the Sociable Pint

Documentation from the November 30th show at Allen Street Hardware, Buffalo, NY.

The Sociable Pint - 11/30/2009 - Allen Street Hardware Cafe from muse207 on Vimeo.

Engineers often ask: “How does technology interface with a user?” But that is only a part of a larger (and more critical) question. Maybe we should step back and inquire: “How does technology interface with a culture itself?”

Tools, as they are employed within a culture, are intrinsic to how that culture operates. Whether a tool is as basic as an eating utensil or as complex as a supercomputer, tools are embraced by a society because of both their practicality and resonance within the culture. Over time, as a tool evolves within a society, its characteristics become more gracefully weaved into the culture fabric. The form of these characteristics become forged not just by accumulated cultural wisdom, but culturally-embedded values.

In the context of an individual, the purpose of all tools is to enhance the interface between the user and the surrounding environment for the intent of empowering the user. For example, a pencil enhances ones ability to inscribe data onto applicable surfaces. Eyeglasses improve the optical transmission of data from the environment into the users’ eyes. Whether a tool serves as input or output apparatus, its design leads toward greater adaptability of task; assisting in the user’s negotiation with the environment. How well a tool performs relies heavily upon accumulated cultural knowledge of the past. This knowledge, which serves as a tools’ blueprint in the form of written and oral artifacts, is embedded within the tool itself in its form and function. Tools, as cultural objects, act as storage media inscribing cultural memory much like a vinyl record acts as a storage medium preserving distinct waveforms. As tools evolve and are replaced to accommodate new cultural values, cultural memory accordingly evolves.

Often it is transferred from original object to a succeeding object with varying corruption of the original value. In this sense we can look at a tool, or any cultural object for this matter, as a medium which encapsulates cultural memory. In this essay, we will explore the idea of cultural memory as it embodied within cultural objects.

A personality is to an individual as a culture is to a society. A personal value system is an internalized set of rules, expressed by behavior, which can be applied consistently to all experiential situations. In a way, a value system operates as an institution as it takes on characteristics of an organized homeostatic structure robust enough to resist external influence. Because of this, values serve as a defining determinant on an individual’s personality. Values, therefore, can be expanded to the society. Cultural values then can be understood as a value system which collectively practiced by all individuals within a society. A cultural value system has a defining influence over a society’s culture.

Cultural memory can be divided into two distinct varieties: inscribed and incorporated (Holtorf). As it relates to social practice, inscribed memory refers to all practices which are stored in a tangible form. This includes inscriptive activities such as writing, painting, and the creation of physical objects. This memory is indirect as it is stored outside the individuals within a society. Thus inscribed memory is related to written language. Incorporated memory, on the other hand, is not stored in externally. Active communicative gestures between individuals are descriptive of incorporated memory. When a performer bows and the audience applauds following a performance, they are recalling an incorporated cultural memory.

“These performances are accomplished by the individual in an unconscious manner, and one might suggest that this memory carried in gestures and habits, is more authentic than…inscribing (Holtorf).”

The embodiment of memory within social practice is then related to oral language. When referring to cultural objects as physical creations of a society, we are primarily dealing with inscribed memory.

If we look at data stored on a Compact Disc, the storage pits are intentionally placed in a pattern that can be reinterpreted. To inscribe data onto a CD a pre-determined language is needed for effective inscription. When we talk about cultural memory embedded in objects, we must realize that there must be a common set of signs in order to interpret the inscribed memory. This is especially difficult to do purely by observing cultural objects, but a visual language does exist. If an individual was to study a coffee cup while concurrently completely ignorant cultural significance of the coffee cup, it could be argued that he would understand the function of the object. He may pick it up by its handle, notice the natural quality of this action, and correctly conclude the function of the handle. When a object characteristic can mapped into a common human experience, the language of that object emerges. Just as a glove’s shape implies a specific function, the speech act of a blood-curdling scream implies a specific function. It can be concluded then, while situated within a cultural context, the form of objects contain a set of cultural recorded speech acts.

