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    All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse
    All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse
    All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse

    By Martin Burckhardt, Dirk Hofer and Erik Butler

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    Why 1 = presence and 0 = absence and the digital world formula is x = xn: an exploration of meaning in a universe of infinite replication.

    In the beginning was the Zero, and the Zero was with God, and God was the One.
    —All and Nothing

    In 1854, the British mathematician George Boole presented the idea of a universe the elements of which could be understood in terms of the logic of absence and presence: 0 and 1, all and nothing—the foundation of binary code. The Boolean digits 0 and 1 do not designate a quantity. In the Boolean world, x times x always equals x; all and nothing meet in the formula x = xn. As everything becomes digitized, God the clockmaker is replaced by God the programmer. This book–described by its authors as “a theology for the digital world”—explores meaning in a digital age of infinite replication, in a world that has dissolved into information and achieved immortality by turning into a pure sign.

    All and Nothing compares information that spreads without restraint to a hydra—the mythological monster that grew two heads for every one that was cut off. Information is thousand-headed and thousand-eyed because Hydra's tracks cannot be deleted. It shows that when we sit in front of a screen, we are actually on the other side, looking at the world as an uncanny reminder of the nondigitized. It compares our personal data to our shadows and our souls, envisioning the subconscious laid out on a digital bier like a corpse.

    The digital world, the authors explain, summons forth fantasies of a chiliastic or apocalyptic nature. The goal of removing the representative from mathematics has now been achieved on a greater scale than Boole could have imagined.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe MIT Press
    Release dateOct 13, 2017
    ISBN9780262342759
    All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse

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      Book preview

      All and Nothing - Martin Burckhardt

      Untimely Meditations

      1. The Agony of Eros

      Byung-Chul Han

      2. On Hitler’s Mein Kampf: The Poetics of National Socialism

      Albrecht Koschorke

      3. In the Swarm: Digital Prospects

      Byung-Chul Han

      4. The Terror of Evidence

      Marcus Steinweg

      5. All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse

      Martin Burckhardt and Dirk Höfer

      6. Positive Nihilism: My Confrontation with Heidegger

      Hartmut Lange

      7. Inconsistencies

      Marcus Steinweg

      8. Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese

      Byung-Chul Han

      All and Nothing

      A Digital Apocalypse

      Martin Burckhardt

      Dirk Höfer

      translated by Erik Butler

      The MIT Press

      Cambridge, Massachusetts

      London, England

      This translation © 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

      Originally published as Alles und Nichts: Ein Pandämonium digitaler Weltvernichtung in the series Fröhliche Wissenschaft by Matthes & Seitz Berlin: © Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Berlin 2015. All rights reserved.

      11049_000_fig_5001.jpg

      The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

      This book was set in PF DIN Text Pro by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Burckhardt, Martin. | Höfer, Dirk, 1956- | Butler, Erik, 1971- translator.

      Title: All and nothing : a pandemonium of digital world destruction / Martin Burckhardt and Dirk Höfer ; translated by Erik Butler.

      Other titles: Alles und Nichts. English

      Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2017] | Series: Untimely meditations | Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017002616 | ISBN 9780262534253 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      eISBN 9780262342735

      Subjects: LCSH: Digital media. | Information society. | Philosophy and civilization. | Nothing (Philosophy)

      Classification: LCC B54 .B8713 2017 | DDC 100--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002616

      ePub Version 1.0

      d_r0

      Table of Contents

      Series page

      Title page

      Copyright page

      1 Revelation

      2 The Apocalypse of Signs

      3 The Engine Room of the Digital

      4 Digital Plagues

      5 The New Jerusalem

      6 Genesis 2.0

      7 Expulsion into Paradise

      8 The World of Angels

      9 A World with No Beyond

      1

      Revelation

      Boole and the Formula

      In the beginning was the Zero, and the Zero was with God, and God was the One. The Zero and the One were with God in the beginning. Through them all things were made; without them nothing was made that has been made. In them was life, and life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

      In 1854, the British mathematician George Boole published Investigations of the Laws of Thought. The author had experienced an ecstatic vision in his youth that set the course for his intellectual life. The book presented the idea of a universe whose elements could be understood in terms of the logic of presence or absence: 0 or 1. In Boolean algebra, the world of numbers—and along with it, the world as a whole—breaks down into binary code.¹ Numbers as we know them are forms through which this coding manifests itself. In other words, they do not represent anything. The Boolean digits 1 and 0 do not designate a quantity; instead, they mark presence and absence. Thus, 1 stands for the universe, and 0 stands for nothingness. Nevertheless, the terms are not governed by a mutually exclusive relationship. Their relationship is complementary: they follow the same logic. Just as 1 times 1 always yields 1, and 0 times 0 always produces 0, x times x always equals x in the Boolean world. For the same reason, All and Nothing meet up in the formula x = xn. Because x can stand for anything and everything—indeed, for the universe in its entirety—it is no exaggeration to speak of a digital world formula in this context.

      The world may be conceived as a vast magnet oscillating between a positive pole and a negative pole, that is, in terms of dyadic logic. This perspective is rife with significance, for whatever can be electrified can also be digitized. Accordingly, x may stand for an alphanumeric sign, a sound file, or an image; it may just as readily indicate the level of hemoglobin in one’s blood as measured by a sensor, or the coordinates of a migrating whale. Indeed, it may stand for all we have yet to digitize in the future: our speech acts, emotions, and dreams. At any rate, when it is digitized, a given x no longer stands as a singularity, an isolated entity; the formula allows us to duplicate it at will. In fact, x duplicates itself on its own: it turns into a population.

      The equation x = xn, then, heralds proliferation; it announces a land of milk and honey where everything is available at all times in unlimited supply. That said, the promise of total accessibility harbors a threat, too. The digital universe stands before a gaping void, a fantasy of global destruction that releases all manner of demons. Although analog reality will survive digitization, we can already sense that it is deteriorating into an atrophied likeness—a facade or ashen shadow—of itself. In its digital mode of presentation, reality’s effects are far more potent: seemingly infinite, lasting forever, everywhere.

      Nor does the Boolean formula bear on the virtual sphere alone. Retroactively, it affects the phantasms that structure our reality. It encompasses the real economy; it transforms our bodies and our understanding of identity and freedom; it pervades politics; and it changes how we perceive time and space. It affects our very humanity. In this sense, the world around us has long since followed the Boolean mantra: Through the Zero and the One all things were made; without them nothing was made that has been made.

      The Darkroom of History

      It is well known that the best way to hide a secret is to place it in plain view. Accordingly, our contemporary society of information, which measures everything in bits and bytes, remains blind to the meaning and origin of its own concept of information. The situation resembles that of money: it is simply taken as something given. Everyone depends on it, but no one asks how the mental continent on which our information society has settled came to enter the world in the first place. When Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, published The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1948, he applied what Boole, the British autodidact and mathematician, had published a century earlier. Shannon’s contribution—and this point is remarkable—involved only engineering and application. His act of technological fertilization didn’t even touch on what had prompted Boole to construct his intellectual edifice; therefore,

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