[D66] All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse

[R.O.]

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  * All and Nothing: A Digital Apocalypse
  * Martin Burckhardt
  * 2017
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  * Published by: The MIT Press
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summary

In the beginning was the Zero, and the Zero was with God, and God was 
the One. -- /All and Nothing/

In 1854, the British mathematician George Boole presented the idea of a 
universe the elements of which could be understood in terms of the logic 
of absence and presence: 0 and 1, all and nothing -- the foundation of 
binary code. The Boolean digits 0 and 1 do not designate a quantity. In 
the Boolean world, /x/ times /x/ always equals x; all and nothing meet 
in the formula /x/ = /x//n/. As everything becomes digitized, God the 
clockmaker is replaced by God the programmer. This book--described by 
its authors as "a theology for the digital world" -- explores meaning in 
a digital age of infinite replication, in a world that has dissolved 
into information and achieved immortality by turning into a pure sign.

/All and Nothing/ compares information that spreads without restraint to 
a hydra -- the mythological monster that grew two heads for every one 
that was cut off. Information is thousand-headed and thousand-eyed 
because Hydra's tracks cannot be deleted. It shows that when we sit in 
front of a screen, we are actually on the other side, looking at the 
world as an uncanny reminder of the nondigitized. It compares our 
personal data to our shadows and our souls, envisioning the subconscious 
laid out on a digital bier like a corpse.

The digital world, the authors explain, summons forth fantasies of a 
chiliastic or apocalyptic nature. The goal of removing the 
representative from mathematics has now been achieved on a greater scale 
than Boole could have imagined.

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