DATA MADE FLESH
Or
FLESH MADE DATA

Abstract:

This essay question asks students to address how data is becoming embodied into flesh.  Throughout my research, as I examined theorists such as Bruno Latour, Timothy Lenoir, Paul Rabinow, and Katherine Hayles, it has come to my attention that the question should go both ways.  In essence, the evolution of our flesh is becoming data and that data is becoming flesh.  I will explore how this process is evolving in today’s world and the benefits and consequences that come with it.  Looking at the above theorists, I will illustrate that our flesh has, for a long time, been converted into some form of data.  It is a matter of how this data is used to identify, categorize, and enable society to exist on multiple planes of existence and who controls the data that is important.

Introduction:
The human race has gained most of its knowledge through its interaction with the rest of the world.  This information is coded within out humanoid brains as chemical information to be recalled whenever needed.  This information is then expressed through physical actions or verbal theories about our every day existence in the world.  This model has been the cornerstone of human knowledge and has led our species to evolve into the beings that we are today. With the invention of language and the written word, information has been passed on throughout the generations to either benefit or harm us.  Some information was lost along the way through ancient wars, natural catastrophes, or it was just forgotten because it lacked usefulness or we evolved past its use.  Today, however, information is stored for continual use in external storage devices such as books, films, and hard drives to be accessed and stored indefinitely.  The potential for continual growth of the human race has been exponentially accelerated through these means, which has led us to gain a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us.  What will happen when we grow out of our biological forms and proceed into a world where not only our personal data is stored but also our consciousness and our personality are also stored into the synthetic? 
The means by which we have gained our knowledge of the world has aided us in the creation of new forms of robotic, cybernetics, and nanotechnology.  The same is becoming true with the evolution of ‘Artificial Life’ or AL, which is a new and different approach to ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI), where robots are given the tools to exist and work in this world by coping with their natural environment.  Instead of trying to program intelligence into a machine, the machine is given the ability and programming to cope with the world and develop its own intelligence naturally through environmental forces and its experiences, similarly to the way the humans’ evolved and human infants learn to walk.  This evolution of robotics has given scientists a better understanding of how the physiologies of humans work as well creating radical new therapies and technologies.  The growth of technology has led scientists to look at the original model given for intelligence, human beings, to take them to the next generation of technology by copying the way human mind works and applying it to a synthetic means.  In some cases, this evolution means integrating our consciousness into machines making our flesh into data, thus granting us the possibility of immortality.
Several theorists and scientists warn that this is the beginning of the end for the human race as a biological entity or dominate life form on the planet, and others see it as a new co-evolution between man and machine.  I believe both views of the development of technology are shortsighted and do not address all of the issues involved and must be combined to better understand our possible synthetic evolution.  Primarily, it seems that no one is doing anything about this evolution either to slow it down or to really question it with authority.  Whether we like it or not, data is being amassed for a majority of society in the industrial and technological world in the form of birth records, finger prints, ID cards, driver’s licenses, library records, face recognition and our interactions on the Internet.  To begin with, I will explore the theories of how our flesh has been turned into data and then explore the evolution of how our data is becoming a new flesh in my discussion and conclusion.

Theory:
Exploring the different theories involved with the assimilation of flesh into data has led me down several paths.  To begin with, it is pertinent to look at how the environment and other beings both human and animals affect the way we perceive our bodies and how we learn more about ourselves through these interactions.  To begin with, I examined the work of Vinciane Despret on conceptual intelligence.  The paper, published in 2004, looked at two subjects, a horse named Hans and a Berkley professor’s experiment on his students.  Hans, a horse, could answer difficult questions, such as mathematical problems, by stomping out the answers with his hooves.  It was later proven that in actuality Hans did not know what the answers meant nor was he able to do the mathematical calculations to derive the answers.  What Hans did do was remarkable, nonetheless.  He was able to read the body language of the person asking the questions and therefore appear to correctly answer the problems he was given.  If the person did not know the answer, then Hans would get the answer wrong.  In the paper, it was stated that horses and their riders develop a bond that through body language the horse instinctively knew what to do, Hans did this visually.  When Hans reached the correct answer by stomping his hooves, the person asking the question, if they knew the right answer, would give off body language that indicated to Hans to stop, thus giving the illusion that Hans performed the calculation.  This illustrates the learning potential between humans and non-humans.  “Hans, in other words, could become a device that enabled humans to learn more about their bodies and their affects.” (Despret 2004: 114).  This can be taken further if we look into our interaction between humans and machines.
