the improvement of central europe

by

Oswald Wiener

translated by Nathaniel McBride

appendix A

the bioadaptor

(for w. pichler)

(1965–66 catalogue)

(unrevised)

a. philosophical approaches and prospective account of the system.

in its principal features, the bioadaptor offers what i believe is arguably the first outline of a comprehensive solution to all the problems of the world. it is the opportunity of our century: liberation from philosophy through technology[1]). its purpose is none other than to substitute itself for the world, that is, to assume control of the ‘existing environment’ whose function as a sender and receiver of vital information (food and entertainment, metabolic processes and social intercourse) has up until now been completely unsatisfactory – and to better fulfil its specified task than the now obsolete so-called natural environment, supposedly shared by ‘everyone’, was ever capable of.

the function of the bioadaptor can be compared to that of an extraordinarily developed uterus which, through a process of constant adjustment, grows to meet the most complex needs of a highly organised organism (‘happiness suit’). it can be understood as an ‘extra-corporeal’ hypertrophy of its occupant’s own organ modules and complex nerve structures, and in this respect is a converter of pleasure impulses projected by human beings into the environment around them (servo-narcissus).


[1] (as well as: language as an argument against solipsism)

the bioadaptor was designed on the principle that only a human adaptor unit can withstand a rigorous anthropological critique while at the same time satisfying the healthy and heroic ideal of placing homo sapiens in charge of the cosmos for the first time – and this by on the one hand draining away the cosmos, and on the other by liquidating homo sapiens. human beings – who outside their adaptors are vulnerable, enervated and wretchedly endowed (language, logic, mental capacity, sense organs, tools) lumps of slime, wracked by a fear of life and petrified by the fear of death – become sovereign entities once they assume their bio-complement; then they no longer need the cosmos, nor mastery of it, because, in the hierarchy of conceivable values, they so blatantly rank above it.

human beings need the adaptor because in the course of their history (which simply gets lost in the adaptor) the development of their consciousness has set them in opposition to an increasingly verbally apperceived environment (i.e. one only ‘perceived’ at all through a process of progressive verbalisation), which they provoke, predict, materialise and produce. they become isolated…their consciousness, to which they ever more despairingly abandon themselves, augmented by education and morbid notions of individuality, forces them to confront a rebus-like environment whose components they can only hope to recognise by overtaxing their senses, an imagined but nevertheless oppressive object world whose information, organised into and neurotic and anankastic categories and insufflated hierarchies, goads them into a blind rage. human beings are rendered helpless by their awareness of their symbolic singularity, of their lyrical hope, and thus of their fictive antagonism to a universe immediately felt to be threatening. it is at this point that the bioadaptor is introduced, and reduces the universe to the status of an entertaining…fable.

the adaptor – seen from the ‘outside’  places itself between the unsatisfactory cosmos and the dissatisfied human being. the latter it hermetically seals off from their conventional environment and, in the first stages of adaption, resorts only to the information it has stored for this purpose, which means, in effect, that of its contents. thus the human being initially enjoys a rehashed and therapeutically enhanced experience of selected aspects of the cosmos they remember. in the first stage of adaption, the adaptor formally represents the ‘external world’, and simulates reciprocal relations by acting as a partner. feeling pleasantly singled out by their environment, the human being finds him- or herself in the middle of a conversation, a game-like dialogue with a benevolent authority. however, the actual activity of the bioadaptor in this phase consists in simulating a communication shield, a membrane between the different structures of its contents’ consciousness. it simulates the implanted human being’s interaction with the ‘external world’ by analysing and constantly learning from all the information they have about the now hypothetical universe (including the products of their metabolism) and offering back selected portions of it in various different combinations, while always emphasising the criterion of the pleasurable. in short, the bioadaptor functions as an information reflector that simulates macro-instructions from a now non-existent external information source: the bio-entity’s impulses are analysed and then re-grouped, transcodified and reflected according to the initially conjectured degree of pleasure.

the needs of the human being under adaption are constantly sounded out, at least in so far as they can be produced by the adaptor itself in order to increase their degree of pleasure. thus the adaptor’s learning structures delicately guide the entire entity from the initial stage, which arises the moment the unit is activated, through a series of phases of ever greater sensual and intellectual enjoyment to a final culmination in an expansion of consciousness, in so far as the latter can be achieved by variably coupling those structures of the adaptor initially experienced as an object world with its contents’ nervous system– a coupling that might be considered the more effective the fewer transcodifications it requires in its information exchange.

to this end, it is necessary to fit out the unit with the most lavish possible supply of feedback loops in order to enable every necessary modification in its programme, whether small or large, and the basic directives (monitors) must also be state of the art; in addition, the adaptor must still be capable of carrying out every conceivable operation on a body that is, at least initially, still human (amputations; organ transplants; neurosurgery), as well as of repairing its own functions should they become impaired, or of designing and installing replacement modules, including those it has developed itself. thus its self-adaption does not only involve modifying its own programmes, which should be understood as the arrangement of a series of ‘material states’, but also modifying its physical modules, which in their capacity as programme substructures are necessary for sequential control. these are, then, no mere passive mediators of the process but rather its determining conditions: the distinction between hardware and software is merely a didactic one and in itself has no objective justification: installing a joint between the shoulder and the elbow will initiate a new era in back-scrubbing.

b. rudimentary account of the system. further conjectures on the development of the system. fragments. individual functional units.

the bioadaptor is produced on a mass scale: apart from mechanised medical effector modules, only microminiaturised monolithically integrated circuits are used in its construction. every adaptor has its own ample supply of transformable energy to draw on in the form of human nutriment, its own operating power, pharmaceutical substances and replacement parts. chemical units for regenerating metabolic products are also provided.

once the monitors have been checked and charged, the adaptor is ready for operation. responsibility for initiating the start-up routines should be left to the human being committing him- or herself to the bioadaptor.

although loading the bioadaptor does indeed present an ethical and legal problem, it need not be insoluble. it could be carried out on a voluntary basis, but it could also be the case that the forces of the state would have to be deployed for the good of its citizens. one might imagine millions of densely packed adaptors being stored next to one another in subterranean or overground honeycomb silos. (needless to say, initiating this international operation means the end of humanity – although certainly not the end of consciousness as the ultimate product of evolution, quite the contrary). once put on, the bioadaptor cannot be taken off again – not least because once a human being enters adaption he or she is no longer capable of living outside the adaptor: the adaptor’s contents are lost to society because they have left behind reality.

since, for obvious reasons, no information from the adaptor is allowed to penetrate society (moreover, once the unit has reached a more advanced stage it would be utterly unintelligible), the development of the unit can only be conjectured on the basis of basic dispositions present at the initial stage. the bioadaptor’s fundamental directive is aimed at preserving consciousness; however, instances could arise when, for psychological reasons (or even – rarely – for reasons of adverse and yet irreversible evolutionary development), the ‘experiment’ would have to be terminated; in such cases the adaptor ensures that its patient dies a happy death and, after automatically shutting down its own functions, becomes the lifeless coffin of its dead contents (euthanasia).

in standby mode, the bioadaptor’s sensors are capable of  detecting whether a human being is inwardly preparing to travel. once the starting lever has been engaged (which as a result becomes useless – it is immediately dismantled and fed to the material reserve), the adaptor begins to work. it seals itself and pumps air into its interior. the temperature control ensures that conditions are the ideal ‘external’ ones.

guided by a number of sensors positioned in series along the contours of the human body, the adaptor enfolds the latter closely on every side without touching it, except in those places where one would expect it to under the influence of gravity. using these sensors, it detects every movement of the human body, and yields at the relevant point before the limb can touch it. in this way it adjusts itself to a structure that is constantly in motion without in any way troubling its contents with feelings of being confined; should there be any intent of locomotive movement (by attempting to walk, crawl or run), the adaptor gives at the appropriate point in the customary manner. the part of the bioadaptor that surrounds the face (the space immediately around the eyes) generates light combinations formed into shapes; when they register attempts at movement, the spatial sensors direct the point of view and the visual location accordingly, as well as the parallax shifts of the background (servo-zoom, automatic perspective) and the strength and direction of sounds, including, where necessary, the use of doppler-effects.

it is true that complex sensations of touch and space do pose particular problems. however, these can be overcome by using various different combinations of haptic generators, all the more easily as the range of different touch sensations in human beings is limited and the most sensitive parts are relatively precisely defined, not too extensively spread across the body and functionally specialised so that they work in conjunction with the other sense organs. the adaptor will only simulate those surface segments of ‘touched objects’ that would actually come into contact with the skin, etc. of the biomodule when the latter fixes its attention on them, and not, for example, the whole shape fed it by the video unit. touch impressions anticipated by the biomodule can readily be inferred and provided by the bioadaptor by registering directional movements towards the images it shows. if, for example, having approached an object, the biomodule moves its hand over its surface, the adaptor only ever simulates the few square centimetres of the surface it actually touches, providing new surface area just ahead of the direction it moves in while immediately dismantling that area again as it leaves it behind.

–  –  –

after it is set in operation, the bioadaptor, drawing on techniques developed in the field of public relations, takes on the optical and acoustical appearance of a pleasant interlocutor, assuming the guise of a variety of different people (either one after the other or several at the same time). once the human being inserted into it reacts either voluntarily or involuntarily reacts to the bioadaptor, contact between the two may be said to have been established.

communication is, of course, initially conducted in human language, that is, the human being expresses various wishes and complaints which the adaptor scrupulously uses as guidelines for its subsequent behaviour. this means that every remark is significant, as it can be used as away of determining the biomodule’s perception and understanding of the world, as well as their norms. this determination must be carried out as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible, because the whole of the first adaption phase is extremely uneconomical in terms of the unit’s use of energy and must be completed as quickly as possible. thus, if possible, the bioadaptor will carry out all medical, energy-related and psychological tests at the same time, while drawing the human being into a conversation calculated to correspond to his or her intellectual level in order to gain further insights into the patient’s knowledge and personality. it serves the rapid progression of these preliminary routines that in them the bioadaptor presents itself as a slightly superior interlocutor and fellow human being (such as by looking and sounding like a somewhat professorial fatherly friend). in order to save capacity, the bioadaptor avoids conveying any ‘objective knowledge’; its conversations only touch upon those subjects in which the patient has already accumulated some knowledge[2]).


[2] example: russian lessons. the adaptor initially extracts its contents’ thoughts about the facts and sentimental values of the russian language. it then expands this material through analogy and induction, defamiliarizes it by aleatory divergences from the norms thus established, measures out this teaching material into small doses and offers it for consumption. the adaptor’s contents now learns ‘russian’ and finds its rapid progress refreshing. it meets numerous russians, and perhaps even travels to a kiev that does not disappoint a single one of its expectations, or ‘stays at home’ and teaches itself by developing its russian conversational skills. 

despite all these efforts and the bioadaptor’s innate superiority, the human being will occasionally notice, as a result of slips and unavoidable errors, that he or she is still inside the adaptor. the process of establishing and constructing certain important settings (such as the parental home, scenes from early childhood, the workplace, the home, familiar places of amusement, etc., along with the form configurations and sound structures that are typical of them, and so on) can only progress through a series of improvements upon earlier attempts and mistakes[3]). to smooth over particularly crude failures the adaptor has recourse to psycho-technical tricks (such as discussions, distractions and, in particularly serious cases, soporification), or to lecturing the subject on the linguistically-constructed and hypothetical nature of reality. nevertheless, the process of constantly perfected integration will soon have reached a stage where the adaptor’s contents’ initial unease about their condition culminates in a determination to be fully reintegrated into the status quo ante. one can well imagine that, particularly in cases where the human being is stubborn or exceptionally anxious, the adaptor, having gathered all the relevant information, grants its contents the impression of a total resurrection – complete with a spectacular and laborious sequence in which they climb out of the machine, are met by a committee of scientists who had been entrusted with the task of loading the adaptor (in so far as the patient can even remember such details as faces, the appearance of the room, etc., or based on these memories), and possibly with the latter assuring them that this had been an experiment of the highest importance for state and country, with high functionaries paying tribute to them before they are finally relieved of their duty so they can pursue a leisured and well-compensated private life; one of the countless other possibilities might be to persuade the patient they had suffered a temporary psychosis that had now been cured by deploying their favourite form complexes (sexual partner, best friend, mother, superior, psychiatrist) – the possibility is an important one because it can be appealed to again and again whenever difficulties arise in subsequent development


