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The Postdigital Membrane: Imagination, Technology and Desire

By Robert Pepperell and Michael Punt
Intellect Books,
Bristol, UK 182 pp. Illus. b/w ISBN 1-841150-042-9, £15.00
Reviewed by Dr Robert Mitchell

During Word War 2 German scientists found themselves in a bit of a predicament when they captured electronic equipment from the British. Some of the equipment they captured had been planted by British intelligence and albeit its complex circuitry, did not actually do anything. However, since they did not know which was which, they had to examine everything rather carefully. "The Postdigital Membrane" poses some similar difficulties for the reader. For example, the authors posit an analogy between the cellular biological membrane and a metaphorical membrane, which like its biological counterpart gives rise to complex phenomena. Such an analogy is sustainable, were one to compare the entropic changes within a living cell and within a living city. In both cases, to use SchrûdingerÍs view, cell and city maintain themselves by sucking order from their environment. Although the book has references both to Schrûdinger and to entropy, such a straightforward analogy is never made and indeed much of the book evokes the surrealism of "Last Year in Marienbad" with the dialogue of "My Dinner with Andre." Fostering this latter image is the imaginary empty seat for the discursive reader at the table in the cafÚ where the authors had their discussions.

As the title suggests, the book is rich in metaphor, especially of the mixed kind that one was encouraged to avoid by English teachers, who liked to nip that kind of thing in the bud, should one happen to float past. The authors argue that "the intellectual restrictions of the digital paradigm are now becoming unavoidable, not least since it insists on the reduction of continuous reality into discrete binary units." However, according to quantum theory, referred to elsewhere in the book in the context of the now resolved entangled photon controversy (and yes, Einstein was wrong), matter at the subatomic level matter is not continuous nor is even time continuous when one gets down to very small intervals. Reality is at a fundamental level quite lumpy. If one objects that the digitization of information is a distortion of continuous reality, then why not object also to the lack of continuity of moving images projected at 18 frames per second?

Besides, the binary restrictions alluded to are bits of a red herring as the argument ignores the exponential terms in the equation. If one imagines one box where 0 stands for white and 1 for black, one box could specify only black or white. With eight boxes there are 28 =256 combinations that could specify 254 intermediate shades of grey. With 32 boxes there would be 232 or over 4 million shades of grey, so many that the human eye would be unable to distinguish between most of them. Indeed much of what we know of the movement of cellular membranes and organelles inside living cells in real time relies on video enhanced contrast microscopy to make exactly such distinctions. The technique uses special video cameras that can detect these minute differences in contrast as well as on computers to digitally refine the images, make them visible to our less discriminating senses. Thus, rather than restricting our perceptions, digital reality has expanded them by opening up new realms to our senses and to our imagination.

The bookÍs subtitle, Imagination, Technology and Desire is based on the notion that imagination begets human desire that begets technology, which in a recursive fashion begets further desire. Recursion is an interesting topic, one that can truly be said to be of mythic proportions. Recursion was explored rather thoroughly by Douglas Hofstadter in his work on Gûdel, Escher and Bach. While the works of the three disparate artists discussed by Hofstadter can be viewed as intrinsically recursive, the three strands of the Postdigital membrane are not. They had recursion thrust upon them and doubtless a Buddhist would point to the Eight-fold path as the solution to this recursive bane of imagination, desire and technology.

Recursion also occurs in metaphor in the story of KekulÚÍs dream of the structure of benzene, recounted on page 78. Friedrich August KekulÚ von Stradonitz (here misidentified as Friedrich von KekulÚ) correctly deduced the cyclic structure of the benzene molecule in an astonishing flash of intuition. He later recounted his second dream experience.

"I turned my chair to the fire [after having worked on the problem for some time] and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly to the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated vision of this kind, could not distinguish larger structures, of manifold conformation; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting in snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lighting I awoke."

KekulÚ had dreamed of a powerful alchemical symbol, the oroboros, "the serpent rejoicing in itself," as Jung has described it. æFar from KekulÚÍs model being flawed as the authors here assert, it was a remarkably accurate insight, especially for the nineteenth century, when chemists were not even in agreement if molecules had shapes at all. By contrast, the discovery of the double helix by Watson and Crick, had more to do with the X-ray data of Franklin and Wilkins than with the metaphor of the double helix. æKekulÚÍs vision, recounted time and time again for over one hundred and fifty years has acquired the status of a powerful meme. To say that these developments rely on "the contingency of models that are based on our ability to recognize what we think we have discovered" is by comparison, a pallid statement.

And what to make of the oblique hints at vitalism in cellular metabolism? æA considerable amount is known both on the general principles of the energetic processes in cells, as well on specific mechanisms (witness the recent Nobel prizes awarded in chemistry for the discovery that millions of little turbine motors are whirring away inside all of us). To deal with the roles of entropy in the first regard would be beyond the scope of this review, apart from commenting that the illustration for "Humans tend toward resistance to entropy" showing an indolent fellow carried in a litter by two porters is of no help and appears to equate entropy directly with energy. However, in metaphorical terms, the enigmatic creature Entropy only manifests herself as Energy after transformation by union with the fiery Temperature, (the mystic union of Sol and Luna?) æCuriously in most popular writings EntropyÍs energetic sibling, Enthalpy, is generally ignored. Fortunately both entities exist in the world of science rather than of the gods, so no harm will be wrought by this slight.

The criticism that Dawkins has underplayed the importance of energy in his self-replicating gene theory is quite reasonable, a membrane of some sort being essential from basic entropic considerations to permit life to evolve and prosper. Unfortunately the authors are vague as to what kind of energy is involved and a figure labeled "Apparent energies" of what appears to be a lens flare in the camera does little to enlighten further. Peter Medawar rightly criticized the use of scientific terms in a nonscientific way in Teilhard de ChardinÍs "The Phenomenon of Man..

The general impression of the Postdigital Membrane is that of a literary Rorschach test, where the reader may see what he or she pleases. Are the translucent pages meant to represent the membrane, which "like a transparent wall both connects and divides?" Or is the laterally-reversed image more like a Looking Glass? And why were the authors haunted by a vivid image of a bicyclist repairing a puncture on a bike on which he or she was riding? The literal minded might say itÍs obvious; the rider was on a tandem and was repairing a spare inner tube. But of course, a student who offered a literal interpretation of a Zen koan would soon get a whack from the Master. One feels that Pepperell and Punt would more forgiving. As they say in their introduction, they do not claim that "the postdigital membrane is a complete theory or even a coherent set of ideas."

Still, as the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, "writing books involves endless hard work" (although with word processors, despite Pepperell and PuntÍs reservations, it is much less work than in days gone by and even an index can be generated fairly readily). Many other objections could be made regarding this singular oeuvre, but as Stephen Potter emphatically said, "Anybody can criticize but how very few do."

According to the biographical information on the back cover, Robert Pepperell is a multimedia artist, musician and author of "The Post-Human Condition". Michael Punt is a film-maker, film historian and the author of "Early Cinema and the Technological Imaginary." æ"The Postdigital Membrane" (181 pages) is arranged in ten sections. Each section begins with a proposition that is amplified using paragraphs and figures intended to be read in no particular order. æA five page bibliography is included but no index. æThe book is published by Intellect Press and a Web site is available (www.postdigital.org) for contributions and comments from readers.

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