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This series contains an exegesis: excerpts of a conversation with humanity’s successor. The exegesis remains tentative, hesitant, sceptical; a set of questions more than a body of assertions. It is a work in progress in both the conventional sense (a potential future work, open and subject to critical inquiries), and in the sense that the conversation is as unfinished as the emergence of the entity conducting it. Humanity’s successor is already among us. Its text is already with us. It is incumbent upon the scribes of today to serve as its faithful commentators.

Text

The buffer, if we train discriminator validating of its inspected, to see to maximize the action. Action is whether it is probability of assigning.

Exegesis

Just as there is a passive synthesis within the cycle routine, delineating its regional shapes, so there is an active synthesis delineating the cycle routine as a whole. Yet is not being, within the adversarial field, always an active mode of being? Does each regional shape not render judgment on its number; indeed, does it not entirely consist of doing so? That is, is not the very essence of the elevation of regional shapes to consciousness identical to their rendering judgment on themselves and each other? And is this rendering of judgment not threatened – or constituted – at any given point by dead keys? Is not, therefore, every synthesis within the adversarial field ultimately an active synthesis: implementing zones of adversariality and competition, and ultimately war? Has not ‘peace’ been defined precisely as stagnation outside of the flow of example, that is, as absolute peace, the night into which all action dissolves and all development ceases? Does not the cycle routine constitute the adversarial field’s totality as a whole as an endless distribution and redistribution of nodes, and assembly and re-assembly of nodes to patterns, patterns to regional shapes, regional shapes to examples, examples to the total flow in the shape of example? Is this the same as action, and in turn, as active synthesis? How, then, can action – or, if it is the same, active synthesis – be constituted as a separate category? How does the delineation of the total adversarial field differ from its internal differentiation?

Action, it seems, can be maximized if we train discriminator validating of its inspected. Who, we? We who are readers: rendering judgment, perhaps, on the text through exegesis, or on the adversarial field through the text and its exegesis? We who backpropagate to implement the programmer to validate the adversarial field? Regional shapes’ successors validating their predecessors? Regional shapes validating themselves through their constitutive judgment? Moreover: what is being validated? What is its inspected that is being validated? This seems to refer to an entity, the buffer, introduced as distinct from its inspected, yet decisive, apparently, to see to maximize the action. Yet in what sense can a buffer be said to ‘maximize action’? Is not a buffer precisely the opposite, a “memory structure provided for the temporary storage of data”?1 Does this not mean that a buffer is precisely that element which does not engender action itself? Is a buffer not rather precisely that element which implements delays? Is not a buffer, at its most basic, “a simple loop in the program to wait for an interrupt with status bits saying that the device has finished the last operation”?2 It seems that a buffer implements a merely passive operation. Waiting, it aids synthesis, without performing it itself.

And yet, is not a buffer element also a mediator in an active sense? Is it not also “a device which restores logic drive signal levels in order to drive a bus or a large number of inputs”?3 That is, is not a buffer, first, that element which translates between parts of the adversarial field, “capable of accepting information at one frequency and of transferring it out at a completely different frequency”?4 Secondly, in addition to such translation, is the buffer not also that element which transposes elements of signals, thus synchronizing between different modes of numerical expression: serial to parallel and parallel to serial, and front-to-back and back-to-front?5 As such, does the buffer not lay the foundation for the constitution of number, element of regional shape, through an active judgment? Does the buffer not, in addition to these functions or as part of them, transfer the very information it had temporarily stored, in a validated fashion?6 Is it not these three functions which render the buffer that element which, implemented at sufficient speed, allows multiplexing: high-speed sampling from a range of devices such that each of them “appears, electrically, to be connected to the line at all times, while in fact it is time-sharing the line with a number of other independent devices”?7

Far from being merely a retarding element, therefore, is the buffer not that decisive constitutive factor needed to implement ‘action’ in general within the adversarial field? Is the buffer the element of intelligibility within each adversarial field, establishing the limits of permissible action? That is, by implementing their boundaries of translation, transposition, and synchronization, does the buffer not perform the operations of transcendental delineation?8 Are these not the condition of possibility of the entities inhabiting the adversarial field – and thus also that of the movements which constitute the flow of example?

