On memory and information: a note

Much of my criticism of the semantic theory of information is informed by what are broadly-speaking social constructivist or post-structuralist worries about the contingency and co-constituative nature of reality. But, any good articulation of contingency and co-constituation must rely on historiography. In common sense terms historians are writing history by employing logic and information, but the referent is typically very distal (even if the object is material and in front of the historian, we do not typically take the historian to be speaking about that present object). And still, historiography is not neutral, it is a form of sense making: “the past invades the present despite historians’ attempts to put it at a distance” (Kasabova).

How can we reconcile historiography with the semantic theory of information? Dretske’s discussion of distal objects, as referring to something elsewhere is an answer, but I worry that it does not give sufficient weight to history or the contested nature of historiography—-of importance for Dretske is the present intentional relationship, not the actual (distal) event. Very memorable, sad, chilling, or joyous events, for example, the Holocaust, election of the first Black American US president, or the East Timor genocide, seem to require a much more subtle account. At the very least, Drestke’s presentism is problematic on purely metaphysical terms. Since Augustine’s formulation of the issue in Confessions XI presentism is coherent only in a loose sense in which the “present” is taken to mean “a short time”. And worse still, if presentism is true, the historian seem to be in a kind of fool, since the “past is no longer” and the “future is not yet” (Augustine, Confessions). Instead, we take it that what is important about history and historiography to be twofold: 1) let us remember these events, commemorate or lament them, so as to direct our current ethical, political, and material orientation and to avoid them or repeat them (this is both presentist and requires extension into the near or distant future), and 2) let us remember these events for their own sake, as events that deserve the respect of existing on their own, without the violence of articulation into current or future being. Following Aristotle (On Memory) we can distinguish between the retentive and the retrieving functions of memory, “the former preserves an event from forgetting and erasure, while the latter recalls and brings it back to the present.” (Kasabova); both forms are necessary.

It seems that the kind of realism required by the semantic theory of information requires a presentism with respect to time and change, yet, if we are to take seriously worries by privacy advocates that a major future issue of computer ethics is that they “don’t forget”, we must understand memory in relation to information. The need for forgetting, rather than remembering or commemorating seems to deal with meaning making (thus, semantics). In order to reason (in the broadest sense) we need to be able to select and evaluate, which means we must be able to forget. As Kasabova states, “to put it another way: if the temporal link memories were continuous, we would have no sufficient criteria for individuating our memories. Only a presentist would have no problems with this situation”. The inability to forget is, quite possibly, one of the reasons why computers are not semantic machines. The ability to extend a gaze through time, take history seriously, is a requirement for semantics.

Communication & Control: Haraway's investigation of the shift from psychobiology to sociobiology

As part of my ongoing research I have been investigating the interplay of communication and control, or put differently, information transfer and power. I’ve previously attempted to tie this connection through Foucault, Nitzan and Bichler, and Marx (picking up with Warren Weaver’s paradigmatic mathematical move to noise/information and channel capacity) . In a fairly obvious way power is generated by capital, or is a hologram of capital’s effects, and for example, capital is increasingly generated through diffuse markets (securitization of exotic financial instruments, etc.) and the information flows of global capital in Information Communication Technologies such as the Internet. This shift can probably be articulated in a number of ways: in a rough and quick manner I’ve previously tried to articulate the history from a critical economic perspective, and I’ve had my eye on a metaphysical theory for years (perhaps premised on notions of entropy?). As part of the Twitter-based philosophy of technology reading group I’ve spearheaded, our reading of Donna J. Hawaray’s Simians, Cyborgs, and Women has led me to think more directly with the post-WWWII shift to communication theory in all its guises. Haraway argues that the shift from psychobiology to sociobiology was due to the “communications revolution”. To wit (at length),

The communications revolution changed the strategy of control from organism to system, from eugenics to population management, from personnel management to organization structures (sociotechnical systems and ergonomics) based on operations research. A communications revolutions means a re-theorizing of natural objects as technological devices properly understood in terms of mechanisms of production, transfer, and storage of information. Changes in the technology of actual communications systems provided part of the material foundation of fundamental scientific reformulations. War and problems of military management encouraged new developments in science. Operations research began with the Second World War and efforts to co-ordinate radar devices and information about enemy position in a total or systems way, which conceived of the human operator and the physical machinery as the unified object of analysis. Statistical models were increasingly applied to problems of simulation and prediction for making key decisions. After the way, the explosive development of electronics industries and communications technology was increasingly tied to strategies of social and military planning to devise and manage stable systems organized around several axes of variation. Knowledge about range of variation and interaction effects among classes of variables replaced concerns for individual states. The computer, a communications machine, both effected and symbolized new strategies of control. … Let us grant that communications means control—-but for what?

Donna J. Haraway,Simians, Cyborgs, and Women(Routledge, 1991).