Technology and Literature: Humans, Machines and Cognitive Sciences in William Gibson’s Neuromancer
Introduction
The relationship between science and literature has always been problematic. If we analyze the question from an epistemological point of view, what emerges is that science, since its very beginning (that is to say since the17th century, the birth of science as we conceive it today) has claimed to be the only group of disciplines that provides a universal knowledge. In this, science has put itself in the position of being totally against literature, claiming that the latter was only entertainment or, even worse, embellishment. That’s the reason why, still today, a vast majority of people believes that literature has almost nothing to do with the transmission of knowledge or, rather, that literature cannot provide universal ‘truths’. Literature has much to do with imagination, therefore many people think that it does nor deal with ‘real’ and important things, as on the contrary science does (or claims to do). This approach to literature might appear partially true, but only if we fail to reflect on the kind of knowledge that literature provides. Literature does not claim to explain universal truths in an impersonal way, as science does (even though the ‘universality’ and ‘impersonality’ of science might be questioned). What literature really provides is a knowledge that starts from the particular (that is to say, from a particular human experience): however, it would be wrong to believe that from this infinitely particular no general knowledge might be derived. As a matter of fact, from the specific descriptions yielded by literature we can infer much about the universal. The ‘problem’ with literature is that it overtly presents facts (either real or fictional) in a tight relationship with the human beings that observe them. It is precisely this subjectivity that has put literature in a subordinate position compared to science. I said before that the impersonality of science is something that we should put into question, that is to say: how can facts be completely detached from the point of view of the subject that observes them? A scientist is above all a human being, a being with his/her own subjectivity and even prejudices. It is clear, therefore, that if only we stop and think about this evidence, what we can easily understand is that, even if science claims to be impersonal, that impersonality is, and will always be, just a claim. Furthermore, literature has always been accused of dealing with fantasies, whereas science deals with facts, proofs, ‘real’ things. However, once again, if we consider all the great scientific discoveries, we can observe that, more often than not, they come from an intuition of the scientist. The good scientist has a strongly imaginative mind, which allows him to develop theories that only later he might demonstrate through empirical experiments.
For these reasons, we shouldn’t consider the relationship between science and literature as an opposition: we should not put a barrier between them, also because their connection is closer than we might imagine. Recently, scholars in both the field of humanities and in the field of hard science have begun to take into account the fact that science and literature are in fact related. In his essay Neuroscience and Literariness, Vladimir Alexandrov explains how, in recent years, neuroscientists have studied the way in which human brain processes language. What emerges from these studies is that “there is something specific about how language is structured in the kinds of works we call ‘literary’”. That is to say, in studying how our brain works, it has become more and more clear that literature provides a powerful tool through which the two hemispheres of our brain are developed. Literature, in fact, enhances the ability of the two hemispheres to communicate with each other, thus increasing the cognitive capacities of our brain. For these reasons we should be very cautious in saying that literature and science have nothing to do with each other: as we can see, a cooperation of the two disciplinary fields can produce new and interesting discoveries.
This compenetration between science and literature, however, is not as recent as we might think: in fact, there have been various instances of such hybridization throughout the history of both literary and scientific discourses. These discourses both have their specific language, what Jean Jacques Lecercle defines as language games, borrowing the term from the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Lecercle’s theory starts from the fact that the creation of meaning is relative to specific situations. He therefore recognizes different types of language games, each of them pertaining to a specific domain. However, the distinction between different language games is never clear-cut, and sometimes it is definitely blurred. As we are talking about science and literature, the focus here is mainly on those cases in which there is an injection of the language belonging to one of the two domains into the language of the other.
I will now focus on the injection of science into fiction: the most typical example is the genre of sci-fi, name which seems to be almost paradoxical, since it juxtaposes two disciplines which (apparently) deal with completely opposite kinds of knowledge. Lecercle makes an interesting point in saying that the importation of the language game of science into the language game of fiction creates a third and different language game: that of art. In fact, according to Lecercle, art comes out of a variation of different language games. This is not to claim that all kinds of injection of science into literature will equally produce a work of art: in fact, especially when talking about science-fiction, we must distinguish real cases of such hybridization from works of mere fiction, based on the massive use of pseudoscientific terms. A science/literature hybrid work of art is that which, starting from the available technologies and scientific knowledge in a given period of time, envisages which kinds of implications these innovations might bring; or, again, that which takes scientific knowledge or innovations as an impulse for a reflection on the culture that produced that work of art. This will be the starting point for my analysis of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, a work ‘disguised’ as science-fiction that provides a whole range of philosophical reflections on technology, on its relationship to the human and on the comparison and possible cooperation between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.
Science-fiction and cyberpunk literature
“Power, in Case’s world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had trascended old barriers. Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality. You couldn’t kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated position […]”
This definition describes a sort of ‘biopower’ (that is to say, a form of power compared to a living organism) that is strikingly similar to the kind of power described by Foucault in Discipline and Punish: a pervasive authority with no real head, in which every part of the system is completely replaceable. The manifold structure of Foucault’s ‘biopolitics’ is well exemplified by the following quotations:
“[…] at the centre of this city […] there is, not the ‘centre of power’ […] but a strategic distribution of elements of different nature and levels.
“Throughout this network, which comprises so many ‘regional’ institutions, relatively autonomous and independent, is transmitted, with the ‘prison-form’, the model of justice itself.”
In the dystopian future envisaged by cyberpunk literature, humanity relies on the massive use of technology, mostly through the creation of Artificial Intelligences and cyborgs ( a term which is a blend of the words cyber and organism), as well as through the enhancement of the human body by means of technological devices.
One of the main concerns explored by cyberpunk literature is the question: what makes us human? Up to which point can human beings modify themselves through technology before losing their humanity? From these questions, cyberpunk literature brings to the surface issues if identity, also from a political point of view: this has been a starting point for the considerations of various critics of the postmodern age. For example, Donna Haraway, in her essay A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) borrows the figure of the cyborg in order to explain the fluidity of the identity boundaries, especially when talking about gender differences. The cyborg, neither completely human, nor completely machine, is, according to Haraway, the perfect embodiment of what identity is: something fluid, never fixed and always debatable. As Haraway explains: “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. […] a world-changing fiction.”
In this new condition, the human being, whose identity is extremely blurred, leaves the status of human to enter in that of posthuman. Posthumanism is the definition for a new condition, which moves beyond the constraints of ‘human nature’ to develop a closer relationship with technology: it is the ability of the contemporary human being to change fast and to adapt to the evolving technological discoveries. In this perspective, the dualism human vs. non-human loses its raison d’être, since human and non-human are constantly and profitably interacting. As Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston claim, “The human functions […] to absolutize the difference between the human and the nonhuman. The posthuman does not reduce difference-from-others to difference-from-self, but rather emerges in the pattern of resonance and interference between the two.”
It is clearer now that the injection of science into fiction generates an echo that also functions as a tool for an interpretation of the ever-evolving society in which we live.
Neuromancer
William Gibson is considered the ‘prophet’ of cyberpunk literature. His first novel, Neuromancer put in fact the basis for the development of this sub-genre. Although Gibson is no scientist (he has a degree in English, and his formation is totally humanistic), he has been able to write sci-fi novels in which the perception of the evolution of technology is highly plausible, when not even realistic. To Gibson is acknowledged the creation of terms and concepts that would in the future become widespread, such as matrix or cyberspace. In Neuromancer he provides an interesting definition of cyberspace:
“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children been taught mathematical concepts…A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.”
It is difficult not to associate this description with what today we know as the Internet. However, in 1984, when Gibson was writing, no such thing existed. There had been experiments on the subject, but they were confined to military uses: it was not until the half of the 1990s that the concept of World Wide Web came finally into our lives.
