informational ontology

7262019 Informational Ontology

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullinformational-ontology 121

communication +1

2 Communication and New Materialism A7 5

7 2013

Informational Ontology Te Meaning of GilbertSimondonrsquos Concept of Individuation

Andrew Iliadis Purdue University 6

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Abstract

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Keywords

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Cover Page Footnote

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Creative Commons License

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American cyberneticists and related thinkers that Simondon heavily engaged withthe primary aim of dispelling the outmoded argument brought up by somecontemporary philosophers that somehow Simondon remained diametrically

opposed to the mathematical theory of communication On the contrary theAmerican cyberneticists acknowledged right from the beginning what were theshortcomings of the engineering version of information and Simondon picked upon these threads before setting out on his own philosophical approach In the thirdsection I offer an exegesis of his informational ontology along with my owncomments on the philosophy of information Lastly I explain how Simondonrsquosunique contributions can be used to transform work in the field ofcommunication However before unpacking Simondonrsquos informational ontologyit will be helpful to understand a little more about his background and the well-heeled education that he received both in France and abroad that led him to a deepand prolonged engagement with what would become one of the twentieth

centuryrsquos most talked about phenomena

Situating Simondon

The philosopher is described by his daughter as having been always on thelookout for new opportunities for recording and reflection He apparently keptnotebooks and a large sketch book during all traveling events whether atconferences family holidays or simply journeying abroad8 These notebooks werefor sketching architecture and design material he would use in his academicteaching He conducted experiments in the family home that would also find thefruits of their labor winding up as demonstrative lessons in the academy But hewas no shuttered academic once in Paris he surrounded himself with the likes ofsuch influential thinkers as Martial Gueacuteroult Maurice Merleau-Ponty JeanHyppolite Jean-Toussaint Desanti Gusdorf Georges Jean Laporte Jean Wahland Jacques Lacan He studied with Gaston Bachelard specifically on polarity inpsychology up to 1948 and seems to have maintained a life-long correspondencewith him9 Taking a graduate degree studying the Presocratics Simondon alsoseems to have maintained an early interest in ancient philosophy one that wouldremain as he situated his informational ontology in opposition to Aristotlersquoshylomorphism 10 Yet his interests remained far reaching He was equallyinterested in physics (he had a certificate in mineralogy) and also psychology (he

8 Nathalie9 Ibid10 For a more comprehensive analysis of Simondonrsquos relation to both Aristotle andDeleuze in terms of hylomorphism see my ldquoA New Individuation Deleuzersquos SimondonConnectionrdquo

Iliadis Informational Ontology

Produced by ScholarWorksUMass Amherst 2013



had a psychophysiology certificate under the direction of Alfred Fessard) as wellas zoology mathematics and the arts He passed the agreacutegation de philosophie in1948 and was appointed to the Descartes School in Tours where he taught from

1948 to 1955 11 In 1952 he studied for three months at the University ofMinnesota learning social psychology and he participated in a seminar inexperimental psychology with Paul Fraisse The context in which Simondonproduced his most important philosophical works is equally impressive His mainthesis Lindividuation agrave la lumiegravere des notions de forme et dinformation ( Individuation in the Light of the Notions of Form and Information) directed byJean Hyppolite was finally defended in 1958 ldquobefore a jury of Jean HyppoliteRaymond Aron Georges Canguilhem Paul Ricoeur and Paul Fraisse and wasalso attended by Maurice Merleau-Ponty Jean Wahl Pierre-Maxime Schuhl andMikel Dufrennerdquo12 His minor thesis (the French system required that candidatesproduce two theses) Du mode dexistence des objets techniques (On the Mode of

Existence of Technical Objects) also defended in 1958 was directed underGeorges Canguilhem Both have yet to be published in English

Simondon was appointed Professor at the Sorbonne in 1963 and Professorand Chair of Psychology in 1965 where he became a colleague of Juliette Favez-Boutonnier13 He also spent time at the University of Paris V where he taughtgeneral psychology and founded the Laboratory of General Psychology andTechnology from 1963 to 198314 He taught at the Eacutecole Normale Supeacuterieurespecifically at ENS Ulm Street St Cloud and Fontenay from 1968 to 1969 andhe taught a course in social psychology and industrial psychology at the Facultyof Humanities of Lyon as well as a course on the psychology of art at the

Pedagogical Institute of Lyon from 1961 to 1963

15

He also worked and taught inSaint-Etienne (19611962) Nice (1969) and Lille (1970) From 1964 to 1970 heparticipated in a seminar on the history of science and technology led by GeorgesCanguilhem 16 Finally and perhaps most importantly from a world-historicalperspective he actively participated in the organization of the Sixth Symposiumat Royaumont on the concept of information in contemporary science whichNorbert Wiener attended in 196217 This conference would have a long-lastingand far-reaching effect on the French intellectual scene as it was the firstsignificant contact between American information scientists and their European

11 Nathalie12 Ibid13 Nathalie14 Ibid15 Ibid16 Ibid17 Ibid

communication +1 Vol 2 [2013] Art 5

httpscholarworksumasseducpovol2iss15

DOI 107275R59884XW



philosophical counterparts The effects of this encounter would go throughSimondon and eventually find their way to Deleuze who then disseminated manycybernetic concepts in fields such as philosophy literature and the arts It cannot

be underestimated how much French philosophy owes to Simondonrsquos earlyencounter with cybernetics Therefore in the next section I offer a short survey ofthe cyberneticist position before diving into the radically new informationalontology that Simondon would derive from it

Cybernetics

The American cyberneticists knew that there were areas yet unexplored by theconcept of information as it was expressed in mathematics and engineeringSimondon knew this and his approach to information was in a way an extensionof these concerns While he remained deeply critical of some of the cyberneticistapproaches to information he did not disagree with the engineering notion ofinformation altogether The mathematical theory of communication (MTC)continues to undergird all other forms of communication including Simondonrsquosnotion of information What I argue is that Simondonrsquos approach to informationalontology is a type of extension of the mathematical theory of commutation onethat accounts for the indeterminacy of informationrsquos interactive existence and thatfurthered the concerns of the earlier cyberneticists Where the MTC notion ofinformation is associated with a closed system of positive and negative types offeedback (the transmission model) Simondon approached information from aperspective that allowed for the interoperability of different types of informationleaving space for indeterminacy that would remain a fundamental component ofSimondonrsquos open informational schema These two factors ndash interoperability andindeterminacy ndash would allow him to apply the notion of information to fieldsbeyond mathematics and engineering But what does the mathematical theory ofcommunication mean and how did it set the groundwork for Simondonrsquosinformational ontology

The idea that MTC undergirds other modes of information andcommunication techniques makes sense given the utility of its wartime originsDeveloped in the Bell Labs in New York City during the Second World War itsinventor Claude Shannon (1916ndash2001) was a brilliant young thinker who spentthe better part of his academic life at MIT His Masterrsquos thesis on Boolean algebra

and what he called a ldquologic machinerdquo would lay the foundations for the design ofcomputer circuits One of Shannonrsquos often quoted passages is the following takenfrom his landmark paper ldquoThe Mathematical Theory of Communicationrdquopublished in 1948 in the Bell System Technical Journal





The fundamental problem of communication is thatof reproducing at one point either exactly orapproximately a message selected at another point

Frequently the messages have meaning that is theyrefer to or are correlated according to some systemwith certain physical or conceptual entities Thesesemantic aspects of communication are irrelevant tothe engineering problem The significant aspect isthat the actual message is one selected from a set ofpossible messages The system must be designed tooperate for each possible selection not just the onewhich will actually be chosen since this is unknownat the time of design18

This distinction between what we can call ldquodatardquo and ldquosemantic informationrdquowould be explicated by other cyberneticists and related thinkers includingWeaver Wiener Charles E Osgood (1916ndash1991) and Wilbur Schramm (1907ndash1987) each of whom believed that communication is first and foremost the flowof information19 Clearly the idea here is that the MTC approach does not havemuch to do with semantic information Osgood and Wiener were equally as vocalabout MTCrsquos inability to account for semantic information The idea was not thatMTC has nothing to do with semantics but rather that while it might undergird semantics it cannot account for it on its own The absence of this importantdistinction acknowledged by cyberneticists is unfortunately reproduced in generaldiscussions that feed the popular imagination of what information theory and

cybernetics is all about a practice that has been maintained with the appearanceof documentaries like Adam Curtisrsquo All Watched Over by Machines of Loving

Grace a film that situates 1940s cybernetics Thatcherism and the Twentiethcenturyrsquos general dissolution of the rights of living beings as part of one confusedcausal mess While the film is admirable for the amount of information it sharesabout early communication theorists the realities that it speaks to are a touchmore subtle then what the 180 minute documentary is able to convey A numberof cybernetic texts can speak to the open place left within information theory thatwould later be taken up by Simondon

Osgood ndash an American psychologist close to the cybernetic circle who is mostfamous for developing the connotative meaning of concepts known as the

ldquosemantic differentialrdquo ndash acknowledged that there was a field beyond the strictly18 Claude Shannon ldquoThe Mathematical Theory of Communicationrdquo ( Bell System

Technical Journal vol 27 1948)19 While only some of these thinkers used the ldquocyberneticrdquo label all of them examinedcybernetic ideas and interacted with many of the fieldrsquos key thinkers



DOI 107275R59884XW



data-theoretic terms developed in the area of mathematics such as ldquosendingrdquo andldquoreceivingrdquo particularly in his description of ldquochoice-partsrdquo that moment wherethe information-theoretic content of a message gives way to something not

entirely predictable This would be a theme throughout Osgoodrsquos career and itshares much in common with Simondonrsquos approach Osgood saw communicationsequences as informational in the MTC sense but also as something that brings

the communicator repeatedly to what may be calledldquochoice-pointsrdquomdashpoints where the next skillsequence is not highly predictable from theobjective communicative product itself Thedependence of ldquoId better not wash the carrdquo uponldquolooks like rain todayrdquo the content of the messagereflects determinants within the semantic system

which effectively ldquoloadrdquo the transitionalprobabilities at these choice-points20

Osgood would go on to describe a theory that lay beyond the ldquopredicativerdquo modelhowever this remained strongly tied to the transmission model of communicationLike the other theorists of cybernetics he theorized the way a semantic notion ofinformation might be predicated on a strictly engineering perspective ofcommunication yet he reserved space for a non-connective realm This sensitivityto contingency lack of probability and openness to the informationalmultimodality inherent to communicative processes are traits that Simondon feltwere equally important Indeed he would take it one step further by introducing

these features ndash which were up to then associated with semantic information onlyndash to information in the ldquohardrdquo sense that is to say information as an entity To putit in terms of a helpful distinction made by Floridi information can exist in threeways information ldquoasrdquo reality information ldquoforrdquo reality and information ldquoaboutrdquoreality21 Where the cyberneticists thought the interoperability and indeterminacyof information ldquoaboutrdquo and ldquoforrdquo reality Simondon thought these concepts interms of information ldquoasrdquo reality Wiener long unanimously declared the inventorof the cybernetic tradition knew this more than anyone

Wiener saw communication as information just as Shannon did yet whereShannon stated that he attempted to explain only an engineering approach toinformation and communication theory in his seminal paper of 1948 Wiener like

20 Charles Osgood ldquoThe Nature and Measurement of Meaningrdquo (Psychological

Bulletin vol 49 No 3 May 1952)983090983089 Luciano Floridi Information A Very Short introduction (London Oxford University

Press 2011) 65





Osgood and Simondon admittedly sought to find the way that MTC informationcan lay the groundwork for a much more fluid and diverse conception ofcommunication that develops from these connective underpinnings The most

interesting figure among the group (for reasons that I will not go into here)Wiener ndash who Bertrand Russell had once taught and described as thinkingldquohimself God Almightyrdquo complaining that ldquothere is a perpetual contest betweenhim and me as to which is to do the teachingrdquo22 ndash admitted that

The desire to apply Cybernetics of semantics as adiscipline to control the loss of meaning fromlanguage has already resulted in certain problemsIt seems necessary to make some sort of distinctionbetween information taken brutally and bluntly andthat sort of information on which we as human

beings can act effectively or mutatis mutandis onwhich the machine can act effectively In myopinion the central distinction and difficulty herearises from the fact that it is not the quantity ofinformation sent that is important for action butrather the quantity of information which canpenetrate into a communication and storageapparatus sufficiently to serve as the trigger foraction23

Wiener developed an approach slightly different from that of MTC one that

admitted to a world where semantic information remained different from yet stilltied to traditional notions of communication where the data sent mattered lessthan the type of data that could penetrate into different communication systemsDifferent types of information mattered to the cyberneticists as any carefulreading of their work will show and this little acknowledged fact flies in the faceof contemporary dehumanizing critiques of that tradition Notice that penetrationis not the same thing as transmission and implies the overcoming of somefundamental barrier Contemporary debates on everything from cognitive scienceto epistemology remain deeply tied to the distinction this barrier introduces interms of information yet many it would seem are unable to account for theinterplay between what Wiener calls ldquobrutalrdquo or ldquobluntrdquo information and the ldquosort

of information on which we as human beings can act effectivelyrdquo Contemporary22 Flo Conway and Siegelman Dark Hero of the Information Age In Search of Norbert

Wiener the Father of Cybernetics (New York Basic Books 2006)23 Norbert Wiener The Human Use of Human Beings (Boston Houghton Mifflin 1950)94



DOI 107275R59884XW



philosophers such as Floridi are attempting a systematic philosophy that mightdefine the interaction between these two levels of information and more Indeedthe philosophy of information as a field is long overdue While the contemporary

approach to this field has begun by analyzing the texts of philosopherrsquos whosework relied heavily on the notion of information ndash perhaps most importantly thework of Fred Dretske (1932ndash2013)24 ndash Simondon remains a key figure that hasyet to receive substantial attention The next section will outline some of the moresignificant points in his philosophy of information specifically Simondonrsquosinformational ontology

Informational Ontology

A little bit of demystification is in order Simondonrsquos informational ontologythough exceedingly clear has become obfuscated through individual

philosopherrsquos appropriative attempts at an explanation of his position25 Deleuzequizzically ignored many of the technical terms that Simondon inherited from theAmerican cybernetic tradition ndash one would be hard-pressed to find any sustainedengagement with concepts like ldquoinformationrdquo and ldquocommunicationrdquo in his worksave for in one of his last texts the deceivingly short brilliant ldquoPostscript on theSocieties of Controlrdquo ndash opting instead to retain only those terms in Simondon thatimbue a decidedly more philosophical feel for example as in such terms as theldquopreindividualrdquo ldquoensemblerdquo and ldquodispartionrdquo26 Deleuzersquos ldquorereadingrdquo (to put itmildly) of other philosophers is well-known and the case is no different withSimondon Simondon was no stranger to terms from fields outside of philosophyproper and he frequently made use of them including terms like ldquotransductionrdquo

ldquomodulationrdquo and ldquoinformationrdquo (this last in an engineering sense) In whatfollows I will attempt to minimize my own reflections on what I call the moreldquophilosophicalrdquo terms associated with Simondonrsquos work and instead try to focuson those that are directly linked with the different fields that Simondon wasdrawing from Additionally most of the material that I will be quoting from inthis section comes from the second half of his major thesis which was publishedin France under the name Lindividuation psychique et collective (Psychic and

