Humans have relied on communication, in one form or another, to relay
messages from one to another. Nowadays, we use complex technology to send
important information to our loved ones, friends and business
associates. However, the technologies we use today did not always exist.
Human beings have relied on various methods to communicate with each
other and Kittler outlines these in extreme detail chronologically in his essay The History of Communication. An interesting point that he makes is that "new media do not make old media obsolete; they assign them other places in the system" He cites the example of typography enhancing the importance of hand-writing.
At the end of his essay he states that there is an end to this chain of technology communications. "The day is not far off when signal processing will reach the physical limits of feasibility" and this will happen when the world is without mankind or an individual. Is he stating that artificial intelligence will not have the capacities to carry out the progression of communication that has occurred throughout the entire the existence of man? What will happen once the progression stops?
Gracie, thanks for pointing out that the development of communication technologies is not simply one of succession and replacement ("progress"), but rather one characterized by overlapping usage and shifting functions (we don't live in a media monoculture, but in a complex media ecology that includes a diverse range of forms).
ReplyDeleteAs for what Kittler is hinting at toward the limits of signal processing, I can't say for sure (he can be rather cryptic at times!), but perhaps he's straying a bit toward the "singularity" theories of people like Ray Kurzweil, which predict a transcendence beyond human capacities.