In Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization the author writes that the machine was unique in that it was a human creation that could exist outside our own existence.
For a while I thought that machines were simply a subset of language, but it seems there’s a differentiation worth making here.
Humans encapsulate recursion into language, where it can expand without causing violence directly. Words can be broken down or combined and lots of fun things happen. However, when we stop using language, it doesn’t appear (on the surface anyway) to continue on despite us. We have to make a constant effort to engage in language: conjuring words, explaining or redefining terms, etc. Eric Gans believes that the first word was therefore the word of the god in question, Yahweh. This “word” was image-less and intuited as having always existed. I think I adhere more to H. Clay Trumbull’s intuition that this was the first sacred: extremely simple, a single word, imageless, probably existing in the midst of a fire, perhaps in a consumed animal sacrifice which resolved the apocalyptic potential of violence, with no frills. The word could simply be conjured at future crises, an animal sacrificed, etc.
James Frazer, though I love The Golden Bough, believed that the first sacred was some kind of magic whereby the speaker attempted to modify his or her environment with an incantation that was also a sort of explanation of the world. Over time the magical word was debunked, sloughed off into science with some ritual energy being left over for purely deferential religion.
I don’t believe Frazer’s ordering is correct, but it exemplifies the Victorian scientific attitude toward language. They believed it was some kind of evolutionary advancement, experienced more by some groups than others depending on latitude and other geographic details, that might have come from more primal, non-linguistic animal calls. This paved the way for lots of bad linguistics that we have thankfully abandoned.
Frazer contended then that all religion comes from some kind of old folk magic, and much of The Golden Bough is an exposee of Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, and some Jewish rituals which have strong roots in pagan magic. This is at least partially correct, but it’s also possible that that same magic came from an over-elaboration of the original sacred word. Per Originary Anthropology, modern religion isn’t necessarily more or less magical than paganism. It’s just elaboration of the original sacred in various directions. Theology is the study of that family tree and which, if any, paths are correct, or close to correct.
Michael Shermer recently posted a video about how it’s unreasonable for any single religion in 30,000 global religions to claim to be the one true faith, but this is a strawman argument from Shermer, who is intelligent. Language performs this same function: I believe you should direct your attention to my action movie, and I believe at least 1 billion people would enjoy it. You the viewer might agree, but most of the 1 billion others have their attention elsewhere. Is it egotistical for me to want their attention? Are propaganda and media in general egotistical? Perhaps, but all language is attempted propaganda. I can trace my argument back to the beginning of time. Any of the 30,000+ religions in the world do this same task. This would only bother one if they are competing for the same demographic.
All this is to say that language has its start at the center of human relations. It’s the symbolic state of recursion. Violence has the same start. Which one came first?
Language and violence are different states of recursion, but there’s a major difference: violence requires the presence of an object of violence. Recursive, object-based aggression (ROBA), being restricted to people, centers around the potential object of violence. It need not actually be present to exert its power. The Cold War was the pinnacle of war tactics, and yet the main antagonists didn’t carry nukes around with them. Rather they carried around codes, phone numbers, and papers. ROBA requires no object, but it’s there in the imagination.
The mere fear of the apocalyptic object in ROBA is adequate to create this first word. It’s plausible then that language preceded violence.
In my recent white paper, I hypothesized a different scenario: the first linguistic sign was the conversion of the object of violence into an object of language: the first “lithic”, or the so-called “handaxe”. This was not a utilitarian means to control one’s environment via cutting wood or skinning animals for clothing. It was an object of violence. It had to be. Only after the stone took on the power of recursion could it be refashioned into a lithic, which could be carried around, left behind, or fashioned as needed. The lithic became the first machine.
The lithic was just as linguistic as the name of God, except unlike language it existed on its own. It needed no human operators. The lithic was the first idol. It could be kept at a shrine, wherein it would eminate power outward. It could be remade when needed.
Some priests might have developed a cult of followers who believed that the only way to kickstart the recursive loop and engage in constructive language was to present the object of violence, the lithic, the idol, and scare the participants into using language. But there’s a problem with this: we do not need an object to conjur the fear of apocalyptic violence. We don’t need an object to engage in language and the dialectic. We can parse words without violence. If one claims that the only way to engage in dialog is to present a weapon, this is a lie. Perhaps the lithic was the first such lie.
If the lithic was the first machine, and the lithic was the first lie, are machines predicated on lies? In other words, we have created Ellul’s Technological Society, Ted Kaczynsky’s dystopian techological hive-mind, which demands we constantly continue operating it. We seem to think that life cannot continue without the machine, because it “intends” that we continue using it. The back-to-the-basics movements are most popular in the most technologically advanced places. The “I only own 100 things” movement was a Silicon Valley thing. Luddite movements appear to be primarily reactions against overwhelming demands made by machines. Myself being somewhere far off camera on the Autism spectrum, I never understood these movements because not only can I easily answer the machine’s demands, I can demand far more from it: I code with it, build websites with it, and now I can make sh*tty concept art and temp music with it. And it appears to fulfill my demands without complaining. If it complains, I’ll upgrade my ram, buy a different app, get a different computer, etc. For Autistics, Tech Society is utopian because we can demand AND contribute far more from/to it than it demands/contributes from/to us. We contribute right angles and perpetual motion machines. We “carpenter” the world with these unnatural aesthetics because it makes things really easy for us. It’s increasingly an Autistic’s world and we know it.