Form of an object operates in a similar fashion as text in a book. Both are inscribed and both require a predetermined language for understanding. By stating this, it is important to realize the great difference between the intended function of text and intended function of form. Text in a book holds a specific intentionality to convey a literal meaning, form of an object, however, is intended to perform a non-literal and often practical function but takes on residual characteristics that can be interpreted as literal. Even though these speech acts are not narrative, they often shine a historical light onto culture. They take relevance to Ong’s term “secondary orality” in the sense that they are dead. Contrasted with primary orality, the design of cultural objects are static, and embedded in physical form itself. When Ong contrived the term “secondary orality” he was specifically referring to a “culturally mediated culture of spoken, as contrasted with written, language (Nyíri).”

Now if we look at a shoe as an object which possesses structural embellishments which do not directly enhance its mechanical functionality, it can not be concluded within the object itself of the significance of the embellishments. We then are forced to be informed by other cultural knowledge for a language to understanding these embellishments. The surface design of the shoe, the thickness of the sole, the way in which the laces are bound all have emerged out of cultural desires which do not speak directly towards function. Thus embellished characteristics of design situate themselves in the other values within the culture. These values, entangled by power structures, mythologies, and prejudices encompass other entangling forces which influence cultural memory. These forces will be discussed later in the paper.

To look at the preservation of cultural values as inscribed memory, written law comes into perspective. Written law has an interesting relationship to its society as it is not directly composed by society. Written law represents an inscribed aggregation of cultural values agreed to by the technocracy which presides over the society. Even though this law is inscribed by government, it puts forth a inscribed framework of cultural values which is generally followed by the populous. Written law, situated within a institutional framework, is intrinsically robust. Because of this, it takes a willful effort by its administrators to modify it. This brings up an important point about cultural memory: it does not always directly reflect the current cultural values. Cultural memory is always associated with a historical component. Jan Assmann illustrates this concept in his exploration of cultural memory within his archeological research. He injects a critical component into the discussion of cultural memory by characterizing it as existing on the “outer dimension of human memory (Assmann, 19).” By exploring cultural memory the archeology, he essentially places cultural memory in a historical context. He makes an important observation that memory refers to the past (Holtorf). There are other entangling forces which corrupt cultural memory including existing power structures, mythologies, and prejudices. Cultural values is are always mediated by existing power structures. Both economic and political structure has a hand in dictating cultural values regardless if they are advantageous to the culture itself. If we look at how the Internet structure in China for example, we can deduce cultural values of censorship and isolation.

Often cultural habits form out of cultural values. As culture changes, these habits deviate away from the original cultural values until only residual cultural memories remain. To present habitual memory within a cultural object, one could speak about the inefficient alphanumeric layout of the Qwerty keyboard.

The Qwerty layout attained popularity in the late-19th century because it was designed to be an intentionally inefficient user interface. By deliberately slowing down typists’ keystrokes, the event of typewriter hammers jamming up decreased. Because of the mechanical clumsiness of typewriters at the time, this lead to greater efficiency. The overwhelming popularity of this layout and the sustained use of alphanumeric keyboards in typewriters and their offsprings created a cultural habit strong enough to withstand the introduction of the more efficient Dvorak layout in 1936. We can blame cultural habits for fact that the majority of brand new computers which we see today possess a keyboard layout which was patented back in 1868. Today, the brunt of cultural-computer interfaces is mediated by a Qwerty keyboard interface.

Cultural values must be actively practiced in order to remain within the cultural memory. If it became culturally undesirable to use a Qwerty layout and enough individuals stopped practicing with the interface, this layout would be quickly be popularly ‘forgotten’ much like slide rules and punch cards have been forgotten. If we speak about social practice, tradition is a relevant concept that illustrates forgetfulness. If we look at cultural practices in places with a stronger and more established social value systems, we see a greater preservations of tradition. Communities in Europe who have adopted practices of cultural isolationism tend to have a richer set of traditions. Often this is fueled by the strong-tie robustness of smaller communities, strong national identities, and rejection to global economic practices. In the United States, the variance of cultural identities and the strong presence of consumerism extinguishes many traditional practices.

“Memory culture is the way a society ensures cultural continuity by preserving, with the help of cultural mnemonics, its collective knowledge from one generation to the next, rendering it possible for later generations to reconstruct their cultural identity (Holtorf).”

