Demet Adiguzel Annotation-The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems

Bill Nichols’s essay “The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems”, written in 1988, in brief aimed to update Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” which was written in 1936. Nichols’s purpose was to extend Benjamin’s analysis by asking how cybernetic systems represent a set of transformations in our conception of and relation to self and reality.

He focuses on the work of culture while assuming that the culture is the essence and analyses the concept in four sub-contents: Mechanical Reproduction and Film Culture, Cybernetic Systems and Electronic Culture, The Cybernetic Metaphor: Transformations of Self and Reality and Purpose, System, Power: Transformative Potential versus Conservative Practice.

In the first section, Nichols introduces the Mechanical Reproduction of Benjamin’s(1936) essay, how the technological innovation, as Benjamin (1936) argues; makes changes in the economic mode of production, nature of art and in categories of perception. He points out that the Mechanical Reproduction makes it possible to copy anything that until then might have been unique or irreplaceable and a universal copy is a represented manifestation of the work of industrial capitalism itself.
In the second section, as comparison with Benjamin’s (1936) findings, he suggests that if the mechanical reproduction delivers authenticity, cybernetic simulation delivers experience; instead of reproducing and altering our relation to the original work, it simulates and alters our relation to our own environment and mind. Nichols also mentions the illusion of control and use of intelligence in cybernetic dialogue can be attractive to men more than women. He refers that Benjamin(1936) neglected the ‘masculine activisms’ and ‘feminine passivity’ reinforced in the cinema. Nichols suggests that the cybernetic interaction emphasizes the fetishist itself rather than the fetish object.
He talks about the ideal simulation that would be a perfect replica by giving the zoo and botanical garden examples in which the simulation of the real does not represent the real but turning into something that has no reality outside of its boundaries.
In the third section, he elaborates how the real becomes simulation and emphasizes on the cybernetic simulations’ power to redefine life and reality. Starting with the example of surrogate mothering case, he draws our attention to the legal issues about copyrighting and claims of cybernetic systems. He refers to the path the Supreme Court took from 1972 to 1985, giving examples of cases like Pac-Man versus Munchkin.
In the fourth section Nichols concludes his analysis by claiming that cybernetic systems deny a relation that honors the free will and subjectivity of the individual. Nichols refers to the relationship between the ‘whole’ and the ‘part’ and suggests that cybernetic systems tend to substitute part for whole, simulation for real, conscious purpose for the goal-seeking of the totality; so the whole system together with the environment.

References:
Nichols, B.,1988, The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems
Benjamin, W., 1936, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction