Imaginary Magnitude Read online

  To explain how germs acquired knowledge of the nonexistent books of a still nonexistent library is a bit more difficult. We are helped by the fact that microbe futurology is limited to fragments of works, namely, their introductions. It looks as though some unknown factor (radiation?) has penetrated closed books by X-raying them, as it were; naturally the content of the first pages is the easiest to probe, as the ones that follow are concealed by the thickness of the sheets preceding. These explanations are far from precise. Besides, Gulliver admits that there is a considerable difference between yesterday's cracking of the ceiling plaster and the positioning of sentences on the pages of volumes to be published fifty or eighty years hence. But, objective to the end, our author does not arrogate exclusive rights to himself in explaining the bases of eruntics: on the contrary, in his parting words he encourages the readers to continue his efforts themselves.

  This book overturns not only bacteriology, but the totality of our knowledge of the world. We do not wish to pass judgment on it in the present foreword, and take no position xv regarding the results of the bacterial prophecies. However doubtful the value of eruntics, it must be admitted that, among history forecasters, there have never been such mortal enemies—and at the same time such inseparable partners in our destiny—as microbes. It may not be irrelevant to add here that R. Gulliver is no longer with us. He died only a few months after the appearance of Eruntics, while instructing new students of microbiological literature, namely cholera bacilli. He had been counting on their competence, since, as the very name implies, the cholera comma bacillus is connected via punctuation marks with correct stylistics. Let us suppress our smile of mournful compassion produced by the conclusion that this was a senseless death, since thanks to it his will acquired legal force, and the base of the library wall already holds the cornerstone and, at the same time, the tombstone of one who is for us today merely an eccentric. Yet who knows what he may become tomorrow?

  Juan Rambellais • Jean-Marie Annax - Eino

  Illmainen-Stewart Allporte - Giuseppe Savarini -

  Yves Bonnecourt-Hermann Pockelein-Alois

  Kuentrich - Roger Gatzky

  A HISTORY OF BITIC LITERATURE

  IN FIVE VOLUMES

  Second, enlarged edition by Prof. J. Rambellais VOLUME ONE

  PRESSES UNIVERSITAIRES PARIS 2009

  Introduction

  1. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

  By bitic literature we mean any work of nonhuman origin—one whose real author is not a human being. (He may have been the author indirectly, however, by performing the functions which generated the real author's acts of creation.) The discipline which studies the entire class of such writing is bitistics.

  There is still no uniformity of opinion as to the dimensions of this research field. In this paramount issue there are two opposing trends or schools, commonly known as Old World (or European) and New World (or American) bitistics. The first school, which operates in the spirit of the classical humanities, studies texts as well as the environmental (social) conditioning of their authors, but is not concerned with these authors' functionally structural side. The second school, the American, treats bitistics as also including the anatomy and functional aspects of the makers of the works under study.

  Our monograph will not enter into the debate on this controversial problem, so we shall make only a brief comment regarding the matter. The silence of the traditional humanities concerning the ' 'anatomy and physiology' ' of authors is based on the obvious fact that these authors, who are always people, differ from one another only as beings of the same species may do so. Thus, as Professor Rambellais says, it would be nonsense in romance philology to make an introductory diagnosis to the effect that the author of Tristan and Iseut or The Song of Roland was a multicellular organism of the order of land vertebrates, a mammal which is viviparous, pneumobranchiate, placental, and the like. On the other hand, it is not nonsense to specify that ILLIAC 164, the author of Antikant, is a semotopological, serially parallel, subluminal, initially polyglot computer of the 19th binasty, with a maximum intellectronic potential of 1010 epsilon-sems per millimeter of n- dimension con-figurational space of utilizable channels, with a net-alienated memory and a monolanguage of internal procedures of the type uniling. This is because these data explain certain concrete properties of the texts of which the aforementioned illiac is the author.

