{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","uuid":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","normalized_title":"mediaandnewcapitalisminthedigitalagethespiritofnetworks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","isbns":["9781349379743","9780230106062"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":258,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Media%20and%20New%20Capitalism%20in%20the%20Digital%20Age%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Networks","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/search"},"page":{"printed_page":158,"pdf_page":160,"physical_index":160,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ef1c8e4072d363547b6c80a6cc157992cd04700f369826768265d18fad6f051e"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"To make the leap between human thoughts and computer activity plausible, “thoughts” are equated in the digital discourse with “neural activity,” which in turn, is equated with “digitalism.” Thus, for example, at the end of a trial session with Nagle, the experimenter renders the sounds of the neural activity audible on a loudspeaker. The author then comments, “A loud burst of static fills the room—the music of Nagle’s cranial sphere. This is raw analog signal, Nagle’s neurons chattering. We are listening to a human being’s thoughts” (Martin 2005, emphasis mine). The brain’s neural signals might be described here as analog, but it is precisely because they can also be thought of as equivalent to the computer’s digital signals that the two can be unproblematically juxtaposed. That is the only way to connect these neural signals (or “thoughts”) so easily with information technology, which is also based on the neural-like activity of binary units. This, according to the digital discourse, is the conceptual and practical level where humans interface with information technology, and this is how the corollary conclusion of the author can be asserted: in the final analysis, this neural activity is human thought. To the degree that thought and consciousness are reduced to neural activity, they can also be understood in terms of information technology.\n\nThe digital discourse offers a more general theory of consciousness based on a distinction between the content of thought and its media of production, transmission, and reception—that is, between software and hardware. This is very much in line with the foundations of information theory laid out by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in 1949, a theory that largely underscored information technology and paved the road to its development (Shannon and Weaver 1948). According to this theory, human brains can be likened to computers. This narrative of the brain-as-computer (and vice versa) is well known and has indeed become a staple of public discourse and popular culture. Underlying such theory of consciousness—based on the comparison of brains of computers—are two forceful assumptions about the human mind and human consciousness. Not only does it assume a disjuncture between, and independence of, media and content, brain and thoughts, hardware and software, instrumentality and substance, means and ends, but also a hierarchy between them. Both of these assumptions are central to the new conception of the network human.\n\n158\n\nMedia and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","previous_page":157,"next_page":159}