The illustration that accompanies the epigram is even more revealing, further uncovering the blurring between “internal” and “external” in the digital discourse. It features a schematic profile of a human head, the likes of which is frequently used to educate about the neurophysiology of sight. Taking the eyeball as a starting point, we see a reverse still image of an iconic scene from the movie Casablanca. At the other end, on the brain, or the mind, is a “projection” of the same image upside down and much enlarged. This would be the conventional direction of the mind processing an external image. But what this illustration suggests is that “seeing,” according to the futuristic scenario painted by Spielberg, is merely a reflection of the images coming not from an external source but from the brain (the reverse direction is indicated by the spiraling arrows). By any measure, “seeing” a movie this way would also be a very external experience, since the signs will still be produced externally—by a storyteller, a programmer, and by information technology—and transmitted to the human mind.
Spielberg’s word choice is not a mistake; quite the contrary, it has been chosen by Wired’s editors to adorn the two-page introduction to the interview precisely because it is such compelling language. That Spielberg is able to denote such experience as internal is a testimony to a breakdown of the very distinction between internal and external in human experiences in the digital discourse. Such modernist language seems incompatible with the new subjectivity and its new experiences, inextricably tied with information technology. As such, these experiences are at one and the same time external and internal, taking place at the technological and the psychological realms. For what does it mean for the network human—a conflation of human and technology—to have an internal experience if his experiences are processed, transmitted, and perceived by both mind and machine, if his identity and consciousness is distributed among several computational machines? His existential sensibilities, lived experience, and identity become intricately bound with technology; his innermost experiences are rationalized and technologized by external machines.
Conclusion: Between Self and the Net
According to the digital discourse, in the information society, humans can no longer be understood as separate from technology. From the molecular level to the realm of lived experience, from the body to psychic life, from the human mind to cyberspace, human beings in the most technologically advanced regions of the world have been inextricably fused with network technology. Under these new circumstances, humans can no longer be thought of within the framework of humanism as distinct from technology but instead as network humans. Network humans are commensurable with network technology. This means that they are conceived in terms of network technology, that they are able to get into intimate relations with them, and, finally, that network technology resonates with the true essence of humanity.
Network Human
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