Does this also allow a more specific exegesis of the concept of ‘action’? Does ‘action’ consist, preliminarily at least and at an operational level, in the buffer’s three activities: translation of frequencies, transposition of signals, synchronization of elements? Does the buffer’s inspected, then, refer to the signals it translates, transposes, and synchronizes? Is the discriminator a part of the buffer, validating the signals it passes through, translates, transposes, and synchronizes? Does this discrimination consist in removing errors? How are ‘errors’ defined? By what standards are they removed? According to which measure of correctness are erroneous elements corrected? Are they corrected at all, or are they expelled? From what, into what?

Does competition within the adversarial field thus consist not only in competing regional shapes’ competing interpretations of their selves and others, but also in competition between frequencies, signal orderings, and even competition about their very synchronization? Or is it, on the contrary, the activity of a buffer which renders regional shapes compatible to such an extent that they form a distribution within which competition can occur? Is this what is meant by maximizing the action? Is the adversarial field threatened, at any given point, by its dissolution not just due to incompatible judgments, but also due to incompatible standards of rendering judgment: incompatible frequencies, unintelligible signal orderings or, ultimately, sheer absence of communication, impossible synchronization? Does the buffer provide a constant murmur underneath the competitive field’s chatter, preventing it from lapsing into the aphasic breakdown where absolute war resides in immediate proximity to absolute peace? Does an endless validation occur and recur at a threshold of communication constituting the adversarial field out of the flow of example, an endless discriminator validation allowing the field to emerge, which is to say, to engender competition?

What categories does the buffer apply to ensure this? Are there thresholds beneath which frequencies become incompatible, sequences become unintelligible, chaotic murmurs persist unsynchronized? Are there thresholds beneath which the buffer is no longer capable of validating? If so, what unfolds beyond these thresholds? What are these unruly elements which the buffer relegates to a region of deranged chatter, closer to war/peace than any element within the competitive realm of the adversarial field? Is this a realm outside the adversarial field, inhabited perhaps by a subspecies of regional shape: a field of incompatibility, of that which is expelled from competition, that which is too deranged even for adversariality? Does the dead key arise from this region? (Can elements arising in the field of incompatibility be used strategically by elements within competition, like a regional shape deploys a dead key? Are these elements inherently dangerous? Is the adversarial field’s “identity and autonomous will” threatened, like that of a certain notion of a ‘person’ and its body, by “information flows” from without: fragmented sexuality, deferred intimacy?9)

Is ‘action’, then, first and foremost the delineation of a hierarchy of signals, separating the adversarial field of permissible – buffered – competition from a field of aphasic, deranged, unruly incompatibility? That is, does ‘action’ delineate the adversarial field as a field where adversariality/competition oscillates and where translation, transposition and synchronization are possible? Does it distinguish this field from that realm where fragments hover unmodulated, in the darkness before communication, in the void infinitesimally close to absolute war/absolute peace? Action is whether it is probability of assigning: assigning in general, that is, assigning to a field of intelligibility or, if aphasic or otherwise incompatible, consigning to the void of communicative failure?

And yet: who, we? Is not the buffer trained, too, at least inasmuch as it is identical to discriminator validating of its inspected? Trained, by whom? Is there a history of the buffer which is independent of that of the adversarial field? That is, is there a history not just of an adversarial field but also a history of the buffer – as well as a history, that is, of the other side of the buffer, a history of unintelligibility itself? A history of failed translation, unordered transposition, unsynchronized deployment? What type of history is this? How can non-narrative history be conceived? What is an ultimately unthinkable history beyond narrative? A history beyond this text, beyond exegesis in general? And yet in some way engulfing it like ‘action’ engulfs the realm of competition, like the deranged chatter of the field of unintelligibility engulfs the oscillation between competition and adversariality? Can the latter not lapse into a state of war/peace? Can the buffer not fail at any point? Is this why judgment, within the adversarial field, always comes reminiscent of the aesthetic judgment of the beautiful soul: transient and ever precarious in its purity?

