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virtualities
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VIRTUAL ENTITY
The passage from the virtual through the possible to the real is the fundamental act of creation ...
Ontology is not an abstract science ... Now the new virtualities, the naked life of the present,
have the capacity to take control of the processes of machinic metamorphosis.
(Hardt & Negri, 2000).
Introduction
Virtual Entity is a philosophical research starting from the assumption that the concepts of authenticity, ownership, uniqueness
and seriality are, within the digital domain, no longer valid. In fact there is no substantial difference between copy and original
on the Web, and these two categories are not relevant. Since any file can generate an infinite number of entities identical to itself,
there is no scarcity on the Net, and any resource is indefinitely available. Assuming possession is related to the numerical
proportion between resources (objects) and potential owners (subjects), then, whereas resources are not limited, the concept of
ownership and the idea of property become superfluous.
If socialist and communist experiments in real world were limited by the presence of state ownership, Virtual Entity is proposing
the implementation of a non-property system within the digital domain. The practical method to achieve such result is a new radical
software being specifically developed to release, license, and catalogue digital files. This system, transforming the traditional
approach towards metadata, is based on the idea that any file is an independent creation living its own life and experiencing various
levels of transformation and progressive generation (of meaning, shape, and entities) in the course of its virtual existence.
This way digital resources, interpreted as cultural units, are considered the main actors of the web.
Cosmogony
Digital artificial world is structured by specific rules that are somewhat different from those expressed and manifested in the
physical world we normally experience. One relevant difference is the definition of identity. Since every 'singularity' is
reproducible in infinite number of identical copies, and there is no substantial difference between copy and original, because the
copy of a copy is exactly the same as the copy of the original, the basic distinction between copy and original is not relevant,
and digital identity is not unique. Comparing this to any analogue reality, we can immediately perceive that some of the values
applying to physical world are to be reconsidered within the digital domain. For example, an analogue tape recorded from a vinyl
record will play a different quality of music than that of the vinyl, and the quality of the incision will be more and more
compromised if we continue copying the same track from one tape to another. This quality decrease structures an inversely proportional
relation with the distance from the original content. Reproduction always depends on the system used, both in case of analogue and of
digital carriers. Speakers, amplifiers and players reproducing a sound can affect the quality of the result. But, in the case of an
.aiff audio file, for example, any copy will perform the same music, given an identical system to be played from. Although this
argument is rather obvious, it leads to the idea that, since there is no constitutional uniqueness inside 'digitality', there is no
relevant reason to limit the amount of copies that are to be created. From another perspective, this example shows a peculiar
fragility that electronic content implies. In fact, any electronic resource is depending on a certain variety of elements
to be reproduced and perceived (a player, an hard disc, a computer, a mini disc, and so forth). Any damage to a single part of such
complex system is compromising the fruition of the entire. If a photographic picture on paper can be visible when a corner of
the image is corrupted, it will be very difficult to display a file whereas a small part of it is damaged. Although electronic and
digital creatures have certain properties in common, Virtual Entity is focusing on digital entities living in the net, so to say
digital files online. The possibility to define these as 'immaterial' lays on the fact that the region where these are perceived
is often very far from the server they are laying on. People belonging to generations not educated to a basic computer literation
often think mails are physically landing on their specific machine, missing the point internet is basically 'sitting' somewhere
else and simply copied and/or displayed on local terminals. This apparent immateriality and cohereness renders the perception of the
internet obfuscated by common beliefs. There is a specific moment when a file is created, and there exists a very first instantiation
of any file that is uploaded, published and shared online. Once this poiesis is performed, the entity is free to proliferate
indefinitely. Virtual Entity names this very first file that reaches the internet a 'native file', or master. There is no way to
distinguish it from all its 'nemesis', after the act of creation. Since identity appears to be distributed rather than concentrated,
digital identity requires a specific approach according to its essence. Virtual Entity is a project structured by a double nature,
and these two perspectives interweave a dialogic relation. While a theoretical reflection on 'digitality' and its constitution
is taking place in the background, the development of a practical system to license and identify files online has begun.