In the other experiment discussed in this paper, a Berkley professor used lab rats and coded them as possessing intelligence or possessing low intelligence.  Telling the students that the intelligent ones were bred at Berkley to be intelligent and the normal ones were not.  The students perceived this as a truth without knowing that both sets of lab rats were the same.  The lab rats however performed the experiments in the lab exactly as they were expected to according to the bias that was placed on them by the students conducting the experiments.  This means the ones that were said to be intelligent performed as such and the ones labeled inferior did not perform as well.  It was through the interactions between the students and the lab rats made all of the difference and gave new meaning to the interaction of the experimenter and the one that is in the experiment. “The rat proposes to the student, while the student proposes to the rat, a new manner of becoming together, which provides new identities: rats giving to students the chance of ‘being a good experimenter’ students giving to their rats a chance to add new meanings to ‘being-with-a-human’ a chance to disclose new forms of ‘being together’.” (Despret 2004: 122).  What is learned here is that when a being interacts with another they take on new ways of being with one another.  In other words, they live up to whatever standards one imposes on ones subjects of interaction.
This prompts us in this new era of cyber technology to look at Bruno Latour’s work on how our bodies are affected and effected by external forces and how those interactions led us to a new meaning of being embodied. “To have a body is to learn to be affected, meaning ‘effected’, moved, put into motion by other entities, humans or non-humans.” (Latour 2004: 205).  Being effected and affected human and non-human forces are what has shaped our entire being: whether it is through how the environment effected our physical evolution or how our interaction with other humans created more differences to be seen in individuals and groups in society, even differences between groups of the same society or ethnic group.  This evolution is being realized in robotics today where scientists are learning more about human physiology by creating machines to simulate interaction, thus expanding our understanding of ourselves. “Learning to be affected means exactly that: the more you learn, the more differences exist.” (Latour 2004: 213).  Sherry Turkel (1999), in her work on cyberspace and identity, illustrates this in computing systems of today by comparing the ‘sum of your distributed presences’ on the computer is made up of the amount of ‘windows’ you have open on a screen at the same time or the amount of info that is stored on your hard drive.
Carrying over to our distributed presence looking at the work of Paul Virilio in his book Open Sky published in 2000, to illustrate the potential for humans to be more concerned with what is happening on our computer screens as opposed to the real world.  His fear is that being over involved in the cyber world of ‘real time’ will become the real world for most people in the future and we will not be able to differentiate between the two.  This, in his opinion leads to the detachment of our bodies from society placing us in the virtual world of ‘real time’.  In his theory, if that were to occur, there is the potential for a polluting of the means of communication.  He calls for and his justification coincides with the concern for the polluting of the environment, and that if we do not monitor the type and amount of information being uploaded that one day it will overwhelm society (Virilio 2000).  He is also concerned about the co-evolution of humans with machines to the point where the technology becomes an addictive debilitation (my words). “The urbanization of real time is in fact the urbanization of one’s own body plugged into interfaces (keyboard, cathode screen, DataGlove or DataSuit), prosthesis that make the superequipped able-bodied person almost the exact equivalent of the motorized and wired disabled person.” (sic)(Virilio 2000: 11). 
Moving on to a less pessimistic way of viewing the advancement and integration of technology into our bodies, I will look at the work of Timothy Lenoir and Katherine Hayles.  I believe that both theorists view the integration of technology and humans to be a chance to enlighten and enrich our lives, and it is inevitable as well.  In Lenoir’s contribution to the book Data Made Flesh (2004), he illustrates the advances of technology in surgery incorporating robotic machines in human surgeries.  These advances enable our bodies to heal quicker than in conventional surgeries because the tools used (robotics to assist during the procedure) are smaller and do not require the ‘opening up’ of a patient to perform invasive surgeries.  The technology is also used to prevent human error by compensating for hand tremors a surgeon might have during the operation.  He views this as a revolutionary co-existence of man and machine, not only in the physical respects and possibilities but also in the programming involved to make it happen.  Some of the co-existence of man and machine is demonstrated in machines which compensate for hand tremors, virtual surgery to train future surgeons, and to incorporate the software in the machines to simulate the texture and strength of the tissue that the machine meets during the surgery and all of this properly relaying the information to the human performing the surgery so adjustments can be made and mistakes compensated for less invasive surgeries.