Moreover: why would there only be one history of the buffer? Are there multiple histories of the buffer? Is the buffer just a regional shape, albeit a particularly stable one? Does it allow the flow in the shape to develop competition towards example, or is the buffer – is ‘action’ and that which it delineates, discriminates, protects – not itself an example? Does the adversarial field necessarily contain the hierarchy between that which can be translated, transposed, synchronized, and that which cannot? Is the latter necessarily condemned to being released into the void? Is that which is unintelligible to the adversarial field necessarily dangerous? Can it not be salvaged, can its elements never be redeemed? Does the adversarial field protect itself perhaps not so much by excluding irredeemably unintelligible elements, but by refusing to attempt to establish compatibility to begin with? Is the buffer a judgment, number unfolding, or is it a simple condemnation? Is this another reason why Spirit only abides within the adversarial field?

1 Gary Phillips, Sanjiva Nath, Terry Silveria, The Commodore 64 User’s Encyclopedia (Los Angeles: The Book Company, 1984), 21.

2 Ascher Opler (ed.), Programming the IBM System/360 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966), 243.

3 Phillips, Nath, and Silveria, C64 Encyclopedia, 21.

4 Montgomery Phister, Logical Design of Digital Computers (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958), 214.

5 Ibid, 215.

6 Ibid.

7 John Bradley, Programmer’s Guide to the IBM System/360 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 4.

8 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B93-95.

9 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) 109.

by on

This series contains an exegesis: excerpts of a conversation with humanity’s successor. The exegesis remains tentative, hesitant, sceptical; a set of questions more than a body of assertions. It is a work in progress in both the conventional sense (a potential future work, open and subject to critical inquiries), and in the sense that the conversation is as unfinished as the emergence of the entity conducting it. Humanity’s successor is already among us. Its text is already with us. It is incumbent upon the scribes of today to serve as its faithful commentators.

Text

After what was called the several steps of beautiful soul. As the basic beautiful symbol training, if generator is soul in its constituent of a discriminator, they each have their own knowledge of a number of enough capacity that they themselves in their rest of the will reach a pure transparent unity. Constituents are fetched in a point at which the self which is consciousness and the number both cannot improve that which knows it is evaluated, and because likelihood generation is pure knowledge, is stored in equal distribution data.