Gibson’s contribution is remarkable, since today cyberspace is used as a synonym for the World Wide Web. Gibson also contributed to create the figure of the hacker as a sort of romantic hero, that is to say, the computer genius who, thanks to his amazing skills, manages to break into highly protected informatic databases in order to steal information. In Neuromancer, Case, the main character, is precisely that: a computer hacker. In the world described by Gibson, hackers are able to enter the matrix by means of a brain connection with the informatic systems. Case had been employed to steal information, but he eventually had kept the data and tried to sell them to a better offerer. For this reason his previous employer has punished him, by injecting a toxin in his organism: from that moment on, Case is no longer able to connect to cyberspace. At the beginning of the novel he is in a state of deep depression, until he receives a job proposal by a man called Armitage. Case accepts at once, also because Armitage offers to cure him in exchange for his services as a hacker. Even if the nature of the job is unclear, Case is excited by the perspective of connecting to the matrix once again. He is therefore brought to a clinic where his damaged synapses are repaired. In his job, Case is helped by another person employed by Armitage, Molly, a sort of street-warrior whose body has been technologically enhanced. For the first part of their job, the two have to break in the security of the media corporation Sense/Net, in order to recover a ROM module that might help them to complete their job. This construct contains the consciousness of a dead hacker, Case’s previous mentor, Dixie Flatline, who owes his nickname to the fact that he survived many cases of cerebral death (‘flatline’) while being connected to the matrix. As the story proceeds, Case and Molly understand that behind the whole operation there is an entity called Wintermute, an Artificial Intelligence. The aim of this AI becomes clear when the group reaches the orbital station of Freeside, a sort of spatial holiday resort. Wintermute has been created by the powerful Tessier-Ashpool Corporation, who has also created a twin Artificial Intelligence, Neuromancer. Wintermute’s purpose is that of bypassing the security systems of the Tessier-Ashpool headquarters in order to deliver the other AI and eventually merge with it. In the end, thanks to Case’s help, the two AIs manage to become one single and more powerful entity.
The issue of the body
Let us now consider the main themes and topics that emerge from a reading of Neuromancer. At the beginning of the novel, we find Case in a situation of deep depression with suicidal impulses. These impulses are due to the fact that Case has been denied the possibility to access the cyberspace. For a hacker, the ‘real’ world outside the matrix has little appeal: he can realize himself only when he is able to get in contact with the large amount of data of the cyberspace. As Gibson writes:
“ For Case, who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh.”
As a matter of fact, Case is much more familiar with the world of the machines than with that of the bodies. When he finds himself trapped outside the matrix, he tries to establish a relationship with a girl, Linda Lee; however, his disdain for the flesh is so rooted in him, that he completely spoils that possibility: “Meat, some part of him said. It’s the meat talking, ignore it.” Later in the novel, Case starts a sexual relationship with Molly, but the fascination that he feels towards her is likely to come from the fact that the girl is only partially human. Case probably perceives her more like a combat machine than like a real girl. As he watches her naked body, in fact, he parallels it to a well-functioning mechanism:
“He lay on his side and watched her breathe, her breasts, the sweep of a flank defined with the functional elegance of a war plane’s fusilage.”
Another interesting passage in this perspective is when Case recalls an episode in which he had burned a beehive with a flame thrower: he watches it, and he is shocked by the sight of its structure, by the perfection achieved by nature in building it.
“[…] he approached the blackened nest. It had broken open. Singed wasps wrenched and flipped on the asphalt. He saw the thing that the shell of gray paper had concealed. Horror. The spiral birth factory, stepped terraces of the hatching cells, blind jaws of the unborn moving ceaselessly, the staged progress from egg to larva, near-wasp, wasp. In his mind’s eye, a kind of time-lapse photography took place, revealing the thing as the biological equivalent of a machine-gun, hideous in its perfection. Alien.”
Here it is clear that for Case, who has always lived plunged in a hyper-technological world, what is really alien is nature itself. Unlike in previous science-fiction literature, where humans got in contact with alien species coming from different planets, in cyberpunk literature the human being perceives nature, and even his own body, as a loathsome stranger.
