Google and Attractors (Part 3)

If we are to believe Claire Colebrook, who claims, in Understanding Deleuze, we are in post-linguistic era, we need to develop theories and approaches that are not language dependent. This means we cannot use discourse analysis or propose a model for communicative action. I do not claim that these approaches are not helpful or should be abandoned. Instead the problem of these approaches is that language is always assumed to be present. In other words, language becomes the transcendent principle and according to Deleuze and Guattari we need to think immanently instead of transcendently. Where can we then turn? In this post I would like to suggest complexity theory can help us out the language impasse. To achieve this I will concentrate, once again, on Google’s search engine. A topic I have discussed previously here and here. In this post I will argue that the language we enter into the search engine functions as a chaotic attractor.
In simple terms an attractor helps to explain the behaviour of a (real) system. For example, if there is a bowl and we put a marble in the bowl, then the point at where the marble rests is referred to as the attractor. However, this example could suggest that attractors are deterministic, in the sense that the outcome is always the same, or that attractors are singular, in the sense that there is only one attractor in a system. Both of these claims are untrue and we need to be careful of proposing determinism. Another example can demonstrate that attractors are not deterministic and multiple. Imagine a game of football/soccer. In the game there are two goalposts situated at each end that act as attractors. As Brian Massumi writes: ‘The field is polarized by two attractors: the goals. All movement in the game will take place between the poles and will tend toward one or the other. They are the physical limits.’[1] Importantly, the goals do not decide the result of the game, but they do determine the movements and variations within the game. The goalposts, as attractors, literally feed into the game.
So how then is this relevant for understanding how Google functions as a search engine when we enter keywords? From a language perspective we could suggest that we are creating what Sassure would term a linguistic sign. This would argue that the keywords entered into Google are the signifier and what is returned from Google is the signified. Both of them together compose the linguistic sign. However, this is exactly the type of thinking we are trying to avoid. There are two clear problems with this type of thinking. The first, as I have mentioned above, is the failure to represent a post-linguistic mode of thinking. To think in terms of linguistic signs means language is a necessary component. The main issue I have with this problem is that language is not always a component of life. In other words, things occur without language (e.g. geological stratification). The second problem Sassure's linguistic sign does not inform us how Google functions as a machine. This is the advantage of replacing the linguistic sign with the idea that the keywords are attractors. Attractors have the benefit of helping to provide an explanation for when a system reaches a stable point. If we return to the football example, we can see how the goals explain how the game settles after 90minutes. Of course, the goals, as attractors, do not fully explain the result of a game. There are other relations of exteriority that require recognition: players, ball, referee, rules…However, the attractors in a system are not there to offer a full explanation, and instead the focus of the analysis should concentrate on how the attractors affect the behaviour of a (dynamic) system. In the case of the keywords entered into Google these influence the behaviour of the sorting machine and explain the emergence of a settled state. In this system the settled state is the website created after a search is executed (i.e. the return page). The point is each time we enter keywords into Google.com we are providing the sorting machine with an attractor. The attractor enters into the system of Google, which can be thought of as the algorithm(s) Google use to download, index, and rank online documents. On the whole, maybe it would be more accurate to realise we are not entering a signifier into Google, but actually entering an attractor. In addition, attractors, in a nonlinear world, continually influence the behaviour and movements of systems throughout the world.

[1] Brian Massumi, Parables For the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (London: Duke University Press, 2002) p72

Good and Evil versus Good and Bad

According to Deleuze, in Nietzsche and Philosophy, Nietzsche holds an important distinction between active and reactive forces. One of the defining characteristics of reactive forces is they create a distinction between good and evil. In other words, they create a hierarchy. An example of reactive forces is what Nietzsche terms resentment, and is associated with 'slave morality'. The problem with resentiment, as a reactive force, is it says No to life, it is a negation instead of affirmation. We can think of the command 'Thou Shalt Not' as a illustration of reactive forces. The problem of resentment, according to Nietzsche, is we are unable to admire (or even love!) our enemies:

'How much respect has a noble person for his enemies! and such respect is already a bridge of love. After all, he demand his enemy for himself, as his distinction; he can stand no enemy but one in whom to be honored. Conversely, imagine "the enemy" as conceived by a man of resentment - and here is precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived "the evil enemy", "the evil one" - and indeed as the fundamental concept from which he then derives, as an after image and counterinstance, a "good one" - himself.' (The Portable Nietzsche, p452)

In other words, resentment, as a reactive force, generates an evil (the other), which produces a good (us). It is hard not to realise that resentment is (omi)present in today's world. Is the war on terror not a war fueled on resentment? We have the axis of evil as the other, and the "good one" as the 'civilised' west (or even the 'coalition of the willing'!)

The problem with resentment is it not only causes a group to resent others as evil, it also acts to repress those who resent. As Deleuze and Guattari would say it is 'desiring our own repression.' An example from a film can illustrate the process of desiring our repression through resentment.

In V for Vendetta a fascist government gets (democratically) voted into the UK government. On the whole, the fascist government gains power through an emergence of resentment of the other, which is viewed as evil. Once the fascist party is in power the removal of the other from the UK occurs. Anyone who is not white and heterosexual is removed from the UK. Through removing the other the British people repress themselves. Instead of affirming life they negate life through creating a majoritarian identity. The majoritarian identity functions as an inhibitor on what people can become. This is the important (ethical) point to realise. That resentment, as a reactive force, represses those who resent.

deleuze's ethics

I am in the process of trying to construct an idea of Deleuzian ethics. So far it seems we can find Deleuze's ethics from his understanding of Spinoza, his reading of Nietzsche's eternal return, and Nietzsche's division between active and reactive forces.

here is a quote from Deleuze's 'Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza':

'For according to Spinoza, Good has no more sense than Evil: in Nature there is neither Good nor Evil...But because there is no Good or Evil, this does not mean all distinctions vanish. There is no Good or Evil in Nature, but there are good and bad things for each existing mode...As Nietzsche put it, "beyond good and evil...at least this does not mean 'beyond good and bad'"...The distinction between good things and bad provides the basis for a real ethical difference, which we must substitute for a false moral opposition.' (p253-254)

As DeLanda would say, we need an ethics of assemblage, which should move beyond abstractions and into real experiences/differences. this is thinking ethically.

Any (more) philosophy Blogs?

I was just wondering if there was any (good) philosophy blogs you could recommend that are absent from my Blog role.

I have tried checking through Technorati, but most of the returns are not really worth a reading.