Computers, subjects and objects

Descartes famously contrasted the mind (res cogitans) with the external world (res extensa), but Mark Poster suggests that computer writing fudges that distinction: “the computer dematerializes the written trace. As inputs are made to the computer through the keyboard, pixels of phosphor are illuminated on the screen, pixels that are formed into letters. Since there letters are no more than representations of ASCII codes contained in Random Access Memory, they are alterable practically at the speed of light. The writer encounters his or her words in a form that is evanescent, instantly transformable, in short, immaterial.” In other forms of writing, the written word becomes a fixed object confronting and sometimes defying the author, but computer writing to a degree “avoids the transformation of idea into graph while achieving the same purpose. The writer thus confronts a representation that is similar in its spatial fragility and temporal simultaneity to the contents of the mind or to the spoken word. Writer and writing, subject and object have a similarity that approaches identity, a simulation of identity.” In the “borderline event” of computer writing, “the two sides of the line lose their solidity and stability.”