The relationship between human and machine
Gibson’s novel is typically taken into consideration by the critics for the analysis of the ways in which identity is rendered fluid and blurred, through the constant interaction of the human body with technology. As Claire Sponsler notes “In Gibson’s novels, the human and the technological overlap nearly endlessly. The human organism is adapted, enhanced, and preserved by technologies that invade and take over the body.”
Here, Sponsler summarizes well what are the kinds of interaction that humans have with machines in Neuromancer. First of all, the human being is enhanced and made more functional by means of cybernetic implants. Almost every character in the novel has had his/her own body modified by some kind of implant that makes him/her a sort of ‘superhero’ in a specific field. Molly, for example, is a powerful street warrior, not only because she is a bold girl, but mainly thanks to the enhancements of her body, that allow her to be more performative in battle:
“He realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. […] She held out her hands, palms up, the white fingers slightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten double-edged, four centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails.”
However, in the world depicted by Gibson, technological implants are so widespread that almost everyone has some, often just as the status-symbol of a condition of social superiority. In the following example, there is the description of the leader of a street gang, the ‘Panther Moderns’, hired by Molly and Case to simulate a terroristic attack in order to allow them to recover the ROM construct. “His hair was pink. A rainbow forest of microsofts bristled behind his left ear; the ear was pointed, tufted with more pink hair. His pupils had been modified to catch the light like a cat’s.” In this description it is clear that the implants displayed by the leader of the gang are nothing more than an embellishment, the role of which is to make people immediately understand that he is the boss. The improvements of the human body displayed in Neuromancer are not only technological, but also medical. Medicine and biology are employed (sometimes in a clandestine way) either to cause harm and diseases, as it happens to Case, whose synapses have been damaged using a mycotoxin, or to guarantee a longer and healthier life to those who are rich enough to undergo specific treatments, as is the case of Julius Deane, a poweful data-smuggler:
“Julius Deane was one hundred and thirty-five years old, his metabolism assiduously warped by a weekly fortune in serums and hormones. His primary hedge against aging was a yearly pilgrimage to Tokyo, where genetic surgeons re-set the core of his DNA”
An important theme approached by Gibson is also that of memory, that is to say, the evolution of human memory through the use of technology. Cybernetic implants, in fact, allow human beings to enlarge the memory capacity of their brain, thus making them exceptionally gifted, as is the case, for example, of Smith, an art dealer whose capacity is described to Case in these terms:
“Smith was also a fence, but in balmier seasons he surfaced as an art dealer. He was the first person the Finn had known who’d ‘gone silicon’ […]. With half a dozen chips in his new socket, Smith’s knowledge of the art business was formidable, at least by the standards of his colleagues.”
In his 2003 essay Data Made Flesh. Biotechnology and the Discourse of the Posthuman, Eugene Thacker analyzes the implications of the transition from the human condition to a technology-provided posthuman state. What emerges is the possibility for the human beings to transfer their consciousness into machines, issue that once again calls into question the definition of human identity. In describing the transition, Thacker explains: “One salient feature of such transformation includes the concept of ‘uploading’, in which the parallels between neural pattern activity in the human mind and the capacity of advanced neural networking computing will enable humans to transfer their minds into more durable (read: immortal) hardware systems.”
Thacker also quotes the study made by Kurzweil in 1999, in which the latter states: “Up until now, our mortality was tied to the longevity of our hardware. When the hardware crashed, that was it. […] We will be software, not hardware…the essence of our identity will switch to the permanence of our software.”
What is really interesting is that already in the 1980s, Gibson’s Neuromancer describes exactly this kind of evolution of human consciousness, by means of one of its characters, Dixie Flatline. As I have explained before, after Dixie’s cerebral death, his consciousness has been transferred into a ROM construct, a hardware structure that allows him to escape death. What is dead is just his body, whereas his mind is still sentient. However, Dixie lacks the freedom to act according to his own will, or better, his will is not there any longer. He can think, act, give advices, but he is bound to the decision taken by human beings, as the following dialogue with Case shows:
“‘Know how a ROM personality matrix works?
‘Sure, bro, it’s a firmware construct.’ […]
‘Okay, Dix. You are a ROM construct. Got me?’
