What the digital discourse suggests is that social affairs are guided by a logic similar to that which governs systems of information and communication in both nature and technology. Alas, this similarity is not simply metaphoric and suggestive (as, for example, in the case of complexity theory. See, for example, Urry 2003). The argument is much stronger here, suggesting that social dynamics should follow those of nature. Moreover, it offers the practical medium through which such change is to take place—network technology. Network technology is seen as a medium between nature and society, facilitating social change in accordance with the laws of nature. The special feature on “Living Machines” ends with a call for arms—“Evolve” (Wired editors 2004b)—that sums it all up in a big crescendo and urges society to keep up with technology and nature: “A lot can happen in a billion years, but look closely and you’ll see the same dynamic at work in every system, and at every scale.” Whether it’s “microbiology or geopolitics,” the underlying dynamics are the same (Wired editors 2004b).
The direction of argumentation may change: technology might be seen as following the logic of nature or vice versa. In an essay entitled “The Computer at Nature’s Core” (Channell 2004), the author turns the table to suggest that rather than technology being like nature, scientists are now gaining insights about nature from technology. Scientists increasingly “explain natural phenomena by invoking such man-made artifacts as the computer” (Channell 2004). Like information technology, the natural world “is the result of a series of yes-or-no choices that take place at the level of quantum mechanics” (Channell 2004). Hence, to understand how nature works, one needs to carefully examine computers. And indeed, “research into quantum computers has implied that matter itself processes information . . . This has led some in the pure research world to the controversial claim that the universe itself is governed by the laws of computation and is, in fact, a computer . . . the field of systems biology is explicitly predicated on a computational model” (Channell 2004).
194
Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age