Collective Individuation) by Aubier in 1989

24 Fred Dretske Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Cambridge MIT Press 1981)25 I do not think this is necessarily a bad thing in itself for the practice of philosophyHowever if one wishes to better grasp the concepts Simondon was working with in termsof their scientific significance there is a far more accurate and historically embeddedstory to be told26 Gilles Deleuze ldquoPostscript on the Societies of Controlrdquo October vol 59 winter 1992





Simondon developed a unique approach to information that while finding itsorigins in the MTC notion of communication left an open space in theinformational schema allowing him to create a robust informational ontology

Some of the important distinctions between Simondon and the MTC approach arethat for the latter information theory is one dimensional is described in terms ofprobability and aligned with the notion of entropy as taken fromthermodynamics In many ways both are indebted to informationrsquos spiritualgodfather John von Neumann (1903ndash1957) who shortly before his death hadprepared an unfinished manuscript for The Silliman Memorial Lectures Series atYale This manuscript erudite and speculative in nature compared manyelements of the mathematical theory of communication (the computational model)with the human mind (the biological model) The manuscript was publishedposthumously under the title The Computer and the Brain in 1958 and the bookrsquosimportance along with von Neumannrsquos influence cannot be underestimated

Famously the word ldquoentropyrdquo was suggested by von Neumann to Shannon toname the value of information embedded in a message Simondon knew aboutthese thermodynamic beginnings In the MTC approach he tells us ldquoinformationtheory is the starting point of a body of research that founded the concept ofnegative entropy (or negentropy) showing that information corresponds to aninverse process of degradation and that within the entire pattern information isnot definable in terms of the source or the receiver but from the relationshipbetween source and receiverrdquo27 To understand how Simondonrsquos ldquoalternativerdquoinformational ontology built on these entropic beginnings to eventually moveaway from MTC there are a number of concepts that must be worked through atask that is doubly important before the rich material of Simondonrsquos courses and

conferences become available in English (they are infinitely more technical innature) 28 The most essential of these concepts are (1) metastability (2)individuation (3) transduction and (4) concretization In what remains I willprovide an exegesis of these terms

Metastability signifies the first-order difference between Simondonrsquos notionof information and the MTC version Where the cyberneticists saw information asa ldquothingrdquo to be sent and received yet still reserved a place for semantics they didnot account for the way that these different fields of information interactSimondonrsquos position is unique in that he viewed information as acting in a state ofmetastability within a dual-dimensional and preindividual system one whosenexus or pivoting point rested with the notions of informationrsquos interoperabilityand indeterminacy Rather than stop at information in terms of its probabilistic

983090983095 Gilbert Simondon Lindividuation psychique et collective (Paris Aubier 2007) 50

28 These are Cours sur la perception (1964ndash1965) Imagination et invention (1965ndash1966)and Communication et Information Cours et Confeacuterences



DOI 107275R59884XW



transmissibility he sought instead to think about the place where one type ofinformation interacts with another in an event that produces a fundamental changein ontology For example he refers to information as being ldquonever in a single

homogonous realityrdquo but instead as existing in ldquotwo ordered states ofdisparationrdquo ldquodisparationrdquo here merely meaning the previous realms from whichthe new informational ldquoentityrdquo emerges Information ldquoeither at the unit [MTC] ortransindividual level is never deposited in a form that can be givenrdquo [hellip] butinstead is the communication ldquobetween two disparate realitiesrdquo a ldquomeaning thatarises when an operation of individuation discovers that the two disparate yet realdimensions may be a system of informationrdquo29 Information passes from a state ofldquometastability to stabilityrdquo it is ldquonever a given thingrdquo for Simondon There is noldquounity and identity of information because information is not an end it requires asystemrdquo30 The amount of foresight that Simondon shows in this formulationborders on that of a clairvoyant Before Marshal McLuhan Simondon

acknowledged the fact that information itself as ldquodatardquo or ldquomessagerdquo was not thewhole story and that the most important thing is the system where theinformation is constituted Yet one must be clear here Simondon acknowledgedinformationrsquos multimodal character Information could be ldquoexchanged betweenbeings already individuatedrdquo but also ldquowithin systems to come that produce a newindividuationrdquo31 However the bulk of Simondonrsquos work does focus on what onecould call ldquointernal informationrdquomdashldquoone could say that the information is alwaysinternal it should not be confused with information signals and media signalsrdquo32

ldquoThe notion of form must be replaced by that of informationrdquo is quicklybecoming one of Simondonrsquos most well-known expressions33 This brings us to

the second important notion to understand and probably the most talked aboutterm in Simondonrsquos philosophymdashthe notion of individuation Individuationindicates that there is a state of stability and metastability and it implies ldquotheexistence of a system in a state of equilibriumrdquo one that individuates entitiesinformation in this system is ldquothe difference in shaperdquo again ldquonever a singletermrdquo but rather ldquothe meaning that arises from a disparationrdquo34 Here Simondonargues that the notion of information ldquoshould never be reduced to signalsrdquo as inMTC but that it must express the compatibility of two disparate realms35 TheMTC realm sees information as a ldquohomogeneous line in which information is

