Dirk Baecker

Die Möglichkeit des Scheiterns gehört, so scheint es, zur Selbstbestimmung des Menschen. Wer scheitert und woran? Welche Kriterien gibt es dafür? Wann ist etwas, wann ist jemand gescheitert? Was heißt es, über eine Kultur des Scheiterns un [...]

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Referring to MacOS’s »swoosh« as the signal of a successfully sent E-Mail the paper looks into the contribution of cultural values to communication with invisible machines. This contribution can be assessed within the context of Talcott Parsons’ action theory which addresses culture as one of four functional aspects of any one action (L), the other three being adaptation to physical, material, and technical environment (A), reference to the goal-attainment of both organism and personality (G), and the integration into, and differentiation from, other action (I). The swoosh signals an »infrathin«, i.e. fleeting, connection of black boxes like machine, body, consciousness, and society being interrelated orthogonally. A culture develops, which momentarily leaves open the question whether or what controls whom or what, even though the calculi of computation themselves are becoming ever more incomputable