My personal data is like my shadow: if you take it from me, you’re stealing my soul. Could it be that the subconscious is laid out on a digital bier like a corpse? Does data “embody” the fallen self; is it to be safeguarded at any price? Why else does such uneasiness arise when information—clicks, searches, addresses, and traces of online movement—becomes public? Could it be that, under the cover of our many masks, we have entrusted more to the Net than we would tell even our nearest and dearest? But then, are our secrets even private? Isn’t it true that media visibility has become obligatory—that irreverent self-portrayal represents a principle of social survival? So to whom does my shadow belong? Does all this amount to making a deal with the devil—with the dark, inscrutable side of power, Google or NSA? The former misuses my personal data for business—like a trafficker in souls. The latter pursues totalitarian aims, forging a digital panopticon to follow, surveil, and manipulate—to take away my freedom. In either case, I am being robbed. But what, exactly, is being stolen from me?
In the animistic worldview, the cosmos exists in two forms: a material world and a spiritual one. Now, our rationalist world has cast a spell over all the spirits; it releases spectral forms that, as products, no longer hold any relation to their point of origin. But from the vantage point of animism everything has two sides. Even if an object is merely an item of use, the donor’s soul inheres in it. Accordingly, when someone gives me something and I fail to offer a fitting gift in return, the residue of the giver’s soul starts to turn against me. A tension arises—a kind of voodoo economy. This model sheds new light on the generosity of the Internet. More still—and in much broader terms—it indicates that we are entering the epoch of digital animism. Accordingly, the friends teeming on my Facebook wall are not just carriers of information; they also bring along their mana—which is why they expect me to repay their friendly turns in kind.
In contrast to other versions of the return of the repressed, the digital dimension brings the spirit world back to life by technical means. Even if they seem to have been banished, ghosts now form a mass that can be archived, administrated, animated, manipulated, and mobilized. Whoever commands spectrally generated data rules human minds, too. Ultimately, this regime will bear on the natural world and administrate it via the laws of the large number, big data. If charitably inclined, one might rejoice that digital technology is animistic: here, the natural and spirit worlds are not divided. Such is the hope of the Californian Weltanschauung, which banks on transparency: the total, bilateral interpenetration of digital and physical space. From a critical perspective, however, digital technology—like all technology—represents a means for subjugating the real in order to escape it. As such, digital activities are not making the world a more spiritual place. They are trying to leave it behind—which is a matter of actual fact, as the physical universe grows more and more fluid. The command x = xn turns singular aspects of reality into a farce. To escape the tragedy this portends, the real retreats further and further into the ghostly, digital world. The electronic shadow—like the hau in Maori culture (the spirit within objects)—grows mightier than the thing itself. It turns into the actual unit of exchange, and objects—understood solely as articles of use (taonga)—offer little more than its pale gleam.
In a world imagined along the lines of traditional animism, it’s the responsibility of human beings to make sure that the ghosts are happy. But when digital animism prevails, the ghosts start attending to human welfare …
Does digital space mark the outer limit, the precipice, where ships flying the flag of our worldview start falling into the abyss? Yes and no. Digital space is technological. As such, it makes the world something to be experienced as a symbolic system; at the same time, it also holds the world at a distance. Like every technological space, the digital realm is simultaneously reality and the underworld: it liquefies bodies and separates them from the spirit. As a psychopomp—a guider of souls—digital technology comforts mortals with the promise of life after, and by way of, the body’s disappearance. Insofar as we hold the whole of our identity at the ready in a digital cloud—insofar as we post, store, and retrieve, whenever we wish, all that moves us and makes life worth living—we put ourselves in the hands of the psychopomp. The only thing we still believe in is the omnipresence of our identity inventory. In other words, we get immortality on credit in order to cheat the body—which is forgetful, prone to error, and perishable. We stand at the mercy of the psychopomp.
Yet this ambiguous deity is leading us to Hades—the realm of Orcus, god of punishment. Disembodied as we are, we now pay a price: nothing can be forgotten. All that constitutes our digital identity will haunt us forever. Copied and stored, it spreads over the vast digital domain in its entirety; even if it no longer seems to be there, it can still pop up, like a repressed memory. Omnipresence—the ubiquity of ghosts—is a symptom of x = xn. It cashes in on the threat of Anonymous—payback. “We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”
It would pose a challenge for an adventurer to pick two coordinates at random and then set out to reach this destination. It would not be a genius locus—a place beckoning with its beauty, the hospitality of the people there, its cuisine, monuments, or historical significance. It would be a wholly arbitrary spot on the map—maybe in the middle of the ocean, in the deepest jungle, or somewhere without any roads. It might lie in a gorge, in a city, or high up in the mountains.
