It is not possible to utilise a single methodological source for a topic as broad as a social theory of the Internet. Nor is it appropriate to utilise a single methodological source to review literature associated with this topic, as it includes studies into the nature of the online community, technological products, and even fictional narratives. The initial objective here is to develop and justify the use of particular methodologies that can be brought together to show a consistent character. Applying the literary model once again, the Internet is the setting, social theory is the theme, and this literature review is an investigation of character. Of course the essential question that is immediately raised is which character is being investigated? This is the challenge for this particular section, because in order to apply the setting and the theme of this study, the character must take the form of a Generalized Other, a collective consciousness of the entirety of the myriad individual consciousnesses that is the human experience of the Internet.
Methodologies of experience thus becomes the operating principle from which an investigation of the Internet's character through this literature review is possible. Indeed, it is quite possibly that it is the only way that such a investigation can be conducted. Thus when this review investigates the literature associated with Internet as a technological artefact, neither the methodological approach or the literature chosen is that of an objectified orientation towards technical manuals. Likewise in the investigation of the Internet as a community, reference to normative orientation of relevant institutional status is avoided. Finally, when investigating the fictional narratives, the universal aesthetic approach of concentrating on degress of impression, expression and narrative coherence is secondary. All of these do have their place and must of course be referred to (a study of the Internet as a technical artefact with no concern for technical truth is clearly ridiculous for example) be they are not the central concern. Rather, the methodological orientation and chosen literature is primarily concerned with building a potrait and an understanding of the Internet's persona and psyche.
Critical questions are raised in each of these literature reviews. In terms of the technology of virtual reality, it is necessary to enunciate the abilities of technological simulation, to describe the psychological predictions of this simulated environment and finally to evaluate a general teleos and crisis tendancies. With regards to community formation, it is necessary to determine the degree that the Internet can be described as a discrete community within its own right, to elaborate the structure of community symbols and to ascertain the degree of influences and interventions from external social systems. Finally , in the aesthetic expression of the Internet-related future mythology, establishing the relationship between the technology, the community and the expressions, distinguishing between the rational and irrational concerns, and importantly, the characteristics of heroic protagonists.
In order to conduct such a review the general methodological approaches chosen are phenomological theories of technology, symbolic anthropological approaches to culture and contemporary psychoanalytic approaches to literature. In the first case the particular theorists chosen include Lewis Mumford for the concern of authoritarian versus democratic technologies, Doh Ihde for an analytical typology of technical experience, and Zoe Sophia's for a well-grounded critique of the limitations of a purely phenomological approach that elaborates experience to include desire and irrationality. With regards to cultural formation, Clifford Geertz has been chosen for the emphasis on culture interpreted through symbolic significance, Claude Levi-Strauss for a structural methodology that uncovers thematic, unexpected and consistent logic in a community and Pierre Bordieu for establishing the economic and intellectual biases (“symbolic power”) in the formation of choice of cultural products. Finally, in the realm of fictional narratives, Jacques Derrida's deconstructive method is particularly apt, especially given the metaphysical presumptions, Frederic Jameson in elucidating the influence of setting through an exceptionally broad social typology of contemporary and near-future settings, and finally Judith Butler, for an examination of assertive multiplicity of agent performance from individual subjects.
In many ways the choice of these theorists may often seem contradictory. Zoe Sophia, for example, is particularly critical of Don Ihde, who in turn avoids politicizing particular technical artefacts like Mumford does. Levi-Strauss, contrary to Geertz, investigates culture from the very perspective where is does not have clear symbolic significance. Bordieu reckons the entire game is biased anyway, whether the symbolic values are clear or hidden in structure. Derrida is concerned with the minutae of detail in the highly abstracted world of text. Jameson is concerned with broad view with a very strong emphasis on the “metaphysics of presence”. Bulter's perfoming agents seem to cut through both approaches.
The point being of course is to consider the competing perspectives as complementary rather that in competition to each other, where each is actually an elaboration to the other rather than an incommensurable opposite. This dialectical approach to these theories recognizes that even where a particular perspective seems antithetical to another because they are based on the same totalizing common denominator – that of experience – a synthesis must be possible which provides the required character potrait of the Internet's collective consciousness. A consiousness, which it must be noted from outset, consists of diverse individuals who step in and out of the Internet reality, who come with biases and expectations, and who take their Internet altered consciounesses, back into their societies.
