Hence, in the historical context of its coinage, Franklin’s maxim is not merely a metaphor regarding the essence of time but an ideology, at one and the same time revealing and concealing the realities of capital accumulation under capitalism and its connection with time. “Time is money,” then, is rendered a strong metaphor when these very different entities are shown in practice to be commensurable. To tie this back to our discussion here, the discursive intensity and potency of a metaphor increases (and becomes practical) when some form of commensurability is pointed out and some channel by which the commensurability of humans and network technology can be materialized.
How is the commensurability between humans and network technology possible according to the digital discourse? The answer, as we have already begun to see, is that both humans and network technology share the common denomination of being essentially informational machines. Thus, humans and network technology are commensurable through the media of information. This commensurability through the medium of information (or more precisely the medium of binarism or digitalism) allows the connection of humans to technology. Thus, for example, the digital discourse renders the brain a “hardware” on which “software,” or “programs,” are run. Thus, whether the hardware is made of neurons or wires, and whether the program is run by a string of binary neural activity or electric signals, becomes insignificant. Unsurprisingly most of the stories in Wired that feature the narrative of commensurability focus on the brain as a site of interconnection between humans and machines: the brain is referred to as a “humans-machine interface” (Freund 2004), and the process of interaction is referred to as “brain-computer interface”(Martin 2005) and “neural interfacing” (Branwyn 1993).
DISEMBODIED CONSCIO<sub>U</sub>SNESS
But in the digital discourse, the brain is often just an entry point (and a euphemism) for a more substantial discussion concerning the core elements of being a network human: thought, mind, consciousness, and unconsciousness. “Mind Control” (Martin 2005), a story about a cyborg, is instructive in uncovering the digital discourse’s underlying assumptions regarding the human mind and its compatibility with network technology. The story focuses on Matthew Nagle, a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down, and the first person to use BrainGate, a system that allows him to manipulate information on computers solely with thought. The system is comprised of an array of microelectrodes that are implanted in his brain and register its neural activity. A computer processor then recognizes the patterns associated with arm motions and translates them into signals on a computer screen. Simply put, the system bypasses and substitutes body movements hitherto needed to execute informational commands from brain to computer (such as moving a computer mouse with one’s hand), rendering human-computer interaction more direct and disembodied.
Network Human
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