Reading in the Servo-Mechanical Loop

Author(s): David Porush

Source: Discourse, Vol. 9, ON TECHNOLOGY (Cybernetics, Ecology, and the Postmodern
Imagination) (Spring-Summer 1987), pp. 53-63
Published by: Wayne State University Press
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 in the
Reading
Servo-Mechanical
Loop

David Porush

We live not in an InformationAge but a CyberneticOne.

While itis truethatthemetaphorof informationgivesus a means
forseeing the underlyingunityamong theoriesacross the disci-
plines,as N. Katherine Hayles has pointed out, and thatexplor-
ing the play betweeninformationand uncertainty, or order and
chaos, explains importantaspects of the postmodernrevolution
not only in fictionbut in literarytheory,physics,and other sci-
ences, focussingon the whole science of cybernetics, rather than
the termit embraces,information, adds a crucial culturaldimen-
sion to the discussion.Where information is a neutraland abstract
term for a phenomenon, like energyor matteror space or time,
cyberneticsconnotes a larger human institution,witha sociology,
and heroes,and a narrativestanceall itsown. Even theworditself
uncoversmore troublingimplications,since it can be traced ety-
mologicallyto notionsof politicalcontrol.It impliesa collapse of
distinctionsbetween humans and machines thatarises when we
treatboth as informationprocessingsystems.Furthermore,this
collapse of distinctionshas successfullycolored the waywe work,
speak, think,plan, and play. Finally,and most importantlyfor
our purposes, it more accuratelyreflectsand signifiesthe con-
cerns of much importantpostmodernliterature,in particulara
sub-genre of postmodernismmade up of works which I have
elsewhere called "cyberneticfiction.'4These worksare engaged

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54 Discourse9

in a struggle with cyberneticsover who or what will control

human communication.
Cyberneticsclaims that mathematicalalgorithmscan de-
scribethe amount of informationtransferredin a systeminvolv-
ing humans. Certain postmodernfictionsportraypeople, usually
the narratoror hero, trapped inside cyberneticdevices. These
devices, in turn, become self-reflexivemetaphors for the texts
themselveswhichhave ironicallyadopted a cyberneticguise. But
cyberneticfictioninsiststhathumans somehowelude mechanical
reduction,thatthereis some meaningfulsilenceleftover- some
irreducible,inexpressible,and unmeasurable remnantor trace
for which cyberneticquantificationof informationcannot ac-
count.
A quick recountingof theriseof cyberneticsin thecontextof
other sciences reveals how and why the postmodern novel has
joined this epistemologicalbattle.
Cyberneticsis a powerfulscience,entailinga powerfulmeta-
physics.With its twinsisterinformationscience, it suggeststhat
everythingin the knowableuniversecan be modelled in a system
of information,fromthe phase shiftsof subatomic particlesto
the poet's selectionof a word in a poem, to the rentin the fabric
of spacetime created by a black hole. Indeed, cyberneticsis, by
Norbert Wiener's definition,the science thatseeks those laws of
communication which apply equally to living beings and ma-
chines.2I call this attitudepostmodern , followingStephen Toul-
min's lead,3 because it also entailsa self-consciousness
aboutthehu-
man rolein information- gatheringand communication.
The birth of cyberneticsand informationscience in the
1940s was fueled bycertainadvances in communicationstechnol-
ogy.But in myview,the primaryimpetusto the cyberneticview
came as a response to the irrefutablepower of quantum physics,
which originated twentyyears earlier.Quantum physicsshoved
the human observer'suncertaintyintothecenterof the scientific
stage, interposinghuman indeterminacybetween the scientist's
theoryand reality.Cyberneticswas framedas a response to what
for many,including Einstein and Wiener, was this intolerable
situation.It sprung froma neo-classicalurge to banish probab-
lism or uncertaintyfrom science, to co-opt the human role in
favorof logic. Wiener soars withwings of lead when he writes
about thisstruggle.In TheHuman Use ofHumanBeings, he turns
theological:"This random element,thisorganicincompleteness,
is one which without too violent a figure of speech we may
consider evil; the negativeevil whichSt. Augustinecharacterizes