As mentioned in the opening section of this study, the choice of the literature reviewed has come down to an attempt to balance the competing requirements of popularity, significance, depth and influence within the chosen orientation of experience. The particular literature chosen for investigating the experience of the Internet as a technological artefact include: Virtual Reality, by Howard Rheingold, Cyberspace: First Steps, edited by Benedikt, Silicon Image by Anstaklins and Blatner, GURPS Cyberpunk, by Lloyd Blankenship and War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High Tech Assault on Reality, by Mark Slouka. In terms of the experience of the Internet as a community: Virtual Community, by Howard Rheingold, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches, by Douglas Ruskoff, the Mondo 2000 User's Guide to the New Edge, edited by Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius and Queen Mu, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Computer Frontier, by Bruce Sterling and Hacker's: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. Finally, the texts chosen for the expression of the Internet experience includes: The Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner, the Neuromancer trilogy, by William Gibson, Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner by Phillip K. Dick and Ridley Scott (dir), the Software series by Rudy Rucker, Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling and Snow Crash by Neal Stephanson.
Apart from providing the necessary means to provide a character portrait of the Internet, the reviews are actually conducted in order of production to also provide a sense of “character development”. Each text is reviewed with a standard template. First, an author and text introduction is provided. Following this, a text synopsis and an application of the methodology of the core characteristics, which includes comparison of author claims with available research and concludes with an evaluation of the text's contribution in elaborating the core characteristics. Whilst the chosen texts are undoubtably designed with a popular rather than academic audience in mind, it is notable that each contain more than requisite academic content for evaluation. Finally, in concluding all these reviews, an attempt is made at a synthetic evaluation and determination of the Internet's character.
The first literature review is concerned with the development of a “virtual reality”. This is at the time of writing not an Internet specific technology, but in fair estimation, like the almost completely integrated myriad computer networks of recent years, it is clearly only a matter of time before the Internet and virtual reality are for most intents and purposes the same things. The purpose of this investigation into the Internet's character is to examine to what degree the experience of the Internet can elaborate, replace or truncuate the experience of real life, or another words to develop a phenomenology of technology. The second aspect of this character investigation is to elaborate the intentionalist, phenomenological perspective with that of the psychoanalytic, and particularly feminist, tradition to deal with various irrationalities (including gender biases). Finally, taking into accont both perspectives and raising them into a macrological scale, an elucidation of the general telos of virtual reality.
In conducting this review and discerning this character, particular authors and their theoretical standpoints have been considered the most appropriate for each particular issue. Don Ihde, drawing upon the vast phenomenology of technology tradition provides a succinct, formula-driven response whose modelling utility is easily recognizable and understood. Zoe Sophia continues in part with Ihde's typology but elaborates it to include the unconscious, the irrational and the horizonal instances of technology. Further, these elaboration occur through critical examination of the gender biases (both real and mythic) in the production and presentation of the technical media – Sophia's “life-giving, erogenic” approach to technology is a radical and inviting interpretation. In attempt to draw out the emanicpatory elements in Sophia and place them on a macrological scale, the distinction between technics of Lewis Mumford is utilized.
The Don Ihde's phenomenological approach of technology has it's origins in both the idea of technology as “revealing the world” and selectively “enframing” it, which is derived from Heidegger and places primacy in technology over science and has been developed over time in three main texts, . Subjective agents utilize technology with intentionality. The feedback received is the “reflexive arc” as decribed by Maurice Merleu-Ponty. The greater the degree of sensory amplification and less the degree of sensory selectivity the more the technology is described as “transparent” with utopian extremes as “horizonal instances” (e.g., the cyborg). The capacity of a technology to perform a range of functions is described as its “multistability”.
[Don Ihde, Technics and Praxis
Don Ihde, Instrumental Realism
Don Ihde, Technology and the Lifeworld
]
A four-part typology of technics is described by Ihde. First, are “embodiment technologies” which amplifiy and extend the body's natural abilities. Simple examples include the shovel or the bicycle. Second, “hermeneutic technologies” which amplify the sensory knowledge of being, such as a map or a compass. The third type of technics are “alterity” technics, where the technology becomes like a second self, capable of providing supplementary memory, action and even giving the appearance of communication. The computer is considered to be the pivotal example, althogh symbolically, Ihde does consider religious icons to have a similar role. Finally, certain technologies have the capacity to act as environment in themselves – these become “background” technics, such as spacecraft or S.C.U.B.A. outfits.
