“En de dingen in de kamer worden vrienden die gaan slapen. . .”
(Boudewijn de Groot, Avond)
I only just barely remember the time before computers. During my life they became so widespread they seemed to swallow the world. Now many (most?) of our interactions with people happen in digital spaces. Seeking to explain what this means for us, Byung-Chul Han outlines a philosophy of life in the Digital Age. Undinge is one of his more recent works, so an English translation has yet to appear. I am discussing the original German—and my German is scheiße—so apologies in advance for any faults.
Han begins by contrasting our present digital order [die digitale Ordnung] with the older earthly order [die terrane Ordnung]. In the earthly order we understand the stuff around us as objects having a certain firmness of being [eine Festigkeit des Seins] characterised by duration and resistance [Dauer und Beständigkeit]. From a certain way of looking at it, we could describe things as being located in a spatio-temporal continuum, having properties like mass, length, material, etc.
For example, we can describe a pen as being an object of a certain length and weight, made of plastic, located in a particular position, manufactured in a factory in Schramberg-Tennenbronn, etc. Yet before we ever interrogate the pen in this detached scientific-intellectual mode, it already appears to us as a thing in our proximity to be used in a certain way. When we need to jot down a shopping list, we simply pick up the pen and write with it; we never even “see” that the pen is there. That is the more primordial sense in which we encounter objects.
While the pen appears to us as a thing to be used [Dienstwilligkeit], sometimes it breaks, or it runs out of ink, or our hand cramps, or our fingers form callouses. Then we realise that there is a different side to the pen, that it cannot be fully sublated into an extension of our will and psyche, that it resists us.
Ernst Bloch playfully speculates on this “other side”, this “secret life” of objects, which must carry on even when we are not there:
The fire in the oven burns even when we are not there. There must have been a fire in the meantime, too, in the warmed-up apartment. But it’s not at all certain, and what the fire was doing before-hand—what the furniture was doing during our departure—is unclear.1
An object’s “secret life” is its Geschichte. That word means both story and history in German, the point being that an object—like a human being—is also a witness to events, the signs of which it bears in its marks and abrasions.
In our more thoughtful moments we may get a sense of that past. At a book fair, nosing among the boxes, you pick up an old paperback and notice peculiarities. Its pages are yellowed and creased. Its spine oozes out of the glue just barely holding it in place. Old library stamps and pockets suggest its arrival from a far-away town you have never been to. Its margins are disfigured with the barely legible scribbles of owners past. There is a birthday wish on the flyleaf, which has perhaps outlasted the friendship this book once symbolised.
Or take a whalebone heru (comb). In Māori culture, that is one of the most precious gifts you can receive. It is not only the sentiment of the gift that imparts value, but also the fact that the heru is made from a relatively rare material having its own distinct tactility: whalebone is surprisingly light and flexible, and no two are entirely alike. Distinct ridges pattern the face of the bone, and while the heru is a bright white when it is first gifted, years of use work the grease of the owner’s hair into the material, staining it an off-yellow colour. Part of the owner lingers within and eventually becomes the object.
When we repeatedly use or possess an object, we form a bond with it, a sense of connection between its history and our own. Something of us is transferred to it:
The things in my possession are containers for feelings and memories. The story [Geschichte] of an object, which develops through long periods of use, ensouls it as a thing of the heart [Herzensdinge].2
Things of the heart form a part of our own own understanding and memory of the world [Geschichte]. Past and future are unified in the present, in this thing in front of us that we can pick up and grasp and comprehend. Its fixedness imparts stability to an otherwise untameable flux; the object is a “resting pole of life” [Ruhepole des Lebens], the heart’s magnetic north.
Perhaps it sounds infantile to talk about bonding with objects, as though we were children prattling on to our teddy-bears. Han believes we are losing this ability, and with it a meaningful point of contact with the world. He traces this development back to the industrial revolution. Mass production tended towards making objects more uniform, cheap, available, and disposable, hence less valuable and personal. The devaluation of objects was really a hyperinflation of objects.
Today the somewhat romantic ideal of the earthly order has been overthrown by the advent of the digital [die digitale Ordnung]. Information, not objects, determine our world. Objects may be overlaid with information; advertising transforms them into products bearing cultural or aesthetic messages. Unlike the heru or the book, which have Geschichte, and grow more impressive with use and possession, a product simply comes pre-loaded with meaning.
Unlike objects, information is not discrete: though one may talk about a piece of information, the boundaries around it are never fixed. Weightless, disembodied, information occupies no space and is without resistance. While there may be limits to the rate at which it is processed, that is a characteristic of the information processor, not of information itself.
Objects have a side to them in which they are presented to us as tools to be manipulated [Dienstwilligkeit]. But to actually use them requires a certain level of knowledge about the object, and care in its handling: to use a pen requires years of practice as a child. Even if we are experts at handling the object, the process nonetheless leaves a mark upon us because objects have resistance. Information, by contrast, is smooth and frictionless. It multiplies far beyond our capacity to grasp it: we need only copy a file, or share a post to our page, or like a comment, in order to spread the information.
Once it is out there, that information takes on a viral life on its own, one that feeds upon human attention and affection. The greater the reaction provoked, the longer lived and more widespread the information will become. It circulates without reference to reality: only its relevance matters, and information has a very short window in which it is relevant [Akutalitätsspanne]. Yet new information does not negate or replace old information, it simply piles on top of and smothers it. Information is fundamentally additive, not narrative; having no Geschichte, it does not contribute to a durable understanding of the world.
Hannah Arendt described truth—like physical objects—as having a firmness of being [eine Festigkeit des Seins]. Because it withstands change, manipulation, and flux, it can be the basis of human existence. Information, on the other hand, has a vexed relation to the truth. In a post-factual media landscape, the velocity and churn of viral information has levelled the distinctions between true and false. It is naïve to suppose that with more information we have obtained more certainty and freedom. On the contrary, beyond a certain point, information no longer illuminates, but darkens the world, imparting a sense of instability and incomprehensibility.
Yet connotations of the word remain positive: no-one would want to make an uninformed decision, much less a misinformed decision. Information actually confines us to fewer choices: having gathered the evidence, an optimal decision may be computed, at which point all that remains for the human being is to carry out the foregone conclusion. If we doubt what the information is telling us, this typically only reinforces the need for more information-gathering, usually in the form of more or less overt systems of monitoring and surveillance: analytics, telemetrics, likes, fitness and location trackers, vaccination passes, recommendation algorithms, social credit systems. The sum of these techniques is a panopticon enclosing man and compelling him to give up his agency within the world:
He sees himself standing across from a world that is slipping away from his understanding. He obeys algorithmic decisions that he otherwise does not comprehend. Algorithms become black boxes. The world disappears in the deep layers of neural networks, to which people have no access.3
Being indefinite, information is also without limit: there is always something new to read or click on. The voluntary, excessive use of smartphones and laptops refigures our minds to be hyperattentive to the reception of new information. While this makes us more available and better able to process information—better information processors, in other words—it also dismembers our capacity for deep, sustained contemplation.
“It is impossible to linger over information,” writes Han.4 A scent may hang in the air and by its fragrance summon a memory or echo of the world. Marcel Proust shows this in Swann’s Way. Only able to recall a single episode from his childhood, the narrator resigns himself to the loss of the past. He nonetheless takes comfort in the “Celtic belief” that the souls of the dead slumber within inanimate objects, Herzensdingen…
...and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life... The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling.5
The narrator stops in at his mother’s house for tea, something out of his routine, given he never drinks the stuff. But as the liquid enters its mouth and mixes with the crumbs of the cake, something in the combination—the taste, the smell?—causes memories of his childhood to bubble to the surface of consciousness:
An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had the effect, which love has, of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me... And suddenly the memory revealed itself.6
Such moments are also possible when we give our care and attention to things of the heart [Herzensdingen]. As awareness of the thing increases, it accompanies a total vanishing of the self [Selbstvergessenheit]; we no longer “see” the object, nor ourself; we merge with the sense that is contained within the object. In such moments, we are lead away from ourselves and delivered unto things which, existing apart from us, cannot be taken over, swallowed up, denied, or made unreal. We feel apart of the continuity and stability of the world, experienced as a distinct thing both apart of and within us. As Proust put it: “... this essence was not in me, it was me.”
No such experience comes to the denizen of cyberspace, for the boundaries of his attention remould their own horizons. Before he has the chance to contemplate the first thing, a second disrupts his focus. Anything that might disrupt his sense of self—disagreeable things, but also magical things of the heart—are too easily dismissed. They are moderated, censored, ignored, downvoted, or simply swiped away. In a digital medium we only encounter the world in simulation. Its boundaries, its categories, its consequences are constantly remade and swept away before we ever have the opportunity to dwell upon them.
