponding to database logic (x = xn). Because human beings are finite and have a determinate sex, they cannot fulfill a complete range of possibilities. In this sense, the individual is x ≠ xn. Under such conditions, it proves impossible to content oneself with just one other person. A series is required: xn. In consequence, generalized suspicion comes to haunt any and every contact—one is all but obliged to view one’s counterpart as a kind of serial offender. But doing so only amplifies one’s own feelings of psychological inadequacy. The result is second-order shame, which follows not from bodily exposure so much as from a sense of failure to live up to a media image. Coming up short in the digital dimension amounts to a kind of nakedness. It’s embarrassing that the unconscious of the machine has not achieved fuller realization—that one’s actual body rejects its power to shape and mold.
Durex, the condom company, has developed an application that allows partners to stimulate each other without touching; designed for foreplay, it uses special underwear to transform swiping and touching motions on a smartphone into strokes and tickles on the skin. A Japanese manufacturer has created his and hers masturbation robots: dildos and linings simulate sexually aroused organs in the most straightforward way; the robots can be operated by remote control (at least in terms of penetration speed) or perform preprogrammed functions. In the wake of the hype about virtual reality prompted by Oculus Rift, countless clips have surfaced that advertise the device by promising the illusion of coupling with the man or woman of one’s dreams. There are now data gloves and data suits; it won’t take long before they’re put together and used for virtual sex. If the chaste assumption still prevails that all this will redound to the benefit of people in long-distance relationships, surely the real appeal is the prospect of being able to sleep with just about anyone (xn). Nor is it difficult to foresee programs offering trysts of different shapes and kinds. There might be preprogrammed “tracks” combining various forms of sexual stimulation into erotic hits. Petting, pillow talk, different modes of kissing and penetration, squabbles, and reconciliation would turn up the heat like musical phrases, riffs, and bridges.
This is all quite banal. But insofar as such technology gathers and processes data in order to improve services and functions—insofar as the information flows into a mainstream and, in due dialectical course, into subcultural deviations—it will literally be possible to sleep with the whole world. Here, x = xn and xn = x means a universal orgasm. “Was it good for you?” might not be the real question. Maybe the postcoital issue will be different: Save, Save as, Cancel. And once the experience has been stored, push a button: Play again.
“The human being is a creature of distance,” said Heidegger. As an unrefined natural product, the individual cannot realize all the possibilities she or he embodies. In consequence, this inherently defective entity has the task of making the best use of the possibilities that do arise. Becoming human is a Bildungsroman. But what, exactly, do these possibilities consist of? Once upon a time, the horizon of immediate experience set the limit for what we could know. But ever since the world has become estranged—made distant, placed at a remove—the realm of possibility has exploded. It is not simply that prostheses now enable us to reach beyond our sensory apparatus (for instance, when a scanning tunneling microscope lets us see how atoms interact). Additionally, digitization allows for telepresence and global action incorporating the storehouse of empirical knowledge. Whatever you want …
For that matter: if we are able to enhance memory and performance, why shouldn’t we? Why, if the body’s appearance is no longer a matter of fate, should we shrink from applying surgical measures of augmentation or insurance? As celebrities demonstrate in exemplary fashion, the possibilities are so vast that it’s easy enough to succumb to an infinitesimal delirium (x = xn). If we can be everywhere, why be anywhere at all? If sex partners or life partners are on sale, why have just one? And since we can be whatever we want, there’s no need to be anything in particular. As a result, awareness of one’s own limitations becomes all but synonymous with a sense of personal nullity. The imago flashing on the horizon of our dreams lies so far away that it assumes negative form: a psychological antipode sucking out what little is left of a devitalized husk.
Wherever the ego is a void (or, to use a tautology, a crossed-out x), the individual hopes for salvation by plunging into relationships that promise to reconstitute him or her as x. But borderline personality disorder (BPD) occurs when the digital system short-circuits. Perceiving him- or herself to be null and void, the sufferer seeks redemption through the One. Then, as soon as the One appears, it is experienced as an attack on the sufferer’s realm of potential and rejected. From this perspective, BPD is the signature malady of our digital age: what happens when the formula fails. It represents the sole taboo still standing in the computerized world. Borderliners show us that bare presence (x = 1) offers nothing self-evident or reassuring; instead, it means experiencing the self as having been annihilated, a flat zero (x = 0). In response, they seek to make the systems of others crash (0 = 1).
The classical self-portrait was soul-searching. Artists set out to find the shadow behind the persona. In contrast, the selfie represents an act of self-forgetting: it perceives the shadow but tries to banish it behind the membrane formed by the image. That’s why there are selfies at the Louvre with the Mona Lisa in the background, selfies with somebody threatening to jump off a bridge, and selfies at Auschwitz. The selfie proves that one has managed to survive the impositions of selfhood and singularity, after all. Hence all the smiling—even when there’s not really anything to be happy about. The selfie doesn’t say “I.” It says “Me, too!” For this reason alone, it doesn’t actually connect with classical self-portraits. It’s not one’s own gaze, but a foreign stare that governs the scene. Selfies are a call for attention; shooting them signals the wish to be taken in and made part of a community. I’m there—Germany, the World Cup, with the Pope! The selfie is skin protecting digital existence from the body. The case of a Polish couple in Portugal shows just how far it can go: taking a selfie on a cliff, they plummeted to their deaths. To be sure, this was an unusual event, a misfortune, but lives are risked all the time for the sake of a better upload. Warnings are disregarded in order to ascend to the digital heavens. In fact, a better picture might result from avoiding all scenery—not showing any backdrop at all. The sea seamlessly fusing with the skies—pure, undifferentiated space—is perfect for selfies. The picture turns into a pure sign, an act where the self can yield to oblivion. Me, too!—in the limpid, digital cosmos.