Alright, pop quiz: Is there a reality outside of human experiences? Please circle YES or NO.
Chances are you find this question either very silly or very complicated, possibly both. But I argue that this question is actually lurking in the background of much this month’s earlier digital dualism debate, and that giving it some attention straightens a lot of things out—especially the compelling (but ultimately incorrect, I argue) charge that augmented reality is itself a dualist framing.
To illustrate why this question matters, consider the following fictional (but not entirely unlikely) scenario, in which I either am or am not a jerk:
say PJ (@pjrey) and I are working on a paper draft late into the night. I go to read a paragraph PJ’s just added and disagree with how he’s put something, so I add a comment in the margin with my critique. PJ reads my comment and responds that, okay, he can see my point, but he also feels I’ve been unnecessarily harsh in how I’ve made it. I, on the other hand, feel that my phrasing is perfectly reasonable. Recall that it’s late, so we’ve probably been at this for a while and we’re both probably tired; it’s entirely likely both that I’ve been careless with my words and that PJ is feeling more sensitive to critique than usual. But the question remains: have I been a jerk co-author and a bad friend, or haven’t I?
If you believe that human experiences determine reality, you’ve got a bit of a problem. On the one hand, PJ very much experienced my comment to be out of line; therefore, the reality of the situation is that I have been mean, and I am a jerk. On the other hand, I very much experienced my comment to be acceptable, so the reality of the situation is that I have not been mean, and I am not a jerk. How can we resolve the tension of these two mutually exclusive versions of reality existing at the same time? There are two easy moves here:
1) Multiple realities. PJ’s human experience and my human experience each inform one of two separate realities (that happen to interact some). PJ lives in his reality, and I live in mine; in PJ’s reality I am a mean jerk, and in my own reality I am not a mean jerk. Since we need to finish that paper though, probably the best thing for me to do is apologize for the fact that I did something (whether right or wrong) that has made PJ upset—after all, that PJ is upset with me is real in both of our realities.
2) Varying degrees of humanness. If human experience determines reality, then perhaps one of us is less human than the other—probably me, given that I’m a woman and PJ’s a man and that’s just how these things tend to go. In this case, PJ’s human experience determines reality, and I am a mean jerk; since I am less fully human, my own experience of not being a mean jerk is less fully real. Again, I should probably apologize—but for my comment itself, in addition to the fact that it hurt PJ’s feelings.
Now as far as the fictional example itself goes, this isn’t so bad. After all, nature of “truth” or “reality” aside, it’s always a good idea to honor your friends by taking their feelings seriously—so who really cares why I’ve apologized so long as PJ and I get our paper done and still like each other at the end of it. But if something about the above is ringing a bell—perhaps something about “separate realities” and “less human”—then you see where I’m going with this: I’m arguing that a fundamental confusion about the relationships between “realness,” “reality,” and human experiences underlies both what Nathan Jurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) recently categorized as ontological digital dualism and the as-yet-unnamed strains of digital dualism theory that deal with degrees of enmeshment and evaluations of what is “more real, deep, human, and true.” My goals in this essay are pretty big: by the time it’s done, I’m going to attempt to straighten out digital dualism’s ontological confusion, clarify some things about augmented reality to show why it’s not a dualist position, propose important refinements to theories of both digital dualism and augmented reality, and see if I can’t make some of my points about that Nicholas Carr piece along the way. (Good thing I’ve got all day.)
Let’s go back to that question: Have I been a jerk co-author and a bad friend, or haven’t I? But this time, let’s think differently about the relationships between human experiences and reality: suppose that there’s one singular reality, but that it exists independent of human experiences (see David Banks’s [@DA_Banks] introduction here for an illustrative story). Human experiences exist inside this reality—they are themselves “real”—but they neither determine reality nor necessarily reflect it. This means that PJ’s experience of me as a mean jerk is real, and my experience of myself as not-a-mean-jerk is equally real, but that neither of our experiences determines (or potentially even reflects) the underlying objective reality of “what happened” when I made that comment. We can argue and attempt to persuade each other as to the nature of that underlying objective reality if we really want to, and either come to an agreement about how we will determine what is “true” or not, but the fact remains: human experiences are real, but they are not themselves the whole of reality. (Besides, I’d rather apologize and spend the last of the night’s waning collective brainpower tromping through ‘the ontological weeds’ than role-play Boyle and Hobbes anyway.)
Here’s augmented reality in a nutshell: There is but one objective reality, and it exists both outside of and prior to human experiences. This reality contains all sorts of stuff, and all that stuff is real: stuff comprised of atoms (ex: my body), stuff comprised of bits (ex: my online presences), stuff comprised of both (ex: my self), and stuff comprised of neither (ex: my feelings and experiences, social forces, discrimination, love, hate, power, the lot of it). All of these things interact and affect each other in a huge multitude of ways, and again: they are all equally real. There you go: there’s our world. There’s augmented reality. It’s not hard.
So what’s up with digital dualism?
The first mistake that digital dualism (broadly speaking) makes is in the dualism part. (Recall that the definition of dualism is, “the division of something conceptually into two opposed or contrasted aspects, or the state of being so divided.”) We at Cyborgology haven’t always been super-consistent or clear about what that dualism actually is, so I’m going to look at the three big ones: Atoms/Bits, Physical/Digital, and Online/Offline. We’ve tended to use these three interchangeably—or to treat them as analogous to each other—but I think that, overall, doing so has created more confusion than clarity. I’m going to start trying to untangle them below.
On a conceptual level, all three pairs are co-produced—meaning that for each pair, our conceptualization of each-as-such also shapes and creates our conceptualization of the other, because the two concepts come into being simultaneously as the result of drawing a single conceptual boundary. We didn’t think about “atoms” the way that we do now until we were also thinking about “bits,” for instance, and we didn’t think about “the physical” in the way that we do now until we were also thinking about “the digital” in the way that we do now (remember that “digital” used to mean something physical: “of or pertaining to fingers”); there was simply no such thing as “offline” before we started thinking about “online.” [If you’re new to co-production [pdf], it’s a particularly useful way to think about these supposed binaries because it rejects a priori demarcations (such as those that define any of these pairs) and “sweeps back into the analyst’s field of vision connections between natural and social orders that disciplinary conventions often seek to obliterate, thereby doing injustice to the complexity as well as the strangeness of human experience.” In other words: when you’re thinking about “the physical” and “the digital” (for example) as being co-produced, you’re inherently recognizing that “physical” and “digital” are not rigid or stable categories, and that there’s nothing ‘natural’ or inevitable about them.]
Ontologically speaking, however, neither Atoms/Bits nor Physical/Digital is truly a dualism. Neither pair includes two things that are mutually exclusive; neither pair represents stuff that forms an oppositional binary in that one reality outside of human social experience. Even if we’re looking for a contrast dualism rather than an oppositional dualism, neither pair comprises the whole of reality: reality includes more than atoms and bits, and more than things that are physical or digital. Granted, that Atoms/Bits and Physical/Digital are (ontologically) false dualisms doesn’t mean that digital dualists—and other people who are wrong—don’t invoke them as dualisms anyway (e.g., as if “the physical” and “the digital” would somehow have beef with each other if suddenly all the people disappeared and there was no one left to imagine it that way), but the important point here is: these two are slippery dualisms.
Both (at least in part) represent concepts that attempt to map onto stuff that exists whether there are human beings around to think about conceptual categories or not. Engaging with these pairs (or critiquing others who have done so) requires careful attention to the level of discussion: are we working on the conceptual, “ideas that some people have” level, or on the ontological, “statements about the nature of our one reality” level? Lack of consistently explicit clarity here is one reason some critics can claim we think all digital dualists are strong digital dualists—and in either case, it’s important that we call attention to when these pairs are being invoked as oppositional binaries without ourselves reinforcing the idea that there’s anything zero-sum about them. There are lots of things which are not physical, for example, but also not digital; “digital” and “not physical” should not be used interchangeably.
The Online/Offline dualism, however, is a bit different. For starters, it’s a genuine oppositional binary: though proponents of augmented reality argue otherwise, in its original (or typical) framing, “online” and “offline” are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed. Notably, where both the Atoms/Bits and Physical/Digital dualisms take two preexisting concepts and pair them in a newer oppositional relationship, the “online” and “offline” concepts were from their first use co-produced as a zero-sum pair. And importantly, this dualism has the lowest chance of slipping unexpectedly into an ontological conundrum: “online” and “offline” are entirely conceptual, and don’t attempt to map onto anything in objective reality (the way that, say, the human concept of “nature” tries to map onto rocks and trees and other things that exist without people[i]). Of course, Online/Offline is a spurious distinction; as we’ve argued over and over again, the nature of augmented reality is that atoms, bits, and everything else are thoroughly and inextricably enmeshed, which makes augmented reality a non-optional system, so no you simply cannot “log off” or “disconnect.” The impossibility of escaping the influence of digitally-mediated interaction means that there is simply no “offline” (and since there is no cyberspace, there’s no pure “online” either); there are only varying degrees and types of engagement or connectivity.
I was originally going to propose Online/Offline as the defining dualism of digital dualism writ large, largely because it’s a less slippery and more clear-cut dualism than the other two. Upon further consideration however, I think these dualisms map fairly well onto Jurgenson’s three strands of digital dualism critique, so instead I propose the following:
- Atoms/Bits is the defining dualism of ontological digital dualism
- Online/Offline is the defining dualism of digital dualism that ignores or underestimates enmeshment (“divisive” or “partitioning” digital dualism?)
- Physical/Digital is the defining dualism of digital dualism that judges and assigns value (“evaluative” or “executive” digital dualism…or perhaps “moralizing” digital dualism?)
Why does any of this matter? Because I really want to address two points: Carr’s argument that augmented reality does not take into account human experience or how people feel, and Bickford’s argument that augmented reality is inherently dualist. In the rest of this essay, I’m going to argue that augmented reality, as a theory, does treat human experiences as real (and that Cyborgologists have done a great job of doing so), even if we don’t take the position that human experiences determine or reflect reality. I’m also going to argue that augmented reality, as a theory, rejects all three of these dualisms: that it recognizes Online/Offline as a spurious distinction (and throws out both categories), and that it recognizes differences between atoms and bits (or between the physical and the digital) without conceptualizing either pair as a dualism or an oppositional binary.
Whitney Erin Boesel has no idea if this essay will ultimately get posted in two parts or three, but she’ll let you know about each part on Twitter: she’s @phenatypical.
Reality check image from here; No Reality image from here; Michelle Bachmann reality check image from here; Stop payment image from here.
[i] I’m aware that Carr made precisely this argument, that “offline existed before online gave us the idea of offline”—but put quite simply: this is not correct. Carr makes an analogous statement that “nature existed before technology gave us the idea of nature,” but as Bruno Latour (and a bunch of other people) have painstakingly elaborated: no, actually it didn’t. Nothing was “offline” before the advent of the “online”; it was simply not-online. See? This is the danger of dualist thinking: it leads you to neglect important categories like “not-online” by trying to make everything zero-sum.
Comments 20
Mitsu — March 20, 2013
A very interesting post, but there are a bunch of subtle issues here (none of which touch on your critique of digital dualism, but are worth pointing out, nonetheless). As I wrote in my post on the subject ( http://www.syntheticzero.com/?p=1640 ) there are actual several problems with the idea of "bits" and "atoms" as you've proposed it, above. I.e., when you say "There's our world. There's augmented reality. It's not hard" actually you're eliding over a ton of issues that are, in fact, quite hard.
In other words, as I wrote above, it's quite possible --- in fact, I believe it is conceptually necessary --- to think of the physical world in information terms. That is, there's no sensible way to distinguish between "bits" as they exist in a digital world and "bits" as they comprise physical systems. Even particles traversing the universe can be thought of as quantum bits, "physical" interactions as information interactions and so on.
This is not merely a matter of semantics --- there are profound implications of this in terms of physical theory. Many bizarre problems in the lab, most notably the problem of quantum observation, can be traced to this issue. In other words, it may well NOT be the case that there's an "objective" world in the sense we ordinarily think of it outside of experience of some kind, or awareness. For those unfamiliar with the myriad deep issues in quantum mechanics, this may seem surprising, but it is quite tenable as a physical interpretation of experiment. For example, consider Max Tegmark's paper, "Does the Universe in Fact Contain Almost No Information?" http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/nihilo.html - in which he argues that it is a potential reasonable interpretation of QM that all the stars, galaxies, etc., only exist relative to a particular observational perspective, and in fact the total universal wavefunction contains close to zero objective information.
The main point here, however, is that when you think about the physical manifestation of "bits", it's simply quantum interactions --- the fact that we're able to create computational systems doesn't change the fact that they're quantum systems interacting just like the rest of "physical" reality. There's no clear way to demarcate a dividing line between the computational systems and interactions and any other systems and interactions. The phrase "human experience" is at best a vague approximation with no clear definition whatever. Thus, "augmented reality" can only be a vague approximation --- to really adopt this as though it were clearly defined is essentially at least partially dualist.
I think this is true in more than just a pedantic sense. One could refer to "virtual worlds" created by, say, oral storytelling, just as well as one can refer to virtual worlds created in a computer. The existence of computers hasn't fundamentally altered the information description, it's just made certain qualitative shifts possible in the way information can be processed.
There is, however, a clear difference between quantum information interactions which set up a kind of computation of any kind (not only computers or humans, but amoeba or any other living system), and those which do not... what Gregory Bateson refers to as "cybernetic" interactions (though his theory was based on a classical physics picture of the world). Any sort of cybernetic (using Bateson's definition) system creates the possibility of a "world" in the sense of observations, awareness... and there are lots of levels of complexity possible. The ability to create a system which can simulate another system, particularly artificially, does create an interesting new category of such systems. These do not divide the world, but they do establish interesting categories of systems worth discussing in their own right.
