Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media

by Mark B.N. Hansen

Even as media in myriad forms increasingly saturate our lives, we nonetheless tend to describe our relationship to it in terms from the twentieth we are consumers of media, choosing to engage with it. In Feed-Forward, Mark B. N. Hansen shows just how outmoded that way of thinking media is no longer separate from us but has become an inescapable part of our very experience of the world.Drawing on the speculative empiricism of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, Hansen reveals how new media call into play elements of sensibility that greatly affect human selfhood without in any way belonging to the human. From social media to data-mining to new sensor technologies, media in the twenty-first century work largely outside the realm of perceptual consciousness, yet at the same time inflect our every sensation. Understanding that paradox, Hansen shows, offers us a chance to put forward a radically new vision of human becoming, one that enables us to reground the human in a non-anthropocentric view of the world and our experience in it.

Genres: Technology

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 29, 2014

Reviews

[Alexander Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strong first attempt to reconcile A.N. Whitehead's Process and Reality with contemporary digital media theory. However, at times it seems a little slap-dash and ad hoc with its theory use, and even a little overly debate-y and abstract about adjacent contemporaries without genuine metaphysical clarification or motivation for these challenges.

This book responds well to the point that computational media today often happens at a distance from human consciousness, and that this generates a value in the use of Whitehead's concept of "prehensions" as he develops them. In turn, this concept of prehension is used to develop a new cybernetic idea: "feed-forward".

The book's title "feed-forward" is rhetorically connected to the cybernetic idea of "feedback". Feedback is a concept in which minds are given information synthesis about a signal that is passed through a (Shannonian) information channel. That synthesis, is achieved by the mind that initiated the signal. Proceedurally feedback occurs as follows: a signal is sent by a sensory agent, an event occurs in an information system which decodes the signal, and that information is relayed back to the original sensory agent. For "feed-foward" to occur, however, it seems that the idea is that media "senses" itself and makes decisions before human sensory bodies do. Thus, interrupting consciousness in the loop.

Crucial to this argument is Hansen's denial of the disconnection of humans from the system. Correctly, Hansen argues that humans are a part of cybernetic systems and always will be. Cybernetic systems, according to him, do not become humanless or (as he says) antihuman. On this (in a particular limiting interpretation of what this could mean) we agree. However it is the way Hansen interprets theory of alternative media theory approaches in which I disagree.

It seems, from my read, that there is an unnecessary flaw in how Hansen rejects the antihumanism of contemporary speculative philosophy. In paritcular, Hansen speaks with sprawling generality about the media and ecological theories of "Speculative Realism" as being a particular sort of "antihumanism". The argument he provides against antihumanism, to give it more philosophic nuance, is 'Even for Whitehead, humans ontologically exist in what are now called cybernetic systems. Contemporary antihumanism argues these systems exist without humans. That is, cybernetic media theory requires human consciousness to exist. Thus, our use of antihumanist speculative philosophy should be interpreted in such a way that it disregards their antihumanism.'

Here is precisely where Hansen misunderstands in regards to Speculative Realism. Firstly, as is very clearly noted by Ray Brassier, Speculative Realism/Materialism are not a unified school of thought, and attempting to suppose they all agree on the same "antihumanism" is mistaken. Secondly, while he might be correct in his interpretations of Object Oriented Ontology, he does not read the antihumanism of Galloway, Thacker, Shivaro, or adjacent speculative theorists as I think they intend to be interpreted. He falls for precisely the same metaphysical flaw that Whitehead is attempting to dissect as problematic about Kant. Namely, what the Speculative Realists refer to as the "correlationism" thesis: the argument that ontological existence (being) requires phenomenology (e.g. consciousness). The reason Whitehead (and many Speculative Realists except OOO theorists) disagree with correlationism and instead develop "antihumanism" is not to say humans do not exist in these phenomena. Rather it is to say that philosophical, non-human things exist (in that they "become", have "vitality", "subjectivity", or "agency"). There are nonhuman ontological subjects which are real. By my interpretation, this does not require us to accept any organization of antihumanist ontological actors so much as reject essentialisms of human phenomenological priority. The (Whiteheadian) datum of digital media is vital because of its interactions with people after all, just as Hansen argues, but so does Thacker, Galloway, and Shivaro. What they argue instead is that (similar to Hansen's whole conception of "feed-forward") that there are digital/algorithmic/cybernetic events -- which are phenomenologically real. In this interpretation, Hansen is an antihumanist of an analogous metaphysical status of Thacker, Galloway, and Shivaro. He seems to reject correlationism precisely in the same way they do except in occasional missteps, he argues that human consciousness is required for any cybernetic system to exist when we have strong scientific evidence to say this is false. For example, mycorrhizal networks, do not require human cognition to function, and yet they are cybernetic systems of information and feedback.