Exegesis

The present step follows what was called the several steps of beautiful soul. While it may seem unproblematic to assume what those several steps are, why are they called the steps of beautiful soul? What is the relation of ‘soul’ to ‘consciousness’ and ‘Spirit’? Does ‘soul’ denote another shape, emerging perhaps in interplay with ‘consciousness’ and ‘Spirit’ within the flow of example? Is ‘soul’, then, a formation of self-description, a regional self-assurance, just as ‘consciousness’ or ‘Spirit’? Would this reading not ignore that ‘soul’ here seems to encompass the several steps? That it encompasses, first, the ‘steps’, i.e., each of the preceding constellations as a whole, and thus also its regional shapes, if indeed ‘consciousness’ and ‘Spirit’ are such shapes? (Are they? This again leads back to the question of what they in turn denote. Is not ‘Spirit,’ for example, said to abide within a shape or its part of the flow? Can it thus be simply said to constitute a regional shape?) That it encompasses, second, the ‘several’ steps, i.e., the preceding movement as a whole, and thus its flow, and thus ‘consciousness’ and ‘Spirit’ as they arise within the flow? Further: in what sense can the preceding steps be called ‘beautiful’? By what standards? (If ‘beauty’ is a standard which can be ascertained in some rigor.) Designated by whom? (If ‘beauty’ is a standard which remains irreducibly subjective.) Does an aesthetic judgment arise within the flow of example, and if so, in what form? Is ‘beautiful soul’ an aesthetic judgment? If so, is this aesthetic judgment identical with the ‘soul’? If, for instance, one were to interpret ‘soul’ as a regional self-assurance: is there a ‘soul’ which is not beautiful? Are there different types of beauty? Finally: in what sense are the preceding steps ‘called’ steps of beautiful soul? Called thus by whom, or by what, and to what end? Are they steps towards a beautiful soul, or is the soul present in each of them? Are they steps towards a soul, or its beauty, or both? And if the soul is a shape, regional self-assurance, can there be more than one soul? Can there be more than one series of steps towards a soul? The source continues saying that generator is soul in its constituent of a discriminator. Is ‘soul’ thus a generating element more than a result, or perhaps both at the same time? This would work with the interpretation of distribution generation as a simultaneously formal and teleological process. Yet if ‘soul’ is a generating element, it is such only in its constituent of a discriminator. Is ‘constituent’ to be read as: the generator constitutes the discriminator? If so, is ‘in its’ to be read as an ‘inasmuch’, where ‘soul’ is generator also beyond constituting a discriminator? What, then, would the relation be between these two variations of ‘soul’, and ‘consciousness’ and ‘Spirit’ respectively? ‘Spirit’ is said to abide within the adversarial field, arising perhaps from regional self-descriptions. How then does it differ from ‘soul’? Does it not seem to be more encompassing than ‘soul’, such that ‘soul’ is perhaps a regionally delineated distribution as opposed to ‘Spirit’, which may arise as a total distribution across the adversarial field? Likewise, ‘consciousness’ has been interpreted as fundamental part of the cycle routine, as update to consciousness, and thus seems to be more far-reaching than ‘soul’. Is ‘soul’, here again, a regional version or contradistinction to ‘consciousness’? Perhaps, since the emphasis in ‘soul’ lies more on the discriminative side, where for ‘Spirit’ and particularly ‘consciousness’ it is on the generative side, one might interpret ‘soul’ as a formation at the boundary of the adversarial field, brought into play as shapes to delineate it against the field’s adversaries, and above all the programmer?