However, I spent about 10 years of my life with a manic (schizoid) personality type, and I came to understand Technological Society through her eyes, and it was a frightening place.
To the schizoid, language is the way to utopia. They jump into the center of the linguistic dialectic, contributing and demanding far more from it than the opposite. They are the great debaters, the seers, the ones who can read an entire room. They’re great intuiters.
Such group situations are terrifying to Autistics. The sheer amount of noise, conflicting intents, criss-crossing of motion vectors, movement of furniture into suboptimal places feels like a puzzle that one is constantly operating but can never complete, like a 911 operator during an air raid. The best of us Autistics will enter this social environment, do a lot of cognitive tasks while taking everything in, then go and be alone for a day or two and process with a long blog post like this.
The Schizoid’s experience with machines, Tech Society, and the carpentered world is the same as the Autistic’s experience in human group settings. The right angles of buildings, droop of power lines, hum of traffic, scroll of the financial ticker and din of repeated electronic sounds is an incessant demand on the schizoid, which is more demonic than mechanical. Its repetition and repeatability lend to its demonic nature, and yet it cannot be exorcised with words, nor reasoned with. Not like with a person. They try. They shout at traffic and buildings, they guard against Wi-fi frequencies. But the machine is nothing like language: it cannot be reckoned with like people. And yet that’s the way of the schizoid. This person is mostly no longer in my life. She spends her days without a phone, photographs, or electricity. In Las Vegas. In the summer.
A very natural reaction to the machine is to bomb it all to the ground, like Tyler Durden in Fight Club leveling all the financial buildings in the city. Like anyone trying to level any building for a political reason. Buildings are the epitome of Tech Society: steel, right angles, light without sun, creating a center, taller than trees.
So far I’ve discussed language and machines as two different manifestations of recursion. Language is symbolic recursion existing only within human relations. Machines are encapsulations of recursion outside of human relations. Perhaps written and printed media are something in between, but since written language comes after lithics, maybe written media is simply its own linguistic “machine.” Anything that encapsulates recursion into an external vehicle (preventing it, for the time being, from being transformed into a violent state) is technically a “medium.” So either media are machines, machines are media, or both. Again, I’m not sure it matters.
There is one “medium” however that doesn’t fit these categories: domesticated animals. Once domesticated, animals were our first machines. They could reliably drive a mill or a turbine, transport us across land, plow a field. I believe the domestication process is badly misunderstood. Belyaev’s experiment on foxes, whereby domestication produced docile foxes with grey coats and smaller jaws in a short amount of time, is usually attributed to their being removed from a dangerous environment. But this can’t be the case: cattle and goats are domesticated, but they are led to the slaughter regularly, and any farmer or shepherd will tell you that they often know their own fate pretty well. It’s not clear at all that domestication correlates with living in a safer environment.t
The ROBA Hypothesis generally holds that human self-domestication results from the use of language over violence, which is the overwhelming trend of human history. The same should be true of animal domestication: however much animals might fail at conversing with humans due to their inability to use language, their domestication is proof that they are trying to. They’re therefore able to respond to at least some human demands, and humans in turn respond to their demands. This process is at least partially-linguistic and I would assume that schizoids would have at least partial success at it. Perhaps Autistics only have partial success too, though Temple Grandin’s work is evidence that it’s more an Autistic endeavor. I’ve heard shepherding referred to as an Autistic trade: the ability to discern one’s flock in a sea of white is akin to an ironsmith hammering out a slight defect, or an electrical engineer finding a disruption in a power grid.
If we use machines, writing, art, domesticated animals and other “media” to encapsulate recursion, preventing it from entering the active state of violence, then these different media might be categorized based on 1) the media’s ability to resolve our intents and 2) our ability to resolve their intents. Machines appear to be the latest media that demand the use of a very specific, impersonal language, one which a subset of the population is quite good at, and another subset appears to be totally averse to. The manic-schizoid personality types might be constantly trying to interface with machines and tech society as though it functions and “talks” like a human group, which doesn’t work.
We especially see this when human and machine become confused. Use of fire produced myths of sacred flames in faraway lands or in the sky (see Frazer’s Fire Myths). Use of ships produced myths of Leviathan. Use of rifles and evidence-based justice produced myths of werewolves. The invention of the telegraph corresponded with the widespread belief in mind-reading1. The measurement of radium correlated with the emergence of the new age idea of the “aura”. Mumford discussed the discovery of bacteria as a new kind of “demonology”, a kind of evil substance undergirding plague, exorcised using prescribed cleansing rituals and magical herbs. Brass mirrors produced mirror divination, but silver mirrors produced the introspective philosophy of Rousseau. The airplane produced the UFO. And the threat of nukes have produced intelligent alien life that acts as our next messiah. All of these media “talk” to us by issuing the latest (craziest) myths of pop culture.
When language itself is the medium of recursion, humans self-domesticate. When animals are the medium of recursion, then animals and humans must experience a kind of co-domestication. When machines are the medium, then the human must bear all the force of domestication until he or she can issue the appropriate update to the machine, and the cycle continues.