Remnants can exist both in inscribed and incorporated memory, but incorporated memory is more volatile. Even if a cultural value is forgotten it continues to be remembered in cultural artifacts enabling values to be recalled in the future. Artifacts in this case includes both cultural objects who are no longer in use or remnants of cultural objects which information can be lifted from. In recent years, the a push by Native American descendants to reconstruct their ancestral cultural identities has been induced by the disappearance of many Native American traditional practices. Preservationists have has to rely on text and photographic documentation artifacts for cultural reconstruction. Cultural objects, in which Native American traditional practices have been remembered, are plentiful as they exist in physical inscribed form in archives and museums.

When voice transmitters were introduced in the 1920’s, Morse code started its long decay. Even though numerous other communication methods eclipsed Morse code in popularity decades ago, Morse code remained as the dominant communication method in specific niches into the 21st century. In fact, until 1991, Morse code transmission at 5 words per minute was requirement to receive an amateur radio license in the United States (Wikipedia, Morse code). Today Morse code is obsolete and is only used recreationally by amateur radio enthusiasts. Through the practice of Morse code transmission, these nostalgic enthusiasts actively maintain the waning heartbeats of a cultural memory. But even if users of Morse code became extinct, the cultural memory of Morse code transmission is not forgotten. Its memory can be reconstructed as it exists as memory in numerous cultural objects including written documents and the telegraph straight key itself.

Often the cultural memory stored within object is transferred to a succeeding object. To better illustrate this idea one might look to cassette tapes. Audio information on tapes, outmoded by smaller, more versatile compact discs, has been transcribed into a different format and stored onto compact discs. The information on both media is essentially the same as it is difficult to determine the media by the sound waves. Encyclopedias act as written media which act exclusively as storage of cultural memories. Encyclopedias, however, existing purely in writing and images, act as a filter, only recording information which its authors consider important. Because of this, the interpretations and ideologies held by the authors vulgarize cultural memory.

If we examine the birth of a paradigmatic cultural object we can concurrently expect a transformation of that culture. An introduction of a object within a culture which invokes a new method in which society can negotiate its environment. Often times this shifts cultural values as society is forced to accommodate the object. Through the negotiation of The birth of telegraph is reflective of a radical shift in culture values. Through augmented communication brought about by the telegraph, the ‘a virtual shrinking’ of the world accelerated. With the capabilities of data being transferred instantaneously over long distances, a new technological paradigm emerged enabling long-distance social interaction between individuals. “A worldwide communications network whose cables spanned continents and oceans, it revolutionized business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime, and inundated its users with a deluge of information (Standage, VII).”

Prior to the implementation of electricity in communication, physical movement of written information was the predominant method of transporting information over long distances. Even though the method of doing this evolved quite considerably through the invention of locomotives and other transportation vehicles, instantaneous communication was something of science fiction.

It can be said, however, that the cultural memory which was embedded within the telegraph did not completely disappear as culture evolved. The tool, which became archaic due to the social desire for more efficient communication platforms, paved the way for communication tools that could hold more complex memory.

“Today the Internet is described as an information superhighway; its nineteenth century precursor, the electric telegraph, was dubbed the “highway of thought.” The equipment may have been different, but the telegraph’s impact on the lives of its users was strikingly similar (Standage, VIII).”

If we are speaking about the preservation of cultural memory over time, these similarities should come at no surprise. The cultural values originally embedded in the telegraph (including the desire for long-distance immediate communication) has been transmitted to today’s communication technologies.

Mobile telephone networks also descend from electronic telegraph networks and maintain a common set of unchanging cultural values. If we look at these two communication networks, we see an improvement over time of the implementation of cultural values. Restrictive wires have been replaced by wireless radio communication, inefficient telegraph clickers have been replaced by a user-friendly multi-button interfaces, clumsy dots and dashes have been replaced by voice waveform transmission, and the telegraph operator has been replaced by automated switching networks. It could even be said that a telegraph office has been reduced to a mobile device which fits in a shirt pocket. In this case, technological form has radically changed, but embodied in the functionality of both of these systems is a common set of social values, the most obvious one being the human desire for immediate long distance communication.

