The Truth of Desire

Lauren McLaughlin’s short story “The Perfect Man” (discussed at the end of my last post) revolves around the (not altogether unexpected) plot twist that the “perfect man” referred to in the title turns out not only not to be a “man” at all (but rather a virtual reality AI automaton), but furthermore turns out not to be as “perfect” as the protagonist might have desired, or rather as perfect as she thought she desired. That is to say, although this “virtual companion” is ostensibly designed to the protagonist Lucy’s specifications, he/it instead treats her horribly, ultimately convincing her to submit to abusive conditions. Lucy, nevertheless, finds herself unexpectedly drawn to this sadistic treatment, suggesting that the robot actually understands better than she what she truly desires.

Perhaps more disturbing than this rather familiar variant on the familiar “rape fantasy” fantasy, however, is the fact that the automaton in McLaughlin’s story derives its knowledge of what Lucy “actually” desires from the process of “mining [her] web habits twenty-four-seven”—which is to say, this internet-based entity reflects her own unacknowledged desires fantasies as unwittingly revealed through her activity on the same internet.

Like all good science fiction, McLaughlin’s story grapples with issues which are, in some ways, already pressing concerns in today’s world. For instance, the idea of using the internet as a figurative Lacanian mirror, reflecting back to us desires (and knowledge) which we didn’t know we possessed, is actually already at hand, as seen in a new software program called Illumio, which, a recent NY Times article, notes, is kind of super-search engine, functioning by “transparently distributing a request for information” to friends and colleagues. This rather hopeful emphasis on “transparen[cy],” however, is perhaps somewhat misleading, since the actual “request for information” is first preceded by a process whereby the software invisibly “allows the user to mine the data on the computers of friends, business associates and others with shared interests on any subjects.” The resulting information is then used to determine which of these friends or associates is the most “expert” in the field that one has a question about, and allows the user to direct the question to said “expert.” "This is searching your friends' heads as reflected in what's on their computers,” explains an investor in the company.

Illumio’s upbeat marketing rhetoric, however, obscures the fact that the software is essentially a model of interpellation, “hailing” users as “experts,” and then “requesting” that they step into the subject position that has been assigned to them.

More generally, the Illumio software builds on a fantasy that we (either as a collective or as individuals) possess knowledge which we didn’t know we had. This, in some ways, is the fantasy of the ideal search engine—one which not only has all of the answers but also, more importantly, knows intuitively all of the right questions (indeed, as any good scholar knows, research is less about coming up with the right answers, than it is with knowing how to formulate the right questions). As Google’s Larry Page recently put it,

The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly. You could ask 'what should I ask Larry?' and it would tell you.

In a very interesting discussion of these remarks, however, Jodi Dean notes that

It seems the engine is to know the truth of desire. More than our mother, more than our lover, it will accept our demands knowing completely what we want. The ultimate subject supposed to know, then, is not even a subject at all, which, come to think of it, is hardly a surprise.

This paradox of the “ultimate subject” being “not even a subject at all,” in turn, is relevant not only to Google executives’ fantasies of an idealized product, but also to legal and political controversies currently facing Google and, more generally, the internet as a whole.

For instance, the European Parliament voted last December to mandate the retention of certain data relating to Internet, telephone, and Voice over Internet Protocol for up to two years. The US Justice Department, meanwhile, has been quietly pushing for a similar law in the US, ostensibly to fight both child pornography and terrorism.

Some of the stakes involved in these debates over government intervention in the internet, meanwhile, are illustrated by the juxtaposition of the recent announcement of Chinese Google’s selection of “guge” 谷歌 [literally “song of the grain” or "song of the (silicon) valley"] as its Chinese name, on the one hand, and the stark controversy over Google’s decision to capitulate to the Chinese government’s demands that it censor its search results based on political considerations, on the other. Google’s act of self-naming, therefore, coincides with a recognition that Google, as virtual “subject,” is actually “subjected” to external political control (Google’s “song,” in effect, functioning as a proverbial “voice of the father”).

This turn of the internet from idealized subject to an instrument of subjectification, meanwhile, is not even necessarily premised on the presence of actual government interference. For instance, a NY Times article today, discusses a case of marital infidelity in China. The husband, the Times reports, discovered on-line correspondence between his wife and a college student, confronted her, forgave her, subsequently discovered that the liaison was still continuing, whereupon he proceeded to post a letter denouncing the student by his real name. This quickly led to a virtual, and real, lynching, wherein

Impassioned people teamed up to uncover the student's address and telephone number, both of which were then posted online. Soon, people eager to denounce him showed up at his university and at his parents' house, forcing him to drop out of school and barricade himself with his family in their home.

The Times notes that this is an example of a

growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.

What we have here, therefore, is effectively a literal playing-out of the lesson of McLaughlin’s “A Perfect Man,” in which the internet functions not only as a literal source of information (the original infidelity being discovered via on-line correspondence between the wife and her lover), but furthermore enables, and even facilitates, a process whereby the body politic cannibalistically turns in upon itself--in effect playing out at a societal level the same cluster of sado-masochistic fantasies awhich McLaughlin’s story explores at a more individual level.