Naked By Numbers
We are surrounded by algorithms. Even when one is not surfing the net, our blended existence is such that one is now unable to go by a day in our terrestrial lives without being touched in some way by them.
Having one’s embodied existence interwoven with strings of code has long been a movie trope. Ever since The Lawnmower Man (1992), we have been fascinated, and perhaps concerned, about the theme of codes taking us from one mode of being in the world to another.
In most discussions about our concerns, the main concern is the extent to which our privacy and agency are coming under threat, with our lives and our choices now a commodity for sale and subsequent manipulation.
When reading Byung Chul Han’s The Transparency Society, I came across yet another concern, which is the converse of the popular concern about privacy. Rather than talking about our privacy coming under threat, Han suggests that how our public lives are becoming recalibrated and turned into a plaything for private interests.
If I am reading Han right, it would be due to two things.
The first is that Han juxtaposes two modes of living. The first mode he calls the narrative, in which our embodied and situated selves cannot help but tell stories, thereby giving our lives meaning and direction (30). The second mode he calls the additive, in which our lives become governed by numbers, or what he calls a “processor” (as opposed to a storied “procession”). Under this latter condition, there is no story to tell, because there are, in Han’s words, “no scenes and no images”. A life lived like a processor is a life that only counts things, focusing on the number of things or experiences and not the type of thing or experience.
Shorn of all meaning, Han says, numbers lay life bare, because “numbers are naked” (30).
Assuming I am reading Han correctly, there is then a strong overlap to be sensed between the nakedness of numbers, and the propensity towards nakedness of lives whose value is judged in accumulative terms, whether it is the accumulation of things or even experiences, which on their face should actually be telling stories of our lives, but wind up becoming indices upon which our lives are valued. Think of holidays, for instance, being judged not by the quality of the trip itself, but by the number of insta-worthy moments that can be captured, posted and liked.
Governed by the additive, our desires become shaped towards a nudity that parallels the seeming nudity of numbers.
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