But journeys of this kind are possible on Google Maps, which depicts the world in its entirety. With a simple click, just about any point on the globe can be sought out and viewed, at least as a satellite image. One can zoom in on the location—in some cases, fly over it in a 3D simulation, or even enter buildings. Floor plans are available—as are photographs taken by travelers, with information about sight lines. Eventually, by means of such pictures, the surface of the world will achieve photo-stereometric representation and be transcribed into a three-dimensional model. Sooner or later, as if we were playing a computer game, we’ll be able to go anywhere at all with a click of the mouse: the middle of a desert, a crag in Karakorum, a Kyoto side street, or a wild game crossing in Patagonia. Even though our bodies will still occupy a determinate location, x, the whole of the earth’s surface will virtually stand at our disposal, in xn points.
Although it may sound a bit childish, this science-fiction scenario could be spun out even further. Visual simulations will provide a pleasant view, but we still won’t be doing anything—that is, experiencing the place in situ. Yet by means of the power of thought—as technology already promises—we might telematically operate an anthropomorphic robot in, say, Caracas; it would talk, interact, and “party” with the people there—or other robots. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, given that this is exactly what drone technology does for purposes of reconnaissance and warfare. Somewhere in the Nevada desert, CIA or military personnel are sitting in front of a screen and evaluating what the electric eyes of their drones permit them to see—which, if need be, is then destroyed. This marks the beginning of ubiquitous being-on-site that will change the relationship between our bodies and their actual location. It heralds a floating state: our bodies might occupy x, but potentially they’ll be elsewhere, too: xn.
The drone is a nobody. The animal that lent its name to these machines is born from unfertilized eggs. In other words, it is parthenogenic. The drone is the technological manifestation of a floating state. When it’s time to mate, the drones of different bee colonies fly to a single spot, but without settling there. They hover and wait for a chance. In aviation, the term drone originally stood for an unmanned object used for target practice: something to be shot out of the air as it flew by.
Because drones are unmanned and sometimes self-steering—and are not conceived anthropomorphically—they represent the veritable prototype of autarchic technology. Drones could be anywhere. Everywhere, there could be drones. They’re like demons—hybrid beings that mediate between physical and virtual reality. The drone is the pixel as object. Its existence puts reality itself into a floating state.
Unix time started on January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 (GMT), its zero point. Ever since, without interruption, it has been counted off at one-second intervals. When these very lines were written, the timestamp—the number of seconds recorded since January 1, 1970—stood at 1,409,905,919. This standard is used the world over to synchronize computers; it affords an independent time zone for the Internet. The timestamp provided by processors also counts in milliseconds. Thus, it is possible to pinpoint every action performed on an interface—be it the click of a mouse, the push of a button, or actions generated by programs (say, setting cookies or creating a file). “The Epoch,” as Unix time is also known, is pure system time. It has nothing to do with the position of the sun, the revolutions of the earth, or the days, months, and years of the Gregorian calendar.
What’s essential is that the timestamp steers the events in programs—and on interfaces. Program sequences, fade-ins, and fade-outs can be monitored, accelerated, expanded, or postponed in relation to this reference point. Programs function like machinery with interlocking cogs; they consist of series of commands and processing priorities. In other words, it’s a matter of “reading off” distinct instructions that then are carried out in sequence. By breaking down processes into the smallest command units that can be linearly executed, it is possible to simulate spatial events (images) in timeframes lying in the millisecond range. This “atomic” structure of time enables the modification and recombination of every picture element (every program event) pixel by pixel. Time can be stretched, squeezed, distorted, and restacked at will. It can be reversed or looped. Accordingly, time need no longer be viewed as a succession of discrete, singular, and unrepeatable instants—as a string on the model of a + b + c + d + e. Instead, time multiplies: the linearity of its moments is transformed into a nunc stans that is constantly modifying itself. The process amounts, then, to a field. The formula describing the field is x = xn. This field, where the simultaneity of all that has ever been created comes into view, may be described as infinite presence.