902692

book-review2020
POSXXX10.1177/0048393120902692Philosophy of the Social SciencesBook Review

Book Review
Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Book Review
1­–7
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
journals.sagepub.com/home/pos

Aden Evens
Logic of the Digital, New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 183 pp.
$108.00. ISBN 978-1-4725-6673-7 (hbk).

Reviewed by: Sheldon Richmond, Independent Scholar, Thornhill, Ontario, Canada

DOI: 10.1177/0048393120902692

Do not expect this book to be about binary logic, nor any form of symbolic
logic, nor even Boolean Logic. It is about ontology, and not the ontology of a
Quine, but the ontology of a Heidegger. Evens is not talking about the values
for variables. Evens is talking about, for all intents and purposes, computer
hardware, software, interfaces, and the internet; but not in a customary way:
not in a way that explains the operations and functions of computer technol-
ogy; nor, in a way that explains the socio-technical workings of computer
technology in current societies.
I suppose I gave it away, when I intimated that Evens launches into his
discussion of the “logic of the digital” from the philosophical platform of
Heidegger. I also intimated my unfamiliarity with the poetics, style, herme-
neutics, methodology, or jargon used by Evens in saying what I expected the
“logic of the digital” to be about, but is not. Evens barely mentions Turing
machines, von Neumann computer architecture, mathematical communica-
tion theory. Evens mentions what is virtually the core of modern digital tech-
nology, and the core of communication throughout digital technologies, in
passing and elaborating upon his theme of how the digital, as bit, moves
through the computer world: hardware, interface, internet. So, if one is not of
the school of thinkers who adore Heidegger and see Heidegger as the greatest
philosopher ever in Heidegger’s supposed tumbling of the pillars of western
civilization; why bother with the book? My answer is yes to the question
whether the book is worth reading for a more general audience of philoso-
phers who have an interest in the philosophy of technology, media, and socio-
technics. However, I would read the book backwards, though I did read it in
the order established by Evens.
Why read the book, even if only backwards? Evens hits on what I person-
ally take to be the fundamental problem of current digital technology and
humanity. Digital technology is a misfit for humans: is there a way to improve
2 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 00(0)

the technology so that it fits humans and allows humans to amplify (to use
Ross Ashby’s terminology) our human abilities, including intelligence? I
want to emphasize that I state what I take as the fundamental problem of digi-
tal technology and humanity, in my words, not the words of Evens. Indeed,
Evens, does not raise the question of whether the architecture of digital tech-
nology has an alternative (which it does: in the VLSI (Very Large Scale
Integrated) neuromorphic chips that Carver Mead developed as a real world
test of his neuromorphic engineering models of brain-like functioning chips;
in the parallel distributed cognitive and computer processing models that
David Rumelhart developed; and more currently in the algorithms of the pro-
totype learning machines that Geoffrey Hinton, his colleagues, and his stu-
dents developed and tested; and classically in the Cybernetic mathematical
models and prototype automata that Norbert Wiener and Ross Ashby devel-
oped). I am running ahead of myself: Evens’s problem, in his own terminol-
ogy, not my terminology, is: how can the binary digital world interact with
“actuality” (which I take Evens to mean the analog world of humanity, and
how people ordinarily understand the rest of the world in relational and com-
parative terms)? Evens answers, we interact with the digital world when we
use “interrupts” in computers to interface with computers, such as hitting
ctrl+alt+del, in Dos-Windows machines, or using a mouse pointer to click
on an icon, or using a keyboard to input text. The digital (the binary) has an
“edge,” according to Evens, and it is the “edge” where the “interrupts” of
computer systems allow one to enter the ontologically discrete, isolated,
stand-alone ultimately super-abstract world of the binary or digital. The
super-abstract binary digital world is a world apart, further from us than
Plato’s Forms.
For the sake of transparency, I have a different take on the question of
how the digital is a misfit with the analog and humanity in my forthcoming
book. I take the problem of the misfit of the digital with the analog, as a
socio-technical problem; whereas, Evens take the problem as an ontologi-
cal problem. From my point of view, Aden Evens provides a peek into how
digital technology fails to adapt to humans. Aden Evens tells us that digital
technology forces humans to bind themselves to activities and concepts that
distort our humanity. Moreover, Aden Evens tells us, in my terminology,
how digital technology forces users of digital technology to estrange their
autonomy, dignity, and humanity. But Evens’s take is ontological. Whereas,
I propose that digital technology is merely the currently dominant technol-
ogy, the technology now in fashion, but a technology that is optional.
Indeed, to my mind, there is an alternative technology, under development,
by prominent computer scientists and engineers (such as Carver Mead
among others for analog-based chip technology, the followers of the late
Book Review 3

