a matter of algorithms

Good thing the internet is so full of stuff always, so I don'¨t have to feel bad about not posting regularly, would love to, but, well... enough of that. Here are some thoughts in the making of an article for a collection on sustainability as a cultural concept, which will be published in january 2008 with Sacha Kagan as editor and a lot of beautiful contributions, more about that later.

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I am working on building in a concept of the algorithm into the theory of eventality that I am using to describe the kinds of changes that seem to me to be called for if "sustainable culture" is to make its way into our worlds of social interaction.

Now, the problem of course is that where the event is also a logical and mathematical term, it also has a range of other uses, so I can allow myself to work through it without too much worrying about the mix of humanities and mathematics in that work. Whereas the algorithm is obviously a mathematical term, and I know already that if I start using it seriously, and people start reading this, I will be accused of transferring uncritically ideas from mathematics (and bad maths, as I am no mathematician) to matters of culture - which will probably be seen as a sin to both one field and the other.

So why speak of algorithms at all? And what is the relevance of algorithms when sepaking of events?

The event, in Badious philosophy, is when an undecidable element is decided (Being and Event) - he therefore speaks of events as the coming of truths that form subjectivities. It is actually quite obvious why Badiou would make use of algorithms (and he is certainly a much better mathematician than I am!), as his focus on the event is on the event as the solution to an undecidability. As I try to explain the event, the problem with badiou's and other ways to explain the event is that there is really no plausible distinction being eventum tantum and eventum minorum or between 'incident' and 'event' - in Danish this translates to 'hændelse', a noun form of 'happen' (a happening is of course something else in English, so I suppose incident is the closest one can get). If the event is the solution, then what is the difference between incident and event? For philosophers such as Kirkeby, inspired by Merleau-Ponty and the Stoicists (and thus, to some extent, by Deleuze, but more by Cusanus, actually, when it comes to the event), this matter is dealt with by moving backwards into the event in order to trace its history back into its 'beginning', viz. cases of very high undecidability or what Kirkeby calls "alma mater", the white substance. However, going backwards or not, this still basically considers the event from the same perspective as does Badiou: the event resumes or resolves an undecidability, it describes the movement of something out of the void, or a movement from void to one, a 'becoming', as Deleuze & Guattari would express it.

Now, to return to my problem with this, apart from not being able to distinguish between one word and another, I am suggesting on the conceptual level a focus on the event as the very tension between what logicians such as Badiou would call the 'undecidability' and its resolution. or, to put it in slightly different terms, the event is a zone of tension between a becoming and a disappearance. This tension could be mistaken for a dialectical relation - but this is not the case, or, if we are to accept that there is such a dialectical relation, it is never upheaved (referring to aufhebung in hegel's terms), it is never resolved. In time, as we tend to see it with our cartesian eyes, we would say, yes, it is resolved, over time, right? But no, the event is not resolved. What happens is that the disappearing movement in the event continues to disappear, or we lose track of it, and it becomes either a part of the becoming (which then is mistaken for the event, when in fact it is rather the effect of the continuous fold in motion, to use Deleuze's term for this, and here Deleuze notes that the fold does not enter into contact with the world around it, it is, one might say, autopoïetic). Whereas the becoming continues to become, as I just noted in brackets: what we see is the continued becoming moving out again of its proximity to the zone of tension. However, the zone of tension, which I would call the evental zone, has been created, which forms a kind of tensive gateway to another dimension. Whew, sci-fi bullshit. Well bear with me, as I go on.

I would say that the zone of tension requires something third, something I have not dealt with so far. if the disappearance is a way to describe an actuality that loses its completeness, moving to a still less actual state, becoming de-totalised as actuality, then the becoming is a virtuality that loses its completeness, becomes still less virtual. If we should deal with this dialectically, I would try to say that the de-totalisation of actuality installs an opening for potentiality, then this is also the case for the de-totalisation of virtuality, but from the opposite side, if you like (well, you may not, but so far it will have to do). so, what happens in this field between the two vectors that cross, or at least move into proximity in a sense, in an onto-logical sense? in this zone, a double construction of potentiality appears - one that i am trying these days to express as a form of algorithmic readiness or disposition that is brought about by the confluence of the two vectors (sorry, Sokalists out there, talk to me if you hate this, I would love to discuss it with you, but only if you can accept that we do not possess the ultimate language to describe uncertainty and emergence with humanist or mathematical terms?) - a disposition that may, at least on a metaphorical level, by spoken of as some kind of an algorithmical disposition.

An analogy may be drawn to the role that algorithms play in the development of DNA or even in the role of the development of the universe. According to complexity theorist James Gardner, the universe may be hard-wired with algorithms that allow for the creation of life and intelligence. What is interesting here is the importance of matter and its transformations or mutations for the algorithm. This use of algorithms is not idealist, for it makes no sense if there is no matter. So the algorithm is installed "in" the matter, preparing it for encounters with eventalities and with other elements in the universe as it develops (or, as it were, with cultural matters, if I may allow myself this metaphorical shift). The question then is, of course, for one thing, what is the character of the algorithm? One way to describe an algorithm is as a set of rules that solve a problem. this of course implies that there are no gaps in the rule, and that the algorithm will disregard anything that falls outside of the rules in the algorithm. Think of a search engine that will search for certain elements when you tell it to - if you don't obey the rules for the algorithm, it will come up with nothing, or with something completely different. This is a logic of closed systems, but what if we are dealing with open systems, and what if there algorithms that are capable of self-transforming according to the eventality of reality? In other words, as long as becoming just becomes, the algorithm does not change. Actuality may disappear, but it does not de-totalise. Virtual becomes actual, actuality becomes virtual, a double-sided, almos dialectical movement, called an event in most cases. What I will claim is that this loses track of the most interesting aspect of eventality - and what I would define as eventality as opposed to pure incidents:

Events are what happens when the open function of algorithms is brought into effect, the function that deals with incapacities to solve problems, and the particular kind of algorithms present that act without the presence of an external superintelligence or God/programmer. What if, as will put forward, we have algorithms that are set to change as they encounter tensions, so that a new algorithm is created that does not destory the existing ones, but adds to them, so that the world is now "as it were, plus a level of complexity that is not considered paradoxical"?

Comments

[Mother Asia]

great post! thanks for sharing