Hilarie's Response: the Me, the Digital We, and How We Feel About It

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#340

Hayles articulates the concept of extended cognition as something “in which human agency and thought are enmeshed within larger networks that extend beyond the desktop computer into the environment” (3). The origin above that, from which Hayles traces the connections that lead to the intermediary level of embodiment, is the “feeling one has that the world is at one’s fingertips” and the ensuing alienation/anxiety when disconnected from that space (2). In other words, the way we process information now as digitally manipulating beings is necessarily networked, and it all starts with how we (as individuals in a networked space) feel about it. This seems really revolutionary to me – and quite useful for our purposes this semester. Feelings (which I’m distinguishing from senses for the present) are so easy to suppress, to ignore, to sublimate beneath conscious thoughts or imposed norms. I don’t disagree with any of this, necessarily, and I don’t want to get too yoga teachery on you, but I think it’s important to remember that the collective starts with the individual, and that individual feelings held by many people at once are what creates the collective using each person as part of the fabric. (Namaste.)

The panic of leaving one’s smart phone at home, then, may be silly, but it’s also useful – it results from the deep and wide interconnection of our individual thoughts and cognitive processes with those of others. I can’t help but want to jump several steps ahead of where Hayles has us and wonder about the implications that go beyond writing and thought (that start from them): is this constant connection a way toward greater understanding among disparate groups? As I mentioned above, I also think it’s worth parsing out a distinction between feelings-as-intuitions and feelings-as-senses. It seems to me, as we discussed in class last week, that pen and paper writing is more qualitatively sensory in the experience (motion of pen on paper, smell of ink, ink on hands), but that computer writing is cognitively and visually sensory. They’re both strongly sensory, though, even when we’re become inured to those sensations. The disconnection feeling, however, is intuition-based – we know there are Things Happening on the Internet without us and it makes us anxious to miss any of it even though we don’t have immediate knowledge of what those Things are.

These moves from and among the individual and the collective center on a kind of synergy, the kind that anchors Hayles’ discussion of Comparative Media Studies as a kind of middle way between print and digital research (7) and a base for technologies and research approaches to come. Her invocation of synergy is important here: “Diverse as these projects are, they share an assumption that techniques, knowledges, and theories developed within print traditions can synergistically combine with digital productions to produce and catalyze new kinds of knowledge” (8). The goal is (or should be) knowledge, not turf wars or snottiness. It’s also important that it makes print “an informed choice” rather than a default (9). This imbricates within print the kind of critical thought about media, placement, connection, and other elements that is so important to digital work. I don’t want to go so far as to say that this kind of thinking never happens in print work, but I take her point that it is less likely to.

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