Can Artificial Lifeforms Cross the Techno-Bio Boundary Through the "Overlap" Between Objects & Spaces?
The Expanse | Part 1
If you are like me and you fluctuate between the opinion that life is not that deep and it is so deep you cannot see where the matter ends, then perhaps keep reading. As you can imagine from an article named after a large, open space, this work covers a lot of ground. Because of such spatial requirements, The Expanse will be divided into many distinct pieces, each harbouring its own specific line of interest, connected to the whole through the central question bannered above.
From rowing down a river of objects and spaces, we look down to see the shimmer of complexity radiating just below the surface. Collecting a vial-full, two frameworks spin a centrifuge to separate the layers of objects and organisms.
We arrive at the frontier between digital and physical. Hyper-objectivity is coupled with Assembly-like Theories to understand the structure of the space and the role of substrates from which emergent phenomena spawn.
Microscope in one hand, long stick in the other, we poke around the digital space scanning for movement. Teeming with connective qualities from biology, chemistry, computation and philosophy of mind, our sample suggests Interconnection is the signpost to embark from.
Our journey into The Expanse begins. Take a measured breath, strap on your lifevest and hold on nice and tight. Life is as deep as we make it. Let’s see how deep we want to go.
Bridging Objects & Spaces
Interconnection is important. David Bohm may not be alone in thinking there exists “a kind of thought that treats things as inherently divided, disconnected, and ‘broken up’ into yet smaller” parts.1 So arises the question: disconnected or interconnected? Given the words you have already read it may not come as a surprise to hear that my tent is pitched in Camp Interconnected.
I think it is fair to assume that a lot of people, from theoretical physicists like Bohm to little old me, from people living in megacities to log cabins in the middle of nowhere, are not alone in the view that both local and global disconnected perspectives are “preventing [us] from working together for the common good, and indeed, even for survival”.2 We need more bridges, not less. Burning the bridges is a clever tactic, but one that is coated in the grimness of war and screams “Burn it all!” Pushing this point, surely many of you would agree that if our species:
“thinks of the totality [of existence] as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how [our] mind will tend to operate, but if [we] can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border… then [our] mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.”3
Interconnection is an important concept to ponder not just as individuals but as one collective whole. Building on Bohm’s idea that, if we were to view the entirety of a social system as existing “coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole” as another way of saying we should see the totality of all global societies as that whole, the underlying quality here is the connection between societies.4 The thread is interconnection.
For me a handy way of thinking about interconnection is in terms of Network Theory and especially “bridging- edges”. One simple way of identifying such points of interconnection is to view where information flows.5 Looking at the interconnection between social networks for example, one way would involve identifying the different hubs or modules - different social groups - and observing at what individual nodes - people or sub-groups - the network information flows between, group-to-group, node-to-node.
Being a bridging node fundamentally means interconnecting. That is why “the cost of network failure by interrupting the bridging nodes would be much higher than the failure on the other nodes”.6 Going for the bridges is clearly a clever tactic because interconnection is important for stability and robustness in the overall whole. So not maintaining such interconnection may be as equally net negative as burning all the bridges in the first place.
If we continue, and equivalate Bohm’s phrase “orderly action” to mean an emergent or spontaneous order, or self-organisation within or as a result of a complex system,7 what emerges from the shadows under our bridge takes the sparkling form of complexity. Could it be that interconnection, or (at least in a social sense) an interconnected perspective, when practised en masse, could result in emergent complexity in many large systems across the world.
It follows that interconnectedness seems to be standing further back as the older, speckled-grey cousin of complexity. As the source of the spring. More fundamental; things seem to interact, intertwine, interrelate - interconnect - before we begin to see complexity flicker across the circuit board of existence.
To explore interconnection we must first map out the space it inhabits. If we were to think about the scale of the space, I find thinking in an Aristotelian sense helpful. The Greek philosopher thought of existence in a hierarchical sense, with the substance of everything - maybe what we call the universe these days - at the top. I like to view his concept of the “unmoved mover” as the outer layer of everything that exists. In this sense, we could keep extrapolating out until we hit the bounds of the “Universal space” (the unisphere) and it would be here that, if I had to, plant a flag for the pinnacle meta-system8 resting atop of and encompassing all other systems within the entire universe. In imagining this as the bounds of everything, you can get an understanding of the scale of space.
