The Changing Face of Alterity: Communication, Technology, and Other Subjects (Media Philosophy) - Softcover

Gunkel, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783488700 ISBN 13: 9781783488704

Verlag: Rli, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Addressing a challenge and opportunity that is definitive of life in the 21st century, this book provides a range of possible solutions that serve to motivate and structure future research and debate around the concept of 'the other' in communication.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

David J. Gunkel is Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of five books, including: Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics after Remix (2016), The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots and Ethics (2012), and co-author of Heidegger and the Media (2014). Ciro Marcondes Filho is a Professor in the Department of Communications and Arts at the University of Sao Paulo. He is creator of the New Theory of Communication, head of the FiloCom - Centre of Philosophical Studies on Communication, and has published over 45 books on journalism, mass media, cinema and philosophy. Recent books include: The New Theory of Communication (7 volumes), The Face and the Machine (Jabuti Award, 2014), Dictionary of Communication.

Ciro Marcondes Filho is a Professor in the Department of Communications and Arts at the University of Sao Paulo. He is creator of the New Theory of Communication, head of the FiloCom - Centre of Philosophical Studies on Communication, and has published over 45 books on journalism, mass media, cinema and philosophy. Recent books include: The New Theory of Communication (7 volumes), The Face and the Machine (Jabuti Award, 2014), Dictionary of Communication.

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The Changing Face of Alterity

Communication, Technology, and other Subjects

By David J. Gunkel, Ciro Marcondes Filho, Dieter Mersch

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2016 David J. Gunkel, Ciro Marcondes Filho and Dieter Mersch
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78348-870-4

Contents

Acknowledgments, vii, 
Introduction David J. Gunkel, Ciro Marcondes Filho and Dieter Mersch, 1, 
PART I: THE FACE OF THE OTHER, 15, 
1 Countenance — Mask — Avatar: The "Face" and the Technical Artifact Dieter Mersch, 17, 
2 Digital Exchanges: Ghosts and Gifts Mira Fliescher, 39, 
3 Performative Modalities of Otherness Jörg Sternagel, 65, 
PART II: FACING OTHERS, 87, 
4 Alterity, Machines, and Eros: A New Vision of Communication as an Event Ciro Marcondes Filho, 89, 
5 Game Over: About Illusion and Alterity Mauricio Liesen, 103, 
6 Facebook and Rolezinhos: Alterity, Communication, and Visibility Alexsandro Galeno, 123, 
7 (De)Facing Alterity in the Digital Age: "The Real Problem" in the Social Interaction of Digital Natives Ann Hetzel Gunkel, 137, 
PART III: INTERFACES AND OTHER FACES, 157, 
8 Alterity and Technology: Implications of Heidegger's Phenomenology Tales Tomaz, 159, 
9 Alterity ex Machina: The Encounter with Technology as an Epistemological-Ethical Drama Mark Coeckelbergh, 181, 
10 Another Alterity: Rethinking Ethics in the Face of the Machine David J. Gunkel, 197, 
Index, 219, 
About the Contributors, 227, 

CHAPTER 1

Countenance — Mask — Avatar

The "Face" and the Technical Artifact

Dieter Mersch

1. A QUESTION OF RELATION

What does it mean to "meet" a robot? What happens when we contemplate it, look into its face or stare into its "eyes?" How do we read the face of an avatar or understand its expression; in short, how do we respond to it? Does gaze meet gaze? What are we reacting to when we dialogue, solve problems, or fight with it? It seems that the face — German, Antlitz, also countenance or visage — is neither an image that can be animated at will nor a simulative screen open to mimetic play, but rather the opening to the Other, an "abyss" or "alterity." Emmanuel Levinas (1969, 197) described the face as the "first revelation of the Other" to whose expression we "respond." From the very first moment we communicate with one another, we throw ourselves into a veritable labyrinth. We become flustered or lose ground the instant we make contact. We carefully get a "feel" for each other, even if we only catch a sideways glimpse of one another in passing. Continuously, the face creates confusion; it takes hold of us and echoes within us long after we have shifted our attention elsewhere. To meet another person is thus, as Levinas so aptly put it, to be "kept awake by an enigma" (1998, 111) — open and ready to be unnerved or, to the contrary, scared-off or repulsed. The experience of the face is met by a fundamental "inindifference," as Levinas said. The double negation emphasizes the impossibility of disinterest. For this reason the face is always like an interruption, a "trap" or an attraction that leaves an indelible impression upon us and reminds us that we are first and foremost social beings and dependent upon others. We refer to others, desire them, and share a "world" with them, whether we want to or not. The "nakedness" of the face, again Levinas's (1969, 75) formulation, the fact that we usually present it unprotected — disclosing its insufficiency and distress, its inherent vulnerability because it exposes the bareness of our existence — also implies that it "concerns" us (regarder), attracts the gaze and expects respect (égard), but at the same time demanding distance and restraint. Levinas speaks in this context of "supplication," the expression of a "first word, 'you shall not commit murder.'" It is almost impractical to destroy a face. For this reason, confronting the countenance also has an ethical dimension. Even if we are oblivious to this fact, every face brings puts us on the trail of the initial experience of sociality that tells us, in principle, you are like me.

Is the above also true for our interaction with robots or avatars? Can they similarly become a "counterpart" that we meet "face to face," like the intermediary incarnation of Indian mythology from which the motif of the avatar stems? Or is there a fundamental separation, an unbridgeable gap, as if two inaccessible territories faced one another? Masahiro Mori (2012) made a similar claim as early as 1970, a claim that reappears in Jasia Reichardt's 1978 study Robots: Fact, Fiction and Prediction. Mori theorized an "uncanny valley," an unease that erupts when technical artifacts become too close to us and their appearance all too familiar. Our acceptance or approval of robots — and avatars — correlates directly, Mori postulated, with their lack of resemblance to us. The more they look like humans, the more they awaken revulsion. It seems we can accept animated dolls, animals, or automatons only if they are not "ghosts" or doppelgangers that we are unable to control. Otherwise the question of their autonomy arises, their "social" status and the respect due to them, depending on the specificity of their differences. The "uncanny valley" is our discomfort at their sameness and it exists in principle for all technical or digital devices with which we interact. Thereby the true question is what exactly does "inter-action" mean, in particular what is "in between" and what can we "share" in its spatium.

In the same vein, the relation between human and machine or simulation and "life," or the possibility of their mutual confusion, is also up for discussion, in particular the question of photorealistic rendering or 3-D models of "people." The problem is not so much whether machines — or computers or robots — can think. Alan Turing attempted to determine just that with his test, which tellingly works with curtains behind which the concealed competitors are asked to make decisions meant to reveal which one of them is, without a doubt, a technical structure (Turing 1950; see also Hayles 1999, xi ff.). Decisions however take place below the threshold of the discernible, for which reason Turing was content to contest that once a machine passed the test, we had no more reason to deny that it "thinks." However the entire construction already presupposes a decision-logical arrangement and thus encircles its own argumentation. The error is thus rooted in the set-up of the experiment itself, which operates within a binary logic where undecidability implies un-difference — but undecidability and indistinguishability are not the same (Mersch 2013). Indeed the greater problem by far is situated before thought at the level of perception, which Turing intentionally precluded from his experiments and which reveals, in a reflection on artificial skin or a "dead" eye, a difference that thwarts deception. If we speak only of "similarities" we have already accepted that distance and distinction. But the question is whether — perhaps in the near future — analogs will exist that not only defy understanding and recognition of distinctions, but also exhibit reactions and affects similar to our own, so that, as some science fiction movies suggest, we despair of trying to detect them. Or put another way, might we, in our meetings with artifacts — avatars or acting and speaking machines...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rli
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783488700
• ISBN 13: 9781783488704
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 238
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland