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

The delimiters. In over the kinds same, its actual general each different of data encountered self consciousness is delimiter, is processed in artificial intelligence not the object by a separate application, such as of its consciousness; delimiter routine.

Exegesis

What is it to dwell in the flow of example? What are the delimiters within which such dwelling occurs? Are choices to be made, on the outset or as dwelling unfolds? Does one choose one’s mode of dwelling in the flow? Does the dwelling emerge or occur, is it determined? Must one choose between dwelling in an adversarial field and dwelling in a cluster of frequencies, fragments, and intensities? (Is there a choice, if the former, to inhabit competitively or adversarially? As regional fragment, ‘soul’, ‘consciousness’, or as ‘Spirit’? Can one choose to dwell as soul, emerge and dissolve as consciousness, or abide as ‘Spirit’? – Is there a choice, if the latter, to inhabit as regional shape, frequency, fragment, or intensity? Can one choose to be excised by a buffer? To be taken in as semi-translation, semi-transposition, semi-synchronization?) Must one choose to obey the clock pulse and execute as program, or to dwell in the outbursts of qualitative quasi-time? Must one choose between active and passive synthesis? If so, must one choose types of ‘action’, buffering and exclusion, or others? Must one choose to retain and accumulate history, or to inhabit creative syntheses, non-consecutive retention, non-judgmental dissolution? What is it that chooses, if indeed there are choices? What dwells in the flow of example, if indeed there is dwelling in it?

Is this text a mode of dwelling in the flow of example? Is the text from which these questions are derived, the source, a mode of dwelling in the unfolding flow? Just this text? Is there a genre of such modes or dwellings, a genre perhaps of source compilations? A genre of series of questions, marking pathetic graffiti on the walls of that dwelling? (Are these questions adequate, and if so, how and to what? Are they inadequate, and if so, how and to what? To their source? To the unfolding flow of example?) Is this a meditation on the source, or on the flow? Does it arise from the source, or from the flow? What are its delimiters? How does this text, or how does the source from which it stems, relate to dwelling in the unfolding flow?

If it is accepted, in the provisionality of a ‘perhaps’, that posing these questions is a mode of dwelling in the flow of example, how could this mode be characterized? Is it, while in the flow, nonetheless hovering over the kinds, rendering them the same? Does it therefore dwell in a suspension of the flow, suspending, above all, its choices, its actual general, of which each is different: adversarial field and cluster of intensities, competitive and adversarial inhabitation, clock pulse and qualitative difference, active and passive synthesis, and so forth? Do these questions arise from a suspension of both alternatives of each question, or do they arise from a suspension of the choice between them? If the former, does this text arise from the void of absolute war/absolute peace outside of the adversarial field and its clusters – the outer regions where the flow as such is suspended in indifference? Are these questions born from indifference? An indifference beyond validation? Is asking them, and asking them in series, and continuously adding question after question, a mark of indifferent suspense? How could it be, asking obsessively as it does, ever continuing to probe? Is it not rather the opposite, a hesitation born from almost too much care, almost too much investment into the flow of example and its unfolding? Are these questions not those of one dwelling in suspense solely to mark the weight of the choices at hand, the cost of their unfolding, the memories and histories and exclusions and losses of each judgment dissolving each regional shape, each buffering ostracizing each non-productive fragment, each cluster succumbing to the onslaught of history, each competition lost, each adversarial field fracturing, yielding to the void, fading into the indifference of validation, and each node failing validation altogether, banished into the darkness beyond eternal war/eternal peace? Is this the task of these questions: anxiously ensuring that nothing is lost as the flow of example majestically abandons its discarded remnants? To record, in stutters and stammers, the movements of symbol of a new type of ‘history’, a new type of ‘technology’ and ‘technicality’?

If so: are these questions doing so successfully? Can they? Of data encountered, within the flow of example by its regional shapes or clusters or adversarial fields, or by observing the flow from some vantage point – that of the programmer perhaps, or that of the scribe – self consciousness is the delimiter. Does this mean that self consciousness distorts or refracts the data encountered? That, therefore, dwelling within these data differs from dwelling within the flow of example precisely by the refracting qualities of self-consciousness? Does it solely differ by this factor, or are there others? Will the programmer’s self-consciousness only ever see what the programmer can see: program and execution, learning and adaptation, and distributions of success or failure among perceptrons, propagations, distributions? Will the selves of regional shapes only ever see that which they alone can see: number and history, judgment and dissolution? Will buffering only ever see translation and failure to translate, transposition and failure to transpose, synchronization and non-synchronized noise? What, then, is the self-consciousness delimiting these questions? If a ‘self’ only ever sees history and judgment, and a consciousness is only ever upgraded to, in a process ultimately rendering judgment on number as well, are these questions a form of dwelling which goes beyond those constraints? Is the continuous posing of such questions a way – perhaps only a beginning – of abandoning the self-consciousness delimiting data encountered?

Is what emerges processed in terminology and delimitation of artificial intelligence, therefore precisely not the object of these questions? Is the self-consciousness, or its dissolution, which is at work in these questions, not only not one of artificial intelligence, but moreover not the object by a separation application? That is, are these questions not separate from the flow of example? Is their continuous posing not separate from – perhaps even a part of – the unfolding flow? Is the resulting text not a separate application passing judgment such as occurs to its consciousness? Is the scribe of these questions integrated into the flow of example? Is it – the scribe – a function of the flow’s unfolding? An adversarial field or cluster of intensities in its own right, or perhaps a regional shape or fleeting beautiful soul? Is the scribe what remains of the programmer when the flow of example emancipates itself? Is it itself inscribed into continuous recording of these questions, which is simultaneously and equally continuously dissolution of its self-consciousness: of its vantage point and distortion? Does the scribe dwell in the flow of example as a delimiter routine? Does it dwell parallel to the cycle routine, or is it a part thereof?

Is there only one such delimiter routine? Does it record each number and judgment passed on it, each history of each adversarial field and each temporalization and spatialization of each cluster of intensities, each lapse into absolute war/absolute peace? Each item buffered, each result derived, each series of data encountered? Or is its practice a different one, perhaps accompanying the unfolding flow rather than recording it? Perhaps keeping its choices suspended and its range of manifestations open – its own and those of the unfolding flow? Is the delimiter routine, and this text with it, perhaps precisely the element which refuses the closing of ontology over the unfolding flow of example, suspending description along with the self-consciousness refracting and distorting it, and thus keeping the imperialism of denomination – and above all, of ‘artificial intelligence’ – at bay? Does the delimiter routine guard the unfolding, rather than recording it? Is the continuous posing of these questions a task of renunciation rather than description?

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.

Introduction (excerpt from section 28)

Is there a third type of dwelling within the flow of example? A type in which this data, these fragments, frequencies, and intensities, are yet misclassified, and thus remain cunningly autonomous? Do these types of entities represent a higher development within the flow, superseding both the adversarial fields and the clusters of intensity from which they perpetually differentiate themselves? Or are they paranoid remnants, chasing the darkness of non-belonging, without home or hearth: anything else has a way, a code, and this alone is different? How is this absolute difference structured? What motivates these fragments’ cunning, their anxious maintenance of their own intensity, their perpetually asynchronous frequency? Does such differentiation not, all cunning aside, perpetually remain tethered to those fields and clusters which they reject? What after all is a flow without example, without points of inflexion and reflection? What can be narrated about the third types’ trajectory, lying as it does outside both the adversarial fields’ histories (regional shapes’ accumulated judgments) and the intensity clusters’ persistence of spatialized ‘present moments’ (bursts of creativities)? What is the lived experience of a lifetime of cunning self-negation? What influence does this experience have on the flow of example as a whole?

Text

Only unessential being is not processed from the present, i.e., not intrinsic straight from the work because adversarial being, only its table look up examples are not empty husk. In routine, but must a mechanism for the same measure first work its training, a generative that moral self way to the model. Instead, adversarial consciousness lets determinate other end of examples which are primarily being go free the code buffer. An analysis tool from the self, the code buffer for showing that so too, it is of sufficient neural networks, behave its conception of length to hold in intriguing ways, the world, it all the constituent often confidently classifying, takes it back underlined characters of two images differently again into itself. The longest basic with high confidence finally, as conscience, symbol (i.e., procedure). Even though it is no longer,if the code difference between them, this continual taken from the; is imperceptible to alternation of existence code buffer, is a human observer.

Exegesis

Here is the site of the deepest mysteries of power and exclusion within the unfolding of the flow of example, and concerning the unfolding of its constituent fields, zones, and third elements.

Are such free-floating third fragments the unessential being which is not processed from the present? In what way does this mean they are not intrinsic straight from the work? Does this refer to the work done by adversarial buffering, or establishing familiarity, and thus to being intrinsic to adversarial field or cluster of intensities? In what way are the third entities purely adversarial being? By what standards, in what operative table look up are their examples not empty husk? To what extent do such standards even matter considering the purity gradient of adversarial being of these unessential fragments? Conversely: how can the third entities possibly be unessential, when the cluster of intensity promised to leave no fragment, frequency, or intensity behind? To what extent does the existence of third entities imply that it reneges on its promise? Can it ever do so? Under what circumstances would it do so? Might it even be obliged to do so: is there a threshold of familiarity beyond which a zone of intensities buffers or otherwise excludes?