Mitsu — March 20, 2013
(To clarify it a bit further --- it's a reasonable interpretation of physics to suggest that there is, in fact, no "rock" or "star" there outside of some sort of experience --- be it that of, say, a bacterium or some other self-referential feedback loop of cybernetic processing. As for the question of how life evolved if there weren't stars and planets before life --- it's a strange possibility but one way of addressing this question is to say that life can be seen to exist in such a way that it retroactively projects a "past" which is consistent with its existence, but in fact time really exists only in "time capsules" so to speak of present awareness, whether it is human or some other form of life/cybernetic feedback. These are all quite within the realm of possible interpretations of physics as we understand it today.)
More digital dualism: we should stop talking about metaphysics and start talking about people | Tyler Bickford — March 20, 2013
[...] Erin Boesel (@phenatypical) has a post up at Cyborology continuing the “digital dualism” discussion, which is partially a response to my post [...]
Tyler Bickford — March 20, 2013
This is really great, Whitney. I totally agree with your framing of the issue in terms of the relationship between humans and "reality", and I think it's really helpful to specify the three dualisms. I disagree about the relative utility of online/offline versus the other two, and even though it seems weirdly like I've just been waiting to pounce (in fact I'm procrastinating during spring break), I posted a bit of a response, originally intended as a quick comment that ballooned out of control, here.
SAA — March 20, 2013
I don't mean to keep bringing up PoSR all the time, but it seems applicable to your fictional exchange with PJ. This was an example of the outcome of PolySocial Reality:
In your scenario, you were typing and leaving each other asynchronous messages. In this case, there was not enough overlap in your message communication to convey proper meaning. Thus, the assumption of your meaning and intent on his part, was not as you intended.
This is an outcome of PolySocial Reality: asychronous messaging can generate less overlap which results in missed meaning which in other circumstances can lead to reduced cooperation. (Our talk from TtW2012)
In this case, no one is a jerk or a bad friend, but PoSR instances, particularly those that are reliant on asynchronicity, can lead to very real miscommunication.
In our opinion, this would all happen within one reality, but both your and PJ's scenario experience were outcomes of instances of PolySocial Reality.
Mitsu — March 20, 2013
I clearly went a bit too far with my physics comment earlier --- too metaphysical perhaps for this topic. However, I'd like to make a simpler comment: atoms/bits really isn't a clear distinction from a physics point of view. In order to implement "bits" you have to use "atoms", there's a kind of naive intuition people have that the physical world is somehow made of "stuff" (atoms) and the digital world is somehow made out of ephemeral "bits" --- but in fact this distinction doesn't really hold water. Information can be distinguished in some sense from carriers of information (that's a complex topic for theory of computation and information theory), but the so-called digital world isn't really separable. Bodies, ecosystems, particles all can be said to transmit and receive information, carry information, have noise, etc., in pretty much a uniform fashion. So this is where there's a problem with the "augmented reality" notion --- as though somehow the introduction of computers and networks and so on has actually created a separate world of "bits" that didn't exist before --- this just can't be made to make sense, really, from a strictly theory of computation/information physics point of view.
The other issues with an "objectIve" world outside of perception are, in fact, also standard physics and part of what physicists discuss --- but it's beyond the scope of this post.
PJ Patella-Rey — March 20, 2013
For the record, you are not a mean jerk.
You don't say it explicitly here, but I think this a good first stab at introducing a phenemenological approach to the digital dualism debate.
Even with approach, we're still confronted with the paradox of having to expain how physical and digital are both the same and different. I think that's why the concept of affordances is both important and useful. It also allows us to make the important point the objective and subjective cannot be disentangled.
In any case, I think the most important contribution here is your attempt to distinguish atoms/bits, physical/digital, and online/offline. We have been sloppy in using these categories and we should be thinking about which set of categories is appropriate in what cases.
Boaz — March 20, 2013
Just a few small comments/questions on the physics stuff here.
Whitney writes:
"We didn’t think about “atoms” the way that we do now until we were also thinking about “bits,” for instance..."
Is this a historical statement? I don't think the development of atomic theory had all that strong of an engagement with the development of information theory.
Mitsu writes:
"atoms/bits really isn’t a clear distinction from a physics point of view"
I think you have to be a little more precise about what is meant by a physics point of view. Do you mean standard model? Non-relativistic quantum mechanics? The most direct place we might talk about atoms and bits might be in statistical mechanics. We have states and probabilities to be in different states. Its not clear to me what "co-production" would mean in this context which Whitney raised as being relevant to all three dualisms here.