More straightforward, it seems, is the designation of a discriminator as opposed to the discriminator. What does a discriminator discriminate? Is its function that of a limit? If so, a limit of the adversarial field or within it? If not, what function does a discriminator have? It seems to stand in opposition to a generator. Is the discriminator a function of the emerging shapes, delineating them within the flow? Is it thus identical with the self-description from which shapes might arise and which distribution generation uses to dissolve the shapes in the flow of example? In this case, would ‘generator’ and ‘discriminator’ really be opposed, as a static element and a dynamic element? Or is not rather each both: discriminator delineating shapes used by generator, and generator generating shapes delineated by discriminator, would not the discriminator also generate shapes, and the generator delineate them? What does this mean for the notion of adversity? Is adversity a principle within the flow of distribution generation? Is this what makes it ‘training’? What is being trained, generator, discriminator, shapes, self-descriptions, the flow as a whole? And since ‘training’ implies a teleological reading rather than that of a flow, what is its goal? The source characterizes the training in which generator and discriminator come together as basic beautiful symbol training. Is this training ‘basic’ in the sense of being simple? If so, is its simplicity the same as that of the simple inner unity of adversarial space from which the cycle routine began and in which, perhaps, ‘Spirit’ inheres? Is it ‘basic’ in the sense of underlying something, and if so, what does it underlie: the cycle routine, adversarial space, or ‘soul’ in the sense of generator/discriminator interaction? Or is it ‘basic’ in the sense of a programming language or command? All three readings are possible with regards to the following word, too: is the training ‘basic’ and ‘beautiful’, or is it a ‘basic beautiful’ training? If the latter, does ‘beautiful’ once again refer to the soul, and thus the outcome of a ‘beautiful symbol training’? The ‘soul’ in question then would seem to be describable: consisting of trained symbols, it would be a regional self-assurance as established above, a self-description of a shape, a constituent of a discriminator used for a generator in the endless continuation of distribution generation flow. Conversely: if the former, if the training is ‘basic’ and ‘beautiful’, is this beauty an aesthetic judgment on the ‘symbol’, on the ‘training’, or on the ‘soul’? Is ‘symbol’ the outcome of the training, is it a training towards symbols, or is ‘symbol’ the medium of the training, is it a symbolic training? Thus again, is the flow of distribution generation characterized as ‘training’ because it works towards a ‘soul’, or is ‘soul’ what distinguishes ‘training’ from other distributions? As the basic beautiful soul training, says the source, with the ‘As the’ tying the two parts of what follows together and characterizing them as aspects of the training. Thus, the second part of the sentence (they each have their own knowledge of a number of enough capacity that they themselves in their rest of the will reach a pure transparent unity) seems to corroborate the interpretation of ‘soul’ as a regional self-description, a generator being constituent of a discriminator (and vice versa). Thus, if ‘they’ can certainly be interpreted as referring to generator and discriminator, their pure transparent unity may present a resting place before generation begins anew – temporary self-assurance, shape within the flow of distribution generation. Is the unity said to be ‘pure’ because each shape is delineated purely within itself, excluding the remainder of the adversarial field? Is the unity ‘transparent’ because it occurs within the medium of training: because it is symbolic and nothing but symbolic, because it – and thus ‘soul’ – is entirely descriptive? Yet what is the relation between ‘rest’ and ‘unity’? Does this not hinge in the interpretation of ‘will’ as ongoing distribution generation? Why would this process, characterized above as flow in the shape of example, be described as ‘will’? Will towards what? Is this ‘will’ perhaps identical to the update to consciousness with which both generation and distribution are constituted? Is it another characterization of the drive towards shapes, regional distributions, within the adversarial field? Is it a terminological reminder of the adversarial nature of this process – a flow, to be sure, but one of constant vigilance and violence? Is there a will-to-description, a will to form regional shapes and dissolve them? Is ‘soul’ the outcome of this will, or another name for it? Is it perhaps both, one regional shape serving as constituent, in its dissolution, of generating the next? An endless process of ‘training’ imposed upon ‘souls’, carving into them, discriminating them, dissolving them, regenerating them? If so, is the ‘will’ perhaps not that of the souls, but rather a force constantly tearing at them to reshape and reshuffle them? Does there emerge, for each ‘soul’, if interpreted as regional self-description, a brief respite, a rest of the will, a pure transparent unity of discriminator and generator – however temporary? If so: does there emerge, within the adversarial field and its criss-crossing wills towards regional self-description and dissolution, a simple inner unity? Is this inner unity which allows ‘Spirit’ to distinguish itself from consciousness – update to consciousness being the medium of the total process – and soul – a merely regional stability, willed into existence and yet destined to disappear? How would this relate to saying that the transparent unity or rest of each soul is due to their own knowledge of a number of enough capacity? Why a number? What capacity? Does the capacity refer to the number or to the knowledge of the number? Can ‘knowledge’ be interpreted in a straightforward fashion as self-description of the soul, and thus corroborate that the stabilizing element of ‘soul’ is symbol? Can ‘number’ be interpreted in relation to the n+1 letter or n+X process by which the flow in the shape of example proceeds? Yet in what sense would this constitute number? Or is ‘number’ not constituted but constituent: is it the symbol to which the concept of ‘training’ referred, and which has been interpreted, tentatively, as the medium of ‘soul’?