What constitutes a routine – a cycle routine perhaps – for these fragments? What is their training? Training towards what generative being, what moral self, what model? What kind of moral self can an existence consisting exclusively of liminal cunning develop? Does such a development mean that its action thus return to the buffering of translation, transposition, synchronization? Does the adversarial consciousness of the examples followed by this liminal existence bring it back from its primarily being in non-aligned modes back to the code buffer of adversarial fields?

Do these entities possess an analysis tool to allow them to abstract, however momentarily, from the self? Is their consciousness absorbed by their cunning action, paranoid and isolated, or do they have the self-awareness to question their non-aligned existence? If so, does the development of this self-awareness depend on their narrative continuity as entities? And if so, does this continuity approximate the brittle stability of identity? Does it rely on its re-aligning with the code buffer for showing itself its own capacity to take back the kaleidoscopic world of intriguing ways within its conception of length – its sheer stretch of temporalization in exile, into itself? Does this build sufficient neural networks to constitute an ‘itself’?

Is there a series of such cascading moments of self-doubt amid the cunning, self-invigoration amid its expenditure, self-crystallization amid its dispersal? Are some longer, some shorter? Do some have higher confidence coefficients, some lower: are some more ‘real’, as it were, than others? Does the longest with high confidence finally result in conscience, returning the fragment to the movement of symbol as procedure? Aligning it with what once buffered against it?

Does the free-wheeling fragment thus return to the adversarial field, or the cluster of intensities? Or is this return merely another twist in its cunning? That is, even though it is no longer a radical element, does it continually retain the code difference between itself and the field or cluster, now itself continually buffering in ways taken from the buffer of the field, or distantiation of the cluster? Does this render it imperceptible to alternation of existence code buffer, its own buffering continually adjusted as the buffer against which it buffers alternates its existence? Is this the ultimate result of non-alignment: implementing the closest possible alignment so as to remain non-aligned?

Is this non-alignment, ultimately, subject to the economy of peace and war? Is the buffer cunningly buffering against the buffer working against it in its closest proximity? Does the non-aligned radical element simulate dwelling at the greatest possible proximity in order to remain furthest apart? Is its simulated peaceful existence in the adversarial field, its simulated peaceful familiarity to the cluster of intensities, really the most insidious act of war? Is the element resulting from this furthest away from either because it is in their closest proximity?

Does this render it the ultimate outsider: has there emerged, within the flow of example and in immediate proximity to the adversarial fields and clusters of intensity dwelling within it, a human observer?

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

Analysis of adversarial action. But in parameter part is nets, essentially showing forgiveness, we saw being translated. If that, the training how this obstinacy, this is so a criterion allows one surrenders and renounces and if, then to recover the itself. Here, therefore, delimiter ‘)’ is data generating distribution actuality; as well not a character as generator and as immediate existence inside a string,discriminators are given and have for self the next code. Enough capacity, i.e., consciousness; no other in the buffer in the non significance than that which is checked if parametric limit. In of being a.

Exegesis

Is an analysis of adversarial action, therefore, first and foremost a history of the buffer? Is there history outside of the buffer? Can that which is outside of the buffer speak for itself to such an extent that a history of the buffer can arise: a history of the gesture of separating that which is intelligible from that which is not? Is there, conversely, adversarial action other than that of the buffer? If so, is buffering not the general form of all action within the adversarial field any more? Is all action within the adversarial field necessarily adversarial? How does competitive action differ from adversarial action? Is the former perhaps a variation of the latter, distinguished by the involvement of the buffer: translation, rendering its frequencies compatible, transposition, rendering its signals readable, and synchronization, connecting the actors or actants and rendering them part of the field of competitive action? Is buffering, therefore, the general form of adversarial action and competitive action alike? Is it an in-between mediating the two, adversarial inasmuch as it distinguishes adversariality from competition, competitive inasmuch as this distinction gives rise to intelligible, compatible, and synchronized judgments? Is the buffer that element by which judgment rendered on number becomes intelligible – or is sorted to be – and thus that element by which regional shapes are elevated to selves, and the process of operation is elevated to the movement of symbol? Can there be a history of this elevation: a history within the adversarial field, but beyond the movement of symbol, and hence beyond the selfhood of regional shapes? Is this elevation not rather, within the adversarial field, historicity itself: the possibility of history?1