This typology is presented in a formula-like method that provides a succinct and abstract descriptive model which is replicated and slightly elaborated here. Technology is represented by the variable 'T', subject actors by the variable 'H' and the objective world with the variable 'W'. The action of intentionality is expressed through the operator => or <= and the reflective arc through the operators -> or <-. Where variables are brought together and act or are acted upon as a cohesive whole they are bracked and represented as a combined variable (and in the case of the background technology a reduced variable). Thus the typology may be described in formulaic terms as:
No technology: H => <- W
Embodiement technologies: (HT) => <- W
Hermeneutic technologies: H => <- (TW)
Alterity technologies: H => <- T -> W
Background technologies H => <- (T/W)
In elaborating the historical masculine bias and the reproduction of these irrational biases in computer culture, Sophia conducts a detailed expansion of Ihde's analytical types to include semiotic (technology as a sign) and psychoanalytic (technology as desire) derivations. The problem with Ihde's analysis according to Sophia is that being bound in the phenomenological tradition it assumes from the outset that the agent actor is acting with complete mental freedom and is not at all inspired by desire and irrationality in technological relations. Sophia expresses three axioms that explains psychoanalytic interpretations of technology. Firstly, "cosmogony recapitulates erogeny", technology expresses neurotic and erotic unconscious desires as well as beings 'tools' for a means. Secondly, "every tool is a poem", it's presentation ambiguous, and its representations always potentially exceed the language and ideology that it officially sustains. Thirdly, "every technology is a reproductive technology", as it intervenes and changes the life process itself.
When Idhe's analytic categories are elaborated to include a semoitics of technology, embodiment technologies are represented as a metonyn, hermeneutic technologies as syndaecote, alterity technologies as trope and background technologies as narrative. When the categories are elaborated to include irrational desires, the psychoanalytic expressions are [EDIT]. Thus, a more complete (phenomenological, semoitic and psychoanalytic) typology of technics is as follow:
|
Analytic Type/Perspective |
Phenomenological |
Semiotic |
Psychoanalytic |
|
Embodiment |
(HT) => <- W |
Metanomy |
Projective Identification |
|
Hermeneutic |
H => <- (TW) |
Synecdoche |
Epistemophilia |
|
Alterity |
H => <- T -> W |
Metaphor |
Narcassistic Fetishism |
|
Background |
H => <- (T/W) |
Narrative |
Mastery |
[Zoe Sofia, Whose Second Self? Gender and (Ir)rationality in Computer Culture, Deakin University Press, 1993]
Whilst this typology is useful there there are two aspects in which it is incomplete for deriving a development methodology for the experience of technology and with the virtual reality aspects of the Internet for this study. The first neglected aspect is that is that does not elaborate from individual technologies to those multi-user, large scale technologies. The second aspect is that it does not incorporate a theory of communicative techniques, as described in the first Chapter of this study. In oder to provide this elaboration, the distinction attempted by Lewis Mumford as either “polytechnic” versus “monotechnic” or “democratic” and “authoritarian” technologies. Whilst Mumford conflated scale and orientation (large scale technologies were always authoritarian human scale technologies were always “democratic”), splitting this into effects of scale and orientation – which is rebuilt here as the difference between mediative and instrumental techniques, is still appropriate.
[Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization
Lewis Mumford, Authoritarian and Democratic Technics]
The second literature review, concerned with the Internet as a community, has a methdological orientation derived from Clifford Geertz, Claude Levi-Strauss and Pierre Bordieu. As noted the key questions for characterization include establishing the Internet as a discrete community, to elaborate the symbolic structures and practises that make up this community and to examine the influence of external influences on the formation of these symbolic structures. Each of the key questions is best analyzed from the perspective of a particular theoretical persepctive, although the questions – and the theorists – are complementary and elaborate on each others perspective. Thus, to determine whether the Internet exists as a community, the methodology provided by Clifford Geertz is most appropriate. To elaborate the symbolic and practises, Claude Levi-Strauss is utilized. To determine the degree of external incluences, the inquiry turns to Pierre Bordieu.