It is often in the interest of capitalist and political organizations to deliberately corrupt cultural memory. Corruption, in this sense, refers to the distortion of memory outside of the general societal consent. Deliberate corruption, evident in advertising practices, injects a false set of culture values which leads to both a artificial set of cultural values and a shift in the social power structure. When a company wants to maximize capital accumulation through sales of a product, they often turn to advertising practices. Many cultures situated in capitalism are bombarded with product advertisements as they pass through all forms of communication media. But advertising does not always happen outside of the object being sold. The very form of a cultural object often acts as advertising itself. Often characteristics of cultural objects mediated through business practice directly reflect the cultural values of the culture the object is being marketed toward. Strangely enough, the embedding of advertising in the form of a cultural object by a company often exaggerates cultural memory. If we look at the automobile industry for example, cars which are marketed toward specific cultural identities often flaunt traits which resonate with the values of those cultures. Pickup trucks for example, are often marketed towards a specific demographic of males who identify with and celebrate stereotypical masculine traits. The form of these vehicles reflect this cultural value through their powerful, robust, and gritty forms. Another example, the family sedan, is also market toward a specific demographic of people with children. Specific cultural values, frugality, modesty, practicality, stereotyped to the culture with the sedan is marketed to can be found in the form of the sedan itself.

Fad, a function of incorporated cultural memory corruption, serves as a mechanism to generate steady wealth accumulation through the constant distortion of cultural memory. In the business sense, this distortion is intentional. Through social psychological advertising practices, businesses are mediate and control cultural memory by suggesting to society what objects are aesthetically desirable. able to create and erase cultural memory for their own interests.

Now that it is understood how cultural memory operates within a culture, it is important to understand how a cultural object evolves within a society. Along with memory, every cultural object contains both inputs and outputs. To understand what controls these functions we can look towards human and computer models.

It would be interesting to look at the evolution of cultural objects as a cybernetic feedback loop between the culture and the object. For an object to evolve to better interface the culture, it must inform the culture. Concurrently, culture must inform the object through the modification of form and function.

“It is the purpose of Cybernetics to develop a language and techniques that will enable us indeed to attack the problem of control and communication in general, but also to find the proper repertory of ideas and techniques to classify their particular manifestations under certain environments (Wiener, 16).”

In order to take information from an environment to place it into memory, it is necessary for there first needs to be a way to input information. If we look at the cognitive processes of the human brain, information relies on sensory input to dictate what information that can be stored. Humans utilize taste, touch, hearing, vision, and olfactory sensors to sensory devices for this function. This information, sent to the brain is filtered, interpreted, and stored. One then could look at the sensory input as a filter in which environmental information is passed through. If we are speaking about culturally-embedded memory in human-produced objects, the question become what is the sensory input mechanisms involved? If we look at the physical form of a tool as the memory itself, the sensory input must correspond with where the information passes through that informs form creation. The sensory input mechanism in this case would be collective human labor. Through human labor, in the forms of both practice and theory, environmental information is filtered and stored in the physical form of the tool.

Output of a cultural object can been be linked to how well that object performs in society. If it encounters characteristic which conflict a cultural value, human agency for which to modify the object is exerted. For example the clunky interface of a rotary phone was unwieldy and inefficient to its users. These qualities presented a challenge to the culture in which the phone was placed. The desire for an better input design generated the human agency to create a telephone button pad. The culturally undesirable interface of this object exemplifies its evolution.

We could also extend the idea of input and output outside of object’s active evolution. The pint glass as it is acted upon by a human, is a tool which possesses a distinct user interface. This cylindrical shape of the container fits comfortably in the hand, its open top and thin rim makes its contents easily accessible and transferrable to the mouth. Functionally, a pint glass inputs information from its environment (as liquid is poured into it), processes it (puts it in an accessible form), and then outputs it (as the liquid is consumed by the user).

“A complex action is one in which the data introduced, which we call input, to obtain an effect on the outer world, which we may call the output, may involve a large number of combinations. These are combinations, both of the data put in at the moment and of the records taken from the past stored data which we call memory (Wiener, 23-4).”

In tandem with elements of Newtonian physics (such as gravity) memory is stored the physical form of the pint glass which enables it to actively store the liquid contents in an identical manner every time it is used. The robust ‘memory’ of such a glass makes it a reliable tool enabling humans to repeatedly consume its contents.