29 Gilbert Simondon Lindividuation psychique et collective (Paris Aubier 2007) 2230 Ibid31 Ibid 23432 Ibid33 Ibid 2834 Ibid35 Ibid 29





transmitted with maximum safetyrdquo indicating a closed channel one that advancesin signal strength as it avoids noise and it is in this sense that ldquoonly content notcode can be transmittedrdquo36 Content is the only thing that can be transmitted in

the MTC model of communication in the words of Shannon it seeks to reproduceldquoat one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another pointrdquoFor Simondon informational ontology on the contrary must be understood not interms of informational content but in terms of informational code understood as atool for converting informational artifacts into something entirely newContemporary communication practices in ldquomultimodalityrdquo and theories onobject-oriented ontology speak to something of this concept and are beginning toprove decisive in furthering our understanding of communicative processes Atbottom it is about a technique which expresses the many different ways it ispossible to interface with an informational system It is about a plurality ofindividuation and not a subjective or singular one Had he lived long enough to

witness the flood of new approaches to information along with their attendanttechnological advances ndash big data computational ontology cloud storage ndashSimondon would have found solace in the fact that much of what he had to say onthe interoperability and indeterminacy of informationrsquos ontological significancecame true ldquoInformation is the formula of individuationrdquo rings true today finallyputting to rest philosophical speculations on the separation between matter andform subject and object 37 The most astute observer of this has been BrunoLatour who describes Simondon as going beyond such simple distinctionsindicating in his own playful manner that for Simondon ldquosubject and object ndash farfrom being at the beginning of reflection the two essential hooks to which it isappropriate to attach a hammock so that the philosopher will be able to sleep ndash are

only rather late effects of the true story of the modes of existencerdquo 38 If individuation is the concept that Simondon deploys in order to overcome

philosophyrsquos separation of matter and form ndash an ancient distinction that Simondontraces back to Aristotle ndash seeking instead to describe information as existing in astate of metastabilty the name that Simondon gives to the actual action ofldquochangingrdquo of informational properties is transduction In this third cyberneticterm form for Simondon ldquoalready draws on a theory of informationrdquo39 Whatbecomes important to describe is instead the process by which differentinformational properties interact among each other to produce something that isontologically new Transduction indicates the meeting of two disparate

36 Ibid 3237 Ibid 2238 Bruno Latour ldquoPrendre le pli des techniquesrdquo numeacutero speacutecial de la revue Reacuteseaux(coordonneacute par Christian Licoppe) Aout-Septembre Vol 28 ndeg163 pp 13-32 201039 Gilbert Simondon Lindividuation psychique et collective (Paris Aubier 2007) 48



DOI 107275R59884XW



informational realms and signals the beginning of the process of individuation Itpoints to the emergence of a new informational structure one that resolves adisparity between fields and these fields come together to actively produce the

ldquopotential that lives in matterrdquo40 One of his favorite examples is the air-cooledengine versus one that is water cooled In the air-cooled engine the informationalproperties in the air perform multiple functions whereas the water in the secondperforms only one and acts as an addition The air-cooled engine is open in thatthe schematic design of the engine interacts with another ldquomilieurdquo (as Simondonwould put it) Transduction means that knowledge of the information inherent tointeroperable elements of an open structure can produce real ontological effectsThis example is admittedly more technological but the priority of informationeven in biology should become clear upon closer inspection For now it sufficesto say that transduction signifies domains of potentiality these being theconnection of information inherent to different systems in a way that interfaces

with other domains unlocking and reconfiguring one another once again callingto attention the notion of the multimodality of communicative information For amore popular example one merely has to think of apps and the way theyreconfigure information to produce new ontological realities for instance aswhen GPS or other systems reproduce quantified aspects of reality in ways thatelicit new affective experiences on the part of the user

There are however some philosophers who attempt to situate information asbeing opposed to energetic notions of reality as if thermodynamic propertiesalone account for the materiality of the world Nothing could be further from thetruth In fact information signifies an a priori philosophy perhaps a first

philosophy one that may work in tandem with energetics as already evidencedby the highly informational character of the work that is done by manycontemporary philosophers of science and physics41 Floridirsquos work is unmatchedin this regard and his ldquomethod of levels of abstractionrdquo shares many affinitieswith Simondonrsquos philosophy of information Like Floridirsquos levels of abstractionSimondon sought not to treat information as idealism or as an ldquoabsolutemagnituderdquo but instead materially as ldquoan exchange between parts of a systemrdquo42 The Simondonian schema necessitates the conservation of information and positsinformational properties that rather than acting as ldquobitsrdquo within a channelfundamentally alter the system itself producing a new ontological reality byreconfiguring two opposing realms in a way that resolves a contradiction