  Still, as Professor Rambellais maintains, bitistics must not occupy itself with this technical (in the case of human beings we should say zoological) side of authors' characters, and for two reasons. The first, practical and less important, is that a consideration of the aforesaid anatomy demands an unusually extensive knowledge of a technical and mathematical type, which in its full range is inaccessible even to particular specialists in the theory of automata, since an expert acquainted with that theory is well informed only about the one branch of it in which he has specialized. Thus one cannot demand from exponents of bitistics, who are humanists by training and method, something which cannot be obtained as a whole even from specialists in intellectronics. Consequently, the maximalism of the American school obliges it to pursue its studies in large mixed teams, which always produces disastrous results, since no collection or "chorus" of critics can eifectively replace a simple critic with a complete grasp of the text under study.

  The second, more important, and basic reason is simply that the introduction of corrections or supplements of an anatomical type in bitistics brings it to a standstill, whenever it concentrates on texts of "bitic apostasy" (which we shall discuss later). All the knowledge of intellectronics specialists is insufficient to understand fully how, why, and to what end a particular author has created a particular text, if the author comes from any binasty of computers of a serial number greater than eighteen.

  To these arguments American bitistics opposes its own counterarguments; however, as we have already declared, our monograph does not propose to give a thorough description of this dispute, much less resolve it.

  2. DESCRIPTION OF THE WORK.

  Our monograph attempts a compromise between the positions stated above, though on the whole it inclines to the side of the European school. This is reflected in its structure, for only the first volume, edited by Professor Annax with the participation of twenty-seven experts from various specializations, is devoted to the technical aspects of computer authors. That volume opens with an introduction to the general theory of finite automata; in subsequent chapters it discusses forty-five writer systems, both individual (simple) and joint ("author-aggregates").

  It must be emphasized all the same that, excepting the references designated by an asterisk in the main volumes of the History of Bitic Literature, the study of it does not necessarily require a familiarity with the first volume.

  The main or essential part of the monograph consists of three volumes entitled Homotropia, Intertropia, and Heterotropia, and follows the universally accepted system of classification which is simultaneously dia-chronic and synchronic in character, since the three main divisions of bitic literature, encompassed by the three titles, are at the same time three successive periods of its origin and development. The table below presents an outline of the whole of the work.

  BITIC LITERATURE

  (after Allporte, Illmainen, and Savarini)

  I. Homotropia* (homotropic, cis-human phase; also "simulative" or "anthropomicric")

  A. Germinal stage (embryonic or prelinguistic): Paralexics (Neologenesis)

  Semolalia Semautics

  B. Linguistic stage ("comprehending," according to All-porte):

  Interpolative mimesis

  Extrapolative mimesis

  Controlled transcendent mimesis ("programmatically excessive")

  II. Intertropia (also "critical phase" or "interregnum")

  III. Heterotopia (apostasy, transhuman phase)

  In its genetic expression, bitistics appeared as the resultant of at least three substantially independent processes: first, crossing th
e so-called intelligence barrier, which was above all the work of the designers; next, something which the latter neither intended nor, still less, projected—the autoregenerative work of systems (beginning with the 17th binasty), or so-called "relaxationally active standstills"; and finally, the relations which gradually crystallized between the machines and people, representing the results of a "mutual concern with and recognition of possibilities as well as limitations on both sides" (Yves Bonnecourt). The intelligence barrier unsuccessfully assaulted by early cybernetics is, as we know incontrovertibly, a fiction. It is a fiction in the (unexpected) sense that its transcendence by machines is impossible to identify. The transitions from "unthinking," "chattering" machines "working purely formally" to "thinking," "speaking" machines showing "insight" occur in smooth stages. Though the categories of "mechanical automaticity" and "intellectual sovereignty" are still valid, we realize that no precisely delimitable boundary separates the two.