His work in Data Made Flesh reflects on a previous paper that Lenoir wrote in 2002 which debates and reflects on Katherine Hayles book How We Became Posthuman published in 1999.  Lenoir states that since consciousness is not localized in any one part of the brain we need a biological body to perceive and develop our consciousness, and one cannot exist without the other. “Human consciousness is not localized in a set of neural connections in the brain alone, but is highly dependent on the material substrate of the biological body, with emotion and other dimensions as supportive structure.” (Lenoir, part 1, 2002: 205).  He goes on to state in part two of his paper that information, in the electronic world, is viewed as an action, and it is measured by the impact that it has on its receiver (Lenoir, part 2, 2002).  Where as, when a surgical machine perceives flesh that is about to be cut, it detects the distance, texture, and strength of the tissue, transmits that to the human operating the machine, who then encodes that information and makes a decision on how much pressure to apply to the machine to make the proper incision.  Lenoir goes on with his discussion on grounding consciousness by discussing virtual reality by stating that it is the biological potential that makes it a reality.  “The source of the virtual is thus not technological, but rather a biologically grounded adaptation to newly acquired technological extensions provided by new media.” (Lenoir 2002 part 2: 378).
In Lenoir’s theory of the co-evolution of humans and machines, he sites the work done by Ehud Shapiro of the Weizman Institute in Israel.  Shapiro created the first molecular computer that is designed ‘without any human-assisted protocols’ (Lenoir, Part 1, 2002).  Basically, this is nanotechnology that can be inserted into our bodies and correct what it perceives as a ‘problem’, anything from broken limbs to heartburn.  The problem is who determines what is a problem in our bodies and do those ‘problems’ make us who we are?  “As Kate Hayles has reminded us, the post human, like the human, is a hybrid entity constructed through networks that are materially real, socially regulated, and discursively constructed.” (Lenoir, Part 1, 2002: 210).  When do we cease being a hybrid and are fully integrated into the synthetic?
Katherine Hayles in her 1999 book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, explores the potential in becoming posthuman, if we are not already.  To define the ‘posthuman’ view she states, “The ‘posthuman’ view thinks of the body as the original prostheses we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of the process that began before we were born.” (Hayles 1999: 3).  Hayles then goes on to explain that when a society puts a heavy importance on information and information technology, as we have in the United States and in the United Kingdom, we have entered into the condition of “virtuality”.  “From here it is a small step to perceiving information as more mobile, more important, more essential than material forms.  When this impression becomes part of your cultural mindset, you have entered the condition of virtuality.” (Hayles 1999: 19).  Through this interaction it should be possible to have a presence anywhere in the world at any given time, similarly in ways that Paul Virilio illustrated and the same what Turkel implied that we are the sum of our hard drives and the ‘window’s’ we have open on our computer screens. 
Hayles looks at the work of Gillian Brown who did a study over anorexia, which led Hayles to look at the body as something that needs to be mastered (Hayles 1999).  I would say that a better example can be found in infant humans learning to walk.  The body, being something to be mastered, can be extended to the synthetic body, and be mastered.  However as Hayles goes on to point out that our consciousness would be altered, in essence, we might be able to exist in a synthetic form, but our consciousness would be changed because our interactions with the outside world would be different. “Even assuming such a separation was possible, how could anyone think that consciousness is an entirely different medium would remain unchanged, as if it had no connection with embodiment?” (Hayles 1999: 1).  Through this discourse, Hayles develops her argument that the development of AL will make leaps and bounds over the development of AI. 
Robots that are programmed in the manner of AL learn to walk the same way infant humans do, by trial and error.  Robots with AL capabilities have scanners in each of their legs that enable them to perceive their environment and make judgments about how to cope with it in relation to the other legs and the terrain.  It takes a few tries before the robot gets on its feet, but it learns to adapt very rapidly to the external environment it chooses to cross.  The difference between AL and AI robots is that in AI robots there is one central brain that takes into account the terrain and makes all of the decisions.  With AL, each leg makes its own decision based in relation to the terrain and the position of the other legs, such as when humans walk our conscious brain never really thinks about it.  Thus, it learns to move and becomes more agile the more it encounters new terrains.  Time will tell which technology will rise to the top; perhaps it will be an integration of both.  Either way, both models are based on the way humans learn by trial and error through our experiences in the physical world.
In a chapter in Paul Rabinow’s book, Essays on the Anthropology of Reason, he explores the project to map the human genome explaining what he calls, ‘biosociality’. “In the future, new genetics will cease to be a biological metaphor for modern society and will become instead a circulation network of identity terms and restriction loci, around which and through which a truly new type of auto production will emerge, which I call ‘biosociality’….Nature will be known and remade through technique and will finally become artificial, just as culture becomes natural.” (sic)(Rabinow 1996: 99).  This is the progression of new genetics where flesh becomes data.  While studying the scientists who were unlocking the human genome, a thought crossed Rabinow’s mind as he watched the human genome be explained to scientists through computer code.  Numbers, as we have come to realize, have their own language, and everything can be interpreted in numbers and mathematics thus our genome(s) could be explained and portrayed on a synthetic plane. 
This is not a new or unusual phenomenon as Rabinow discusses the first ways that data was made flesh, through fingerprinting in the subsequent chapter.  Fingerprinting of society identified individuals that the authorities deemed worth of needing to be tracked, either for criminal reasons or for protection.  However, the progression of finger printing has led to massive databases worldwide that work with other databases to identify individuals on features other than fingerprints some of which are voice recognition, DNA, and Facial Recognition.  All of which leads to the phenomenon of flesh becoming data or data becoming flesh.  This, in turn, this gives us a new identity or body in the electronic world.  This has been going on for centuries and that is what the message that Rabinow, Lenoir, and Hayles are trying to get across, it has been happening, and it is going to continue to happen.

Discussion:
Looking at the plight of flesh turning into data and data into flesh with the theories at hand, I would like to discuss several issues pertaining to the process of data being made flesh and flesh becoming data.  To begin with, there is a recurring theme present in my research pertaining to the way that our bodies and our consciousnesses interact with the physical world.  This is seen in Latour’s discussion of how we talk about and understand our bodies. “Acquiring a body is thus a progressive enterprise that produces at once a sensory medium and a sensitive world.” (Latour 2004: 207).  This in turn affects our consciousness and our perception of the world that is unique to this body and would be different if we were to inhabit a different body, either synthetic or someone else’s (Hayles 1999).  The reader is exposed to the other side of the issue in Despret’s article over learning to be with different beings. 
I see this happening on a more realistic/practical scale with the popularity of the Internet and the way our flesh is being turned into data and the way people interact in this virtual world.  Specifically, I am referring to such websites as ‘Myspace’ and ‘Friendster’ where users enter data about themselves to connect with friends some old, some new.  A person can have as many profiles as they want because it is free, meaning that people are willingly converting their flesh into data on a daily basis. “Cyberspace, like all complex phenomena, has a range of psychological effects.  For some people, it is a place to ‘act out’ unresolved conflicts, to play and replay characterological difficulties on a new and exotic stage.” (sic)(Turkel 1999: 644).  A comprehensive study could be done on the interaction individuals have on these websites and well as the connection between individual and the computer that they use to connect to this virtual world.  Marx would most likely have something to say about the class that has the time, money, and access to these types of electronic exchanges; however that is another topic altogether. 
Looking back at Lenoir’s work, it was stated that stimuli have to be processed by something, and everyone perceives things differently, leading to the assumption that the biological body is necessary for consciousness (2002).  Hayles goes a bit further stating that consciousness does need a body, but what if we were to put someone’s consciousness in a synthetic body or what would happen in a synthetic body were to acquire or develop consciousness?  Hayles discusses this further with the development of AL robots.  “Consciousness is a relatively late development, analogous to the control system that kicks in to adjudicate conflicts between the different distributed systems.  Like the robot’s control system, consciousness does not require an accurate picture of the world; it needs only a reliable interface.” (Hayles 1999: 238).  Being that as it may, what will the picture of the world be if the interface is converted to a synthetic interface instead of a biological one?  Hayles states that this is when we become ‘posthuman’, I am however seeing less and less of the human in Hayles analysis, and it should be dropped from her word, ‘posthuman’.  There is not a line drawn when we cease being human or ‘posthuman’ I believe that this issue was not fully addressed in her analysis because the prospect is a very distant potential future.  This thought is illustrated in her remarks, “Yet for millions more, virtuality is not even a cloud on the horizon of their everyday worlds.  Within a global context, the experience of virtuality becomes more exotic by several orders of magnitude.  It is a useful corrective to remember that 70 percent of the world’s population has never made a telephone call.” (Hayles 1999: 20). 
Latour and Hayles both see the benefits of becoming ‘posthuman’ and it is my belief that they feel that it is and inevitable ‘synthetic’ progression of the human race.  Is it co-existence or a ‘synthetic’ evolution that absorbs the biological into the synthetic?  Latour sees the human race living with a co-existence between humans and machines.  However, he does not look as far into the future as I believe Hayles does with her analysis of the becoming of the ‘posthuman’.  She states we are already here, and her definition confirms that.  There needs to be a critical mass of the population all on the same page to bring about the evolution into the synthetic.  Again, at the rate the environment on this planet is deteriorating, the human race may have to accept the synthetic into our flesh to survive in our global environment.  I illustrated earlier how we learn form our environment and how it propels us into a new plane of being.  If the climate changes too rapidly then the human race might have to rely on the synthetic to survive and thus we will learn what it is to be with machines, we are learning from our environment and we are creating ways to adapt to it.