Like most of his books, Han ends Undinge with a personal illustration of how we might resist these things. One day, while cycling down the street, it began to rain. Han sped up and accidentally crashed his bicycle. Coming to, he noticed a store he had never seen before. It sold antique jukeboxes. He was enamoured with one, a big turquoise thing with lots of chrome bumpers and tail-fins, in imitation of American muscle cars. It now sits in an empty room in Han’s house. When we wants to play it, he must plug it in and wait for the machine to warm up. When he puts a coin in, it rattles in the slot. The various parts of the machine begin to move. The stylus glides over the grooves of the vinyl record, imparting a crackled texture to the sound. The jukebox itself lights up the darkness. Unlike digital music, which simply “appears” out of a device with uncanny smoothness, the jukebox presents its working parts to the listener. It makes music into a multi-sensory experience, giving it a sense of depth Han had never truly experienced before.
The point is not that we should all run out to save your grandma’s chic gadgets from a tragic death by landfill. Han simply implores us to go through life more slowly. He wants us to cultivate personal relations with everything in our vicinity, the people and the objects. His aphoristic writing style—part philosophy, part poetry—hits a perfect note here. I never thought there could be something significant about the material and texture of the objects around me—though on reflection, one may see a longing for this in “online aesthetics” such as Cottagecore or Dark Academia, both forms of nostalgia for a vanished world of tactile depth.
It is necessary, Han says, to re-romanticise the objects around us. Objects are not literally alive, but if we have the ability to see them that way, it will help us to connect with our surroundings. We will find consolation and awe in that we would otherwise overlook. Yet in a book about material things, there is no discussion of the moral hazards involved in forming bonds with them. Identifying too closely with objects of splendour and delight and sentimentality may simply lead us down another path to the same indulgence Han warns against, in which the vanities of Self cloak the existence of Other.
Han posits another Lebensform, one that ultimately boils down to an enlightened silence, “doing nothing” as praxis. I am not always convinced by this. Hannah Arendt believed that in privileging the life of the mind we had undermined the capacity for action. Han, meanwhile, believes we are hyperactive. Because we are doing too much, our attention is scattered across a million tasks and distractions and projects with no sense of limit or finitude. We swallow up all the intervals of silence, allowing ourself no space nor time to simply sit and contemplate; and contemplation, Han argues, is a necessary precondition for meaningful action.
While perfect silence may hone the mind to the point at which it is ready to strike, enduring social change requires the subordination of the self—of multiple willing selves—for the sake of cooperation. That requires us to rediscover the Other, certainly: only if we have a personal connection to someone are we willing to stick our neck on the line for them; only if we vest a part of ourself into the objects around us will they carry any meaning down the generations; only if our relationship with the environment is a close, personal one will we find the motivation to protect it.
Yet it’s not enough to look on the world with perfect gentleness. We also have to act. Not the compulsive hyperactivity Han identifies so well, but the heroic sort of action Hannah Arendt envisioned: a decisive break with things as they are to put something new and unpredictable into motion. Even if an action is wrong or mistaken, it nonetheless discloses who we are. It forms our character in the same moment it announces it. It change us and it changes the people and the surroundings around us. And it enables us to break out of the stifling passivity and vicariousness of the Digital Age, which will not be waited out in dignified silence.
Original: “Das Feuer im Ofen heizt, auch wenn wir nicht dabei sind. Also, sagt man, wird es dazwischen wohl auch gebrannt haben, in der warm gewordenen Stube. Doch sicher ist das nicht und was das Feuer vorher getrieben hat, was die Möbel während unseres Ausgangs taten, ist dunkel.” Quoted in Undinge (59-60).
“Die Dinge in meinem Besitz sind ein Behalter von Gefühlen und Erinnerungen. DIe Geschichte, die den Dingen durch einen langen Gebrauch zuwächst, beseelt sie zu Herzensdingen.” (24)
“Er sieht sich einer Welt gegenüber, die seinem Verständnis entgleitet. Er befolgt algorithmische Entscheidungen, die er aber nicht nachvollziehen kann. Algorithmen werden zu Blackboxen. Die Welt verliert sich in den Tiefenschichten neuronaler Netzwerke, zu denen der Mensch keinen Zugang hat.” (14)
“Es ist unmöglich, bei Informationen zu verweilen.” (16)
In Search of Last Time, Volume 1: Swann’s Way. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Revised by D. J. Enright. Published by The Modern Library, New York, 1992. Quotation from pp. 59-60.
ibid. pp. 60-1, 63.