  The relaxational output of machines was first observed and recorded almost thirty years ago. It turned out to be a purely technical necessity that the prototypes (beginning with the 15th binasty) should be provided with rest periods during which their activity did not come to a standstill but, deprived of programmed directives, manifested itself as a peculiar "mumble." That at least is how their verbal or quasi-mathematical production was then interpreted; the name "machine dreams" was even generally accepted for it. According to current opinion, the machines had to have active rest to enable them to regenerate and then return to normal full efficiency, just as such a phase—sleep, together with the reveries (dreams) typical of it—is necessary for human beings. The designation "bitic production," used then for these "chatterings" and "dreams," was therefore disparaging and disrespectful: as if without rhyme or reason, the machines ground out "bits of all the information contained within them" and by this method of "shuffling" were supposed to recover their partially lost efficiency. We adopted the name, although it was obviously inappropriate. We adopted it in accordance with the historical tradition of all scientific nomenclature: a random example—"thermodynamics"—reveals an analogous inappropriateness, since the scope of contemporary thermodynamics is not the same as it was for earlier physicists who coined the term. Indeed, thermodynamics is not concerned solely with the thermal activity of matter, just as, in referring to bitic literature, we do not mean just the "bits," i.e., units of nonsemantic information. Pouring new wine into old bottles is, however, a general practice of science.

  The mutual acquaintance of machines and human beings led over the years to a more and more explicit division of bitistics into two basic provinces, to which the terms creatio cis-humana and trans-humana correspond.

  The first embraces literature which is the result of the coexistence of machines and human beings, that is, of the simple fact that, in implanting our ethnic language and structural languages in them, we have also harnessed them to our brainwork in the whole sphere of culture and natural science, as well as the deductive disciplines (logic and mathematics). Nonetheless bitic creativity, whose direct cause and animating agent is the transmission to nonhuman authors of typically human problems in the field of learning and the fine arts, is divided in turn into two fairly distinct subspheres. For a linguistic product obtained through planned control— which may, to use Professor Kuentrich's visual image, be called an "order" (that is, the immediate direction of the machines to a range of questions or themes chosen by us)—is one thing, while a linguistic product which no human being has "ordered," and which admittedly arose under the influence of earlier stimuli (or program-mings), but constitutes the manifestation of by now spontaneous activity, is quite another. And yet, whether bitic texts thus engendered resulted from a direct or indirect cause, their connection with typically human problems constitutes an essential, indeed a chief, trait: and so cis-humana bitistics studies both genres of these texts.

  And it was only the granting to machines of facilities for creative freedom with no discipline, program, rules, or limitations that gradually led to the separation of their (so-called "later") creativity from typically anthropomorphic and anthropological influences. In the course of this evolution bitic literature began imperceptibly to offer us, its likely recipients, growing resistance and assimilative difficulties. For divisions of nonhuman bitistics (in the trans-humana sense) now exist which attempt to understand (analyze, interpret, explain) bitic texts which in varying degrees are unintelligible to humans.

  Obviously we can always try to employ some machines to interpret the works of other machines. But the quantity of cells necessary to enable us to understand bitic texts which are the extremes of "apostasy"— deviations from our norms for the creation, understanding, and explanation of meaning—will increase as one receives increasingly difficult texts to interpret. And as this increase becomes exponential, it ultimately pre-eludes our acquiring even a vague knowledge of the content of this "culminating apostasy/' thus signifying practically the total helplessness of the human race in relation to literature, which humans after all indirectly originated.

  Some speak in this context of the sorcerer's apprentice who unleashed forces beyond his control. This term is a form of resignation, for which science has no place. Bitic literature is surrounded by a very abundant body of pro- and contrabitic writing; it is full of desperate judgments articulating symptoms of depression, terror, and also shock at the fact that man has created something that has surpassed him intellectually as well.

  However, it must be emphatically stated that bitistics as a scientific discipline cannot itself be the place for expressing views of this type, which belong to the philosophy of nature, man, and his works (nonhuman as well). We agree with Roger Gatzky that bitistics has neither more nor fewer grounds for despair than cosmology, for example: it is obvious that, no matter how long we humans exist, and likewise no matter what intellectual assistance we may expect from cognitive machines, we shall not totally exhaust the universe and thus shall not totally comprehend it, though astrophysicists, cosmologists, and cosmogonists would never think of complaining about such a very unalterable state of things.

  The whole difference is that we are not the originators of the Universum, but bitic production is surely—if indirectly—our work. Yet one wonders where in fact the idea originated that man can accept the inexhaustibility of the Universum with complete equanimity, but cannot accept with the same objective equanimity the inexhaustibility of something which he himself has created. 3. CRUCIAL DIVISIONS OF BITISTICS. Explanations and detailed descriptions, together with a descriptive bibliography of the subject, are supplied by our monograph in the appropriate piaces. However, a bird's-eye view of the main divisions of bitistics would appear desirable; such a description can in no way replace a detailed exposition, but it is something by way of an abbreviated guide through a much-partitioned region where it is easy to lose one's way. Still, it is proper to point out that the main sections of bitistics described below are given in a greatly simplified form, repeatedly verging on a distortion of the central issue.

  Our survey—being, as we have said, of a preliminary nature—concentrates on only the four "peaks" of bitic literature, namely monoetics9 mimesis, sophocrisis, and apostasy. In point of fact, these terms are already obsolete; in present-day nomenclature their rough equivalents would be: homotropia (in its first part), exact mimesis, critique of philosophy, and bitic creation, of which the last lies outside the limits of our comprehension. Nevertheless, the nomenclature rejected today had the virtue of clarity, and we are particularly anxious to keep our initial explanations straightforward.

  A. Graeve, Gulbransson, and Fradkin—who are numbered among the creators, the "fathers" of bitistics— saw monoetics as the earliest phase of bitism. (The name derives from monos, "single," and poesis, "creating.") Monoetics owes its origin to the instruction of machines in the principles of word formation. The harmony of these principles determines what was once commonly called the "spirit" of a given language.
/>   An actively used, historically created language employs the principles of word formation with very definite restrictions, though on the whole those who use the language are by no means aware of them. Not until we had machines whose practical restrictions in word formation were thoroughly unknown, could we obtain an insight into all those chances which language ignores in its evolution. The simplest illustration would be to present a handful of examples gathered from the second volume of our History, chiefly from the chapters Para-lexics, SemauticSy and Semolalia.

  (a) Machines may use expressions existing in a language and assign them other than the accepted meanings: thoroughfare: a large meal; piglet: a filthy rooming house; horseman: centaur; knee guard: dwarf sentinel; princeling: royal fish; carnivore: Mardi gras prostitute; flabbergast: sagging stomach; skinflint: stone facing.

  (b) Machines also create neologisms along so-called semantic axes. We have purposely chosen examples of this creativity not all of which require detailed dictionary-type explanations:

  tartlet, screwball, bedrabbled (read: bed rabbled), layette, claptrap; anteater, bugbear (bird feeding its brood); fistigob, slapyap, slugmug; arithmeticker, summer, cipheretor (computer); suspenser (chair lift); deathsign (memento rnori); gladland (paradise); sea slicer (sawfish); etc.

  Any comic effect is clearly unintended. Also, these are elementary examples, though characterized by distinctive bitic features which persist—though much harder to discern—in later stages of development as well. The whole fact of the matter is that, whereas for us the real thing is the world, for the machines the first and foremost actuality is language. The computer, to which the categories that culture imposes on language were still alien, "thought" that "little prostitute" is the same thing as "tartlet," "screwball," etc. Hence, too, those characteristic corruptions: "horseman" is by now a classic textbook example of the formation of an agglomeration of meanings and morphological aspects, for here we have a mating of "horse," "man," and as it were a coupling from the region of semantics, "centaur," because, since a horse cannot be a man, it must be half horse, half man.