Reading Kroker:
a hermeneutic analysis

by Ian Robbins

Experience suggests that reading and thinking are concurrent processes. Literate thinking, Olson says, involves understanding the role of evidence in the assignment of illocutionary force to expressed propositions. We need to become aware of the alternate ways in which statements can be taken. This definition is a restatement of his definition of critical reading, which is stated as "the recognition that a text could be taken in more than one way and then deriving the implications suitable to each of those ways of taking and testing those implications against available evidence."

In light of Olson's encouraging, if implicit, arguments in favor of critical reading and literate thinking, I've decided to examine a few passages from an essay by Arthur Kroker. Kroker's essay, titled "The Theory of the Virtual Class" (which is the first chapter of his book, Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class, published in New York by St. Martin's Press), purports to offer a theory of a postulated group of people who participate in electronic media, such as the Internet, and carried on other electronic channels.

[Extracts from Kroker's essay are set in bold type.]

The twentieth-century ends with the growth of cyber-authoritarianism, a stridently pro-technotopia movement, particularly in the mass media, typified by an obsession to the point of hysteria with emergent technologies, and with a consistent and very deliberate attempt to shutdown, silence, and exclude any perspectives critical of technotopia.

What Kroker seems to be saying here-when you eliminate the hyperbole-is that mass media have carried a lot of stories about new forms of technology, and that the stories have generally been positive; that is, they have carried a positive publicity value, in addition to any informational content on the nature and purpose of the technology.

The hysterical, I'm-a-victim-and-so-are-you tone, seems a disingenuous attempt to draw the reader into a conspiracy of Kroker's own making. He undoubtedly realizes that participants in a conspiracy are not likely to critically evaluate their own leader, who they will, instead, tend to worship. And Kroker is the leader of this conspiracy, knowingly gathering around him a cadre of willing fellows.

The paranoid conspiracy and victimology is found in his claim of a consistent and "very" deliberate attempt to shut down, silence, and exclude any perspectives critical of technotopia. There is really no need, for instance, to say the deliberate attempt is a very deliberate attempt. Either it is deliberate or it is not deliberate. Why, then, say it's "very deliberate?" It's a rhetorical device, verging on a poetry, which is sometimes delightful to encounter in an academic paper, but in this case it is used to add a huffiness to his voice, which carries with it the force of ad hominem outrage against an un-named, scapegoated agency, upon whom Kroker seeks to dispense his vituperation.

The single word "silence" is actually sufficient to carry the basic intention of his claim; the other words, "shutdown," and "exclude," only serve to carry the rhythm of his prose, and to hint at the self-possessed angst-ridden state of mind in which these words are seemingly created.

Not a wired culture, but a virtual culture that is wired shut: compulsively fixated on digital technology as a source of salvation from the reality of a lonely culture and radical social disconnection from everyday life, and determined to exclude from public debate any perspective that is not a cheerleader for the coming-to-be of the fully realized technological society.

In this sentence, Kroker seems to change his focus from mass media to virtual culture. Lacking an explicit definition of virtual culture, we may probably assume that there is some overlap of mass media and those aspects of the dominant culture that express themselves on the Internet, or in computer-readable forms, like CD-ROMs.

Public debate may or may not be limited by participants in the virtual culture. We would never be able to say, one way or the other, on the strength of Kroker's sentence. Saying something is so doesn't always make it so, particularly when what is being said is a very comprehensive generalization, such as the one Kroker presents, which states that a culture, virtual or otherwise, is determining to exclude from public debate "any perspective" that isn't a particular perspective. I spent a few minutes using the Alta Vista search engine to look for places on the web that offered critiques of new technology, and I found quite a few (approximately 80,000). Some were more hard-nosed than others, but even so, I'm hesitant to believe Kroker's claim.

The virtual class is populated by would-be astronauts who never got the chance to go to the moon, and they do not easily accept criticism of this new Apollo project for the body telematic

This sentence seems laden with hostile intention, connotating a view of people who use new forms of technology as pathetic losers; people who were rejected by the system they worship (the American space program) but who were, and remain, too infatuated with that system to care that they've been spurned. If Kroker had critically evaluated the word "astronaut", exploring the implications of that term, and if he had answered the questions: what does the astronaut represent to people within the space program? to people outside of the space program? to people in North America? to people in Western civilization? to all of mankind? what aspect of the astronaut is common to all of these people?; would he have found a positive value in the word "astronaut"?

The use of the word astronaut bears some examination. Given the existence of a virtual class, and given that the members of this class never got to go to the moon, given that they wanted to be astronauts...so what? Is there something wrong, incorrect, about wanting to be an astronaut? Politically incorrect, perhaps, from a political stance of a person who feels oppressed. But what is wrong with striving to get to the moon? What is wrong with believing, as many still believe, that exploring the moon is a worthwhile ambition? Kroker doesn't say. We might propose, given the general tenor of his work, that he rejects the totalitarian, hierarchical organizations people use to build space exploration systems. The use of military systems may repulse him, as it does many people, because of it utilitarian justification for violence and a lack of respect for persons.