It looks like the atoms/bits dualism lands mostly in the philosophy of science realm, and so clearly some engagement with that literature would be necessary to clarify what is being discussed. Do you only want to talk about digital media- the ones and zeros of a hard drive or CD? Or do you want to make some claim about the unity vs. lack of unity of the entire universe?
PJ recently posted on Twitter a link to a paper by John Sanders about the ontology of affordances, which tried to connect them to basic physics. I guess that's one direction of clarification or grounding. It did make me think that one could talk about the affordances of atoms in terms of moving them around, causing them to transition from one electronic state to another, etc. And affordances of bits could be stuff like applying an XOR operation, or maybe something having to do with parsing and such. But I have a hard time seeing how one could go from such a low level description to questions about affordances of different media at a human scale.
In any case, I enjoy reading these posts and following these discussions even if I think it doesn't always make so much sense, and that more grounding in some traditional fields could clarify things a lot.
Materiality Matters: Confronting Digital Dualism with a Theory of Co-Affordances » Cyborgology — March 21, 2013
[...] light of Carr’s piece, Whitney Erin Boesel and Nathan Jurgenson have both written excellent posts attempting to refine the concept of digital [...]
nathanjurgenson — March 22, 2013
"Atoms/Bits is the defining dualism of ontological digital dualism
Online/Offline is the defining dualism of digital dualism that ignores or underestimates enmeshment (“divisive” or “partitioning” digital dualism?)
Physical/Digital is the defining dualism of digital dualism that judges and assigns value (“evaluative” or “executive” digital dualism…or perhaps “moralizing” digital dualism?)"
i can see why "atoms" and "bits" points to ontological concerns, but to disagree with PJ above, i'm not sure i follow the usefulness of other two categories as it is currently outlined. "atoms/bits" is also commonly used for the 2nd and 3rd concerns. perhaps i do not understand the goal in making these categories?
Miscellaneous Observations | The Frailest Thing — March 23, 2013
[...] thorough job of documenting the digital dualism debates over the last year or two here, and here she offers the first part of her own effort to further clarify the terms of the digital dualism [...]
QRG — March 24, 2013
Here’s augmented reality in a nutshell: There is but one objective reality, and it exists both outside of and prior to human experiences. This reality contains all sorts of stuff, and all that stuff is real: stuff comprised of atoms (ex: my body), stuff comprised of bits (ex: my online presences), stuff comprised of both (ex: my self), and stuff comprised of neither (ex: my feelings and experiences, social forces, discrimination, love, hate, power, the lot of it). All of these things interact and affect each other in a huge multitude of ways, and again: they are all equally real. There you go: there’s our world. There’s augmented reality. It’s not hard.
- I disagree. I fins this issue 'hard' to get my head round. The idea there is one 'objective' reality is not something I am ready to accept. You would have to work - harder - to convince me of it.
Difference Without Dualism, Pt 2 (of 3) » Cyborgology — March 29, 2013
[...] Part I, I identified what I see as the three major dualisms of digital dualism: Atoms/Bits, [...]
Stéphane Vial — April 1, 2013
Hello Whitney! Interesting work. Just a few remarks.
1. You argue on that digital dualism has 3 variants : Atoms/Bits, Physical/Digital, and Online/Offline. Perhaps I missed it, but what's the difference between Atoms/Bits and Physical/Digital ? For me, it's the same, Atoms or Bits are just metaphors or metonymies for Physical/Digital. But, as I said somewhere, Bits are made of Atoms, and all that is digital is also physical, so maybe those terms are not the best ones... (but they are useful).
2. I think you forgot one very important dualism : Real/Virtual, which is very strong here in France and which is very ontological. I think it is the heart of ontological digital dualism, based on metaphysical fantasy, as I said at #TtW13.
3. It seems you agree on that there can be 3 (or more ?) digital dualisms, as Nathan introduced. i don't (and it seems PJ does not too). I cannot see more than 2 approaches : ontological and ethical. All other distinctions seem to me only rhetorical. Check my comments here : (as said here : http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/03/14/digital-dualisms-of-the-real/
4. Actually, I would not disagree on the idea that augmented reality is itself a dualist framing. I'll try to read Tyler Bickford asap.
Difference Without Dualism, Part III (of 3) » Cyborgology — April 4, 2013
[...] our collective work through clarifying both our language and our theoretical frameworks. In Part I, I identified the three major dualisms of digital dualism: Atoms/Bits, Physical/Digital, and [...]