Geertz's, “The Interpretation of Cultures” is the primary methodological text for determining the existence of an Internet community. In this text, Geertz emphasizes that a culture consists of symbolic systems of meaning representing “the total way of life of a people”, “the social legacy the individual acquires from the group”. The perspective, as Geertz acknowledge, is derived from Max Weber in recognizing that human beings are suspended in webs of significance. Following the insights of linguistic philosophy, Geertz argues that culture is public because meaning is generated collectively. Thus, in the first instance, determination of the existence and complexity of a culture is determined by the existence and complexity of the symbolic values. Further, the determination of the depth of membership (if any) that an individual has to a culture can be evaluated in terms of their capacity to understand the values ascribed to collective signs.
The methodology for such evaluation here is particularly important. Geertz strongly emphazies the need to avoid a rigid, pseudo-scientific approach considering a intrepetive and hermenutic one. Cultural anthropology is therefore not dissimilar to literary analysis – symbols and structures of significance must be ascertained, the value of actions are determined by their contextual importance. As such decisions necessitate interpretation, Geertz is also steadfastly opposed to anthropological investigation from the perspective of the “detached” observer, where a culture is treated as if it could be examined under laboratory conditions. Rather, in the term of Renato Rosaldo, the appropriate approach for an anthrological ethnography is to be a self-reflexive “positioned observer” where observation, participation, and hermeneutic reflection also lead to the transformation of the anthropologist.
[Clifford Geertz, (1973) The interpretation of cultures. Basic Books.]
More recently Geertz has claimed that this particular methodology leads to a cultural anthropology that is rhetorical. This is not meant, of course, in the prejorative sense, but rather in sense of literary analysis, that awareness of the influence (and prejudice) of accepted canon. The point is not replace research itself, but rather to evaluate the reasons that a particular analysis is more persuasive than another. The importance of these comments in this particular of course, is the constant reflection on whether the general methodological orientations and subject-matter can make claims of persuasive legitimacy. In this particular instance the challenge is placed to assert the validity and significance of the symbolic values noted within the Internet culture.
[Gary A. Olson, (1991) Clifford Geertz on Ethnography and Social Construction (interview), JAC 11.2 ]
The inclusion of Claude Levi-Strauss in this particular point of methodology may initially seem a little incongrous. After all, Levi-Strauss' major investigations were in the structures of myths, which would suggest that this methodology is better suited in an examination of the literary expressions of Internet culture. That however, is the point of this character analysis. The literary expressions of the Internet are chosen as expression within the context of contemporary with a view towards the future. The point of discerning the symbolic values of the Internet community is to establish it's existence and by utilizing Levi-Strauss, to show that degree of complexity in this culture. Levi-Strauss' structuralism, influenced by the sociology of Emile Durkheim, is chosen as a means to determine the collective unconscious in the Internet culture's symbolic structures. Whilst Geertz and Levi-Strauss both engaged in extensive and involved field-work as anthropologists, their methodology of interpretation is vastly different. Geertz is deeply suspicious of Levi-Strauss' claims of innate structures and the use of mathematical models preferring, as stated, a more relativistic analysis.
While Geertz's methodology is indeed useful for elucidating symbolic significance based on the intention of cultural actors, it cannot provide an account for that which is not conscious to the actors themselves and this is where Levi-Strauss comes into use. It is not necessary to claim, like Levi-Strauss does, that this has some sort of special superiority to the significance of historically conscious symbolic values, but rather merely to recognize that they represent an elaboration of those values and because of the different form of consciousness involved, a different methodology is required. The point of a structuralist methodology in cultural anthropology is not do discover what symbolic values exist, but to elucidate the unexpected and hidden values that can be discerned from a structural analysis and thus confirm the continued existence of universal concerns across relative cultures.
The concern here is therefore the structure of symbolic values, rather than their content. Following de Saussere, symbolic values consist of “langue” and “parole”, of ahistorical synchronic structures and the contextual, time-linear, diachronic structures. Once the symbolic values of the Internet culture themselves are ascertained, it is possible to describe them according to the synchronic and diachronic dimensions. The former will elucidate the timeless totality and, to use Levi-Strauss' analogy, the harmony of the symbols, the “bundle of relations”. The latter elucidates the historical evolution of the symbolic values. According to the methodology, universal concerns expressed through binary oppositions will become evident through a logical system of intrepretation of the the symbolic structure.
[Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963, FP 1958]
[Claude Levi-Strauss, The Structure of Myth...]
If Clifford Geertz and Claude Levi-Strauss are the anthroplogical equivalents of the sociologists Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, then Pierre Bordieu surely represents the equivalent of Karl Marx. Bordieu's primary concern is the use of “symbolic power” and access to “cultural capital” to classify individuals and to maintain existing relations between social classes. Backed by hefty empirical research, Bordieu examines how supposedly free-choice by social actors in the field of cultural products almost invariably, through class location, education indoctrination and peer relations results in a disposition that regenerates and replicates existing social divisions. In doing so Bordieu undermines the idealized notion of aesthetics as established by Immanual Kant, of the universal agent disinterested in the morality, utility or functionality of an aesthetic product, rather concentrating on the “beauty” of the artefact in it's own right.
The purpose of using Bordieu's methodology in this analysis is to examine the degree of bias and distortion in the supposedly free formation of the Internet's cultural values. Further it provides an opportunity to investigate the degree of division within the community itself, the social spaces and social distances that they inhabit and how these divisions and biases are re-established via the medium itself. Rather than viewing the Internet culture and community as a unified whole, using Bordieu's methodology invites the opportunity to examine it as a space where conflicting values compete for resources and cultural capital. In doing so, the prospect is raised to elaborate the notion of an Internet culture as co-existing with multiple Internet sub-cultures and likewise, the Internet community is elaborated into existing with multiple Internet sub-communities. For the purposes of this study, “culture” is defined as the symbolic values and community as the agents who utilize those values.
[Pierre Bordieu, 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of Taste, Harvard University Press, FP ]
On opportunity does arise however, to bring the form of the medium used in the production of cultural values on the agenda. More recently Bordieu published “On Television”, a surprise best-seller, examined the concerns that the influential role of intellectuals as the specialists of cultural production and creators of symbolic power were being undermined by this pernicious medium that degrades journalism through its sheer inoffensiveness, blandness and inability to elaborate (due to time-limits, the “sound bite” etc) on complex issues or ideas that counter the prevailing point of view. A television-determined conventional wisdom thus stupefies cultural development. A comparison between the information and capital intensive medium of the television and the communicative and intellectual intensive medium of the Internet suggests the prospect of cultural emancipation.
[Pierre Bordieu, On Television, 1996]
The final particular set of methodological perspectives chosen in this literature review refer to understaning the aesthetic character of the Internet as derived through the fictional expressions that the Internet as a collective consciousness identifies with. Whilst the literary sub-genre of cyberpunk science fiction is hardly a institutionally related product of the Internet itself, it is hardly necessary to engage in the empirical research of “deep” community members of the Internet (e.g., those who have a high level of Internet symbolic recognition, achieved through substantial involvement through a variety of communication services) to realize their identification with these texts – the level of anaecdotal evidence is simply overwhelming. The purpose of such a review is to elucidate the relationship between the technology, the community and its expressions, the character of the Internet's collective consciousness in terms of their rational and irrational desires and fears, and the characteristics of their heroic protagonists as role models.
In the first instance the literary methodology developed by Frederic Jameson seems appropriate. The advantage of Jameson is the use of a Marxian-inspired comprehensive framework that grounds “the postmodern condition” or “late capitalism” as a total typology in the way that other frameworks cannot. In doing so however, Jameson also incorporates a great deal of structuralist, post-structuralist and psychoanalytic insights. In doing so postmodernism is described as the cultural logic of a new stage of capitalism whose features include the collapse between high and mass culture, the end of historical thinking, an emphasis on style over substance, pastiche and schizophrenia, These aesthetic feature however must be understood in the context of the new electronic media (television, computerization), the deindustrialization of the technologically advanced nations and the world social system of global capitalism.