It is true that few people actually stepped on the moon. Does this mean, as Kroker seems to suggest, that something is wrong with that? Emerson wrote: "The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of his and mine ceases....It is the eternal nature of the soul to appropriate and make all things its own. Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them into my own conscious domain. His virtue-is not that mine? His wit--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit." One feels a desire to propose that we all benefited from those few men actually stepping on the moon.

This is unfortunate since it is less a matter of being pro- or antitechnology, but of developing a critical perspective on the ethics of virtuality.

This is the sneakiest, most disingenuous statement in the first part of Kroker's essay. In it, Kroker adopts a "high road" moralistic stance that declares: he really doesn't mind all of the pro-technology hype around him; he just wants people to be able to read a critical perspective on the ethics of virtuality.

Paraphrasing Kroker we find a statement like: It's too bad that we're surrounded by so much pro-technology and sales hype because it obscures important issues beneath our use of this technology. Because, honestly, folks, there is value in technology, assuming it is put to good use. All I really want is for people to be able to discuss whether or not the new technologies are, in fact, being put to good use.

I've read this kind of statement in Ursula Franklin, too. It's a disarming statement; and intended to disarm. To suggest to the reader that the author isn't some anti-technology crank. Just a reasonable person, trying to understand what's going on in a confusing environment. It has a placating, calming effect on the critical intelligence.

In Franklin's CBC Massey Lecture series, for instance, she began by saying "In the past, I have often spoken about the social impact of technology in terms of apprehension and foreboding, but this is not my purpose here. My interest is in contributing to clarity." But the predominant effect of her lectures is precisely to contribute to a sense of apprehension and foreboding about technology, and the clarity she is interested in sparkles only within a miasma of reluctant qualifiers.

In the case of Franklin, we are confronted with anecdote and principle after anecdote and principle declaiming many forms of technology. The sought-for critical perspective on the ethics of virtuality is actually within the texts and examples that Kroker (and Franklin) examine and find lacking. But it isn't a perspective they agree with, so they discount it; pretend it isn't there, or misrepresent it. Having built straw men and having knocked them down, these authors then take centre stage as moral authorities. All the while humbly protesting that they are only offering suggestions for consideration.

Franklin, for instance, refers to a prediction of the future of Canada, made by a vice-president of the National Research Council. The vice-president (whom she does not name) wrote an essay titled "Canada: Plenty of Room for People," in which he allegedly stated that he saw, in the future, "a Canada of at least 35 million people, exporting wheat, pulp and paper, iron ore, nickel, and many other metals." At the same time, Franklin states, this vice-president said (in the future) Canada's manufacturing industries would be thriving. "His prediction also foresaw a great future for educational television." His optimistic and technologically-oriented vision of the future continues, in Franklin's book, and after listing his table, she states: "What is so striking in this and many similar comments is the lack of appreciation of the political dynamics of technology....The economic underdevelopment was perceived by the scholars; the reality of moral underdevelopment was rarely mentioned."

But the moral and political dimensions on which technology may be measured are plainly seen in the intention of the vice-president, given an understanding of that person's social, economic and political context. One part of the role of a vice-president of a national research council, an organization dedicated to distributing tax money to researchers, is to convince the tax-paying public that their contributions will make their world a better place to live in. And "a better place" for most Canadians is a place where products, made in Canada, are being sold, being exported; in which stable manufacturing jobs are allowing people to make things, and feel that they're contributing to the quality of life, as well as to pay their bills, feed their children, look after their parents, and so on.

It is not unethical for people to expect a return on their investment. Moral substance, in the vice-president's statement, may be found in his recognition, that statements made by leaders often become prophecies fulfilled by the people who follow. Like that unnamed vice-president, I believe the Canadian middle-class life is a good one, and worth defending.

We all need things to believe in. Let us state plainly what it is that we value, rather than deconstructing straw men, and leaving no worthy alternatives in place.

When technology mutates into virtuality, the direction of political debate becomes clarified.

Although his intentions seem sometimes obscure, and sometimes deceptive, at other times Kroker's style is poetic. There's a joy of the sound of language, which is well represented in the preceding sentence. The meaning is unclear, but it sounds good.

In the case of this sentence, the meaning is unclear because virtual and actual aspects of technology are irrelevant to technology's basic nature; to it's definition. The fundamental nature of technology lies in it's processes, not it's form, and changing forms of technology don't necessarily have an influence on political debate, or anything else. Changing technologies do have profound effects. I recognize their effects, along with many others. But what is technology? Is it the shape of the box an invention comes in? Or is it the action and interaction between the invention and the person involved with the invention?