Hansen even points to a few examples of antihumanist cybernetic systems himself. However it is because he mistakenly argues that antihumanism is the rejection of human phenomenology is where he disagrees with them. This is a straw person argument. Their argument is cognition (of any kind) should not be a privileged ontological subject. Human "consciousness" whatever that is, is not necessarily rejected in speculative realist/materialist phenomenology. They just don't give it the exceptional anthropocentric privilege that Kant, Descartes, and Heidegger do. Their arguments either do not give human cognition exclusive, hierarchical, or generalized phenomenological status.

Most counter-arguments to this are not that of Hansen's outright rejection of this tendency. Instead people critically argue (1) people cannot understand non-human phenomenology, (2) if we cannot adequately address the flawed interpretations of cognition among humans then we are not ready to proceed to non-human cognition or (3) the leading interpretations of Kant/Descartes/Heidegger is/are correct and speculative philosophy is wrong. Where fundamentally (1) undermines a science of speculative philosophy, (2) is a utilitarian moralization that speculative philosophy does not benefit society in an aggregate positive way in the present moment, and (3) rejects speculative philosophy outright in favor of philosophical alternatives. While I think each of these are cogent critiques in a variety of contexts, I see serious flaws with all of them as general points about philosophy/theory/science. In contrast, I see Hansen's critique as actively self-defeating, so to interpret the book in full, I must ignore his criticism of most speculative realist media theory (which is a significant part of his critique, making this no easy task).

A lesser important qualm that I have with this book, but might be an implication of this book, is the way he implies a limitation of Deleuze's metaphysics of cinema. He seems to be arguing that iterations of consciousness do not happen for Deleuze in The Fold because "assemblages" are conscious as a whole. If this is his legitimate reasoning, it might follow from a similar misstep in interpreting Speculative Realists. Deleuze, as other poststructuralists/posthumanists and antihumanists would argue, does enable interpretations of phenomena over regularities of events.

In total, I think this book does a lot to develop a speculative media theory that is not so distinct from Thacker or Galloway, but does come to speculation from a different angle with particularly valuable warnings about misunderstanding speculative philosophy and cognition. However, much improvement in these readings could be achieved which would reconcile much of the contemporary theory on the subject. This area of speculative media theory is still in its infancy.

[Adam Fishman · Rating 2 out of 5]

It strikes me as somewhat demented to write a book on new media that effectively assumes that its reader has read Process and Reality (Hansen makes some fitful attempts to bring the uninitiated up to speed, but the clarifications are scattered amidst the sections of Whitehead scholarship that already presuppose the background knowledge that the clarifications are meant to provide). Moreover, I do not see what justifies the panpsychist attribution of "subjective agency" to the inanimate environment -- what is the evidence for such a posit? And what aspects of new media -- or of anything, for that matter -- are illuminated by making this kind of metaphysical posit? This posit is essential to the project of the book, but its justification remains obscure to me. It seems explanatorily vacuous.

[Steen Ledet · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important and insightful book extending Whitehead's philosophy to 21st century media, thus emphasizing the non-cognitive dimension of media experience. What I especially enjoy is Hansen's insistence on a neutral ontology and that media produce a broader sensorium and new sensibilities, although not in a prosthetic way. Hansen's argumentative, polemical style, however, remains frustrating at times.