[
Frederic Jameson, (1984) "Postmodernism--The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," _New Left Review_ 146
Frederic Jameson (1991) _Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism_. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
]
This elaborate typology has almost become conventional wisdom now in cultural theory. However, apart from placing political-economy as the core of the analysis in the first instance Jameson also orientates towards a political agenda within the field of cultural production. Because on one hand there are the postmodernists, infected by neoism and certain of their ageing, who seem to celebrate this change almost without any substantive critique. On the other are traditional modernists – among whom Habermas must surely be counted – who bemoan the cultural impoverishment and the superficiality of the new cultural logic. Jameson avoid both positions and argues instead that regardless of our viewes on the quality of the new culture, we have accept that it has been a shif in the logic of cultural production that these are the conditions that we are dealing with – to accept it without criticism is corrupt and to reject it without criticism is to be in denial.
Jameson's surprising alternative – of which is also encountered in Herbert Marcuse's 'Eros and Civilization' - is a celebration of the utopian and critical moments in popular culture fiction, especially fantasy and science fiction. According to Jameson, even relatively conservative versions of these texts often portray “a better world” and thus, provide a standpoint of criticism of the existing world. Yet at the same time, realistic texts are also celebrated as they provide opportunities for knowledge and identification by the reader of the problems of life under late capitalism. One can conclude that it seems through Jameson's methodology the emancipatory cultural products of contemporary society that are those which are both realistic and critical-utopian (or dystopian), that engage in the mass production of popular culture, and are stylistically avante-garde and high art. Whether cyberpunk science fiction fits this role is a character question that will need to be answered.
To complement Jameson's cultural typology, Derrida's deconstructionalist methodology, especially given its metaphysic presumptions, seems a particularly apt means to discern the rational and irrational desires and fears as expressed through the fictional literature. Whilst taking counter-intuitive positions – a rejection of “metaphysics of presence”, the claim that “there is nothing outside the text”, that writing has “ontological priority” over speech Derrrida provide some unique insights with regards to the formation of consciousness through language and – although rarely, if ever, commented upon – the formation of symbolic values in – rather on - the brain.
[Jacques Derrida, 1967 Of Grammatology
Jacques Derrida, 1967, Speech and Phenomen
Jacques Derrida, 1967, Writing and Difference
]
The first part of Derrida's methodology is a rejection of a claimed dominant phonocentric analysis of language and a rejection of attempts to anchor a language system through reference semantics. Rather, claims there is no referent outside the system of language itself. This shouldn't be taken as a confusion between the signifier and the signified however. Rather, Derrida elaborates that signifiers and the signifieds are related by their difference to other signifiers and signified. When the difference is combined with a rejection of reference semantics, a concern arises in “the chain of expectations”, leading to difference, a portmanteau of difference and the act of deferring.
[Derrida of course claims that deconstruction is not a method, but reviewers have noted several continuing themes and procedural methods.]
The deconstructive project thus consists of several features; a rejection of objective qualification of language, an analysis that emphasises the narrative over reference semantics, and the possibility of multiple readings of texts (the act of deferr ing meaning or making different meanings). Following this the methodology seeks to discern obvious presentations of hierachial binary oppositions and, rather than simply reverse those hierachial oppositions, it undermines not the opposition itself, but points out the instablility of the hierarchy itself by including the opposition within itself. The purpose not necessarily negative, but also a means to explain the resiliance of some literature and the capacity to provide reader identification over space and time. In other words, the act of deconstruction of a hierachial binary opposition to show how unstable it is, can also serve the purpose of elucidating how texts can reconstruct with equality and unity.
The relevant purpose with regard to a textual analysis of cyberpunk science fiction is to elaborate the fairly obvious thematic content and motifs that show expressions of fear and desire, both in terms of their realistic elements and their utopian/dystopian elements and to also include those which are hitherto hidden by the assumed hierachies in each text and in the subgenre as a whole. The interest is raised whether the cyberpunk subgenre has the capacity for resiliance, or whether, through it's contradictions, inaccuracies and hierarchial binary instabilities it is a thoroughly flawed set of prophecies.
For an analysis of subject performance by protagonist and other major characters in cyberpunk science fiction the assertive assertive multiplicity of agent performance from individual subjects is examined, using the methodology of Judith Butler. Butler's work is primarily directed towards a critique of gender feminism – the notion that there is a single unified character type of woman that is somehow independent or dominant of other subject positions – and as such may on a superficial level, not appear to be particularly appropriate to a literary analysis of the major characters in the subgenre. This however is not true, Butler, like Donna Harraway, understands the subject position as cyborg, consisting of a multiplicity of experiences, identities, some more influential, some less influential but nevertheless with subjective difference from others whom share some of the same characteristics.