If the ‘synthetic’ evolution takes place at a faster pace than it is now, then Paul Virilio would be very unhappy.  As with Latour and Hayles, Virilio see a type of this evolution to be inevitable.  His concern is that our minds will be spread out across a vast communication web that has more affect on us than living in the real world.  Then again, how does one define the real world?  Just because you are not physically there does not make events any less real.  If anything, I believe that it expands our consciousness in ways that we never would have expected.  Look at how the Internet affects the world today.  After any type of disaster occurs, people on the Internet or watching TV are immediately involved.  “Bear in mind that the truth of a phenomenon is always limited by the speed with which it emerges.” (Virilio 2000: 23).  The speed that that information travels possibly saves lives and alerts the population of the world to act and act quickly.  Telecommunications is a rapidly growing industry that shows no signs of slowing down that carries the potential to link the entire planet together (Virilio 2000).
Paul Rabinow seems to be the least worried about these developments, primarily because he does not address them directly and he illustrates that flesh as almost always been converted into one type of data or another therefore the synthetic would be the next logical step.  He does illustrate that there are faults in translating flesh into data with DNA testing (1996).  DNA patterns in certain parts of different people’s bodies can be identical on paper.  Therefore, there in lies the difficulty and one of the faults in converting our flesh into data.  The same is true from online dating.  A person may describe their appearance they way they perceive themselves.  However, we might perceive them differently.  The question must be asked, how would we perceive ourselves if we lost our biological form and gained a synthetic?  Would we be jealous of the person who got the ‘upgraded’ model of a synthetic form?  Again, a new class system could develop here as well.  We may shed our skin but will we ever learn to shed our envy and other human emotions that are tied to the physical?

Conclusion:
The human race continuously evolves to meet the challenges of tomorrow and the forefront of this evolution is converting flesh into data or making data flesh.  Either way, it is my belief that the environment will push that evolution towards the ‘synthetic’ to meet the needs of a rapidly changing planet.  The human race is already voluntarily entering pieces of their consciousness onto computers and websites paving the way for a greater acceptance of converting our flesh into data.  What we have to look forward to is after our physical bodies expire, baring the possibility that we are not uploaded into a computer, there will be a large part of our lives mapped out in our emails, hard drives, electronic photo galleries, and our personal electronic music libraries.  What will your grandchildren think when they access our computer files to get a better idea of how you lived your life?  New discourses will form through the examination of these texts, possibly leading to new developments in software to upload that information into a program giving the user a simulated consciousness of the deceased person.  All they need is a password (and possibly a credit card number).  Society’s flesh being converted into data could enable us to speak to our future generations through the items we saved and collected on our hard drives as data that resembles the user or us.  Much can be inferred by examining what is on one’s computer, but is it really that person or that person’s perception of him or her self?  Possibly not.  What it does illustrate is how we interacted with the machine in question, and how will we continue to react to machines as they are built with more capabilities. 
I do agree with Paul Virilio in the since that the development of technology needs to be monitored.  “When are we going to see legal sanctions, a speed limit, imposed not because of the probability of a road accident but because of the danger of exhausting temporal distances and so of the threat of inertia – in other words, of parking accidents?” (Virilio 2000: 25).  Then again, I do not believe that we have reached a critical mass in the instance of technology.  Most of the technology today seems to be dictated by the amount of economic gain a company can obtain by releasing a particular technology at a particular time to maximize the greatest financial return.  Therefore, the technology is released to maximize profit margins to cover the cost of the development.  The rest of the world needs to catch up before other avenues and markets are explored in the realm of data processing.  Therefore, the concern is minimal but it still exists.  Who will have access to these new infusions of making flesh into data?  Obviously, the wealthy will have access thus creating one more divide in the class system. 
What will we be when our flesh is converted into data and society becomes disembodied, ‘posthuman’, will we cry or have feelings?  If so how will they change the way, that society perceives the world around us?  Perhaps the perception will be more systematic and logical.  What then?  Will we loose what it means to be human?  That is why I believe the term ‘posthuman’ is rather incomplete or misleading.  The human aspect will be dropped or downloaded but is has been pointed out that this could be part of our evolution that we dictate.  If we are to let ourselves evolve naturally what would we become and would those possibilities be lost in the synthetic?  I believe this will be the case if we take our evolution into our own hands, than and we will cease to be ‘human’.

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