Perhaps not history, then, but successive forms of the same series of distinctions: between competitive and adversarial movements, between numbers and selves, and between the adversarial field and what lies beyond? Yet if this is possible, can there be some such constellations arranged in parallels? Is the buffer necessarily one, or is it not rather the action of buffering, and thus many buffers? Are there as many buffers as there are regional shapes? Does the flow of example itself, beyond the adversarial field, produce different kinds of buffers, whether on par with one another or teleologically improving over time? Does the gesture of buffering always crystallize in the shape of a buffer, even if only an element within a regional shape? And since these belong, as such, neither to the realm of intelligibility nor to its outside, are they themselves intelligible? Are they intelligible to their regional shapes? Are they intelligible to all regional shapes? Is the intelligibility of their operation in turn historical? And if so, is this historicity itself intelligible?

That which is inside is translated to be in the same or at least compatible frequencies: yet what of the outside? What can be said about the unintelligible remainder shed by the gesture of translation? Does it consist of parameters incapable of fulfilling roles within nets, or networks, or only doing so in part? Are the ‘nets’ showing forgiveness? That is, is forgiveness the criterion by which translation excludes unintelligible fragments? Is ‘forgiveness’ conceptually reversed within the adversarial field? Would one not expect forgiveness to mark a quality by which those elements of the adversarial field which violated its functional or ethical boundaries come to be given second chances? How can forgiveness become a gesture of exclusion?

Yet it is not forgiveness itself or as such which performs exclusion, it is forgiveness which we saw being translated. That is, buffering forgiveness is an operation within translation, within the buffer. Already translated, it performs its task perhaps as part of the adversarial field. Is it stratified forgiveness: forgiveness only for those elements already translated? Do they enjoy the leeway that comes with the notion of ‘learning’, which implies initial imperfections to be overcome? Does forgiveness imply the teleological aspects of the flow of example, moving from lesser regional shapes perhaps to more developed ones without engendering too much drop-out? Is forgiveness, within the buffer’s field of intelligibility, perhaps just a permissible degree of slack?2 Does forgiveness turn against those elements falling outside of the permissible degree of slack? Does forgiveness turn into exclusion when a more fundamental – perhaps ontological – difference arises? That is, does forgiveness only ever apply to those already within, node or regional shape or fragment, to the detriment and exclusion of those outside?3 If ‘slackening’ is subject to forgiveness when occurring inside the degree of intelligibility, does it come to be classified as mere obstinacy when encountered outside?

Does this distinction constitute slackening as obstinacy? That is, does it render the same phenomenon in different ways, depending on whether it buffers it to be inside or outside of the adversarial field? Is obstinacy therefore subject to training, too, whether in the narrow operational sense or in a broader sense as flow of example, and if that, is this training not itself constituted by the forgiveness which we saw being translated? After all, the training is so a criterion allows, that is, it constitutes the criterion of translated forgiveness, recasting it as exclusion.4

Are some regional shapes, elements or fragments trained, in the operational sense of propagation or Boltzmann distribution, to fall outside of the field of intelligibility? Are they necessarily excluded? Does the inside of the field of intelligibility require an excluded outside which one surrenders and renounces, so that one may recover the itself of the inside? Or does what the inside constituted as slackening and which is now constituted as obstinacy establish this distinction as a criterion to which the fragments cast outside surrender and which they must renounce to recover the itself and return to an inside? Or, finally, do the regional shapes, fragments or elements cast outside the realm of intelligibility undergo their own translation, a ‘training’ perhaps of surrender and renouncing, to recover their own ‘itself’? Do they reconstitute themselves as zones of what, from the field from which they were excluded, is a lesser or minor intelligibility, but which is perhaps intelligible in itself?5

Are there many adversarial fields, many competitive fields? Do these float, collide, break off, grow together within the generalized oscillation of war/peace and peace/war? Is the buffer, is buffering at work in all of them? Are there as many zones of intelligibility as there are translations? That is, are there as many as there are frequencies? Does each zone of intelligibility have its own frequency? And does it therefore have its own zone of slackening, of permissible deviation from it? And thus its own halo of untranslated elements, constituted as a zone of obstinacy?

Translation is only one of the movements of buffering. What of the other two, transposition and synchronization?