In any case, none of the important words in that sentence have been defined, although we may infer from the first clause that Kroker doesn't share the same definition of technology as we do. "Technology," "mutation," "virtuality," "direction," "political debate," and "clarified" all need to be made plain before we can derive his intention; before we can know what he meant.

Standing back from the sentence, however, and seeing in as an object within a larger frame, we may read it as a Zen koan; something to stare at, to ponder, to wonder at, until our mind, in exhaustion perhaps, relaxes it's attempt to find logical consistency, and sees the entire essay (to that point) as an attempt to bring into awareness Kroker himself, the author, who is writing sentences like those for the purpose of allowing us to reflect on the freedom we have in language to be logical or illogical.

If we cannot escape the hardwiring of (our) bodies into wireless culture, then how can we inscribe primary ethical concerns onto the will to virtuality?

Examining this sentence from Olson's perspective, we ask: what is Kroker talking about, hardwiring our bodies into wireless culture? What is he talking about, inscribing primary ethical concerns onto the will to virtuality?

The first phrase offers few clues as to it's meaning. But sharing, as we do, a mainstream culture with Kroker, we can make a few attempts to reading it. Hardwiring normally refers to the establishing of physical connection among computers. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines hardwiring as: "Of, relating to, or implemented through logic circuitry permanently connected within a computer or calculator and therefore not subject to change by programming, and, Directly connected by electrical wires or cables." Our organic nature does not yet allow our bodies to be hardwired in the strict sense of the word.

Perhaps we should take this sentence metaphorically. Reading the statement as a metaphor, we could see it as a way of describing the way many of us buy computers, plug them into the telephone system, and participate in Internet technologies. In this context we infer that Kroker is seeing our electronic media as extensions of our bodies. We plug our bodies into our electronic media (hardwiring ourselves) which tie further into the culture that uses the various Internet protocols as their primary medium (his "wireless culture"). Like the moviegoers who watched the black bar in Kubrick's film 2001, and who observed Hal, the personality residing within the computer on the space ship in that film, we confront, in this sentence of Kroker's, the possibility of a person, participating in a culture, who may or may not be acting ethically.

But as the second phrase in the sentence suggests, the central problem is whether people will act ethically, in whatever medium they are participating. Kroker seems to suggests that something in the nature of computer mediated communication presents unique ethical dilemmas. This is a claim he does not substantiate. It may be true, but then, it may also be the case that, as the writer of Ecclesiastes put it, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

The question of whether we can escape the hardwiring of our bodies into the wireless culture is an interesting one. One wonders why we could not escape it. One manages to escape various other aspects of our culture, and subcultures, such as country music, rap, the culture of wealth, military culture, and so on. It's partly a matter of not answering the telephone; of looking the other way, and of generally learning to say "No."

But then Kroker might counter with the claim that the virtual culture has somehow pervaded the reader without the reader being aware of that pervasion. That the consciousness of the reader has been changed by forces he has chosen to ignore. This type of argument makes good fiction, and poor science. The onus would be on Kroker to adduce evidence in support of this claim, if it is a claim he would advance.

How can we turn the virtual horizon in the direction of substantive human values: aesthetic creativity, social solidarity, democratic discourse, and economic justice?

This is an age old question, applied to a several new media (the World Wide Web, mail protocols, file transfer protocols, etcetera) which we draw into the phrase "virtual horizon". The use of the horizon metaphor brings the sense of a distant location, always receding, yet delightful to look at; in that respect it is well chosen. But one cannot turn a horizon. Still, we imagine that Kroker is asking how we can remain ethical beings while using new media.

The answers may be found in many sources, from old religious texts to the latest scientific discourse on cooperative behavior. Kroker asks the question rhetorically, in order to spend the next several sentences complaining that we can't answer it as long as we've invested heavily in the idea of becoming users of that electronic media. Therefore it seems fitting to find one answer to his question firmly grounded within a virtual domain, a domain more virtual, even, than the World Wide Web, our example being an entirely closed system that contains simulated organisms.

Robert Axelrod is a political scientist who, in the 1980s, worked with a few computer scientists and a biologist to use artificial life to better understand how cooperation evolved "among egoists without central authority" (In Levy's Artificial Life, 1992). In a genetic algorithm environment where simulated chromosomes of 70 genes stood for the egoists without a central authority, Axelrod discovered that a successful program called "modified TIT FOR TAT" prevailed and sustained itself in the face of a challenging environment.

In the non-zero sum world of the simulated chromosomes, those chromosomes who were eager to manipulate their relationship with other chromosomes into mutual cooperation prevailed to a greater extent. The chromosomes behaved in this way: they initially began an encounter with a new chromosome by being not cooperative in some way. This was a clever ploy for quickly determining the opponent's strategy, so the initial chromosome could immediately know whether an ideal series of transactions could ensue (with both sides cooperating to mutual benefit). If the opponent responded by cooperating, then both sides would mutually cooperate. If the opponent responded by not cooperating (known as "defecting", in the parlance of this world), then the chromosome hadn't suffered the initial blow that an initially nice chromosome would have weathered on meeting a mean opponent.

If this style of behavior was as common in our world as it was in Axelrod's virtual world, the best response would be to observe the Christian invocation to turn the other cheek.

To link the relentless drive to cyberspace with ethical concerns is, of course, to give the lie to technological liberalism.

To insist, that is, that the coming-to-be of the will to virtuality, and with it the emergence of our doubled fate as either body dumps or hyper-texted bodies, virtualizers or data trash, does not relax the traditional human injunction to give primacy to the ethical ends of the technological purposes we choose (or the will to virtuality that chooses us).

Privileging the question of ethics via virtuality lays bare the impulse to nihilism that is central to the virtual class.

Those three sentences really only make sense when taken together. Re-writing Kroker's text, to remove the symbolism and the hyperbole, leaves the following: If you're considering the implications of building of a new medium, and you're wondering if the people who are going to use that new medium will behave ethically...well, they won't.

But my paraphrase has altered something, for Kroker doesn't place the locus of ethical control within the individual, as I do. He examines the social movement; the swarm of individuals, as if seen from the perspective of a person standing by a window in a skyscraper, looking down at the people in the street. And from his lofty perspective, he sees nihilistic tendencies in the people who are using electronic media.

The word "nihilism" is used in different ways, and Kroker doesn't make clear which way he is using the word. But it's probably either in the sense of a negative doctrine or total rejection of current beliefs in religion or morals, often involving a general sense of despair coupled with the belief that life is devoid of meaning.

There are four concepts in the second sentence that are intriguing: "Body dumps," "hyper-texted bodies," "virtualizers," and "data trash." What Kroker means by these terms is likely pointed to by the overall cynical, dark tone of the essay, reminiscent of many dystopic science fiction films, from Blade Runner to The Ghost in the Shell. Body dumps may refer to cyborg-like bodies that act as the repository for information, knowledge, and memory. It's an objectification of the body that conceives of the brain as a kind of secondary storage mechanism in the service of other people or agencies who act on the "body dump" via new communication media. "Hyper-texted bodies," could be the flip side of that mind-body diagram, with far-flung systems housing the personalities formerly located within the human form.

"Virtualizers," sounds very like programmers, systems designers, and other computer science professionals: people who make their living constructing the domains which house applications that people use. And "Data trash" sounds like "poor white trash," which refers to economically disadvantaged and marginalized people; in Kroker's scheme these are probably those computer users with little power and lots of resentment; probably young; potential grist for his conspiracy mill.

For it, the drive to planetary mastery represented by the will to virtuality relegates the ethical suasion to the electronic trashbin.

There is an assumption within this text: one cannot master the planet and act ethically. It comes from a vision of the world that seems to see planetary mastery as different from other forms of mastery, for surely one can be a master of something, and still an ethical being. Otherwise, Kroker would be arguing against mastery per se, be it the mastery of a planet or the mastery of the nipple by an infant, suckling on the breast. Is there any real difference between mastering a planet and mastering one's garden, one's home, or one's own body? Or is the difference in scale only an apparent difference? All four systems have this in common: they're comprised of parts that may act individually. Perhaps Kroker is arguing against the notion that an individual should master anything. An ironic contradiction seen in view of his essay, which reveals a mastery of language.

As for the phrase "will to virtuality": how is the will to create a virtual environment any different, and more relevant to his argument than the will to create a garden environment in a flowerpot?

It brings to mind an precept offered some years ago by Ludwig von Bertalanffy:

Man is not only a political animal; he is, before and above all, an individual. The real values of humanity are not those which it shares with biological entities, the function of an organism or a community of animals, but those which stem from the individual mind. Human society is not a community of ants or termites, governed by inherited instinct and controlled by the laws of the superordinate whole; it is based upon the achievements of the individual and is doomed if the individual is made a cog in the social machine. This, I believe, is the ultimate precept a theory of organization can give: not a manual for dictators of any denomination more efficiently to subjugate human beings by the scientific application of Iron Laws, but a warning that the Leviathan of organization must not swallow the individual without sealing its own inevitable doom.

When we lose sight of the individual, we lose sight of ethics.

References:

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. (1926). Essays. New York: Harper & Row.

Franklin, Ursula. (1990). The Real World of Technology. Montreal: CBC Enterprises.

Levy, Steven. (1992). Artificial Life: A report from the frontier where computers meet biology.. New York: Vintage Books.

Olson, David R. (1994). The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press.

Von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. (1968). General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: George Brazillier.

Email Ian Robbins.