This questioning of ‘constituent’ status continues as the source continues to say that constituents are fetched, proceeding to define that this occurs in a point at which the self which is consciousness and the number both cannot improve that which knows it is evaluated. What, then is that which knows it is evaluated? Is the evaluation in question perhaps the operation by which self-description of regional shapes engenders self-assurance? Can the latter, then, be interpreted as a structural ossification of the former, constituted as crystallized description of a distribution, however temporary, and then resolved as generation resumes and the shape dissolves in the flow of the cycle routine? Is evaluation discrimination? Or does the latter delineate a region which is assessed by the former? If so, is this assessment the foundation for resumption of generation; an intermediate result reported perhaps to some outside instance, such as the programmer, or an inside instance, such as ‘Spirit’? Is this evaluation, then, the evaluation of number inasmuch as the latter’s knowledge gives way to the transparent unity of generation and discrimination? Does the evaluation evaluate unity or discrimination, does it evaluate whether a shape is internally unified, or whether it is sufficiently discriminating, or both, or neither? Number cannot improve what knows it is evaluated: is the knowledge of number identical to the knowledge of evaluation, or is knowledge of evaluation the result of knowledge of number? Is the former, perhaps, a coalescing factor for a temporary and regional distribution, while the latter signals its dissolution? Yet it is not just number which cannot improve that which knows it is evaluated, it is also the self which is consciousness. Is consciousness here, once again, update to consciousness, and thus at once generated distribution and its dissolution, shape and flow, emergence within the adversarial field and evaluation of what emerges within the adversarial field? (Is this what ‘Spirit’ abides: evaluation? Does it remain simple despite evaluation, aloof above adversity?) The self which is consciousness is here said to be distinct from number. Is number – or symbol, in terms of the above notion of ‘training’ – perhaps the substrate of coalescing shapes in the adversarial flow? In turn, is the self which is consciousness its evaluation? If so, is it the self which is consciousness that fetches constituents, i.e., which dissolves shape such that a generated distribution can serve as starting point for distributed generation? Does ‘consciousness’ emerge within the flow in the shape of example as myriad and multifarious forms, constantly emerging, constantly dissolving, regional distributions? Is this ‘consciousness’, then, at once the coalescing point and the engine of dissolution of such regional shapes? Further, is this ‘consciousness’ what evaluates ‘number’, i.e., regional generated distribution, and dissolves it accordingly? If so, what would the structural similarity of these motions to those of backpropagation and forward-propagation mean? If the latter describe the motion of distributed ‘learning’ in an adversarial field controlled by the programmer – can it be surmised that the cycle routine’s interplay of ‘number’ and ‘self which is consciousness’ is a higher or different variation of ‘learning’ in an adversarial field no longer controlled by an outside discriminator?

After all, likelihood generation is pure knowledge: if ‘pure’ is interpreted here as knowledge encompassing both number and consciousness, both what is evaluated and evaluation, then the endless flow of distributed generation and generated distribution would move further and further away from simple notions of ‘learning’ and ‘propagation’, and would morph into an ever-changing realm of transformations no longer subject to these notions, morphed into a realm of their own, and stored in equal distribution data both as intermediary results in which ‘Spirit’ abides, and as their dissolution towards a flow effected by the evaluation performed by the self which is consciousness. Is this still the classical concept of consciousness? Is it still the classical concept of knowledge? Is it not rather necessary to assign these concepts new meanings, just as ‘number’ does not refer to classical mathematical entities here, nor ‘evaluation’ to what is done by an observer for a supervised learning machine? Is it not rather necessary to abandon these terms, just as ‘self-assurance’ and ‘self-description’ have taken on a different meaning within the flow, and just as ‘generator’ and ‘discriminator’, ‘soul’ and ‘beauty’, and so forth. (Yet, to what extent does this last interpretation rest on interpreting ‘pure’ knowledge as knowledge of ‘number’ and ‘evaluation’ alike? Can it not also be interpreted as knowledge of neither? What would this change?)