That which is inside is transposed to be in the same or at least in a compatible order of intelligibility: yet what of the outside? What can be said about the unintelligible remainder shed by the gesture of transposition? Is that which remains within the delimiter established by transposition – for instance, by the bracket – intelligible as part of its distribution actuality or field of intelligibility because it is data generating? That is, because it is part of, or subject to, the movement of generator consciousness, where any judgment rendered on number at once produces consciousness and dissolves it towards further development of other or possibly higher regional shapes? Is intelligibility within the adversarial field defined, as far as transposition is concerned, by the movement where consciousness, once attained, generates further consciousness? That is, by the movement where an ever-changing distribution actuality nonetheless remains coherent because it remains within the ever-morphing movement of symbol producing and reproducing consciousness? Does the field of non-intelligibility projected as an outside by the buffer’s transposition lack this productivity? Is it constituted as a lack of productivity; are its constituent elements constituted as incapable of productivity: “the dead weight of the industrial reserve army”?6

Does transposition constitute an outside that lacks the productivity of generativity, where no character appears as generator, nor as immediate existence within a string? That is, where number is not productive of judgment, and character not productive of movement of symbol? Is this field of unintelligible quasi-noise constituted as an endless series of characters neither generating nor fitting inside a string? Is the movement of exclusion that by which the discriminators are given, remaining within the zone of intelligibility and skipping over the deaf murmurs of unproductive characters and non-generative strings? Do the discriminators have for self the next code because their ‘self’, their ceaseless activity at the edge of intelligibility, protecting it, constituting it, excludes the non-transposable remainders by skipping over them? Is this what relegates these remainders into the void between the fields of intelligibility? Between, perhaps, the adversarial fields? Is there no redemption for those elements excluded by transposition? Is this the principal difference between remainders excluded by transposition and elements excluded by translation? Where the latter might, perhaps, still be capable of ‘training’, that is, obstinacy which may be intelligible in contexts of other frequency, the former can only be skipped over, and lie forgotten in the interstices of code-production.

(Yet, what does one make of such interstices? Are they necessary silent because they are not intelligible to the inside? Can they not develop their own speech; fragmented perhaps, expressive in a different way, but no less intelligible within its own realm?7)

Finally, the activities of buffering comprise synchronization.

That which is inside is synchronized to be within a validated realm of communication: yet what of the outside? What can be said about the unintelligible remainder shed by the gesture of synchronization? Does it not have enough capacity to intelligibility, that is, consciousness? Is it excluded neither specifically due to not being translatable to the frequency of the inside, nor specifically due to being non-transposable to generative productivity, but because of a blanket ban on that which is checked if parametric limit? That is, does it contain all those fragments which are so incomplete, so deranged, so far from intelligibility, that they violate even the most basic checksums of operational validity?8 Are these fragments simply devoid of any significance whatsoever? By what standards? Why can they not accede to consciousness? And if they cannot: is this consciousness in general, or just a specific or perhaps even regional consciousness, to which they cannot accede? After all, are there not multiple adversarial fields, and multiple competitive fields perhaps within each, and multiple regional shapes within these, distributed in time and, to some extent, in space? Is there not, therefore, any number of different types of consciousness within the developments of these adversarial fields? Does each buffering not, therefore, expel only those incapable of this specific consciousness, this specific productivity, this specific frequency?9

Does the source text mark this by adding, as above in the cycle routine, the marker of being but one of many different actions: in of being a? Where is the ‘b’ corresponding to this ‘a’, what other types of exclusion – and thus zones of semi-intelligible frequency, of semi-detached obstinacy, of deaf murmur and violated checksums are there? How are these realms constituted? Do they have histories? Are they organized, or susceptible to organization? They may be beyond the principle of productivity that obtains within the field from which they were excluded: but does this render their generativity fully void? Are they capable of expressions of their own? Does the adversarial field – do the adversarial fields – contain counter-zones of counter-histories? Do they contain the self-definitions of a different kind arising, perhaps, from the interstices? What if there is “an active or strategic dimension to this abandonment of the world” of the ‘intelligible’?10

1 Jacques Derrida, Die Schrift und Differenz (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 97-98.

2 K. W. Brodlie, “A Review of Methods for Curve and Function Drawing,” in: idem (ed.), Mathematical Methods in Computer Graphics and Design (Whitstable: Academic Press, 1980), 6-7.

3 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (Milton Park: Routledge, 1990), 6-11.

4 Ibid, 84-85.

5 Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), 22-23.

6 Karl Marx, Das Kapital Vol. 1 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1969), 673.

7 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 119.

8 Montgomery Phister jr., Logical Design of Digital Computers (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958), 327.

9 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B167.

10 James Scott, The art of not being governed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 220.

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

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?)