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 1987
Spring-Summer 55

as incompleteness."4

The way cybernetics one-upped Heisenbergian physics

ranks as one of the great, sneaky philosophical tricksof the
century.Leo Szilard, as earlyas 1927, followedby NorbertWie-
ner and thenClaude Shannon in the 1940s, took the formulafor
thermodynamicrandomness (entropy ) and used it to define the
randomnessfromwhichinformationarises,and thenalso called
it entropy.This ingenious trickhad powerful consequences. It
appropriated the idea thathumans introduced uncertaintyinto
the systemand defined it as nothingmore or less than a precon-
dition for having a quantifiableamount of information.Cyber-
neticstherebymanaged to subsume the messinessof the human
observer's role under a systemof positivemath.
Norbert Wiener named the science, appropriatelyenough,
after the Greek word for governor,kybernos. A governor is a
servo-mechanism,a controllingdevice thatmediates the flowof
informationbetween sender and receiver; a servo-mechanism
could be a thermostat,or a cruise control on your BMW, or a
human observer of subatomicevents. From the point of viewof
cybernetics,theyobey thesame laws and thereforeare empirical-
ly and metaphysicallyindistinguishable.
The consequences of the abstruse strugglebetween cyber-
neticsand quantum physics,however,have trickleddown to us in
powerful forms. The success of the cyberneticmetaphor has
virtuallyaltered the waywe viewtheworld,willy-nilly, bycreating
one of the most pervasivecontemporarymythswe have, one so
powerfulthatwe have taken it forgranted,even as we inhabitit.
The surface signs of the total operation of thismythare every-
where, however. MTV's Max Headroom and hyper-technolo-
gized music/dance/videos purposefullyblur the line betweenhu-
mans and robots.The mostcommon advertisementsglorifyand
perfectthe human body by mechanizingit. Cyberneticspaved
thetheoreticalpath to thedevelopmentof high-speedcalculating
machines,computers,robots,satellitecommunications,biofeed-
back devices, and thence to artificialintelligencecomputers. It
has spawned and aided a number of sub-disciplines,including
cryptography,behaviorism, robotics, prosthetic engineering,
computationallinguistics,neurochemistry, informationscience,
brain science, general systemsdynamics,game theory,and com-
puter modelling.We see itsinfluencein the prevalenceof "expert
systems,"softwarepackages that supposedly are able to climb
various professional decision trees (from medical diagnosis to

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56 Discourse9

legal briefwritingto tax preparationto, yes,horrors,instruction

in composition, fulfillingthe wish of instructorsand assistant
professorseverywhere).It is apparent in theerosionof privacyas
the result of the massive uploading and correlation of trivial
informationabout us and our transactions,but it also enabled a
new kind of freedom of expression found in the professional-
looking "desktop" publishingby privatecitizenswho have access
to certain personal computers. Perhaps the surest sign of the
radical energy of this mythis that it has displaced traditional
children's imaginings,expressed in their toysand cartoons. To
know an American seven-year-oldtoday is to know Gobots and
Transformers.5
Like manymythsthatare thisdeeply rooted,itlacksa name.
As shorthand, I call it The Mythof the Soft Machine, stealing
WilliamBurroughs'simage, whichI hope summarizesthe essen-
tial image of human vulnerability,freedom, and uncertainty
wedded to mechanical hardness, determinism,and order.