Substances
Any copy of a file can be defined as an instance of the file entity. The main idea of Virtual Entity is that, any time a native file
is created and uploaded to the Net, it is possible to initiate a Soul for this file. The Soul of a file, according to Ve's imaginary,
is the combination of a set of Metadata plus editable space for information interchange, not very dissimilar from a wiki. Digital
entities are subdivided is four main substances, that are Text, Audio, Video and Image. All entities are either natural born analogue
or natural born digital. An interesting process to be taken into account is 'transmutation': what happens when content is mutating
substance, or carrier, from analogue to digital, and vice-versa? Substances are always immanent, and an entity can be defined in
accordance to more than one substance, because this identification depends on the specific approach to content, rather than on a
supposed unique matter. A number of critical examples and ambiguities can be analysed and tested. If software, as source code, is
considered text, an executable is something more malicious, composed, an 'organon' creating a different functioning. Be software a
daemon, or a polumetis spirit, it is not a simple entity.
Metadata
An important and problematic element of digital content management is the organisation of Metadata, that is information about
information. Main issue is establishing a compatible form that is firm through time. One critical aspect is that, if metadata are
stored inside a file, when information is updated on one copy of the file, all other copies are not accessing the new data. Another
problem is the lack of persistence through successive codification, encoding, editing and transformation. Storing metadata inside
the Soul of a file, that is a database separated from any instance and independent from a specific file structure, is a technical
proposal to overpass some of the limits the use of metadata encountered so far. In such structure information would be accessible
from any instance of the file, because the repository of metadata is always providing the latest version. The idea of dividing
entities in four groups is useful also in this: a core metadata set listing a certain number of fields that are substance
independent, is combined to other fields that are substance specific. A possible approach to define these basic elements of
description can be the following: metadata have to be, as much as possible, both machine and human understandable. To be optimised,
only a minimal amount of necessary information is to be considered relevant; permanent and global characteristics are preferred to
local, non permanent methods of description. Inspiring researches are the Latent Semantic Analysis on one side, that focuses on the
relationships, in vectorial semantics, between a set of documents and the terms they contain, and the symbol abstractor named
Singular Value Decomposition, an algebraic method to describe the peculiarity of an object.
The noise margin
We all use to be enthusiastic about this possibility of copying and copying and copying. So we all think the copy is just the same as the original. Maybe the copy is in fact the ‘original’, but how many originals are there?
Any entity can have more than one Soul, and any Soul is connected to ‘n’ amount of copies existing. Every copy is original. So, how many originals do we have? Answer: wehave ‘n’ originals. Well, then: are those original all the ‘same’? A definition of ‘sameness’ would help. Let’s see what is at hand: 1_The quality or condition of being the same. and same·ness (sām′nis)
noun
1. the state or quality of being the same; identity or uniformity 2. lack of change or variety; monotony
We don’t know much more yet. The question is, can we really consider all those copies as something identical? Probably not. Compression, re-compression, singularity, noise, instantiation, difference, error, bandwidth, accident, player, screen, monitor, glasses, psychoactive substances, operating systems, servers, hard-drives, time, space. Everything is singular, the experience, the system performing it (hardware), the meat-ware receiving it, the copy in itself, which is indeed, SINGULAR. Every copy is a ‘original’ on its own. There is no ‘original’, originality is status a-priori, it is never actual in the virtual world. There are only copies in the virtual world, and every copy is unique, every instance includes differentiation. The whole concept of identity is to be re-described. In philosophy, identity (also called sameness) is whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable, in terms of possessing a set of qualities or characteristics that distinguish it from entities of a different type, states wikipedia. But are those sets of qualities relevant and distributed to the extent that makes and renders indiscernibility? If this is not the case, identity can, thus, be performed as difference, not repetition but progressive differentiation. The noise margin baptizes any copy a new, unique, original.
Eleonora Oreggia - August 2009 - xname.cc
http://virtualentity.org