"... ELSE LOOP FOREVER". THE UNTIMELINESS OF MEDIA In ...

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techniques of synchronisation meet a deadly economy of time. "Timeto live" means that each daten packet is assigned a given lifespan; "Time to die" stands for the crucial signature of theinformation age .A mathematical anticipation of endingTechno-mathematics operates in an untimely mode (to make use ofFriedrich Nietzsche's German notion of "unzeitgemäß").Oswald Spengler starts volume I of his classic Untergang desAbendlandes with his notorious chapter on "The Sense of Numbers". He criticizes modern "Faustean" science for itsemphasis on mathematical laws of causality which do not catch theunpredictability of life which is rather a function of destiny.According to Spengler, future live can be sensed, but notcalculated. Soon after Spengler, Western science managed to copeeven with destiny and unpredictability in mathematical terms:linear prediction by stochastic calculation and harmonic analysis,as developed by Norbert Wiener. Linear prediction (which inlinguistic grammar is futurum exactum) pracitcally means theanticipation of the past in the future. This chronotopos of "pastin the future" has been developed as a mathematical tool for antiaircraftartillery in the Second World war, leading from theanalogue computer (Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyzer) to thefirst electronic computers.With anticipatory targeting (known from human "musical"perception, such as melody recognition as analyzed by HenriBergson as much as by Edmund Husserl), such a directional "senseof ending" opens a temporal horizon, in fact: it temporalizes theapparent momentary presence into an augmented presence. What hasbeen described by Edmund Husserl (examplified by the humancapability to grasp a musical melody) as "inneres Zeitbewußtsein",a temporal horizon consisting of re- and protentions, has becometechnomathematical in real-time computing (since the storedprogram computer, the so-called von Neumann architecture ofcomputing) which - seen under that aspect - is "musical" incharacter. Indeed, this form of temporal integration is known fromhuman physiology and in linguistics, when it comes to (Husserlian)semantic pro- and retention in sentence-building, such as thebackwards-correction of the meaning of a word. A similarphenomenon is the perception of a musical melody when there isdiscreet sonic pulses in (physical) reality. Each attentiveperception involves always already an expectation, resulting fromthe evaluation of what has just be perceived by mixing it with thememory of previously perceived impressions. Thus during the socalledpsychic time of presence the immediate future is alreadybeing calculated. "Bergsonean time" (as mentioned in a chapter ofNorbert Wiener's Cybernetics), which is the experienced event time(temps durée), differs from the physical time in science (tempsespace). Is it therefore - referring to Husserlean phenomenology -
an anthropologically (or better: neuro-physiologically) groundedtendency to predict from past events a future behaviour of timeseries. In the case of music, the cognitive hypothesis states thatthe physically heard signals will be reproduced in one way or theother in the immediate future ("Protention"). It is suchprojective fields which account for an impresison of regularity -a role traditionally ascribed to the abstract notion of prescribedmetrum .Sensors for targets (rockets, trajectories)The meaning of the end and the sense of ending are closelycoupled. There is a complex and controversial relationship betweenthe ideas of the end and of sense, with "sense" here referring tothe physiologically sensual (neurologically and electrotechnically)signal-based, but to "meaning" as well - anambivalence kept in Italien (senso). Let us look at the pluralityof semantics. Latin finis means border, limit, end, achievement,goal, final aim, purpose, equivalent here to Greek telos. It hasbeen a technological paradigm of 20th century communicationtheory, in fact cybernetics, which gave a hitherto metaphysicalnotion an epistemological twist for both humans and machines, asexpressed in Norbert Wiener's writing on "Behaviour, Purpose, andTeleology", cultivating a non-deterministic, still teleologicallyorientated theory of feed-back . Between target anddestruction, on one hand, finis means end and ruin, whereas, onthe other, result, achievement, aim. This polysemanticity is keptin Italian, but as well is resonant in elaborate German language,f. e. in G. W. F. Hegel's notion of the "end" of art ("Ende" hereequals "Vollendung", fulfillment).Military techno-mathematics is less metaphorical here, orexpressed the other way round: it is literally metaphorical (with"metaphor" naming "transfer"). Archytas of Taranta once explainedacoustic sound kinematically: a really media-archaeological,process-orientated explanation indeed. His kinematic (or dynamic)description of sound as crash of objects with air most probalyresults from the poetic notion of the voice as missile . Archytas recognized the essence of sound from its temporalnature (and thus its frequency avant la lettre), analyzing thathigher sound (the pitch) results from higher speed. In ballistics,the final destination has been a function of mathematicalcalculation, giving rise to a plethora of new methods. A shell[Geschoß] has to be imbued with an in-built "sense of ending" inorder to arrive at its planned destination, culminating with theGerman V1 rocket in World War II and its pre-calculatedtrajectory. With the V2 rocket a further escalation happened: Aself-correcting mechanism (a kind of Analog Computer, the in-built"Mischgerät") was able to correct aberrations during thetrajectory ("on the fly") - a technomathematical sensorium ofending. We know the image from Iraq War II: The ending of the
Page 6 and 7: But wait a minute, have you noticed
Page 8 and 9: perception of a melody takes place
Page 10 and 11: individual laws of media. While mov
Page 12 and 13: emains in the end are listings - a
Page 16 and 17: trajectory is the final hit of the
Page 18: Feedback, Control, and Computing be

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