Yuk Hui: What is a digital object?

What is a digital object?

Yuk HuiGoldsmiths University of London

Plan

Part I: ObjectsPart II: Relations

Remark IPart III: Mind

Remark II

Part I: Objects

Digital Objects

Digital Milieu

MetadataExample of Friend of a Friend (FOAF)<foaf:Person>

<foaf:name>Peter Parker</foaf:name> <foaf:gender>Male</foaf:gender> <foaf:title>Mr</foaf:title> <foaf:givenname>Peter</foaf:givenname> <foaf:family_name>Parker</foaf:family_name> <foaf:mbox_sha1sum>cf2f4bd069302febd8d7c26d803f63fa7f20bd82</foaf:mbox_sha1sum> <foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://www.peterparker.com"/> <foaf:weblog rdf:resource="http://www.peterparker.com/blog/"/>

</foaf:Person>

MetadataMetadata of a Flickr Photo

• comments: 1• dates: • dateuploaded: 8/19/07; 2:44:43 AM• lastupdate: 8/19/07; 2:44:43 AM• posted: 8/19/07; 2:44:43 AM• taken: 8/18/07; 10:44:43 PM• takengranularity: 0• description: Sent from my iPhone• editability: • canaddmeta: 0• cancomment: 0• farm: 2• geoperms: • iscontact: 0• isfamily: 0• isfriend: 0• ispublic: 1• id: 1166257196• isfavorite: 0• license: 5• location: • accuracy: 15• country: United States• county: Santa Clara• latitude: 37.444293• locality: Palo Alto• longitude: -122.160591• region: California• notes: • 72157601607070993:

Metadata• h: 20• id: 72157601607070993• title: Blue Chalk Cafe• w: 68• x: 280• y: 14• originalformat: jpg• originalsecret: • location: USA• nsid: 22221172@N00• realname: Dave Winer• username: scriptingnews• rotation: 0• secret: • server: 1007• tags: • barcampblock: • author: 22221172@N00• id: 380915-1166257196-13743477• machine_tag: 0• raw: barcampblock• heatherharde: • author: 22221172@N00• id: 380915-1166257196-2504570• machine_tag: 0• raw: Heather Harde• techcrunch: • author: 22221172@N00• id: 380915-1166257196-3057• machine_tag: 0• raw: TechCrunch• title: Heather Harde, TechCrunch CEO• photopage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/1166257196/• visibility: • isfamily: 0• isfriend: 0• ispublic: 1

Object-Data

Object Data Object (internet of things)

Digital Objects

Information Object (embodiment)

Perception Data (control)

Immaterial relations Material Network (Materialization)

Ontologies

“The curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’”

W.V.O. Quine, On What There Is

Object and Appearance

Proposition 1: The core question of object for metaphysicians since Aristotle is becoming the question of appearance

Aristotle’s Ontology

BeingSubstanceAccidents

Quantity, Quality, Relation, Action, Passion, Time, Place, Disposition, Rainment

Grammar: Subject – Predicate

Hylomorphism

“in speaking here of matter I have in mind, say, the bronze of a statue, while by shape-form I mean the geometry of the object’s appearance and by the composite the statue itself as a whole entity”

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Hume1) since no one will “assert, that substance is either a

colour, or sound, or a taste”2) so the “idea of substance must therefore be derived

from an impression of reflection, into our passions and emotions”

3) “none of which [passions and emotions] can possibly represent a substance”

4) “we have therefore no idea of substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we talk or reason concerning it”

David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature

Kant

Noumena: unknowable (the-thing-in-itself)Phenomena: knowable

perceptionunderstandingreason

Husserl

“how are we to understand the fact that the ‘in itself’ of the objectivity can be thought of by us and moreover ‘apprehended’ in cognition and thus in the end yet become ‘subjective’”

Husserl, quoted by Edo Pivčević Husserl and Phenomenology

Natural Objects

The metaphysical investigation of object has been always centered on its “Eidos”

Technical Objects“is not made of matter and form only. It is made up of technical elements arranged from a certain system of usage and assembled into a stable structure by the manufacturing process”

“There would be no exaggeration in saying that the quality of a simple needle expresses the degree of perfection of a nation’s industry”

Gilbert SimondonOn the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects

Part II: Relations

Networks

Hylomorphism?

An architectural rule which the SGML community embraced is the separation of form and content. It is an essential part of Web architecture, making possible the independence of device mentioned above, and greatly aiding the processing and analysis

Tim Berners-Lee Web Architecture from 50,000 feet

Relationstheir [Peirce and Schröder] method suffers technically (whether philosophically or not I do not at present discuss) from the fact that they regard a relation essentially as a class of couples, thus requiring elaborate formulae of summation for dealing with single relations. This view is derived, I think, probably unconsciously, from a philosophical error: it has always been customary to suppose relational propositions less ultimate than class-propositions (or subject-predicate propositions, with which class-propositions are habitually confounded), and this has led to a desire to treat relations as a kind of classes

Bertrand RussellThe principle of Mathematics

Relational Calculus

xRyx : referentsy : relatumR : relata

“we can now develop the whole of mathematics without further assumptions or indefinables”

Bertrand Russell, The principle of Mathematics

Relational Database

Edgar F. Codd, A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks, 1970

Tuple Relational Calculus a simple example: consider a company has the following information inside its relational database: EMPLOYEE (SSN, Name, Bdate, Address, Salary, DeptId), and the query of a TRC will be something like this: Find all employees whose salary is greater than 30.000 { t∣t EMPLOYEE t. Salary>30. 000} ∈ ∧

Digital Objects

- A digital object is defined by relations (not subject-predicate)

- A digital object’s identity is defined by its being-in-the-milieu

- All accidents become element of relations- Substance is not an engineering question

Remarks

Remark 1: what we have been talking about are Discursive Relations, which we can actually identify with Hume’s philosophy of relations.

Remark 2: there are other type of relations, which I call Existential Relations, Martin Heidegger is a philosopher of existential relations though he refused

Part III: Mind

Mind

Tim Berners-Lee: Global Mind

Turing: can machines think?intelligence simulation

Can we think with machines?social computing

I think

Rene Descartes: cogito ergo sum I think= substance

“I think” to Kant is “not something represented, but the formal structure of representing as such, and this formal structure alone makes it possible for anything to have been represented.”

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Kant’s Categories

Social Categories

At the root of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of understanding: ideas of time, space, class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the solid frame, which encloses all thought… They are like the framework of the intelligence

Durkheim, The Elementary Form of Religious Life, 1915:9

Thinking

- Creation of digital objects through ontologies: a global schema

- Digital objects as tertiary retention, which conditions I think (Bernard Stiegler)

- Machine functions intrude into the flux of consciousness

Remark

Remark 3. Clark and Chalmers’ Extended Mind: cognitive process is outside the skull.

Remark 4. Digital Objects as tertiary protention