One of the most obscure responses to this new mythology

was the counter-inventionof a new sort of novel on the edge of
literaryexperimentation(what Donald Barthelme might have
meant when he coined the phrase "the leading edge of the trash
phenomenon"). As a resultof the metaphysicalleap initiatedin
the 1940s by cybernetics,literaturethat concerned itselfwith
philosophical questions could no longer comfortablyembrace
the machine metaphor.6By the early 1950s there is a definite
hostilitytowards technology,more, I believe, because of the cy-
bernetic propositionthan, as is commonlyassumed, because of
the dropping of the Bomb on Hiroshima. I would suggest that
cyberneticshas had at least as much impact as the Bomb, for
ultimately, the formeris more threateningthan the latter:radio-
activitymaydemolishyourbody,destroywholecities,and threat-
en to make the human race extinct.But cyberneticsthreatensto
deprive us of our sense of our selvesand authorsof theirauthor-
ity.It would replace the mind witha brain, meaning withinfor-
mation,reading withinformationprocessing,the textwithtech-
nique, uncertaintywithclosure, love withfeedback loops.7
This is a positionthatis bound to threatenliterature.So itis
not surprisingthat in the ensuing decades we suddenly see the
emergence of a new counter-genre,mixingapocalypticimagin-
ings withanti-mechanisticthemes,deliberate use of cybernetic

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 1987
Spring-Summer 57

principles, and anti-formalisticexperiments.8This counter-

genre of cyberneticfictionis exemplifiedby the textsof William
Burroughs ( Nova Express[1964] and The TicketthatExploded
[1967]) which prescribea cure for our imminentcyberneticiza-
tionin demolishingthe word. In Burroughs'swildmythography,
humans are simplymessages typed onto thejelly of flesh by a
biological typewriterhe calls the "soft machine." He tells us to
send the machine a self-dismantling feedbackmessage.9Similar-
ly,we see a cooler demolition of the machineryof logic in Samuel
Beckett's Comment C'est ( How It Is [1958]) - and to a certain
extent,in Kurt Vonnegut'searlysatiricalthrustagainstcybernet-
ics in PlayerPiano (1952) which responds directlyto Norbert
Wiener'slandmarkpopularizationof cybernetics, a book withthe
chilling titleThe Human Use of Human Beings(1948).
The singleunifyingfeatureof cyberneticfictionsis thatthey
-
pose as cyberneticdevices which ultimately and this is the
source of theirpowerand postmodernism- do notwork.In other
words,theypose as soft(vulnerableand uncertain)machines(sys-
tems which strivefor invulnerability and completeness). For in-
stance,John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy(1963) tellsus thatitis written
by a fabulous computer, WESCAC, and thatJВ is onlyan editor.
Beckett'sThe LostOnes (1973) is a textwhich asks the reader to
participate in a gedanken , a thought experiment designed to
maintainthe notion of an enormous cylinder-machinein which
are trapped 200 humanoid bodies. Recent fictionby Don Delillo
touches on the theme ( WhiteNoise [1986] and Ratners Star
[1978]). And of course it receives full-blowntreatmentin the
novels of Thomas Pynchon. We also find it in the postmodern,
self-consciousscience fictionof Phillip K. Dick ("Do Androids
Dream of ElectricSheep?"), StanislawLem (especiallyTheCyber-
iad: Fablesfor a Cybernetic Age [1976]), William Gibson ( Neuro-
mancer[1983]), and Samuel Delaney ( The EinsteinIntersection),
among others. Joseph McElroy's PLUS (1977) occurs inside a
brain which has been cut out of its human body, linked to a
weather-monitoring computer,and launched in a communica-
tionssatelliteintoorbitaround the earth. WilliamGibson'sNeur-
omancerplaces us inside the soaring, impressionisticspace of a
world-widecomputer networkwhich linksdirectlywiththe hu-
man nerve-net,an extended McLuhanesque fantasy.Barthelme
places us inside a communicationsblack box in his short story,
"The Explanation" fromCityLife(1973), and Italo Calvino has us
shuttlingback and forthembodied as messages in a communica-
tion systemin his story"Night Driver" in T-Zero. The narrator

