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Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
The Emergence of the Posthuman Consumer and the Fusion of the
Virtual and the Real:
A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for Memory Stick
________________________________________________________________________
Alladi Venkatesh 3200 Berkeley Place CRITO University of CaliforniaIrvine CA 92697 avenkate@uci.edu Eminegul Karababa Visiting Scholar CRITO University of California CA 92697Irvine and Department of MarketingGuliz Ger Bilkent University 06533 Bilkent Ankara, Turkey
March 2001 (CRITO Working Paper)
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
The Emergence of the Posthuman Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for Memory Stick (Abstract)
As the world moves closer to new cybernetic life forms (i.e. self-regulating technological entities) a fundamental question arises as to what the term “human” means. An equally important question is whether we are entering a new phase of “posthuman” lifeworld inhabited by cyborgs composed of organisms and machines.questions might appear have no theoretical or practical significance. At first glance, such However, some recent developments in human/machine interactions suggest that this requires attention. This paper makes a modest beginning in addressing relevant issues and examines their implications to some new ways of constructing the consumer, or more precisely the posthuman consumer.
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
“The term “posthuman” has come to designate a loosely related set of recent attempts to reconceptualize theExhibit 1 relationship between the rapidly transforming field of technology and the conditions of human embodiment. These are,generally speaking, a response to the cybernetic turn and the visualization of information, provoked by … the scale of disorientation and displacement created by the impact of computerization, the rise of new forms of engineering andnew modes of knowledge, the creation of artificial life etc. The most literal adjudication of the term posits the demise of human in the face of a technological evolution, its absorption into the new informational economies as obsoleteorganic matter. Some other less apocalyptic and more nuanced critiques, primarily associated with cyborg politics, also take the posthuman to designate an historical effacement of some precybernetic, ‘organic’ human figure…For nowI want to use the term to evoke a general critical space in which the techno-cultural forces which both produce and undermine the stability of the categories “human” and “non-human”, can be investigated. How are the self-identity andtranscendent status of the human secured as the “not-animal,” the “not-machine” and the “not-embodied’” and in what way does the purity of these categories unravel and contaminate each other?” (Rutsky 1999 p.24) Cyborg is a term popularized by Harraway (1990) who describes it in the following terms:“A cyborg is a hybrid creature, composed of organism and machine. But, cyborgs are composed of special kinds of machines and special kinds of organisms appropriate to the late twentieth century.War hybrid entities made of, first, ourselves and other organic creatures in our chosen “high-technological” guise as Cyborgs are post-Second World information systems, texts, and ergonomically controlled labouring, desiring, and reproducing systems. The secondessential ingredient in cyborgs is machines in their guise, also, as communication systems, texts, and self-acting, ergonomically designed apparatuses. (p10-11) “First the post-human view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodimentin a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second post- human view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition longbefore Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenona, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only minor sideshow. Third, the post-human viewthinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that begun before we were born. Fourth,and most important, by these and other means, the post-human view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the post-human there are no essential differences orabsolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals.” (Hayles, 1999, 2-3)
These three quotes suggest to us that we are witnessing the emergence of a posthuman/cyborgian paradigm that views the intersection of human and machine as a postmodern possibility in contrast to the received view under modernist thinking which considers these two entities as distinctly separate. However, at this intersection is not an ordinary machine—machine nevertheless—but a machine that is cybernetic and intelligent, a machine that has begun to evolve out of a virtual world of information and communication technologies. In this paper, we first present some foundational ideas concerning human identity and notions of representation. This will be followed by a discussion on posthuman
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
possibilities and in the final section we will consider an ad from SONY corporation for Memory Stick TM^ as an example of an interesting imagery of posthumanism.
The Human Identity in Modernity andMechanistic Ideas of Representation Beginning with Descartes our understanding of the world has followed a mechanistic route. Essentially, the mechanistic approach formalizes the ideas or symbols we use to represent the world in a rationalistic fashion. In addition, it also attempts to formalize the process of thinking itself. Thinking in this perspective means instrumental reasoning, calculation, using formal rules of evidence and monitoring standardized/predictable performance. Rational thinking is a conscious, competent administration of an idea, aided by procedural methods. The mechanistic and formalistic idea of representation was also at the heart of computing in its beginning stages and continues even today to some extent. Data are representations of facts and computer technology is essentially directed toward storing and manipulating of data. The mechanistic paradigm underlies the design of various every day technologies that exhibit a purpose, are singular, and well-ordered. To the extent that mind is presumed to control matter, we view these machines as controllable devices whose functions are dictated by human needs and dictates, and whose operations and purposes appear to be very transparent. Any interaction with the machine implies this relationship.