40 Ibid 3241 I am thinking primarily of the work of Bas C van Fraassen Steven P French andStathis Psillos For a comprehensive account of informationrsquos relevance to thesephilosophers of science see Floridirsquos brilliant The Philosophy of Information 4642 Gilbert Simondon Lindividuation psychique et collective (Paris Aubier 2007) 234





Simondonrsquos philosophy of information retains this sense of dialectic Therelationship is not designed ideally as one ldquobetween preexisting terms but as aplan of reciprocal information exchange and causation in a system [hellip] the

relationship exists physicallyrdquo43 It is both informational and material producinginformational structural realism Here one sees what Deleuze may have foundmost enticing in Simondonrsquos informational ontology For Simondon ldquoinformationexpresses the immanence of each of the subsets with the setrdquo 44 However thisimmanence does not imply homogeneity of information information forSimondon remains fundamentally heterogeneous ldquoInformation is nothomogeneous with respect to its current structure and there therefore remains inthe individual a margin between the current structure and acquired informationrdquo45

Concretization describes the relationship of the metaphysics of information tothe ontology of the technical object This is where I situate most of my own work

on Simondon As is often the case with thinkers who deploy idiosyncratic use ofterminology Simondonrsquos concepts are typically misread and grouped into acombative category of thought to which I do not think they entirely belong Manyhave tried to situate Simondon as completely opposed to the mathematical theoryof communication to the extent that his theory bares absolutely no connection tothose of Shannon and Wiener This would be a mistake While Simondon wasoften very critical of both Shannon and Wiener I think it would be incorrect tosituate him as being diametrically opposed Rather I believe that Simondonthought information as an entity in very much the same way as Shannon andWiener however he described the entity that information is in terms of adifferent type of process The difference is not that Simondon saw information as

a ldquothingrdquo differently from Shannon and Wiener but that he envisioned itrsquosinteroperability in a different sense Like the buffoonish character Wayne in the1992 movie Waynersquos World if I continuously close and open one eye and then theother (ldquoCamera one camera two Camera one camera twordquo) it will produce eachtime a new effect where my affective ocular sensibility changes with each ldquoclickrdquo(this back and forth of perspective is famously known as ldquoparallaxrdquo) The objectsin my visual field clearly do not change when I perform this activity butsomething else certainly does namely the affect produced by each new perceptBut does this mean that these two pairings of affectpercept are two distinctentities Not at all All that has changed is a mode of processing information Iunderstand Simondonrsquos relationship to the mathematical theory of communicationin very much in the same way Information is of course a real ldquothingrdquo to bediscussed and studied environmentally semantically and physiologically It can

43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW



even be viewed as being sent and received The difference lies not in the ldquothingrdquobut in its process its interoperability and its functionality This is where I seeSimondon contributing something that is unique to the philosophy of information

and communication And I will admit my bias In the aforementioned parallaxanalogy I view Simondon as having the one eye open

So how does the interoperability of information lead us to artifacts totechnological objects and finally to theorizing technological genesis Iunderstand technology in terms of technique If opening and closing my eyes is atechnique then it is a type of technology But in this example there is no type oflong-form genesis How to explain the long-form genesis of technical objectsHere again Simondon proves eminently useful His concept of concreacutetisation (ldquoconcretizationrdquo though this is an unfortunate translation) I believe is moreuseful than the concept of individuation in that it avoids humanist correlative

attitudes and certain types of ldquosoft metaphysicsrdquo that people are prone to engagein when dealing with highly generalizable and historically messy terms likeindividuation But I will not digress into a meta-theoretical exercise on whyoccasionally the terminology associated with certain concepts deserves to be leftbehind Concreacutetisation is not quite like the English transitive verbldquoconcretizationrdquo First of all the English word is ugly Second and moreimportantly concreacutetisation is an indefinite process that does not indicate aldquotransferrdquo as if something had gone from one state (abstract) to the next(physical) as concretization does Concretization defines a specific result It isused in the way that I can say simplistically that I have ldquogiven form to an ideardquo(the way that a group of advertisers might be told to make a brand more

ldquoconcreterdquo) Concreacutetisation on the other hand describes a certain type of ldquopullrdquoit indicates what Simondon described as the ldquoliferdquo or ldquobeingrdquo of the technologicalobject It is a notion popularized in books like Wired co-founder Kevin KellyrsquosWhat Technology Wants But it is not a type of emergentism like the kind Kellyargues for The reason is that the ldquosumrdquo of concreacutetisation is not greater than itsparts it does not connote something that at one point never existed To put itsimply itrsquos concreacutetisation ldquoall the way downrdquo Concreacutetisation is the engine thatdrives individuation