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58 Discourse9

sums up the CyberneticPositionquite succinctly.He says,"I can

no longer accept any situationother than thistransformationof
ourselves into the messages of ourselves.'40
However,thesetextsadopt thiscyberneticpositionironically.
Their purpose is not merelyto furthercomplicate the ancient
metaphor "This textis a machine"; rather,theyare designed to
explore, and even create or replicate in the reader, that gap
where mechanismand humans differ,where cyberneticsfailsto
account forhuman activity. Cyberneticfictionemploysa hyper-evolved
technique that
ofself-reflexiveness makes the readerintenselyawareofhis
or herownstatusas an information processing machine , too.That is,
these text-machinesplayupon thosetalentsin the reader thatare
precisely most mechanical, most compulsive, if you will, most
cybernetic.But thevirtuein thistacticis thatsomehow,byforcing
the reader into a cyberneticfix,these textssucceed in pushing
the reader out and beyond the pointof his or her own automati-
zation. In fact,thesefictionsaccomplisha formaldeconstruction,
in the strictDerridean sense. They use the illusion of logocen-
trismto demolish it. They privilege the cyberneticsystemsof
informationin order to de-privilegethem as a wayof gettingat
any essential meaning. They use, in Derrida's terms,a "positive
scienceof writing"whichexposes itsown fallacy.Derrida calls this
failure a kind of textual "incompetence - the closureof the
1
episteme.'4
There's a certain momentin postmoderntextswhichseizes
the reader withan interpretivecompulsionthatspiralsintoever-
widening circuitsof apparent organization,deciphermentand
meaningfulness,while leading only to irresolution.In certain
especiallywell-wroughttexts,thisspiralabsorbs,likea blackhole,
everyother aspect of the textuntilwe readers are captivatedby
and left only with our own compulsion to interpret.Beckett,
Pynchon,McElroy,and Barth are mastersof this technique.12
In postmoderncyberneticfictionthistextualeventor verbal
mechanismleading to "erasure" is created by the author's delib-
erate use of cyberneticprinciples. In what follows,I refer to
Pyrichon'sThe Cryingof Lot 49 because it is probably the most
widelyread and accessibleof cyberneticfictions.Kathleen Wood-
ward was one of the firstto point to Pynchon'smasteryof cyber-
netic technique. Calling The CryingofLot 49 "informationpro-
cessingout of control"and "positivefeedbackat itscrazywork,"13
she explores how Oedipa Maas, theheroine,uncoversa systemof
exfoliatingclues in the will of Pierce Inveraritythat sends her
into circuitsof wilder and more de-stabilizingoscillations.The

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 1987
Spring-Summer 59

more informationOedipa receives,the more helplesslypuzzled

she becomes. Far from helping her to achieve resolution,her
interpretiveacts only serve to expose the futilityof her tech-
niques of interpretation.Of course, as many criticshave noted,
Oedipa becomes the avatar of Reader.
Earlier,Pynchon descends into a spirallingplay on the ini-
tialsDT. Oedipa hasjust found out thatan old sailor,who seemed
to hold a clue to her search, has died. He sufferedfromthe dťs.
In mourning him, Oedipa recalls thatdt also stands for "a time
differential,a vanishingsmall instantin whichchange had to be
confrontedforwhat it was, where it can no longer disguise itself
as somethinginnocuous like an average rate." This pun sends
Oedipa and the reader into a seizure of dťs thatlook something
like this:
-DT stands fordelirium tremens. Delirein Latin means, literal-
"to
ly, go off the furrow." Tremens means to tremble.Pynchonin
the next paragraph interpretsthe experience as "a trembling
unfurrowingof the mind's ploughshare."To unfurrowthe brain
would mean to smooth out those wrinkleswhich comparative
anatomiststell us are literalsigns of human intellect.
-The term dt plays a special role in Pynchon'scalculus. It
resonates forward in his work to Gravity'sRainbow,where the
vanishinglysmall instantof timerepresentsthe rocketfrozenin
midair that comes screamingacross the skyat the beginningof
the novel and which is about to land at its end. This in turn
shuttlesus back to V whichsimilarlytakesitsname (in part) from
the German rocket.
-Here, however,dtis mostrelevantas thedimension usedin the
calculusofinformation flow in thechannel oftransmission
. This use of
the term opens the door to informationtheory,and sends the
reader into correlationswithother passages mentioningcyber-
netic principles. Here I mention only one. Later in the text,
Pynchon describes Oedipa as feeling"trapped between the ze-
roes and ones of an enormous computer." What exists in the
excluded middle between the zeroes and ones of a computer?
Pynchon has warned us about "excluded middles: they'rebad
shitto be avoided at all costs."The zeroes and ones of a computer
representbits , an inventionof Claude Shannon, who suggested
thata mechanismcould representinformationif its potentialto
be "on" (1) or "off' (0) representsan alternative.The word bit,
therefore,designates an irreducible amount of information.
Gregory Bateson whimsicallycalled it "the difference which
makesa difference."Here, Oedipa findsthateach bitof informa-

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60 Discourse9

tionis thedifferencewhichmakes,as Derrida would say,a "différ -

ance The informationserves to defer meaning to some other
place, outside the systemshe's in. That is where, I believe, Pyn-
chon wants us to be as well.

Pynchondoesn't merelyportraythe techniquesand effects

of such manipulations,he actuallyuses themon us, the readers,
and tells us so. In order to interpretthe phrase "the trembling
unfurrowingof the mind's ploughshare,"one has to experience
it. This is "reading in the servo-mechanicalloop." This self-
deconstructingactivityconvertsthe human brain into a linkin a
positive-feedbackservo-mechanism. The reader experiences
postmodernvertigo,tremblingon theedge of a revelationof this
truth:"There are no revelationspossible as long as you remain
withinthe systemof your reading."
Pynchonhas used a combinationof cyberneticprincipleson
us:

1. Uncertainty
createsa gap wherefoolsand angels
rushin. Humansare uncertainty-reducing
animals.Weare
compelledto resolveuncertainties
whenconfronted with
them.Somewouldarguethatweactually seekuncertainties.

2. Increasetheamountof noise(accidentalmarginalia
or scribbles)in the signal(intendedmessage)and you in-
creasethepotentialforinformation. Noiseis simplyentro-
py.Information is negentropy,or the resolutionof noise
intosignal.Noiseisthechaoticgroundfromwhichinforma-
tionis organized.Froma morehumanor readerlypointof
view,theresolution of mysteries
leads to greatercertainty;
thatis thepointat whichinformation appearsto be mean-
ingful.
3. But whatis noise and whatis signalwe can only
determineby lookingat the source(the author)and the
terminal(thereader).Thatis,one man'sscrabbleisanother
man'ssignificance.
As we read,we convinceourselvesthat
ourextractionofinformation ismeaningful.Unfortunately,
as we read Pynchonand othersof hisilk,we discoverthat
competing systemsarise,systemswhichcancelor contradict
ourown.Thisleadstofurther irresolution
and thecreation
of newuncertainty.

4. See 1.

Used together,these principlescreate a message systemthat

summons up the machineryof interpretationin us readers. But

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 1987
Spring-Summer 61

by continuallybroadening the scope of reference,Pynchonen-

sures that our reading operates not to bring us to some zero
degree of certaintythrougha negativefeedbackloop in the way
thata modernistnovel or a thermostatworksto adjust the infor-
mation (about the world or about temperaturein a room) to a
desired point and then shuts down. Rather,the text works to
frustrateour link to the machineryof interpretation,including
the machineryof language.
In response,ifwe are healthy(as Oedipa and otherPynchon
heroes and heroines are not), we find some alternativeway to
view our reading of signs and, consequently,some alternative
place withinus. We recognize the incompetenceof the text,its
pretense at offeringus closure, and we embrace, instead those
realmsof meaning thatlie beyond the playof mere information.
We slip out from under mere mechanism. Pynchon and other
cyberneticfictionmakershave achieved the enduring goal of
American fiction:to use the word as a weapon against the word,
to use systemas a weapon againstsystem,and to lightout forthe
territoriesof meaning that lie in silence.
This, I would suggest,is especially crucial in a time when
cyberneticsis one of the most potent and characteristicepiste-
mologiesof our age and threatensto dominateour culture'sview
of what human communicationis reallyall about.