Romantic View in Modernity - Mechanism vs. Organism: In parallel to this mechanistic view of the world, there always existed a romantic view. Human emotions and unconscious desires always resisted these mechanistic and formalistic norms of behavior and looked for forms of liberatory moments. Poetry
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
Figure 1. Configuration of Mechanistic and Organismic View of Life
Simple Machines(e.g. Appliances) Ill-Defined (Compiters)
MechanisticView of Life OrganismicView of Life
Well-Defined(Automobiles) Complex (Cyber/WebTechnologies/Robotics)
Human Agency
Mechanical to Computational to Bio-Technical: We are moving from a mechanical concept of the world to a computational concept and further into a bio-technical concept of the world. For centuries, a key argument centered around culture and nature dichotomy questioning which of the two was superior in explaining or guiding human behavior. The debate continues and keeps some of us occupied. A few thinkers have suggested that the dispute between nature and culture is itself socially constructed, for according to some of them what is natural is cultural and what is cultural is natural. While the debate regarding nature-culture goes on, a parallel debate has surfaced in recent years, natural vs. artificial. Whatever progress we have recorded in the last 300 years is in the world of the artificial. For more than three decades our focus has been on not just artificial but artificial intelligence (AI). This has more recently expanded into artificial life (AL) suggesting that we are moving away
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
from AI to AL. The aesthetic of the body has also accordingly shifted to artificial formulations of the body. The basis of computerization is the effacement of the distinction between mechanism and organism. We are now picturing machines as organisms or self- replicating artifices. Organisms do not have a purpose, at least one that can theorize about. We can talk about the automobile having a purpose, that is, as a means of transportation. The main purpose of an organism seems to be self-replication and this is as close we can get to in uncovering its purpose. The site for the effacement of the distinction between mechanism and organism is the cyberspace.
Computerization of the Aesthetic: Computers are no longer viewed as merely computational devices working with mass amounts of data. The cyberspace has become a site of romantic vision and experience, and all the suppressed emotional areas of life are blossoming in cyberspace. One can see this in various technological manifestations of cyberspace--interactive media, virtual technologies, simulated art and a host of similar developments. If the basis of cyberspace is the effacement of the distinction between mechanism and organism, we may be looking at machine-organisms as self-replicating artifices. The main purpose of an organism is to self-replicate but, as we stated earlier, this is true of a machine. However, this traditional distinction between mechanism and organism is being eroded with the entry of new technologies of information. Of particular interest for our discussion is how the blurring of this distinction has an impact on individual identity.
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
Consumer Subjectivity in Cyberspace: The models of virtuality in cyberspace provide new forms of subjectivity. For example, many of the contingent essentialisms of cyberspace come from science fiction (e.g. Neuromancer, Bladerunner). Hollywood presents the realms of possibility and advertising takes its cue from what happens in Hollywood--where hi-tech determines the protocols of contemporary consumer culture. With this general discussion on the notions of the virtual and the real, let us move more specifically to the emerging posthuman condition.
The Development of Posthuman Thought: The Individual as Posthuman
Posthuman Identity: In her book Katherine Hayles (1999) discusses some critical notions concerning post-human identity. The most popular post-human identity is the cyborg created by science fiction movies and literature. In the construction of the cyborg there are informational paths connecting the organic human body to its prosthetic artificial extensions. This presumes a conception of information as a disembodied entity that can flow between carbon based organic compounds and silicon based electronic compounds to make protein and silicon operate as a single system. This is both a powerful metaphor and a profound (ly) material consequence of organic and inorganic fusion. This posthuman phenomenon is exemplified in the SONY ad for Memory Stick TM^ (which will be discussed later in some detail) (Figures 2a and 2b) where the fusion occurs between the polymer based Memory Stick TM^ and the carbon based human brain. Such a fusion is
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
explained by Hayles (1999) as a construction of post-human identity (see her quote – Exhibit 1 above):
Sony’s Memory Stick: In the spirit of providing a concrete example of how the posthuman discourse is being enacted in our everyday life, we have selected a Sony product, the Memory StickTM which appeared in the November 2000 issue Discover , a popular science magazine (Figures 2a and 2b). At one level, the ad is like any other ad, a print communication concerning an electronic device. At another level, it begins to merge the human with the artifice, and it is this aspect that is of interest in the paper.
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
Figure 2b. Sony Ad (cont.)
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
Before we analyze the ad in some detail, a brief comment on the cultural interpretation of an ad would be an order. Williamson (1978) argues that advertisements are cultural factors that mold and reflect the lives of masses. Although the basic goal of advertising is to sell products to potential customers, an important function of advertisement is to manipulate the cultural symbols that lie behind the ad, to structure the material life of the consumer and influence their feelings and life patterns. Advertisement creates structures of meanings in a way that consumer identities are established through a process of consumption of both the product and its accompanying meanings/images (McCracken 1988, Askegaard 1991). During this analysis one of our goals is to understand the collective impersonal signs and symbols that are communicated in the Sony ad and used by the consumers to identify themselves. The product shown in the ad is Sony’s Memory StickTM^ which is a copyrighted product of Sony Corporation. It is a recordable IC (integrated circuit) digital storage media. It is used in electronic devices to store and transfer digital data. It has the potential to become a standard storage and transfer media. It is smaller than a stick of chewing gum, and is available in the range of 8MB – 64MB storage sizes and with a PC card adapter. Due to its compact and thin size, it is designed for use in small digital audio/video electronics products. It allows users to transfer information, such as data, text, graphics or digital images from one electronic device to another quickly and easily. Compared to other IC media, Memory Stick is smaller in size than compact flash and smart media. It is highly reliable with a 10-pin connector, and an Erasure Prevention Switch that when set on "Lock" eliminates the risk of accidentally erasing or recording over- stored data. It has Original Serial Protocol for forward compatibility with
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
In addition to the utility of the product which is hardly elaborated in the first page of the ad, the ad stresses its symbolic value.
