杏吧原创

When I landed at MIT in 1976, I was struck on day two by two
things鈥攖hat my students had what I considered eroticised relationships
with their computers, which had an intensity, a holding power鈥� it was
compelling. It was not addiction, but it was something very powerful and it was
completely new to me.

And secondly, the way they use computer language where I would have used
psychoanalytic language to talk about the self. I thought this was fascinating.
For example, they say 鈥淒on鈥檛 interrupt me, I have to clear my buffer鈥�, or 鈥淚t鈥檚
not a Freudian slip, it鈥檚 an information processing error.鈥�

So there was the combination of those two, plus there was the political side.
It was the beginning of the personal computer movement. So there was this kind
of Utopian discourse about the Personal Computer Revolution. It could get rather
florid鈥攁nd turn into talk about making the New World. People would have
personal computers and access to information and this would be the
revolution.

What were you teaching at MIT?

I was teaching things to do with psychoanalysis and culture. And then as soon
as I got involved with computers and people, I began teaching about their
interaction. At first, quite frankly, I was learning about computers as I was
teaching about them. I taught about people鈥檚 relationships with computers, about
kids and computers and the psychology of programming. I taught a course about
artificial intelligence and metaphors for mind鈥攖hings I ended up writing
about in my last book The Second Self.

You don鈥檛 seem to be taken with the description of these people as nerds?

When I look at hackers鈥攁nd of course I鈥檓 not talking about people who
crack computer systems and put viruses in鈥擨鈥檓 talking about the old way of
seeing hackers, as people whose highest value is the mastery of the technology.
I don鈥檛 see these people as nerds, I see them as people who are driven by a
desire for a certain kind of understanding that strikes me, not as noble, but as
having an aesthetic quality.

These people were my teachers. I鈥檓 not a 鈥渢echie鈥�, I don鈥檛 have a technical
background. They taught me with a kind of patience and sensitivity to what it is
to understand something and to teach somebody something, and a respect for the
learner and a love for learning. Lumping them together as nerds doesn鈥檛 work for
me. I don鈥檛 see them as the wretched of the Earth.

In your book there鈥檚 a sense in which people feel that their relationships
with computers could be made perfect. It leaves one feeling that they are not
fully developed emotionally.

I think you have to be emotionally limited if you want a perfectible
relationship since it鈥檚 hard to have it with people. I think that it is part of
what draws people to technology, but I also think it鈥檚 part of what draws people
to intense relationships with all manner of things. What makes computation
special is that the medium presents itself as perfectible in its essence, the
fantasy is that you do it right and it will do it right away. But it goes
without saying that if you try to bring those skills to a relationship with
people, you鈥檙e going to be in trouble.

On the other hand, it鈥檚 hard to know how much to make of that. Just because a
technology is invented and developed by people who are bound up in it that way,
it does not mean that when it is deployed into the culture at large, everyone
has to see it that way. I would say that the theme of The Second Self
is that it鈥檚 time to take the computer culture away from the people who made the
computer. Now that it鈥檚 really going to be part of everyone鈥檚 life, what do the
rest of us want? I feel that even more strongly now. That we need to look at
ourselves and all our psychological and political commitments, to make the
computer culture that we want.

If computers are now embedded in our culture, then aren鈥檛 the hackers in a
purist cul-de-sac in a way, whereas the rest of us will be doing whatever we do
with computers? For them it holds a sense of passion. If something is just an
everyday cultural artefact, you don鈥檛 get passionate about it, do you?

I鈥檓 hesitating鈥�I think I鈥檓 trying to argue that there are different
ways of being passionate. Some people are excited by opening the hood and seeing
inside, and some people talk about the ecstasy of navigating on the Internet.
One is more invested in the mechanistic, or modernistic, notion of 鈥渙pen the box
and see inside and understand it鈥�, the other is into the sublimity of
cyberspace. But I think that I wouldn鈥檛 necessarily want to characterise the one
as more passionate than the other. The argument of Life on the Screen
is that we鈥檙e moving ever more towards the second of these, and that today鈥檚
enthusiast is happy to just navigate and have a sense of the system as a
whole.

You make much of the idea that today鈥檚 computer users are only interested in
鈥渟urface鈥�: they only want to use the icons and computers for their own purposes.
Is that right?

