Energy-hungry, surrogate Cyberworld

It seems we have fast adapted to life in the cyberworld, that used to be called cyberspace, a misleading term because the cyberworld is more than a space. This is indicated already by the 'cyber' in its name that derives from Greek κυβερνᾶν (_kybernan_) 'to steer, guide, govern'. The cyberworld has everything to do with governing all sorts of movement via algorithmic control. It is also a world because it is all-encompassing, enabling near-total immersion in it as a surrogate alternative to the familiar physical and social worlds. As a surrogate, it is also dangerous, especially for the youth, by offering an escape from problems in the interplay with others when growing up. It seems you have more control playing algorithmically steered games than interplaying with flesh-and-blood others. The algorithms exercise a mesmerizing attraction especially on young minds through the seemingly endless and easy existential possibilities they offer.

The basic unit of the cyberworld is the Universal Turing Machine, a mathematical construct thought up by Alan Turing in the 1930s to model what he regarded to be human thinking. In his 1936 paper on Computable Numbers, he casts human thinking as computation, a hermeneutic recasting of what has long been conceived as reason (νοῦς _nous_, ratio, rationality), with enormous ramifications that, more often than not, are sold to a naïve and misled public as 'human progress' in 'improving lives'. This ambivalent progress consists in enhancing power over kinds of movement even beyond the 'classic' case of physical movement, especially to the kinds of movement through which we humans sociate with one another. Such enhancement includes increasing immersion in and dependence upon the cyberworld with its media platforms and communication apps, and ever-increasing subjugation to and dependence upon what the algorithms steering the cyberworld allow or disallow.

But what is an algorithm and what does it have to do with the Universal Turing Machine? The 'Universal' refers to Turing's ideal construction that can accept any computable algorithm at all to control it via instructions. Although such an ideal machine will never be built, it nevertheless theorizes what any computer at all does, namely, work step-by-step through the digital data input to the algorithm employing purely if-then rules encoded in the algorithm. Both the algorithm and the data are nothing other than strings of digital bits, 0 and 1, or bit-strings. The algorithmic bit-string steers how the data bit-string is to be acted upon by the algorithm's logical if-then rules to generate step-by-step, along the one-dimensional time-line of successive now-steps, a third bit-string as output. The algorithm is hence a set of encoded if-then instructions. The output bit-string controls some kind of movement either within or outside the cyberworld. The cyberworld thus consists of countless trillions of algorithmic bit-strings copulating with data bit-strings, whose output bit-strings may merely be fed into other algorithms or used directly to control a movement, e.g. whether you can access your online bank account or whether a rocket launches.

Since any computer, even if it be a super-computer or a quantum computer, works according to if-then rules, in principle, any computation can be carried out by a Turing machine with the appropriate algorithm. In turn, any algorithm at all, even those driving multi-level artificial neurons employed in Artificial Intelligence, can be broken down, in principle, into the Turing simplicity of a bit-string. It is also easy to see that, since the Turing machine only computes according to if-then rules, computing already existing data bit-strings, it acts with blind necessity from the past, i.e. it does not 'see' into the temporal dimension of the future at all. Such imaginative seeing into the future, envisaging a possibility, however, is the hallmark of human freedom that a Turing machine cannot simulate.

In truth, a Turing machine is not in time at all. It is only we humans who are exposed to the openness of three-dimensional time and are able, for instance, to insert logical if-then rules into an algorithmic bit-string with a particular end or τέλος (_telos_) in mind. A corollary of this is that the Artificial Intelligence employing multi-level, so-called 'deep-learning', artificial neurons, no matter how mind-bogglingly complex these become, only works by detecting patterns in already existing data and extrapolating them into the future. Predicting what is coming from the future thus becomes a statistical matter relying on the so-called Law of Large Numbers: in the long run, in a significant number of instances, the A.I. algorithm will generate correct predictions. When deployed e.g. as advertising in the cyberworld's mass markets, A.I. will 'predict' consumers' behaviour sufficiently well, based on the personal data collected on their previous consumer behaviour. 'Sufficiently well' here means merely that the advertising will generate enough hits (actual purchases) to be worth the trouble, and especially the cost, of doing the market research, i.e. gathering the personal data of unsuspecting prospective customers, and writing the appropriate A.I. algorithm to nudge their purchasing behaviour.