In essence, the physical form of an inanimate tool can be described in similar terms as ROM (Read-Only Memory) inside a computer. Both are permanent, unchangeable, and are intended to perform a pre-determined action. ROM extends past the physical realm by harnessing the natural properties of electromagnetism to perform a function, but remains absolutely static in functionality. A computer implements ROM by sending it data in the form of electric pulses. The properties of the ROM, namely the electromagnetic data which it contains, takes this data, processes it, and then outputs a result. A hammer, which does not use electromagnetic properties, readily interfaces with a computer of another type, the human. Through desired human intervention, the handle is embraced by a human hand which provides its mechanical energy. Data is this case would be the nail. The hammer’s processing function is the act of driving the nail into a solid object. Through the energy provided by the computer (human) the hammer is swung for the pre-determined purpose to change the state of the data (nail). The output result would take the form of the nail being embedded within the desired object. It can be emphasized that data storage in an object is no different than data storage on a memory chip within a computer. A pint glass as a technological device, however, is static both in function and form, and inherently lacks the plasticity to readily adapt to a new function. Although a pint glass can reflect qualitative social desires by being portable (which minimizes interference with the human social agenda to remain physically mobile), it does not contain the facilities itself imitate the act of socializing.

Once an object has been refined to such an extent where it does not provoke cultural challenges to the ingrained power structures within a society, additional evolution of the object grinds to a halt. For this condition to take place, the object must additionally resistant to aesthetic values present within the society. Objects such as screws and washers, standardized by industry for the purpose of consistency and efficiency, exemplify an evolutionary plateau. For the most part, such objects take on basic forms and functions and have little political value. Embodied in such objects is cultural memory of institutional magnitude. Take a standard pint glass for example. The shape of this object has not significantly changed for many decades. Of course there are slight variations of a pint glass. The printed designs on the outside of  a glass is no more than a superficial embellishment usually placed for the purpose of advertising. But the fundamental physical shape of a pint glass is the same. One could  walk in any given restaurant or bar with a reasonable expectation to find a standardized pint glass.

As we move into a world of automated computational technology, we are embedding our own knowledge into computational technology in a new way. Through the implementation of redundant algorithms computers do our math, check our spelling, and keep track of our financial activities. With the outsourcing of our literal memory to external devices, the attention to more complex activities become possible.

“Take the VCR, for example. Not only can it watch TV for you, it can watch more channels and watch them better than you can. Similarly, the Electric Monk does your believing for you. Instead of having to wade through mountains of propaganda, you’d tell your Electric Monk to pick a few random hopeless causes each week (Adams).”

We are outsourcing inscribed memories to devices in a literal fashion. Storage media are better equipped to ‘remember’ literal tasks, events, text. The searchability and accessibility of computational tools extend past the abilities of traditional printed media. It is here where the idea of a cultural object begins to become convoluted.

It is here where we must situate ourselves in the understanding that cultural values have remained essentially static over time. As new cultural tools emerge they must find way to weave in embedded cultural values. As we continue to negotiate our values within our tools, cultural values will always have a homeostatic influence on the form of the tools at hand.

References

Adams, Douglas. (1987) Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Chicago, Pocket Books.

Assmann, Jan (1992). Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich: Beck.

Barthes, Roland, (1964). Elements of Semiology. Hill and Wang, New York.

Feenburg, Andrew. (1999). Questioning Technology. London and New York, Routledge.

Holtorf, Cornelius. (date unknown). Cultural Memory. University of Toronto. 24 April 2007 <https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/holtorf/2.0.html>

“Morse Code.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 22 July 2004. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 24 April 2007 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code>

Nyîri, J.C. (1997). Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Secondary Orality. appeared in Grazer Philosophische Studien. Hungarian Acedemy of Sciences. 24 April 2007 <http://www.hunfi.hu/nyiri/gps97.htm>

Ong, Walter. (1988). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World. New York. Methuen.

Standage, Tom, (1998). The Victorian Internet. The Berkley Publishing Group,
New York.

Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings.

Right now I am having an awful headache working with PHP. I used to be good at this, but now I don’t know why the code is not working properly. This is a test entry to test the robustness of this code. One of these day I will get this thing up and I will start adding documentation. I want to show my progress on these pint glasses.