Even though I have just made the argument for the original French for thesake of clarity in what remains I will simply say ldquoconcretizationrdquo since I am nolonger concerned with comparing the two and the reader should understand

ldquoconcretizationrdquo in the French sense outlined above So what are the inherentqualities of concretization There are two The first is that during thetechnological genesis that is concretization the technological object tends towardself-sufficiency You can cast aside all thoughts of ldquostrongrdquo artificial intelligenceand mythological notions of conscious machines All this means is that





concretization is not an additive process and that the technological object tends toget smaller as it re-purposes elements within itself When I say that concretizationis not additive and that it becomes self-sufficient this is due to Simondonrsquos

second and more nuanced point that technological objects re-purpose themselvesby an interoperability that is achieved through the transduction of two regimes ofinformation What does this mean If I have a technical object ldquoABrdquo and I want itto do something else then I have to add ldquoCrdquo to it This is not concretization but anadditive process (think of the water-cooled engine) Concretization operates morealong the lines of an algebraic equation not in the direction of the ldquoplugging inrdquoof numbers that happens when we substitute variable functions with knownquantities but the reverse when we reduce the equation down to its simplestabstract form In this sense concretization is a rather counter-intuitive process Itdoes not tend toward the ldquorealrdquo or concrete ldquothingrdquo so much as it does toward theessence of the technical object Simondon provides countless examples and

empirical evidence of just such a transcendental transductive principle throughout Du mode drsquoexistence des objets techniques moments in history where parts in thetechnological object become useful in more ways than one re-purposed orachieve a higher state of interoperability and as a result help to move thetechnological object along in its concretization toward a more abstract state ofbeing But it should not be forgotten and people do not talk about this nearlyenough that information plays a fundamental role in this concretization Ifconcretization is the engine that drives individuation then information is the gasthat keeps concretization working

Informational ontology then sees all things as real yet it acknowledges along

with Simondon that information is the methodological skeleton key that allows usto inquire into the ldquoobjectsrdquo and ldquomaterialityrdquo in the first place As Floridi soeloquently puts it we are decades into our ldquofourth revolutionrdquo after CopernicusDarwin and Freud 46 At this late stage in the game we need to keep thisphilosophical car running and not turn back for lack of historical or philosophicalhindsight Alan Turing long held up by mathematicians and computer scientistsdeserves to enter the pantheon of continental heritage and create some ripples inthis too often isolationist pond Simondon while clearly at odds with much of themathematical theory of communication and its practitioners did not denouncethem entirely He engaged much of Turing and the extent of Deleuzersquosengagement with Simondon was no tiny event as we are all beginning to see Toend with a clicheacute it does not take a special type of genius to see that 1 + 2 = 3

983092983094 Luciano Floridi The Fourth Revolution

How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human

Reality (Oxford Oxford University Press 2013)



DOI 107275R59884XW



For my conclusion I will briefly explain what I believe a return to Simondonndash and specifically an informational ontology ndash can contribute to the field ofcommunication

Communication and New Materialism

How might Simondonrsquos unique contributions be used to transform work in thefield of communication What does it all mean It would be much more effectiveto explicate the significance of Simondonrsquos work and to describe exactly whatconceptual or methodological advantage there is in situating him as a philosopherof information for communication What is there to recommend his work

The way I see it Simondon is useful to the study of communication for fourreasons although they can be grouped under the general observation that

communication as a discipline has yet to ldquofindrdquo a philosophy that it can call itsown We have yet to find a work that outlines communicationrsquos metatheoreticalpositionality in toto This is barring of course work on this subject in two by-now classic texts Robert T Craigrsquos excellent ldquoCommunication Theory as a Fieldrdquo(1999) and John Durham Petersrsquo insightful ldquoGenealogical Notes on lsquoThe Fieldrsquordquo(1993) Consider that many other ldquofieldsrdquo have canonical philosophical texts thatoutline something of their theoretical heritage Communication must find aphilosophy that speaks to the multimodality of three thingsmdashinformationcommunication and technology and that answers the philosophical questionldquoWhat is communicationrdquo I believe Simondon provides us with an answer to thisquestion for it is not enough to accept the sorry conclusion so often reached in

these metatheoretical exercises that communication is an ldquointerdisciplinaryrdquo mixof this and that or worse that it is by virtue of being an academic potpourri thatcommunication finds meaning Such conclusions are conceptually lazy Simondonoffers us the conceptual tools with which to parse through this field in a properlyanalytical and philosophical way that can enable future scholars ofcommunication a way forward while providing a useful reference point

A return to Simondon specifically provides communication with thefollowing First Simondon offers us a new methodology from which to conductinquiries related to communication as an empirical endeavor An individuative methodology would seek to proceed by articulating instances of the modulation ofcommunicative processes themselves rather than in the simple ldquotransmissionrdquo of

meaning or data between pre-given already individuated entities For examplewhether we are talking about empirical evidence in doctor-patient healthcommunication or the analysis of vast quantities of data in social networkanalysis an individuative methodology would seek to measure uncover orunderstand those communicative structures that modulate in the act of





communication and that perpetuate by virtue of an individuative flexibility Whatvariable characteristics of the formal ldquoconsultationrdquo setting are responsible fortrends that develop in interpersonal communication How do reflective properties