Notes
1David Porush,The
SoftMachine
: Cybernetic
Fiction(Londonand
New York:Methuen,1985).
2 NorbertWiener, Controland Communicationin the
Cybernetics:
Animaland in theMachine(Cambridge,MA: MIT Press,1948).
3
StephenToulmin,TheReturn toCosmology:PostmodernScience
and
theTheology
ofNature(Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1982).
4 NorbertWiener,TheHumanUse Human
of Beings(New York:
1954) 11.
Doubleday/Anchor,
5We can
gaugethemyth's invisiblenessbytheextentto whichits
metaphors havebecomeliteral:data, bytes, sender
noise,
feedback, ; receiver,
openand closedsystems,
organization, - all the
and entropy
redundancy,
mumbojumbo of cyberneticmythology.
6As lateas 1933,
RaymondRousselin hiscollection CommentJ'ai
écrit demeslivres
certains (HowI WroteSomeofMyBooks ) constructed
verbal
mechanisms thataspiredto a pure and totalcongruencebetweenthe
machinery of languageand themachinery describedbythatlanguage.

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62 Discourse9

7
enough,thebomband cybernetics
Interestingly are intimately
linked.As NorbertWienerdocumentsin hisworkson cybernetics (op.
cit.),one ofhisoriginalmotives fordevelopinga mathematics ofcontrol
and communication was to furtherrefinethe guidancesystemsand
trajectory calculationformortarand rockettechnology duringWorld
WarII. Thomas Pynchonmakesliterary hayout of thisconnectionin
Gravity s Rainbow(1973) in whichthe hero (TyroneSlothrop)slowly
discoversthatthereis a cybernetic-behaviorist-mystical
connectionbe-
tweenhissexualconquestsin Londonand theschwarzgerat - the"dark"
or "mysterious thing" - the black-boxguidancegovernorin thenose-
cone of V-rockets fallingon London.
8 I would
argue thateven the highlyformalisticexperiments of
Barthand Pynchonare "anti-formalistic" sincetheyare designedex-
presslytodefeatthepurposeof formalism, whichis toachievea totaliz-
ingsystem. I further
argue(below)thatthisisthedistinguishingfeature
betweenmodernism, whichpretendsthatitssystem iseffectively
totaliz-
ing,and postmodernism,which drivesat some phenomenological sense
of theinsufficiency
of system.

•'TonyTanner'saccountofBurroughs's
fiction
elucidateshisanti-
mechanismratherthoroughly in CityofWords:
American Fiction1950-
1970 (New York:Harperand Row,1971).
10ItaloCalvino,T-Zero
, trans.WilliamWeaver(NewYork:Harcourt
BraceJovanovich,1969).
11 , trans.GayatriSpivak(Balti-
JacquesDerrida,Of Grammatology
more:JohnsHopkinsUP, 1974) 93.
12I wouldcontrastthiswithmodernist
technique,wherethetext
leavesa trailofclues- Nabokov'sLolitaandJoyce'sUlysses
- thatleadto
the uncoveringof a map of reading,a correlation amongimages,a
completion ofthepuzzle.Closesthedoortotheroomofinterpretation.
Not sterile(for the visionis deliveredwhole),merelycompleteand
consistent.Indeed,I wouldarguethatthisis thedistinguishing
feature
betweenthetwomodesof discourse.
,sKathleenWoodward,
Modellingin RecentAmerican
"Cybernetic
Writing,"NorthDakotaQuarterly51.1 (Winter1983): 57-73. See also
KathleenWoodward, ed., TheMyths
ofInformation: andPostin-
Technology
dustrial
Culture(London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul; Madison:Coda
Press,1980) and Teresade Lauretis,AndreasHuyssen,and Kathleen
Woodward,eds., The Technological Theories
Imagination: and Fictions
(Madison:Coda Press,1980).BothbooksareavailablefromIndianaUP.

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 1987
Spring-Summer 63

Mechanismof themusicalandroidbyJacquet-Droz
(fatherand son) firstviewfromLe MondedesAutomates
by
A. Chapuisand E. Gélis,Vol.2, Paris,1928,p. 274

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