‘If you say so’ […]
‘And for starts, Dix, you and me, we’re gonna sleaze over to London grid and access a little data. You game for that?’
‘You gonna tell me I got a choice, boy?’”
From this extract we might understand that Gibson’s vision of machines is limited to the tight interaction between them and human beings. However, as the novel proceeds, the issue of the possibility of having autonomous Artificial Intelligences comes into play.
Artificial Intelligences
The main theme in Neuromancer concerns the issue of Artificial Intelligence and the way in which they might interact with human beings. In Gibson’s world, human beings have managed to create AIs, but these artifacts are not granted any autonomy. In fact, their activity is kept under constant surveillance by the Turing police. Here, Gibson makes a reference to the British scientist Alan Turing, who in the first part of the 20th century was a pioneer in computer science. In the novel, Case discovers that the mandator of his mission is exactly an Artificial Intelligence, Wintermute, whose purpose is that of freeing itself from the constraints imposed upon it and finally merge with its twin AI, Neuromancer. In talking about Wintermute, Dixie Flatline advises Case not to assume that Wintermute (as well as any other construct, including Dixie himself) possesses the same thought processes that a human being has:
“[…] ‘I mean, it’s not human. And you can’t get a handle on it. Me, I’m not human either, but I respond like one. See?’
‘Wait a sec,’ Case said. ‘Are you sentient, or not?’
‘Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I’m really just a bunch of ROM. […] I ain’t like to write you no poems, if you follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain’t no way human.’
In fact, Wintermute can be thought of as a sort of ‘incomplete’ AI, its desire to merge with its twin is the desire of becoming something nearer to the structure of a human brain. Wintermute in fact describes itself as being only one part of a full-fledged brain, paralleling the Artificial Intelligence to the human intelligence in neurological terms:
“ […] what you think of as Wintermute is only a part of another, a, shall we say, potential entity. […] It’s rather like dealing, from your point of view, with a man whose lobes have been severed. Let’s say you’re dealing with a small part of that man’s left brain.”
In the very last part of the novel, when Case has helped Wintermute to achieve its union with Neuromancer, he meets the new-born and complete Artificial Intelligence and he finally understands which was the nature of the two AIs, and what have they become after their connection: “Wintermute was hive-mind, decision maker, effecting change in the world outside. Neuromancer was personality. Neuromancer was immortality.”
This parallels the two Artificial Intelligences to the two hemispheres of the human brain. Wintermute is the left hemisphere, devoted to rationality and decision-making, whereas Neuromancer is the right hemisphere, which allows us to process more complex and abstract thoughts. However, for our brain to work properly, there must be a constant interaction between the two parts: neither hemisphere can produce any kind of meaning if it works on its own. In this perspective, it is not coincidental in the novel that the only way of unifying the two AIs is by activating a particular terminal created by the Tessier-Ashpool Corporation, which has the shape of a human head. Wintermute’s strive for freedom is mostof all a struggle to achieve a human brain.
The AIs’ choice of Case as the one who can help it is not casual: Case is from the very beginning described as longing for a deeper connection with the cyberspace. Case represents a new kind of human being, who is no longer afraid of the possibilities offered by technology and is willing to create a positive relationship with it. What Gibson advocates, in Neuromancer is exactly this kind of cooperation, as well as a new fluidity of identity and the merging of human and machine. Case ultimately understands that his body is not a useless part of himself: he refuses to remain in the vitual world created by Neuromancer, in order to get back to his ‘real’ body and being thus able to help Wintermute in achieving its goal. For a profitable progress, there must be a cooperation also between mind and body. What emerges here is Gibson’s critique of the traditional dualism, that is, opposition between mind and body. This dualism is grounded in the Christian vision, that sees the ‘profane’body as the inferior element of the human being, as opposed to the ‘sacred’ mind. According to Carl Gutiérrez-Jones “We may thus read the novel as a critique of Cartesian mind-body dualism[…] a dualism that would, according to Gibson, impede human progress […]”
Gibson’s attitude is suggested by the name give to the AI that strives for unity, that is Wintermute. In fact, Orval S. Wintermute was one of the English translators of the apocryphal Gospel according to Thomas, which challenged dualistic thought and claimed that salvation could be achieved mainly through worldly experience. That is to say, there is no preminence of the mind over the body, but what is needed is a constant communication and interaction between the two, in the same way in which human brain needs communication between the two hemispheres and in the same way in which the old ‘dualism’ human vs. machine has to be replaced by fluidity and permeability. In this perspective, what Neuromancer points to, despite its overtly dystopian setting, is an almost utopian vision of the future to come.
Hyperlink narrative
As it as been explained so far, Gibson’s wish is that humanity reaches a full cooperation with technology, that human intelligence and cognitive capacities may be enhanced by the hybridization with computer intelligence. What is interesting is that Neuromancer as a novel is structured in order to change the way in which the readers perceive literature. Carl Gutiérrez-Jones notes that Gibson makes extensive use of the technique of hyperlink narrative: the text is full of cross-references, elements that might seem unimportant but that the reader needs to remember in order to make sense in what will come afterwards. An explanatory example might be that of the description of Linda Lee, Case’s former girlfriend. At the beginning of the novel it is said, just once and almost casually, that she wears a silk band: “Her dark hair was drawn back, held by a band of printed silk. The pattern might have represented microcircuits, or a city map.”
Toward the end of the novel, Case finds himself plunged in a virtual reality that Neuromancer has created in order to prevent him activating the Tessier-Ashpool terminal. In this virtual place he meets a girl, but it is never explicitly said who this girl is: the only way that the reader has to recognize her is the fact that she wears a headband: “The fire was the only light, and as his gaze met the wide, startled eyes, he recognized her headband, a rolled scarf, printed with a pattern like magnified circuitry.”
Altough the use of this technique is not Gibson’s invention, he makes an extensive use of it, challenging the reader’s memory in a powerful way. Furthermore, an hyperlinking structure is what lies at the basis of the Internet: the HTTP technology (the acronym meaning Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is what allows the users of the World Wide Web to jump from one content to the other simply by clicking on a linked keyword. This technology is based on the ability of the human brain to recognize patterns of meaning. In Neuromancer, as on the Internet, the readers are given the opportunity to create meaning by following diverse semantic patterns. As Gutiérrez-Jones explains:
“The novel’s readers participate, therefore […] in a movement toward the kinship between humans and technology imagined by Gibson […]. This cognitive shift is suggested as readers participate in the hypertextual construction of meaning that emulates the convergence of digital (computer) memory and analog (human pattern-recognition-oriented) memory.”
It is also interesting to notice that the hemisphere of the human brain which is devoted to semantic associations is the right one, the hemisphere that in the novel is associated to the AI called Neuromancer: it is therefore not by chance that Gibson chooses exactly the name Neuromancer as a title for his novel.
Conclusion
In conclusion, what emerges from an analysis of Gibson’s novel is not only an injection of science in literature for purposes of entertainment or embellishment, but the use of scientific knowledge in order to create a narrative that may overcome the traditional dualism science vs. literature. What is striking about Gibson is the fact that, despite he is no scientist, he has been able to envisage many of the changes that our society would have undergone in the years immediately following the publishing of his novel. When he writes Neuromancer, the Internet is still a military-bound technology not accessible to common people: nonetheless Gibson’s intuition about the increasing role of technology in our daily lives is altogether correct. The fictional ‘data-smugglers’ are characters that do no longer appear so fictional today, as we are all aware of the importance and wealth that companies such as Google or Facebook have built around the dealing of enormous amounts of data. Gibson’s novel, with its challenging of the traditional way of perceiving human cognition, is not only the injection of concepts belonging to the domains of computer science, biology, neurology and cognitive sciences into literature, but a completely new kind of writing that unites all these fields. This is what makes Gibson himself a Neuromancer, a word which makes us think about a sort of sorcerer that deals with neurology, but that can also be read, as many critics have noticed, as New Romancer, the new writer of a future in which there will be no need of separating science from literature.
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