inherent in the visibility of a wiki edit history potentially alter future edits Theseare the structural qualities of modulation that an individuative methodology wouldseek to uncover Second Simondon offers us a new conceptual toolbox andspecialized terminology with which to frame our future discussions on entirelynew communicative phenomena the language of technics Instances ofmodification in the technical evolution of objects such as engines programs andgames can be referred to as points of ldquoconcretizationrdquo when we intend to saysomething like ldquotechnological evolutionrdquo Moments where once-separate levels ofcommunicative or informational properties are linked and give way to somethingnew can be referred to as acts of ldquodisparationrdquo and so on (Simondon uses theexample of left and right retinal imaging) Third Simondon allows us to bypass a

longstanding philosophical debate however it is one that affects the future ofcommunication studies also A Simondonian informational ontology allows us tofinally put aside the subject-object deadlock and instead consider the human thatis present in the technological object and vice versa as an ensembleCommunication research into interfaces and human-computer interaction stand tobenefit from Simondonrsquos deeply phenomenological approach to technology andembodied interaction where the point is less about the separation of the humanfrom the technical than it is about the successful interoperability of the ensembleFourth Simondon shifts the discussion from paradigms of closed ecologies towide-open informational paradigms Though this might sound speculative Ibelieve Simondonrsquos informational ontology stands with some of the most rigorous

philosophies of informational structural realism that currently exist and thus thatit can inform communication not by proffering predetermined boundaries ofinquiry as in ecology but by recommending an open informational realism that isamenable to the most radically inquisitive forms of research such as inmultimodality (Simondonrsquos concept of ldquotransindividualityrdquo expresses somethingof this) But there is much more than this to recommend in Simondon

For all of the above stated reasons (and many more) Simondon isuniquely situated to add significantly to communication (and philosophy) onceagain Although tragically cut short his career and the body of work that itproduced stands as a veritable treasure chest of philosophical diamonds stillwaiting to be discovered In the same way that Ian Hacking found inspiration inFoucault producing some of his best work after the French philosopher had diedor in the way that still countless others found inspiration in Deleuze when I thinkof Simondon it is with the hope that vicariously he too will one day enjoy in theafterlife the career he was so close to obtaining in this one



DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography

Deleuze Gilles Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 Translated by Mike

Taormina New York Semiotext(e) 2004Floridi Luciano The Philosophy of Information Oxford Oxford University

Press 2011

mdash The Fourth Revolution How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality Oxford Oxford University Press 2013

mdash Information A Very Short Introduction Oxford Oxford University Press2012

Latour Bruno Prendre le pli des techniques Edited by Christian Licoppe Reacuteseaux 28 no 163 (Aout-Septembre 2010) 12-32

Osgood C E The Nature and Measurement of Meaning Psychological Bulletin 49 no 3 (1952) 197-237

Shannon Claude A Mathematical Theory of Communication The Bell System

Technical Journal 27 (July 1948) 379-423

Simondon Gilbert Du Mode Dexistence Des Objets Techniques Paris Aubier2012

mdash Lindividuation agrave la lumiegravere des notions de orme et dinformation ParisMillon 2005

mdash Lindividuation psychique et collective Paris Editions Aubier 2007

mdash Sauver lobjet technique Entretien avec Gibert Simondon Esprit 76 no 4(1983) 147-52

mdash Two Lessons on Animal and Man Translated by Drew S Burk MinneapolisUnivocal Publishing 2012

Smith Brian Cantwell On the Origin of Objects Cambridge MIT Press 1996

Wiener Norbert Cybernetics or the Control and Communication in the Animal

and the Machine Cambridge MIT Press 1965

mdash The Human Use Of Human Beings Cybernetics And Society New York DaCapo Press 1988




Abstract

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6 7 7 7 I 7 7lt 67 77 66 7

666 7 7 B6 7 76 76 lt 6 7 676 gt6 6lt 7 F67 7 6776 7 7 F 77 6 67-$ $ II E 77 66 6 7 7 676 gt6 7 77 7 Alt7 77 7 Flt 7 6 66 gt6 77lt lt 76 77 676 7 7lt 76 6 666 77 7 7 7lt

Keywords

D= $ 7 7 7lt 76 676 77 lt76

Cover Page Footnote

I 7 7 67 7 C7 amp P6lt 7 P 67lt

Creative Commons License

B6 6 6 C7 C6 A7- A 30 L6

B6 7 6 7 +1666626615










Situating Simondon












15





DOI 107275R59884XW





Cybernetics


















DOI 107275R59884XW












Press 2011) 65















DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011


























Situating Simondon












15





DOI 107275R59884XW





Cybernetics


















DOI 107275R59884XW












Press 2011) 65















DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011
























15





DOI 107275R59884XW





Cybernetics


















DOI 107275R59884XW












Press 2011) 65















DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011





















Cybernetics


















DOI 107275R59884XW












Press 2011) 65















DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011





























DOI 107275R59884XW












Press 2011) 65















DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011




























Press 2011) 65















DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011





























DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011








































DOI 107275R59884XW





















DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011





































DOI 107275R59884XW


















43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011


































43 Ibid 21044 Ibid 23645 Ibid 273



DOI 107275R59884XW
























DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011








































DOI 107275R59884XW






















DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011






































DOI 107275R59884XW



Bibliography



Press 2011



















Bibliography



Press 2011

















informational ontology

Documents