The cyberworld conceived as countless algorithmic bit-strings copulating with countless input-data bit-strings to generate countless output bit-strings controlling movements of all kinds (physical, mental, social, ...) is, of course, a theoretical idea that nevertheless provides an answer to the ontological question: What is the cyberworld? The idea of the Universal Turing Machine is the key to grasping its essence, its whatness. However, the cyberworld as we know it is actually physically constructed by deploying the suitable technologies from the material sciences through electromagnetic engineering (esp. constructing fast digital networks) to computer programming. Actually carrying out computations in this artificial, engineered world is a kind of physical movement that, in turn, requires physical energy to drive it. To change a bit in a material electromagnetic medium from 0 to 1 or vice versa requires electrical energy that has to be generated in some way. Electrons must be made to move in a controlled way.

This contrasts with the movement of the human mind itself, that can only be crudely modelled by conceiving it as computation or as physical movement at all. The mind moves freely and effortlessly, pre-spatially and pre-materially, through the openness of three-dimensional time, hip-hopping from one temporal dimension to another and understanding what comes into its focus one way or another. The mind is hermeneutic, interpretive in nature, not computational, employing the brain as its organ in an extremely energy-efficient way. Today's A.I. experts and neuroscientists marvel over how energy-efficient the brain is, after having misguidedly conceptually reduced mental movement to physical brain movement, imagining that  consciousness is an immaterial epiphenomenon generated by the physical movement of material neurons. How does the brain manage such energy-efficiency? they ask in their perplexity, imagining themselves to be committed materialists. 

This acknowledgement of perplexing energy-efficiency does not stop them from continuing to physically construct and extend the energy-inefficient, artificial, surrogate cyberworld. That is their mission. In so doing, they notice that the physical energy requirements to perform digital calculations explode exponentially. Already today, data centres, especially those carrying out A.I. computations, are consuming immense amounts of electrical energy surpassing the electricity consumption of entire small cities. The need for algorithmic control of all kinds of movement through the digitized, electromagnetic medium of the cyberworld, however, is insatiable, since it has proved itself to be highly effective. 

The cyberworld has turned out to be invaluable as the medium of choice for algorithmically disseminating disinformation on a mass scale, in particular, to influence voting behaviour in elections. The state has discovered that it is indispensable for controlling the movements of its citizenry, e.g. through surveillance as well as for tax collection. Digital technologies are today indispensable for increasing productivity and accelerating the turnover of deployed capital, thus enhancing the endless valorization of thingified value (The Medium). The cyberworld is also the domain of a global mass market for both capitalist enterprises and consumers where produced goods and services are sold to realize revenues for capitalist enterprises both large and small. The opening-up of the internet for commercial purposes in the 1990s was a boon for endless profit-making, starting with the giant U.S. tech corporations that were the first to see its capitalist potential.

In other posts I have discussed what lies behind this insatiable striving for power over movement of all kinds that dovetails so seamlessly with the striving for endless valorization. These are two ambivalent 'devilishly divine' ideas that have possessed our mortal mind and are personified by two hitherto unknown gods (or demons) whom I have named Willy P. and Pleon Exia. The cyberworld represents perhaps the consummate realization of the two gods' collaboration.

Further reading: 'Turing's cyberworld of timelessly copulating bit-strings' 2012.

'Turing's Cyberworld' in Information Cultures in the Digital Age: A Festschrift in Honour of Rafael Capurro Matthew Kelly & Jared Bielby (eds.) Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016 pp. 65-81.

'Algorithmic Control of Movement in Time: Abolishing even our selves ourselves' in Kinder und Jugendliche in der Krise: Gegenwärtige Herausforderungen und neue Perspektiven Rainer J. Kaus, Hartmut Günther (eds.), transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2025 pp. 219-233.

Movement and Time in the Cyberworld: Questioning the Digital Cast of Being De Gruyter, Berlin 2019.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024. 

Tale of the Qua: A Philosophical Comedy KDP 2024.

The Good & other gods.