I think there鈥檚 no sign that people will be involved with the inner workings
of the computer. I鈥檓 very struck that at the Computer Museum in Boston, the most
popular exhibit is this giant computer where everything is blown up so you can
walk through it. Keyboards the size of this room, the screen the size of this
wall. It teaches you nothing about what happens inside. It鈥檚 just big and yet it
is written about as though it is a powerful educational moment to be in the
presence of this icon. And I鈥檝e interviewed kids as they go through it to see
what they make of it. It鈥檚 about surface. So I think there鈥檚 every indication
that the way the future is going to understand the world is in the context of
this kind of navigation, surfing and windows.

So how have we arrived at today鈥檚 view of the computer from the old
mechanistic view?

I think the computer鈥檚 changed dramatically. When I started studying
computers in 1976, the culture was about opening the box and seeing inside,
which I call a kind of modernist, Enlightenment way of understanding.

In the book, I quote Ralph Waldo Emerson: 鈥淒reams and beasts are two keys by
which we are to find out the secrets of our nature鈥�they are our test
objects.鈥� Darwin argued that we measure human nature against the world of the
beasts who were our forebears and our kin. While for Freud, human rationality
was measured against the dream. They were test objects for modernism. If Emerson
had lived now, I鈥檓 sure he would have seen the computer as a test object for
postmodernism.

The notion of the computer as a test object, as something causing us to
reflect on ourselves鈥攖hat was there by 1984. The message the computer
carried was still a message of understanding the mechanism. The computer was a
giant calculator. By 1994, it had become a message about a culture of
simulation, where a certain level of mechanistic understanding could be bypassed
and I believe that鈥檚 a change in the nature of what the objects carry by way of
the meanings embedded in them.

These Walt Whitman lines are my favourite: 鈥淭here was a child went forth
every day/And the first object that he looked upon, that object he became.鈥� I
believe that we make our objects and our objects make us. So the ideas the
computer carries in 1984 are not the ideas that the computer carries in 1994.
The decade has made for a real change in what you learn to value when you hang
out with computers.

Taking everything at interface value, as you say in the book?

Yes, and that I do see as an interesting 鈥渃ultural break鈥�.

In the Eighties, we were keen to empower lots of people to learn about
computers. Now we want them to use them. I鈥檓 not saying that鈥檚 good or bad, I鈥檓
just noting that鈥檚 been a shift. And I think you need to keep in mind what
you鈥檙e losing and correct for it. As an educator, I鈥檓 interested in giving
children something so that they can appreciate the value of understanding
through opening the box.

So that鈥檚 the value of the orgot story?

For me it鈥檚 the most important story in Life on the Screen. The
orgot is my object to think with. Now Tim, the 13-year-old I was playing with,
he was right in some ways and I was right in some ways. There are things I would
be able to understand with my old-time way of thinking that he will not be
interested in. He doesn鈥檛 care what an orgot is. He says 鈥渓et鈥檚 just make it
work鈥�. And I am curious that he is not curious. He needs to have a little more
of what I have and I need a little more of what he has. I think that these two
ways of knowing can be in a constructive dialogue with each other. I think our
culture needs both.

So what would you do at school level?

Well, I think it鈥檚 fine to be on the Internet but there are lots of very
basic things schools need above and beyond being on the Internet. In the
development of a child鈥檚 mind, information may be an overrated commodity.
There鈥檚 a sense of connection with other people, there鈥檚 a sense of connection
with knowledge. There鈥檚 a sense of falling in love with knowledge: in my
daughter鈥檚 case with the story of Pocahontas, and wanting to know things about
the Indians because you acted it out fifteen times with your mother.

Why do people want to know something? I believe it鈥檚 because it has a charge,
because it鈥檚 infused with some sort of personal meaning. And it can be a
teacher, a friend. As someone whose passion for learning was nurtured in the
school context, it wasn鈥檛 in my home, but it was falling in love with a teacher
and that teacher loved Jane Austen. I still love Jane Austen.

If you think too mechanistically about the technology and about children as
having an 鈥渋nformation deficit鈥� as they go onto the information superhighway,
you鈥檙e losing something very important. So, I want to keep the focus in schools
on relationships, and on passionate relationships with knowledge, and on
curiosity infused with personal meanings, and not a sterile notion of how much
information can people have.