[
Judith Butler, 1990. Gender trouble : feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge, 1990
Judith Bulter, 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", Routledge,
Donna Harraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs
]
Haraway, in describing the cyborg, refers to a being “resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intamacy, and peversity”, which accepts the imperfect, rejects the reified absract concepts of purity and separation and seeks unity in diversity. Likewise Judith Butler in acknowledging multiplicity, is no less committed to genuine social emancipation and personal freedom. The point is to understand the complexity that each and every subject must deal with in the typology of formal power relations, irrationalisable cultural distortions, and their own subjective neuroses. This typology weakens the capacity of the subject to experience even their own body in a fully rational way. It is through the act of reiterative performativity that the subject must deal with these relations. Performativity can be distinguished from free expression (which assumes the subject must be free in the first instance) or dramatic expression (a screened alter-identity roleplay).
The relevance of this methodological interpretation of the self and behaviour in cyberpunk literature is to examine the multiple forces of identity on the main characters and to analyze their performative actions. This task will be made somewhat easier by proceeding examinations of setting and thematic considerations, but the contribution to the overall rationale for conducting such an investigation in the first place remains unique. Because if there is cultural identity among the fundamental core of the Internet's community with cyberpunk science fiction and that fiction is a genuine expression of irrationalisable future fears and desires that apart from a realistic evaluation of the potential of these settings to become reality in the style that they express it is also necessary to examine how these protagonists and other characters express themselves with their multiple influences and the particular typologies of social relations.
In addition to these particular methodologies, a general methodology is applied throughout which incorporates the social and political theoretical orientation of Habermas and Arendt with the insights gained from the perspectives just discussed. A methodology of techniques (technologies and systems) needs to be considered not just with success orientations, but with an orientation towards reaching understanding. To be sure, no technology or system is a communicator in itself. But both technologies and systems may expand the scope and scale of communication and also ensure its conditions. This is a synthesis of instrumental and communicative action - or in Weber's terms - a combination of instrumental and value-rationality. In these instances, techniques exist in a non-social situation, yet are orientated towards reaching understanding. It is this category of mediative techniques, described in the previous section, that fulfils these necessary conditions.
Applying mediative techniques to the instrumental genres provided by Ihde and Sophia requires some modification. In terms of technics, every relationship requires at least one other human actor whose intentionalities are of equal capacity. For example, the telephone may be expressed as the formula;
(H-T)=><- W-> <=(T-H)
In all communications technology a protocol of the lowest common denominator must be established. Likewise for system guareentees. Unless universal rights are assuredly universal, the technique ceases to be mediative and becomes instead, strategic.
In terms of a semiotics of mediative techniques, there is no change. Signification or trope are clearly defined by the technique genre, and not by the orientation. Not so in terms of a psychoanalysis of techniques. An instrumental or strategic orientation has neurotic tendancies. A mediative one, in virtue of potentially enhancing communicative connections, has a theraupetic tendency. With mediative embodiment techniques this tendency is towards sanguinity, with hermeneutic techniques it is pronoia (the irrational but intuitive sense of social solidarity), with alterity techniques it is identity, and with background techniques it is security.
The category of mediative techniques provides the opportunity to empirically validate changes in the functionalist AGIL schema. In doing so, the functionalist categories cease to be abstract, and gain practical manifestation from which quantities, qualities, and rates of change may be evaluated. The performance of instrumental action equates with the capacity of goal attainment., the performance of strategic action equates with latency, or pattern-maintenance., mediative techniques with adaptability and communicative actions for the ultimate values of a society.
A methodology examining the potential of 'virtual reality' accounts not just technical replication, but also problems in implementing it as a means of production. The most significant problem is developing an alternative set of productive relations that have equivalence with the new productive means, that is, developing a technique. Furthermore, if such techniques are implemented, changes in productive capacity, the mode of consciousness, and potential pathologies must also be identified.
Finally, in an emancipatory interest, such a methodology must also include an empirical category which identifies the degree by which such techniques assist in actions orientated towards understanding. This is achieved by the inclusion of mediative techniques, a category of relevance and elaboration to no less than five theoretical positions of action and technology (Weber, Habermas, Parsons, Sofia, Ihde), which requires no modification to existing models.
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