The unisphere has housed a series of unreckonable interconnections since… well, since the beginning of whatever the space began as. Be it Einstein's E = mc2, Hawking & Co's Big Bang, be it Turok’s Simple Theory that Explains Everything, be it whenever or whatever you want the start and end of this space to be, it matters to the extent that you see the causal interconnection running throughout the space. From nothingness and singularity to space dust and hydrogen atoms attracted into a spinning vortex resulting in nuclear fusion and debris amalgams smashing together to form planets, hurtling in orbit around giant burning balls of plasma and balancing out gravitational pulls towards the event horizon of dark curious voids in spacetime, all this, all these bizarre interactions and events, interconnected and continue to do so at some level to exist in our observable reality.
If I was trying to be flashy (which most of the time I am not very successful in pulling off) I would re-phrase all of this as:
Objects within reality are interconnected through their process of creation
Since whenever time became immemorial, objects have sprung into existence, populated the unisphere and interconnected on the way up - or down - whatever way you want to spin it. Whether it be on the scale of super-positioned quantum multi-objects or your good old fashioned washing machine, this shared process of object creation takes place within one space or another. But is it any space? It seems the space does matter. But more on space later.
Whilst, when you read my sentence back it isn’t that flashy, it does make one thing more apparent: exploring the underlying essences of interconnection has lead us directly to objects. Thus objects and interconnection appear fundamentally linked. Whilst we may not be able to see the other side, it is that bridge we cross over now. Try not to look down.
Assembling Hyper-Objects
Unsurprisingly there are many ways to define an object: something classically physical i.e. a table or a chair; something to desire i.e. food or a partner; non-physical desires i.e. your object of desire is to love or to experience equanimity, or to be happy and fulfilled, or to be satiated. Phenomenology is a tricky one.
Sure non-physical objects (i.e. desire) can cross paths with the physical (i.e. a car). In such an object classification the good life could cross paths with down-payment on a new apartment. It all depends who the observer of said object is and what context they are observing said object within.
Dangling on to this thread for Dear Life, it becomes philosophically clear in a moment of panic-induced clarity that some objects transcend the boundaries between the non-physical and the physical. If, in fact, it is that deep, and we have managed to hold on this long, we notice that we (humans) are objects ourselves, being objectively here, assembled in fundamental ways from the ground-up. We are finite and physical. We can be both the object of desire and the object feeling said desire.
Objectiveness - our collective, somewhat agreed upon species-wide perception of something - is a substance built upon scientific rigour and compounded validation. Yet, despite the grand iron gates of modern natural sciences, such objectiveness often appears at odds with our equally species-wide subjective experience, based upon tacit knowledge and life experience. Is this such a shock? Belief systems and value structures shape interactions with our environment. Relevance sorting and our biological sensory apparatus shape what we observe. Immanuel Kant may have been one of the first to philosophise the tension between the subjective and objective manifestations of reality through the divergence of rationalism and empiricism when he said
“that objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known by means of these representations, nor ever can be, but respecting which, in experience, no inquiry is ever made.”9
Without wanting to undermine the ancient transcendental connection between truth, beauty and goodness, clearly the labels we attribute to certain objects, objectively and subjectively, go a long way in shaping our individual and shared perception of those objects. Considering our reality is made of such objects, it could be inferred that such a unique observational objectiveness also alters our perception of reality. But are rationalism and empiricism in such perpetual contention as they appear to be? Are things simply black and white, chalk and cheese, zero-one? Upon closer inspection there appears one class of objects that transcends this boundary. The question is whether this transcendence is purely philosophical or could these transcendent objects manifest in the very “real” bio-physical space?
One observation from Category Theory is that an object is defined by the totality of its relations. Hyper-objects are beginning to get more attention in modern philosophical thinking, with the “hyper-” added before the “object” to signify a certain unobservable, unquantifiable, perpetually-changing quality. In a sense, the more relations an object has, the more hyper it becomes. Something “more” than what can be directly observed. Less object in the traditional materialist sense, hyper-objects exist in the weird, ill-defined space between physical and non-physical. This odd group of objects speed down their own lane on the spatio-temporal highway. In the most surface-level sense hyper-objects can be objects that take on a different form, shape and/or meaning depending on who is observing them. The example below demonstrates such observational relations of a object, in this case three distinct objects that remain all objectively “tables”:
A table has gone from manufactured to almost natural to artificial, from physical to digital, from somewhat alive to completely “dead”. A dining table turns to a tree stump and a tree stump turns to a way of changing values in one area to solve problems in another. Tables are a great example of an object that houses many relations to other objects, including people, manufacturing warehouses, computers, chain-saws, ranging in situational contexts from dinner to nature to problem-solving. Some objects (even everyday ones) exist on a constantly moving spectrum of physicality - objectivity and subjectivity - hence the categorisation of relations between hyper-objects and themselves, or hyper-objects and other objects, borders on impossible to define. However this is just the surface-level interpretation of a hyper-object and its web of relations. We now zoom out a bit.
Observing a hyper-object may be akin to sitting in the metallic confines of an orbiting satellite (somewhat smaller than the ISS). In this analogy Jupiter can be the hyper-object, you are the observer, the satellite is your mode of and the context for your observation (including the framework and barriers built by tacit knowledge, life experiences, biases, belief systems, value structures, relevance sorting etc). Glimpsing a small slither of the otherwise expansive surface, from your bracketed view you try to ignore the fact that you are hurtling through space in a tin can and begin to make observations about what you are seeing. You are there to do a job, after all. Not only do the confines of the satellite restrict your modes of view, the object itself restricts observations due to sheer enormity.
On top of this, your personal observational context - conscious and subconscious, objective and subjective, rational and empirical - each adds another observational filter. On top of that your own sensing apparatus filters things out before they even make it to your brain for processing. (Like only 0.0035% of the total (known) electromagnetic spectrum making it through your eyes and into your mind.) Perhaps in NASA’s fancy satellite you could find enhanced observational tools like a celestron telescope lying around. Not in your tin can though. You are on a budget and besides, you would need more than a telescope to make it past the enormity of Jupiter. It only serves to zoom in further, the objective structure blurring your path of vision. You know more exists in the web of causal patterns and objective components yet whatever that more is is obscured in the shadow of the hyper-object.
Working against the odds, ever the consummate professional, you furrow your brow and, just as you begin to focus and take note, yes…hmm…perhaps… the orbital path of the satellite rips you away. Repositioned once more, dismayed, you take a deep breath and look down to see the planet from a new angle. Dismay quickly turns to joy. You begin to focus once again, observing a new slither of the hyper-objective surface through your many filtration layers. Then, inevitably, you are unabashedly pulled away again.
Frustrated, you get up to leave, but you realise you are in a tiny satellite orbiting Jupiter. Bad luck. At least you have a lot of time to sit and think. Slowly you come to realise that, by their very nature, hyper-objects, just like giant planets, are unobservable in their entirety through our current orbital lens(es) of observation. Just like a small fly caught in a large web, you know there is more to the object but because of circumstances, both relating to your own position and the structure of the web itself, you are never able to see past the small slither you are stuck focussing on. In this sense, the object becomes “hyper”. In other words, it becomes very complex. In more words, its relation to itself and other objects becomes exponentially more interconnected.
Observational issues when interacting with hyper-objects may best be described by what is known as cybernetics, specifically cybernetics of the “second order”. Ignoring the not so subtle relation to Skynet, cybernetics comes from the Greek word kubernetes meaning “helmsman”10. No surprise that cybernetics as a field generally deals with communication and control within a specific, or set of systems, just as the helmsman is in control of the vessel they are steering.
Observing hyper-objectivity follows cybernetics in the sense that the second order framework is focussed around the difference between an observing system (i.e. us humans) and an observed system (i.e. a hyper-object), and this difference is namely the concept that “every observation is autobiographical”.11 We are the helmsman and the vessel we are steering is ourselves. We ride through the waves of observations and we imprint ourselves onto whatever we see. As we can see from the image above, the object we are observing has as an effect on us just as we have an effect on it. We see what we want, expect or have learned to see and, for the most part, we all see the same thing when we observe certain objects. But sometimes we do not and such cases support the idea of orbital observational issues that philosophically arise when interacting with hyper-objects, namely that everyone sees what they expect or want to see, because they are the systems doing the observation, steering themselves.
In such an auto-biographical sense, knowledge is consistent but not identical to true reality. Whilst this is admittedly a slippery slope to risk sliding down all the way to the bottom, having something that is consistent (knowledge) yet not identical (observation) suggests that observing a highly complex and interconnected phenomenon, one that is perpetually changing depending on who the observer is, may lead those of us taking observational notes to get stuck in an “Observational Sisyphus Trap”: doomed to roll our weights of observation to the top of Inquiry Mountain, only to reach a certain level and immediately slide back down to the bottom to do it all again, repeating the trial in perpetuity.
Hyper-objectivity at its core suggests that objects exist that we may never fully grasp an understanding of, especially in a context of one “interconnected whole”. As Bohm put it earlier: it is easier for us to think of massive, complex systems in superficial “independent fragments”, “inherently divided” and “disconnected”. Hyper-objects are such massive complex systems, yet they become a framework for exploring the interconnection of things at a much deeper level.
We understand that objects relate to one another, and the type of relation and object has a clear affect on our day-to-day reality.12 But before we move on to more concrete examples of what these objects may be defined as, the connection between hyper-objectivity and cybernetic-like autobiographical observation may be best defined by the Fabric Analogy13:
Ignore my masterful artwork and imagine a piece of thin fabric - this represents the fabric of our reality - the space that we see as “real”. Most of the time we are positioned (by choice or by circumstance) in such a way that we only observe this fabric from a single observational direction, based on geographic location, sensory filters, belief system, relevance sorting and other conscious and unconscious mechanisms. Now imagine the tip of a pencil pressed into the fabric from the side opposite to your observational direction.
From your position you will see the fabric start to form a new three-dimensional shape - a fine-pointed “bump” rising out of the otherwise flat surface. We see this change in appearance by the affect it has on the fabric, but given our direction of observation we have no idea of the cause, and even less about the relation this cause has to the fabric in the first place. How could we know there is a pencil behind the fabric? We cannot see its form. We cannot infer its function. It is invisible to us barring the observable effects on the fabrics surface. But us humans are smart, so I have to give us some credit. We have miraculously worked out that the bump is just an effect, caused by something unseen to us behind the thin but opaque veil.
Extrapolating further, even if we could use the shape and size of the bump to infer the shape and size of the object behind, what about how the object behind got there in the first place? How it was assembled? What caused it to be there? In our analogy, the object that is pushing the pencil into our observational plain yet hiding it from site is us, and we are a massive complex system involving fingers attached to a hand attached to an arm attached to a shoulder attached to a body attached to a head attached to an intelligence attached to a consciousness.
Our object involves complex manufacturing processes, assembly chains of atoms to molecules to proteins to organelles to cells and so on. Not to mention that the pencils existence requires resources and logistics beyond the normal scope of any one person. Which of us know how to construct a pencil? Could we do it if our life depended on it? Even more so, none of us could produce the object that we are: life, on our own. It takes two to tango, if you catch my drift.14 If you had only ever seen the fabric from one observational direction then even if you saw the objective affect of the human pressing the pencil into the observable space of your reality, how could you begin to comprehend that the affect is only one small piece of a series of interconnected relations from a concious object just beyond the veil?
In this scenario we are the hyper-object. Because it is hard to see a hyper-object in its entirety, primarily because of orientation of the observer, partly because of the space the object exists in, in part because of obstructions (objective and subjective) that influence our individual and collective observation and partly because of the many complex systems and cause and effect chains that wrap around such co-inhabited spaces, this indicates several interesting philosophical questions to turn to next: What are hyper-objects? Are hyper-objects fundamental, the same way interconnection appears to be? How do hyper-objects inhabit space? If we think of a hyper-object, can it really be “hyper”?
Once again all of this indicates a deep interconnection between spaces and complex objects. Thus, it is into spaces we turn next.
In Part 2 we continue where we left off, shining a light on some interconnected spaces and use what we have learnt so far to dissassemble the conceptual grounds of Assembly Theory, all the while chasing those allusive artifical lifeforms deeper and deeper into The Expanse. See you soon.
Ibid. P. xii.
Ibid. Italiscation and brackets added.
Coherent meaning a “unified whole” and harmoniously meaning a “pleasing and consistent whole” - denoting interconnected as “one”, not disconnected as “many”.
Hwang et al, 2006, P. 4.
Ibid, P. 7.
I am aware I have still not given you a firm definable example of a hyper-object. In Part 2 we will get there. I promise.
A spin on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
Or, in the most fundamental sense, a sperm and an egg… unless you are Israeli scientists.