Posthuman Analysis: For a further elaboration of this viewpoint let us turn to Hayles (1999). She visualizes the post-human subject as a composite, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational unit whose boundaries undergo continuous construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. In a similar fashion to Hayles, Haraway (1991) envisions the cyborg as a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism. It is where the social reality meets fiction in an abashed fashion. For Haraway “the late 20th century is a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organisms; in short we are cyborgs.” (1990) At this point, we shall attempt to take the analysis to the next level of phenomenology. In this ad, we see certain visions of mind-body duality that have occupied social theorists, scientists, and philosophers through many centuries. Most scientists acknowledge that the mind-body duality is a social construction that obscures the holistic nature of human experience. Damasio discusses the complex mechanisms by which mind and body communicate, and emphasizes that the body is a more than a life- support system for the brain (Damasio as cited in Hayles, 1999, 245). According to this perspective, the body is not a passive organism receiving orders from the brain but an active contributor of content to the human mind. Feelings are communicated by the body to the mind in the form of information about the body’s structure and its continuously varying states. If feelings and emotions are the mutterings of the body to the mind, by
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
extension, the feelings are “just as cognitive as other precepts” and are considered part of human thought and indeed part of what makes humans rational creatures. In other words, the mind-body duality has to be problematized not in terms of Cartesian disjuncture but as a postmodern union. In terms of the specific example that we are concerned with here, being posthuman is not simply a question of the human having prosthetic devices grafted into his/her corporeal matter but perhaps one of equivalence between humans and computers as information processors.
The Next Page of the Ad: The next page of the ad is a spatial representation of electronic devices orbiting around the memory stick which is placed at the center of the orbit. At the top of the page, are the words, “STICK IT™”. Once again, we see a double coding of the message. “Stick it” is not only a literal term for the memory stick, but it also conveys the notion that all these various devices stick together. The metaphor used here is cosmic in detail and impact: it is the universe where celestial bodies are in orbit. Since the memory stick is at the center of the orbit, it may be viewed as the sublime force that keeps the electronic (planetary) devices in an elliptical gravitational field. Taken as a whole, the memory stick is the linking tool between the human (the first page of the ad) and the various electronic devices (the second page of the ad). However, this link is not simply a link in the utilitarian sense but a link in which the devices and the humans are able to cross their respective corporeal and artifactual boundaries in a posthuman fashion.
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
consciousness into a computer.” We may be closer to it than when they uttered these words. The most significant thing to both of them is the data, and the programs in the data that reside in the brain. And some day the individual will be able to take all that data, put it on a little disk and store it for a thousand years, and then have it turned on again. Lyotard (1991) likens this to a monad that knows everything out of the conventional time span. Although this is a rather extreme interpretation of the ad, the direction of its meaning is inescapable. For example, at the bottom of the second page, we see the following words, “if the world of digital has become your world, Memory Stick ®^ media is the link that sticks it all together. You can capture digital images and MPEG video. You can store digital music files. And with the Sony Memory Stick Voice Recorder, you can even record your voice and convert it to text. That’s just the beginning.” These words seem to herald an oncoming posthuman world.
Summary and Conclusion Our analysis shows that we are moving from a modernistic notions of the consumer to some new possibilities of posthuman consumer. We capture this progression in the Figure 3. The role of new technologies in this progression seems to be most interesting and compelling. Traditional culture is marked by local situations where they cannot be easily transplanted or communicated without the help of technologies. The new technologies furnish cultural models which are not initially rooted in the local context but diffused through out the globe, and provide a remarkable means of overcoming the obstacles traditional culture face in the recording, transfer and communication of information.
Consumer and the Fusion of the Virtual and the Real: A Critical Analysis of Sony’s Ad for the Alladi Venkatesh, Eminegul Karababa, and Guliz Ger,^ The Emergence of the Posthuman
(Lyotard, 1991) According to Lyotard, the current functions of the technology, the real value of the technological products (e.g. the Memory Stick) and the global diffusion of electronic and information networks give rise to a global capacity for memorizing and sometimes stand in opposition to the representations within traditional cultures. The paradox implied by this memory resides in the fact that in the last analysis it is nobody’s memory. But nobody here means that the body supporting that memory is no longer earth bound. (Lyotard, 1991, 64). This paper is a modest attempt to initiate a discussion on the notion of a posthuman consumer who is at the center of a major technological revolution. Some of our established ideas rooted in modernist thinking need to be re-examined and as we develop new theories of consumer behavior, we should remind ourselves us that the world of technological practice is moving at a lightning speed and both as researchers and practitioners we should meet the new challenges.