So that makes me against the hype, but then I鈥檓 also against the hate. We鈥檙e
going to have to live with this technology. It is here. And if the people who
really are concerned with humanistic values, as the people who are the new
Luddites tend to be鈥攖hey鈥檙e the nicest people, they鈥檙e wonderful, they鈥檙e
well-read, well-educated鈥攊f their idea is to throw it out, then who鈥檚
going to be left to bear the weight of the computer culture? I see this as a
tremendous abdication of responsibility and interest on the part of exactly the
people I want to see in the game. That鈥檚 the part that upsets me the most.

But some groups, such as feminists, are sternly turning their backs. What do
you say to them?

I say to them don鈥檛 turn your backs. Don鈥檛 let this culture be made by men
for men. Feminists are the ones who should be most used to living in a culture
that betrays its origins as made by men for men. So the point of feminism as I
experience it is to accept that this is the material that we have to work with
and dig in. I work in an academic environment and that betrays its origins I can
tell you!

I think there鈥檚 a real opportunity with the Internet. Building virtual
communities on the Internet requires a set of skills鈥攃ollaboration,
negotiation, interest in community, interest in compromise, interest in letting
different voices emerge, that women in our culture have been socialised to know
how to do really well. These are the things that women should bring to the
table.

It鈥檚 not that women are computer-phobic, it鈥檚 more that they鈥檙e
computer-reticent. And why shouldn鈥檛 they be? It shows a healthy desire for not
wanting to be pigeonholed and having to do things in a stereotypical way. I have
a tremendous sympathy for women who see the Net as a hostile place. I know
about harassment on the Net, I know about boys and their toys. This is one of
the major struggles to come. We shouldn鈥檛 turn away from it.

So how do we allow for this, and for popular dissent in a world built round
the Net?

I had an interesting experience related to the US Telecommunications Act
recently (鈥淥ff with its head鈥�, New 杏吧原创, 16 March, p 44). Its
provisions for dealing with 鈥渋ndecency鈥� are truly bad law. It鈥檚 as if when the
telephone was invented, they had said: 鈥淥h my God, any American child can pick
up the telephone and some filthy stranger can spew sedition and filth into their
ear, so the telephone company has to eavesdrop on all the calls and they鈥檙e
responsible if anyone says dirty stuff.鈥�

I read about this protest against the act and I was very excited. People were
going to 鈥渂lacken鈥� their Web pages, and I read that as meaning they were going
to turn off their Web sites so the Internet would be dark for a day or a week.
So the day comes and I go to see what people are doing, and it turns out that
they put up a black background on their Web pages. It kind of looked cool, very
artistic. And I was sitting with Mitch Kapor, one of the founders of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation pressure group, and we couldn鈥檛 believe it.

The point that he made was that you need an intergenerational learning
process where people who became politicised in the Sixtes and Seventies teach
younger people something about the politics of protest. Making your pages
psychedelic for a day, that really doesn鈥檛 cut it politically!

Similarly, people of our generation are the ones who need to get involved
with the Web, they are the ones who have to do this hard work of making real
life more permeable to the virtual and the virtual more permeable to the real.
This is hard work, it鈥檚 grassroots work. Efforts need to come from both
sides.

So the best thing we could get from all this Net culture is discovering
something new about ourselves?

I end Life on the Screen by calling into question the notion that we
are at the end of the Freudian century. For me this challenge is deeply felt.
Some say we are moving from a psychoanalytic culture to a computer culture, but
the reality is more complex. The people who do best in this brave new world, the
people who make the most of their lives on the screen, of having multiple
identities on the Internet, are the ones who approach technology in a spirit of
profound self-reflection.

These people are certainly not classical Freudians. Most have never read a
word of Freud. They are people who are looking at what they鈥檝e done and saying
what does this say about me, about what I need, what鈥檚 missing, what I need to
do over鈥� The personal ways they use computers need a sustained reflection
about the self, about society, about what鈥檚 missing in one鈥檚 life. So we need to
rethink our participation in the computer culture and the psychoanalytic culture
in terms of joint citizenship.