[3] this is one way of interpreting certain hallucinations in the ‘real world’: a second glance shows me my error: but did i really make a mistake, or did the world just very quickly repair its mistake?

_ _ _

at this stage the unit is very close to completing the first phase of the adaption which, probably proceeding in a very similar manner to many other instances, has prepared the way for the actual process of adaption that will now follow. the implanted human being – they are still no more than that – lives amid familiar surroundings, albeit more pleasant than they ever dreamed possible. their environment ‘reads their wishes in their eyes’: whatever they undertake proves a success. their favourite partners, favourite foods, favourite poisons, favourite places, favourite activities are constantly being offered to them, and always cum granosalis, the better to keep them in a state of excitement. they find themselves to be better looking, more capable, cleverer, more desirable, more sought after, healthier. their every desire is fulfilled, they enjoy luxury and status, they travel the world, they rise to positions of leadership.

the bioadaptor achieves all this first and foremost by its opportunities to instruct the patient through interlocutors, and only secondly by simulating sense impressions. in so doing, it never goes beyond communication’s usual capacities for suggestion, which nevertheless allow it to meet every variety of need by the crudest means of sensory verification. when it comes to these sense impressions, the adaptor mainly bases itself on its patient’s sense of sight. of course, everything that the adatptee sees are appearances and not actually ‘things’. for example, if they incline their head far enough they see an image of their legs, and not actually ‘the legs themselves’.

auto-tuning substructures, connected to various perceptual generators engaged in producing an ‘overall impression’, ensure the patient accepts the world he or she perceives as something, as it were, concrete. these make up a complex feedback control system for dispensing precise doses of stimuli. correlation between different sensory modes, essential for any individual’s coherent perception of the world, is produced not so much by repeatedly deploying complexes of stimuli simultaneously (which in any case come up against considerable obstacles on the part of consciousness because of the biological principles of perceptual optimisation), but rather by repeatedly invoking conceptual structures generated by words. the ‘high degree of correlation’ that presents itself to consciousness is maintained at the same level by relatively rough concomitances of sense-stimulation; as a result, it is sufficient if (to take as our first example) the bioadaptor generates relatively crude sense data for sensory complexes directed at the surface of the skin (the sense of sight constitutes an exception of a kind) and leaves the rest to the patient’s reafferences. if in doubt, verification is always much better carried out through verbal communication with ‘other people’ than by close examination of the given; and in particularly difficult cases the bioadaptor will simply offer measuring instruments to resolve questions of this kind.

–  –  –

the bioadaptor considers all its occupant’s behavioural patterns to be pathological and infantile behavioural sequences, and having sufficiently analysed their ramifications it compiles their structural schemata in a catalogue of motivations; it determines variation ranges and branching conditions, memorises the former as envelope parameters and stores the latter in random access memory fields: it assembles its own reactions from the elements deduced and, using the monitors, calibrates them according to the therapeutic principle, which guides everything.

–  –  –

certain of the biomodule’s mental states are particularly conducive to furthering adaption. chief among these are ecstatic states in all their various forms, and especially those that number among the organism’s ‘natural states’.

it is for this reason that the sex servo-modules are especially lavishly fitted out and semi-autonomous. if necessary, they can assume control of crucial sectors of the bioadaptor, and then lend features to the biomodule’s entire environment which are exceptionally suited to strengthening its capacity for protopathic experiences. should the biomodule find itself in a state of sexual excitement, it is immediately confronted with an environment that is conducive to this excitement in the highest degree. everyone it meets casts lascivious glances at it. it hears seductive words whispered by breathless voices, it encounters sensual music. plants and inanimate objects, landscapes and abstract nouns all have an erotic effect on it and exhibit a sexuality directed at it. depending on its personality, it may experience chastely austere conquests or moments of bestial abandonment full of violence and caprice. the bioadaptor ensures that even instances of eternal love are managed in highly skilful and varied manner which leads its contents beyond its existing range of experiences into a state of uninhibited libidinousness. the patient rolls among phalluses, breasts, vaginas, roused by yohimbe, testoviron, monk’s pepper, extract of lilies, camphor, lupulin, sodium bromide, cantharidin, colorines of zompantlibaum…preludin, amphetamines heighten its initial lust…nupercainal preparate delays, amyl nitrate extends, chlorethyl, stickoxydul intensify its orgasms, current impulses passed through its mucus membranes turn its passions into delirious states[4]. the world consists of drauci and pathici, in the general frenzy fantastical irrumations bring about alterations in reality itself, it copulates with mountains of money, with cupboards, viruses, spectacles, firms, ivy, busts, it ejaculates at the mere sight of agate.


[4] a simple device you can assemble yourself can be found in o. prokop, forensic medicine, berlin 1966.

–   –   –

the adaptor also provokes and enhances ecstasies of destruction, whether directed against the world or against the subject itself. whether achieved with ease or after great struggles, or indeed – depending on its personality – at great personal sacrifice amounting almost to self-destruction, the biomodule annuls anything it feels the urge to destroy, whether it be in the guise of a heroic outlaw or libertine, whether with the support and backing of the public or as its iniquitous enemy, mowing down, chopping up, tearing apart…biting, pulverising, trampling underfoot in furious paroxysms…

or, after mature and careful consideration of all the pros and cons, annihilating worlds and universes as reason dictates, and so on, and so forth.

 

c. second adaption stage

the bioadaptor now controls every detail of its contents’ physical and mental states, which is to say, it has assumed the position of the state. it can now proceed to expanding (improving) the biomodule’s consciousness.

the first important procedure of interest here is the dissection and removal of the nervous system, accompanied by the creation of a more direct flow of information between adaptor and biomodule. the process of dismantling begins with the limbs and slowly proceeds to the more central parts of the body. the bioadaptor is able to carry this out with a minimum of anaesthetic, since prior to any operation it can connect all the afferent paths to its own stimuli converters: for example, while one of the biomodule’s legs is being amputated, the latter perhaps enjoys a refreshing stroll through delightful Hungarian countryside. the adaptor simulates the complex interplay between efferent nerves and kinaesthetic and proprioceptive fibres, and a glance down at its legs assures the biomodule that its pleasure in taking exercise is increasingly agreeable to the muscular interplay of its extremities. the superior processing speed of the adaptor’s electronics greatly facilitates the process of dismantling, since the adaptor is able to recognise and rectify, before the biomodule becomes conscious of them, any errors that may arise by means of centrally placed control sensors.

–  –  –

the process of reducing the biomodule to its intrinsically susceptible part is only complete once the central sense organs of its former head have become inoperative and been replaced by more direct attachments to the adaptor’s information providers.

at this stage, many unnecessary forms of substance and information transfer are discontinued (e.g. food preparation, movement assimilation, the processing of sense data) and are replaced to great advantage with ‘contacts’ (nutrient solutions, direct impulses between motor end plates or peripheral synapses and micro-electrodes). the unit is no longer under such pressure to conserve energy, meaning that it uses only about 100 watts (though this increases slightly later), not including the 25 watts needed for the brain itself. a variety of mechanical aggregates become unnecessary and are either dismantled and converted by the adaptor, or fed to the reserve (where the bio-body’s cellular tissue is also stored).

–  –  –

the dismantling of the nervous system itself, which now follows, is very carefully carried out by the adaptor and soon completed; for the aim of the unit is to achieve a greater complexity of functional structures, and not to reduce them to a minimal model. for this reason, it is more accurate to speak of constructing a more complex and flexible hierarchy of circuits. the gradual replacement of the peripheral system’s cellular circuits with solid logic components makes the unit more compact but not necessarily more integrated; rather, tighter integration is achieved by increasing the number of circuits themselves and by distributing information more optimally across them. in particular, the adaptor strives to maintain the concept of sensuous quality, and indeed to expand the modal field by inserting additional sensory modules. it hardly needs mentioning that the main focus of attention in this process is on the central structures of the brain: at a stage that is characterised by largely equal current impulses in the afferent paths, all modal differences are ultimately based on variations in the switching blocks from the mesencephalon upwards.

in view of these processes, it is possible to speak of a gradual absorption of cellular organisations by the adaptor’s electronic switching blocks, and no doubt this description is perfectly accurate in so far as we are speaking of the stimuli reaction relations in material terms. from the point of view of the biomodule, things look quite different. it consists purely of consciousness, and the latter undergoes, through a series of phases, an extraordinary expansion. though its material substructure changes, it does so at an imperceptibly slow pace; this change is – occasionally – accompanied by a brief dimming of consciousness, but the latter is immediately succeeded by an as yet unexperienced intensity. while the first stage of adaption was a way of expanding the biomodule’s possibilities by means of an environment that was no less than antagonistic, indeed almost cooperative, now consciousness itself becomes the environment, which can henceforth be used as a kind of extension of itself. while up until now improvements in performance were initiated by conditions that can be ‘externally’ created, such as hyperventilation in cases of hypoxaemia, experiments which enrich anions in the air, or magnetic fields, they are now produced by ever greater numbers of data-processing elements, by a greater complexity of connections and by greater processing speed.

the continuity of the ego-consciousness, in so far as it can be postulated at all, is ensured not by the physical continuity of ganglionic cells, but by continuity of information. however, this perseveration is not interrupted by the process of electronic structures gradually absorbing this information because the process is incremental, proceeding cell by cell, so to speak, and components are immediately reconnected to the central processor. the result of these significant expansions of data-processing material is an explosion of the ‘limits of consciousness’ that have constricted human beings for so long; the processing speed of the autonomous subcortical core increases enormously – this means, however, that it also ultimately becomes necessary to synchronise the former cortex, and finally the various different processing circuits are integrated into consciousness, along with their substructures, and the ‘unconscious’ remains limited to elementary, atomic transmission processes.

thus consciousness, that cuckoo’s egg of nature, ultimately supplants nature itself. while previously the forms of sensuous perception were mere products of conditional reflexes to a superior experimental setup, spectres of contingent human senses (for example, the ear originates phylogenetically from the jaw structure), final products of social processes, monstrous abortions of language, now consciousness is at rest, immortally, within itself and creates out of its own depths ephemeral objects.

 –  –  –

moreover, the adaptor, now fused together with the substructures of consciousness, will create new pleasure centres outside the thalamus which will open new paths both to the experimenter and the process of self-stimulation. the various subcortical cores which serve homeostasis (such as the respiratory centre and suchlike) are re-functioned and incorporated into consciousness processes. activation of memory structures.

d. (omitted)

 

e.

of course, the development of the bioadaptor entirely depends on the subject’s mental strength, courage and self-reliance. where dissatisfaction is not strong enough, or where the social structures that constitute consciousness are excessively strong, in such circumstances the adaptor can also just create a ‘normal’ world – even in the second phase. it may be that we are all

 

 

 

the improvement of central europe

by

Oswald Wiener

translated by Nathaniel McBride

appendix a

the bioadaptor

(for w. pichler)

(1965–66 catalogue)

(unrevised)

a. philosophical approaches and prospective account of the system.

in its principal features, the bioadaptor offers what i believe is arguably the first outline of a comprehensive solution to all the problems of the world. it is the opportunity of our century: liberation from philosophy through technology[1]). its purpose is none other than to substitute itself for the world, that is, to assume control of the ‘existing environment’ whose function as a sender and receiver of vital information (food and entertainment, metabolic processes and social intercourse) has up until now been completely unsatisfactory – and to better fulfil its specified task than the now obsolete so-called natural environment, supposedly shared by ‘everyone’, was ever capable of.

the function of the bioadaptor can be compared to that of an extraordinarily developed uterus which, through a process of constant adjustment, grows to meet the most complex needs of a highly organised organism (‘happiness suit’). it can be understood as an ‘extra-corporeal’ hypertrophy of its incumbent’s own organ modules and complex nerve structures, and in this respect is a converter of pleasure impulses projected by human beings into the environment around them (servo-narcissus).

[1] (as well as: language as an argument against solipsism)

the bioadaptor was designed on the principle that only a human adaptor unit can withstand a rigorous anthropological critique while at the same time satisfying the healthy and heroic ideal of placing homo sapiens in charge of the cosmos for the first time – and this by on the one hand draining away the cosmos, and on the other by liquidating homo sapiens. human beings – who outside their adaptors are vulnerable, enervated and wretchedly endowed (language, logic, mental capacity, sense organs, tools) lumps of slime, wracked by a fear of life and petrified by the fear of death – become sovereign entities once they assume their bio-complement; then they no longer need the cosmos, nor mastery of it, because, in the hierarchy of conceivable values, they so blatantly rank above it.

human beings need the adaptor because in the course of their history (which simply gets lost in the adaptor) the development of their consciousness has set them in opposition to an increasingly verbally apperceived environment (i.e. one only ‘perceived’ at all through a process of progressive verbalisation), which they provoke, predict, materialise and produce. they become isolated…their consciousness, to which they ever more despairingly abandon themselves, augmented by education and morbid notions of individuality, forces them to confront a rebus-like environment whose components they can only hope to recognise by overtaxing their senses, an imagined but nevertheless oppressive object world whose information, organised into and neurotic and anankastic categories and insufflated hierarchies, goads them into a blind rage. human beings are rendered helpless by their awareness of their symbolic singularity, of their lyrical hope, and thus of their fictive antagonism to a universe immediately felt to be threatening. it is at this point that the bioadaptor is introduced, and reduces the universe to the status of an entertaining…fable.

the adaptor – seen from the ‘outside’  places itself between the unsatisfactory cosmos and the dissatisfied human being. the latter it hermetically seals off from their conventional environment and, in the first stages of adaption, resorts only to the information it has stored for this purpose, which means, in effect, that of its contents. thus the human being initially enjoys a rehashed and therapeutically enhanced experience of selected aspects of the cosmos they remember. in the first stage of adaption, the adaptor formally represents the ‘external world’, and simulates reciprocal relations by acting as a partner. feeling pleasantly singled out by their environment, the human being finds him- or herself in the middle of a conversation, a game-like dialogue with a benevolent authority. however, the actual activity of the bioadaptor in this phase consists in simulating a communication shield, a membrane between the different structures of its contents’ consciousness. it simulates the implanted human being’s interaction with the ‘external world’ by analysing and constantly learning from all the information they have about the now hypothetical universe (including the products of their metabolism) and offering back selected portions of it in various different combinations, while always emphasising the criterion of the pleasurable. in short, the bioadaptor functions as an information reflector that simulates macro-instructions from a now non-existent external information source: the bio-entity’s impulses are analysed and then re-grouped, transcodified and reflected according to the initially conjectured degree of pleasure.

the needs of the human being under adaption are constantly sounded out, at least in so far as they can be produced by the adaptor itself in order to increase their degree of pleasure. thus the adaptor’s learning structures delicately guide the entire entity from the initial stage, which arises the moment the unit is activated, through a series of phases of ever greater sensual and intellectual enjoyment to a final culmination in an expansion of consciousness, in so far as the latter can be achieved by variably coupling those structures of the adaptor initially experienced as an object world with its contents’ nervous system– a coupling that might be considered the more effective the fewer transcodifications it requires in its information exchange.

to this end, it is necessary to fit out the unit with the most lavish possible supply of feedback loops in order to enable every necessary modification in its programme, whether small or large, and the basic directives (monitors) must also be state of the art; in addition, the adaptor must still be capable of carrying out every conceivable operation on a body that is, at least initially, still human (amputations; organ transplants; neurosurgery), as well as of repairing its own functions should they become impaired, or of designing and installing replacement modules, including those it has developed itself. thus its self-adaption does not only involve modifying its own programmes, which should be understood as the arrangement of a series of ‘material states’, but also modifying its physical modules, which in their capacity as programme substructures are necessary for sequential control. these are, then, no mere passive mediators of the process but rather its determining conditions: the distinction between hardware and software is merely a didactic one and in itself has no objective justification: installing a joint between the shoulder and the elbow will initiate a new era in back-scrubbing.

b. rudimentary account of the system. further conjectures on the development of the system. fragments. individual functional units.

the bioadaptor is produced on a mass scale: apart from mechanised medical effector modules, only microminiaturised monolithically integrated circuits are used in its construction. every adaptor has its own ample supply of transformable energy to draw on in the form of human nutriment, its own operating power, pharmaceutical substances and replacement parts. chemical units for regenerating metabolic products are also provided.

once the monitors have been checked and charged, the adaptor is ready for operation. responsibility for initiating the start-up routines should be left to the human being committing him- or herself to the bioadaptor.

although loading the bioadaptor does indeed present an ethical and legal problem, it need not be insoluble. it could be carried out on a voluntary basis, but it could also be the case that the forces of the state would have to be deployed for the good of its citizens. one might imagine millions of densely packed adaptors being stored next to one another in subterranean or overground honeycomb silos. (needless to say, initiating this international operation means the end of humanity – although certainly not the end of consciousness as the ultimate product of evolution, quite the contrary). once put on, the bioadaptor cannot be taken off again – not least because once a human being enters adaption he or she is no longer capable of living outside the adaptor: the adaptor’s contents are lost to society because they have left behind reality.

since, for obvious reasons, no information from the adaptor is allowed to penetrate society (moreover, once the unit has reached a more advanced stage it would be utterly unintelligible), the development of the unit can only be conjectured on the basis of basic dispositions present at the initial stage. the bioadaptor’s fundamental directive is aimed at preserving consciousness; however, instances could arise when, for psychological reasons (or even – rarely – for reasons of adverse and yet irreversible evolutionary development), the ‘experiment’ would have to be terminated; in such cases the adaptor ensures that its patient dies a happy death and, after automatically shutting down its own functions, becomes the lifeless coffin of its dead contents (euthanasia).

in standby mode, the bioadaptor’s sensors are capable of  detecting whether a human being is inwardly preparing to travel. once the starting lever has been engaged (which as a result becomes useless – it is immediately dismantled and fed to the material reserve), the adaptor begins to work. it seals itself and pumps air into its interior. the temperature control ensures that conditions are the ideal ‘external’ ones.

guided by a number of sensors positioned in series along the contours of the human body, the adaptor enfolds the latter closely on every side without touching it, except in those places where one would expect it to under the influence of gravity. using these sensors, it detects every movement of the human body, and yields at the relevant point before the limb can touch it. in this way it adjusts itself to a structure that is constantly in motion without in any way troubling its contents with feelings of being confined; should there be any intent of locomotive movement (by attempting to walk, crawl or run), the adaptor gives at the appropriate point in the customary manner. the part of the bioadaptor that surrounds the face (the space immediately around the eyes) generates light combinations formed into shapes; when they register attempts at movement, the spatial sensors direct the point of view and the visual location accordingly, as well as the parallax shifts of the background (servo-zoom, automatic perspective) and the strength and direction of sounds, including, where necessary, the use of doppler-effects.

it is true that complex sensations of touch and space do pose particular problems. however, these can be overcome by using various different combinations of haptic generators, all the more easily as the range of different touch sensations in human beings is limited and the most sensitive parts are relatively precisely defined, not too extensively spread across the body and functionally specialised so that they work in conjunction with the other sense organs. the adaptor will only simulate those surface segments of ‘touched objects’ that would actually come into contact with the skin, etc. of the biomodule when the latter fixes its attention on them, and not, for example, the whole shape fed it by the video unit. touch impressions anticipated by the biomodule can readily be inferred and provided by the bioadaptor by registering directional movements towards the images it shows. if, for example, having approached an object, the biomodule moves its hand over its surface, the adaptor only ever simulates the few square centimetres of the surface it actually touches, providing new surface area just ahead of the direction it moves in while immediately dismantling that area again as it leaves it behind.

–  –  –

after it is set in operation, the bioadaptor, drawing on techniques developed in the field of public relations, takes on the optical and acoustical appearance of a pleasant interlocutor, assuming the guise of a variety of different people (either one after the other or several at the same time). once the human being inserted into it reacts either voluntarily or involuntarily reacts to the bioadaptor, contact between the two may be said to have been established.

communication is, of course, initially conducted in human language, that is, the human being expresses various wishes and complaints which the adaptor scrupulously uses as guidelines for its subsequent behaviour. this means that every remark is significant, as it can be used as away of determining the biomodule’s perception and understanding of the world, as well as their norms. this determination must be carried out as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible, because the whole of the first adaption phase is extremely uneconomical in terms of the unit’s use of energy and must be completed as quickly as possible. thus, if possible, the bioadaptor will carry out all medical, energy-related and psychological tests at the same time, while drawing the human being into a conversation calculated to correspond to his or her intellectual level in order to gain further insights into the patient’s knowledge and personality. it serves the rapid progression of these preliminary routines that in them the bioadaptor presents itself as a slightly superior interlocutor and fellow human being (such as by looking and sounding like a somewhat professorial fatherly friend). in order to save capacity, the bioadaptor avoids conveying any ‘objective knowledge’; its conversations only touch upon those subjects in which the patient has already accumulated some knowledge[2]).


[2] example: russian lessons. the adaptor initially extracts its contents’ thoughts about the facts and sentimental values of the russian language. it then expands this material through analogy and induction, defamiliarizes it by aleatory divergences from the norms thus established, measures out this teaching material into small doses and offers it for consumption. the adaptor’s contents now learns ‘russian’ and finds its rapid progress refreshing. it meets numerous russians, and perhaps even travels to a kiev that does not disappoint a single one of its expectations, or ‘stays at home’ and teaches itself by developing its russian conversational skills. 

despite all these efforts and the bioadaptor’s innate superiority, the human being will occasionally notice, as a result of slips and unavoidable errors, that he or she is still inside the adaptor. the process of establishing and constructing certain important settings (such as the parental home, scenes from early childhood, the workplace, the home, familiar places of amusement, etc., along with the form configurations and sound structures that are typical of them, and so on) can only progress through a series of improvements upon earlier attempts and mistakes[3]). to smooth over particularly crude failures the adaptor has recourse to psycho-technical tricks (such as discussions, distractions and, in particularly serious cases, soporification), or to lecturing the subject on the linguistically-constructed and hypothetical nature of reality. nevertheless, the process of constantly perfected integration will soon have reached a stage where the adaptor’s contents’ initial unease about their condition culminates in a determination to be fully reintegrated into the status quo ante. one can well imagine that, particularly in cases where the human being is stubborn or exceptionally anxious, the adaptor, having gathered all the relevant information, grants its contents the impression of a total resurrection – complete with a spectacular and laborious sequence in which they climb out of the machine, are met by a committee of scientists who had been entrusted with the task of loading the adaptor (in so far as the patient can even remember such details as faces, the appearance of the room, etc., or based on these memories), and possibly with the latter assuring them that this had been an experiment of the highest importance for state and country, with high functionaries paying tribute to them before they are finally relieved of their duty so they can pursue a leisured and well-compensated private life; one of the countless other possibilities might be to persuade the patient they had suffered a temporary psychosis that had now been cured by deploying their favourite form complexes (sexual partner, best friend, mother, superior, psychiatrist) – the possibility is an important one because it can be appealed to again and again whenever difficulties arise in subsequent development


[3] this is one way of interpreting certain hallucinations in the ‘real world’: a second glance shows me my error: but did i really make a mistake, or did the world just very quickly repair its mistake?

_ _ _

at this stage the unit is very close to completing the first phase of the adaption which, probably proceeding in a very similar manner to many other instances, has prepared the way for the actual process of adaption that will now follow. the implanted human being – they are still no more than that – lives amid familiar surroundings, albeit more pleasant than they ever dreamed possible. their environment ‘reads their wishes in their eyes’: whatever they undertake proves a success. their favourite partners, favourite foods, favourite poisons, favourite places, favourite activities are constantly being offered to them, and always cum granosalis, the better to keep them in a state of excitement. they find themselves to be better looking, more capable, cleverer, more desirable, more sought after, healthier. their every desire is fulfilled, they enjoy luxury and status, they travel the world, they rise to positions of leadership.

the bioadaptor achieves all this first and foremost by its opportunities to instruct the patient through interlocutors, and only secondly by simulating sense impressions. in so doing, it never goes beyond communication’s usual capacities for suggestion, which nevertheless allow it to meet every variety of need by the crudest means of sensory verification. when it comes to these sense impressions, the adaptor mainly bases itself on its patient’s sense of sight. of course, everything that the adatptee sees are appearances and not actually ‘things’. for example, if they incline their head far enough they see an image of their legs, and not actually ‘the legs themselves’.

auto-tuning substructures, connected to various perceptual generators engaged in producing an ‘overall impression’, ensure the patient accepts the world he or she perceives as something, as it were, concrete. these make up a complex feedback control system for dispensing precise doses of stimuli. correlation between different sensory modes, essential for any individual’s coherent perception of the world, is produced not so much by repeatedly deploying complexes of stimuli simultaneously (which in any case come up against considerable obstacles on the part of consciousness because of the biological principles of perceptual optimisation), but rather by repeatedly invoking conceptual structures generated by words. the ‘high degree of correlation’ that presents itself to consciousness is maintained at the same level by relatively rough concomitances of sense-stimulation; as a result, it is sufficient if (to take as our first example) the bioadaptor generates relatively crude sense data for sensory complexes directed at the surface of the skin (the sense of sight constitutes an exception of a kind) and leaves the rest to the patient’s reafferences. if in doubt, verification is always much better carried out through verbal communication with ‘other people’ than by close examination of the given; and in particularly difficult cases the bioadaptor will simply offer measuring instruments to resolve questions of this kind.

–  –  –

the bioadaptor considers all its occupant’s behavioural patterns to be pathological and infantile behavioural sequences, and having sufficiently analysed their ramifications it compiles their structural schemata in a catalogue of motivations; it determines variation ranges and branching conditions, memorises the former as envelope parameters and stores the latter in random access memory fields: it assembles its own reactions from the elements deduced and, using the monitors, calibrates them according to the therapeutic principle, which guides everything.

–  –  –

certain of the biomodule’s mental states are particularly conducive to furthering adaption. chief among these are ecstatic states in all their various forms, and especially those that number among the organism’s ‘natural states’.

it is for this reason that the sex servo-modules are especially lavishly fitted out and semi-autonomous. if necessary, they can assume control of crucial sectors of the bioadaptor, and then lend features to the biomodule’s entire environment which are exceptionally suited to strengthening its capacity for protopathic experiences. should the biomodule find itself in a state of sexual excitement, it is immediately confronted with an environment that is conducive to this excitement in the highest degree. everyone it meets casts lascivious glances at it. it hears seductive words whispered by breathless voices, it encounters sensual music. plants and inanimate objects, landscapes and abstract nouns all have an erotic effect on it and exhibit a sexuality directed at it. depending on its personality, it may experience chastely austere conquests or moments of bestial abandonment full of violence and caprice. the bioadaptor ensures that even instances of eternal love are managed in highly skilful and varied manner which leads its contents beyond its existing range of experiences into a state of uninhibited libidinousness. the patient rolls among phalluses, breasts, vaginas, roused by yohimbe, testoviron, monk’s pepper, extract of lilies, camphor, lupulin, sodium bromide, cantharidin, colorines of zompantlibaum…preludin, amphetamines heighten its initial lust…nupercainal preparate delays, amyl nitrate extends, chlorethyl, stickoxydul intensify its orgasms, current impulses passed through its mucus membranes turn its passions into delirious states[4]). the world consists of drauci and pathici, in the general frenzy fantastical irrumations bring about alterations in reality itself, it copulates with mountains of money, with cupboards, viruses, spectacles, firms, ivy, busts, it ejaculates at the mere sight of agate.


[4] a simple device you can assemble yourself can be found in o. prokop, forensic medicine, berlin 1966.

–   –   –

the adaptor also provokes and enhances ecstasies of destruction, whether directed against the world or against the subject itself. whether achieved with ease or after great struggles, or indeed – depending on its personality – at great personal sacrifice amounting almost to self-destruction, the biomodule annuls anything it feels the urge to destroy, whether it be in the guise of a heroic outlaw or libertine, whether with the support and backing of the public or as its iniquitous enemy, mowing down, chopping up, tearing apart…biting, pulverising, trampling underfoot in furious paroxysms…

or, after mature and careful consideration of all the pros and cons, annihilating worlds and universes as reason dictates, and so on, and so forth.

 

c. second adaption stage

the bioadaptor now controls every detail of its contents’ physical and mental states, which is to say, it has assumed the position of the state. it can now proceed to expanding (improving) the biomodule’s consciousness.

the first important procedure of interest here is the dissection and removal of the nervous system, accompanied by the creation of a more direct flow of information between adaptor and biomodule. the process of dismantling begins with the limbs and slowly proceeds to the more central parts of the body. the bioadaptor is able to carry this out with a minimum of anaesthetic, since prior to any operation it can connect all the afferent paths to its own stimuli converters: for example, while one of the biomodule’s legs is being amputated, the latter perhaps enjoys a refreshing stroll through delightful Hungarian countryside. the adaptor simulates the complex interplay between efferent nerves and kinaesthetic and proprioceptive fibres, and a glance down at its legs assures the biomodule that its pleasure in taking exercise is increasingly agreeable to the muscular interplay of its extremities. the superior processing speed of the adaptor’s electronics greatly facilitates the process of dismantling, since the adaptor is able to recognise and rectify, before the biomodule becomes conscious of them, any errors that may arise by means of centrally placed control sensors.

–  –  –

the process of reducing the biomodule to its intrinsically susceptible part is only complete once the central sense organs of its former head have become inoperative and been replaced by more direct attachments to the adaptor’s information providers.

at this stage, many unnecessary forms of substance and information transfer are discontinued (e.g. food preparation, movement assimilation, the processing of sense data) and are replaced to great advantage with ‘contacts’ (nutrient solutions, direct impulses between motor end plates or peripheral synapses and micro-electrodes). the unit is no longer under such pressure to conserve energy, meaning that it uses only about 100 watts (though this increases slightly later), not including the 25 watts needed for the brain itself. a variety of mechanical aggregates become unnecessary and are either dismantled and converted by the adaptor, or fed to the reserve (where the bio-body’s cellular tissue is also stored).

–  –  –

the dismantling of the nervous system itself, which now follows, is very carefully carried out by the adaptor and soon completed; for the aim of the unit is to achieve a greater complexity of functional structures, and not to reduce them to a minimal model. for this reason, it is more accurate to speak of constructing a more complex and flexible hierarchy of circuits. the gradual replacement of the peripheral system’s cellular circuits with solid logic components makes the unit more compact but not necessarily more integrated; rather, tighter integration is achieved by increasing the number of circuits themselves and by distributing information more optimally across them. in particular, the adaptor strives to maintain the concept of sensuous quality, and indeed to expand the modal field by inserting additional sensory modules. it hardly needs mentioning that the main focus of attention in this process is on the central structures of the brain: at a stage that is characterised by largely equal current impulses in the afferent paths, all modal differences are ultimately based on variations in the switching blocks from the mesencephalon upwards.

in view of these processes, it is possible to speak of a gradual absorption of cellular organisations by the adaptor’s electronic switching blocks, and no doubt this description is perfectly accurate in so far as we are speaking of the stimuli reaction relations in material terms. from the point of view of the biomodule, things look quite different. it consists purely of consciousness, and the latter undergoes, through a series of phases, an extraordinary expansion. though its material substructure changes, it does so at an imperceptibly slow pace; this change is – occasionally – accompanied by a brief dimming of consciousness, but the latter is immediately succeeded by an as yet unexperienced intensity. while the first stage of adaption was a way of expanding the biomodule’s possibilities by means of an environment that was no less than antagonistic, indeed almost cooperative, now consciousness itself becomes the environment, which can henceforth be used as a kind of extension of itself. while up until now improvements in performance were initiated by conditions that can be ‘externally’ created, such as hyperventilation in cases of hypoxaemia, experiments which enrich anions in the air, or magnetic fields, they are now produced by ever greater numbers of data-processing elements, by a greater complexity of connections and by greater processing speed.

the continuity of the ego-consciousness, in so far as it can be postulated at all, is ensured not by the physical continuity of ganglionic cells, but by continuity of information. however, this perseveration is not interrupted by the process of electronic structures gradually absorbing this information because the process is incremental, proceeding cell by cell, so to speak, and components are immediately reconnected to the central processor. the result of these significant expansions of data-processing material is an explosion of the ‘limits of consciousness’ that have constricted human beings for so long; the processing speed of the autonomous subcortical core increases enormously – this means, however, that it also ultimately becomes necessary to synchronise the former cortex, and finally the various different processing circuits are integrated into consciousness, along with their substructures, and the ‘unconscious’ remains limited to elementary, atomic transmission processes.

thus consciousness, that cuckoo’s egg of nature, ultimately supplants nature itself. while previously the forms of sensuous perception were mere products of conditional reflexes to a superior experimental setup, spectres of contingent human senses (for example, the ear originates phylogenetically from the jaw structure), final products of social processes, monstrous abortions of language, now consciousness is at rest, immortally, within itself and creates out of its own depths ephemeral objects.

 –  –  –

moreover, the adaptor, now fused together with the substructures of consciousness, will create new pleasure centres outside the thalamus which will open new paths both to the experimenter and the process of self-stimulation. the various subcortical cores which serve homeostasis (such as the respiratory centre and suchlike) are re-functioned and incorporated into consciousness processes. activation of memory structures.

d. (omitted)

 

e.

of course, the development of the bioadaptor entirely depends on the subject’s mental strength, courage and self-reliance. where dissatisfaction is not strong enough, or where the social structures that constitute consciousness are excessively strong, in such circumstances the adaptor can also just create a ‘normal’ world – even in the second phase. it may be that we are all

 

 

 

Oswald Wiener is an Austrian experimental artist, writer, and computer programmer. Oe of the founding members of the avant-garde collective the Vienna Group in the fifties, Wiener’s magnum opus the improvement of central europe has never been fully translated into English.

Nathaniel McBride is an translator and writer who lives in London.