In 1974 the philosopher Robert Nozick created a thought experiment that asked if a user would prefer a simulated reality where they experienced nothing but pleasure, or would reject it for the pursuit of real world experiences. The machine would stimulate the brain in such a way as to evoke those sensations, without the user having to go through the process. This experiment was designed as an attempt to show that there is more to life that just pleasure, that hedonism is refuted, and that, if given the choice, people would pursue things other that pleasure and sensation.
We can see how this links into our ongoing series looking at various machines and assemblages. (See earlier posts from September and October on Cybernetic Machines, Science Machines, and Gaming Machines).
What happens if we try and fit the experience machine within that previous framework?
An experience machine is a feeling created by a creator fed into an assemblage called an experience machine that produces an experience.
The formulation breaks down a bit, because the experience machine, as described in the thought experiment is so already so generic we lack the words to provide a distinction to it.
We generally describe different classes of experience, in much the same way that “content” (as used by McLuhan, and since then) is an ur-descriptor for different types of media. So “experience” might describe a taste, or a sound, or feeling, or emotion, or all these things assembled into a whole. We are talking about the constituent elements, or the whole at the same time.
The experience machine thought experiment is not making a distinction on these different types of activities, whereas we as experiencers often do – ascribing value to the kinds of experiences we like.
The hedonists may claim otherwise.
But let’s see if we can remake the machine in a way that’s useful. Let’s take a look at that statement again, at the most redundant level:
An experience machine is a feeling by a (creator) fed into an assemblage called an experience machine that produces an experience
That’s incredibly repetitive. The issue may be that while the EM provides an experience to the user, it is more about capture and control, the Soma of Huxley’s Brave New World. So if we rebuild the machine with that in mind, it might look something more like this:
An experience machine is a device by a (creator) fed into an assemblage called an experience machine that produces an enthralled subject.
The addition of enthralled subject helps us identify exactly what is happening to the user of the machine (if that’s how we want to characterize them), but we’re still a little stuck with the nature of the assemblage. Back when we looked at Science Machines we talked about how those assemblages are what we had called “cybernetic bio-technical machines” earlier on. This is still true. But what kind of assemblage would desire to have an enthralled subject? What wants
Are we not just describing society? And what kind of society would that be?
I feel like our French philosopher Gilles Deleuze had an idea about this. In his 1990 essay Postscript on the Societies of Control, he described how modern society had transitioned from sovereign societies through to disciplinary societies of early modernity, through to the new form arising in the 20th century, the control society.
Deleuze was describing something that was already underway, the context in which Nozick developed the original experiment of the experience machine. The Control Society had already been born out of the shift in the world order following WWII, and the rise of the computing as a tool around which the societies oriented themselves. Within the control society, codes and passwords instruments of regulation and for engaging with the Machine(s) of the society.
Reworking our madlib, we’re getting closer to untangling our experience machines:
An experience machine is a device used by a (controller) applied to an assemblage called a control society that produces an enthralled subject.
But we’ve highlighted the key word there, the one that might be causing some issues in how we think about this version of the machine. Most of the assemblages we’ve been looking at have been at a (relatively) small-scale, rarely extending past the limit of the monkeysphere (or Dunbar’s Number, for those more comfortable with boring names).
Does our formulation still work for something on the scale of society itself? What would a social machine look like? We’ll take a look at that next…