David Rumelhart for modeling parallel processing based on how neurons

function in parallel to perform analog processes, and Geoffrey Hinton
among others, for learning-machine technology applications). To be fair to
Evens I will take his point of departure as my point of departure in this
review. However, what I aim to do in this review is to open up the discus-
sion of Evens’s book to a broad readership. I attempt to decode how Aden
Evens understands the fundamental problem of digital technology in a more
neutral terminology, free of the terminology of Heideggarian philosophy,
and for that matter, free of the terminology of school philosophy.
The rest of this review will decode how Evens applies his understanding
of Heidegger to the task of understanding the “logic of the digital,” or in
plain terms (as I said above), for the purpose of opening up Evens’s book to
a broad readership). Evens talks about not how we work with digital tech-
nology, but how digital technology works on us when we use it. The ques-
tion Evens asks, in my decoding is: is there an escape from the distortions
that digital technology imposes on us when we work with it? I read Evens
as saying: there is no escape from digital technology. Why do I have this
reading? The short of it is that I think Evens treats digital technology as an
absolute.
I turn now to how Aden Evens sees Heidegger as a platform for develop-
ing a language, a coding system, for interpreting digital technology based on
digital technology’s lack of any relationship with the “actual”:

As Heidegger emphasizes in Being and Time, we do not first find a world

filled with independent and autonomous objects but can only encounter that
world and those objects as already related to us, to our desires, our needs,
our embodied space, our being in time. This relatedness is a precondition of
experience of the world and the things in it. . . . To encounter an object in
the world is to move within an open-ended potential whose horizon is
indefinite. Whereas to encounter a digital object is to confront a finite list
of possible manipulations determined by the structure of the object and
software that surrounds and sustains it. Even a user who does not know all
of the specific possibilities for manipulating a given digital object knows
that those possibilities are part of the object and are clearly delineated in its
structure. (131)

The digital, unlike the “actual,” is a world of discrete distinctions, inde-

pendent of relationships to the actual world and us. Whatever the functions of
a digital object are, such as an icon on the computer screen, or the functions
of a software application (an app), the functions exist as a set of finite choices
independent of the goals of the user, including functions and choices that are
unknown to the user. Whereas, whatever exists in the “actual” world only
4 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 00(0)

exists in relation to persons and their experience, according to Aden Evens

(and Heidegger, also according to Evens).
Using the thesis of a gap between the digital and “actual,” everything
Evens says about the digital as opposed to the “actual” falls into place where
the world of the digital becomes exclusive and exhaustive concerning com-
puters and automata. Moreover, the gap between the digital and the “actual”
is a gap that cannot be bridged, according to Aden Evens. The digital creates
a world without relationships; a world of “autonomous and independent
objects” with dispositions or functions hidden to us and independent of our
will, choices, wants, and needs. Whereas the world of experience is a world
conditioned by our will, choices, wants, and needs; this is the “actual” world.
What is, is willed; and what is willed, is. That is “actuality” according to what
Heidegger says it is (according to Evens).
I understand that Evens is saying, in agreement with Heidegger, or at least
in agreement with what he wills Heidegger to say: we relate to objects through
systems of comparison to us. It is not that objects have properties indepen-
dently of us; it is not that we find out about those properties by forming
comparisons to us, to other objects; nor is it that we find out about those
properties by creating metaphors, and stories, as tools for making predictions
about the behavior of objects that depend on the independently existing prop-
erties of objects. Rather, it is that everything is what it is in reference to us, as
the ultimate measure. Except, the digital: the digital has properties pre-exist-
ing regardless of our attempts to relate the digital to us because the digital
cannot be related to us. Though we create digital codes, say as the basis of a
high-level code, that arbitrarily represent ordinary text by conventions set up
by software developers, these codes have no inherent relationship with us nor
with the text. Evens has a very clear presentation of the arbitrariness, the
inherent unfamiliarity, and unnaturalness of the code. The code has no rela-
tion to us; it stands on its own, though we use it to create something that is
familiar and related to us:

The bits associated with the letter c stored in ASCII encoding represent the
(decimal) number 99, or as a row of bits, 1100011. Neither the numeric
value nor the pattern of bits bears any inherent relation to the letter c, but
that only affirms that the relation between the bits and the letter is a matter
of convention. (11)

So far so good. Bits are assigned by convention to a high-level code,

ASCII, for instance, and the code is translated by the machine when the elec-
tronic two-state or binary signals produced by typing the letter “c” on the
keyboard enter the machine (chips on the board used for keyboard input)
Book Review 5

through the USB (or other serial) port. Or, as Evens says very straightfor-
wardly: “The digital representation in bits must first be read by the machine,
. . .” (11). The sentence continues but shifts into the register of ontology (as
understood by Evens)

. . . an automated reincarnation of the symbol to be presented. Whereas

material symbols appeal to their sensible materiality, tying themselves
necessarily to a place and time, the bit pushes its materiality aside by a kind
of indirection, a shift of registers from the symbolic into a still more abstract
domain. (11-12)

Such “a shift of registers” calls for a thorough discussion of the ques-

tion: has the invention and use of digital technology created a new onto-
logical realm that cuts the world into two, the digital versus the “actual”?
Evens very thoroughly discusses the question and exhaustively, relent-
lessly, without tiredness, and with intense concentration, answers in the
positive. But one who takes computers at face value, and accepts without
quibble or qualification, the slogan WYSIWYG (“what you see is what
you get”), might interrupt Evens in his ruminations about the ontology of
the bit, and respond as follows:
The GUI, graphical user interface, such as the “desktop” with clickable
icons or the app boxes on smart devices with touch screens, the interface
between us and computers, or the digital world, brings the digital world out
of its own ontological realm into “actuality.” At least, if the digital world
exists in its own ontological realm, the GUI interface allows for interaction
between the two worlds. Also, VUI (voice-user interface) allows one to use
speech to interact with the digital world. At the minimum, even if the digital
is ontologically distinct from the “actual,” the two realms interact using GUI
and VUI. In general, such interfaces are classified as “user-friendly” inter-
faces. However, Aden Evens is prepared for such an interruption in his solilo-
quy on the tenacious bit and its imperious behavior, dominating everything,
inside its ontological purview.
Aden Evens goes to great lengths to address the question of how user-
friendly interfaces misdirect the reality of the situation, where even the inter-
faces are trapped in the digital world; embedded in the ontology of the bit.
Evens first lays out how the “visual interface” deceives

. . . the visual interface follows the logic of the icon throughout. Not just the
small images that stand for files and folders, not just the pictograms that
populate palettes and toolbars, but every element of the visual interface. . . .
Each object in the interface stands as representative of some nonpresentable
version of itself . . .
6 Philosophy of the Social Sciences 00(0)

I interrupt. Here comes the binary, the bit sneaking behind the scene,
behind the screen in front of our eyes. Evens continues. “. . . a binary encod-
ing whose visual presentation is only one face, one aspect. What one sees on
the screen is, in principle generic, iconic, representing . . .” I interrupt. The
generic does not represent files, garbage, or dust bins, nor does the iconic file
folder really mean “file save/open,” nor does the iconic garbage bin mean
“file delete/see deleted files.” The generic icon really represents the binary,
the bits, behind the scene. Evens continues. “. . . a digital artifact that is both
more and less than its material analog.” (90) One cannot help responding:
let’s get to the chase. What is this “digital artifact” that is “both more and less
than its material analog”? We had the full answer in the first chapter how the
bit in its tyranny works though super-abstract: it is so abstract that its only
representation in the binary 0/1 represents nothing other than 0/1: nothing can
be more abstract that has no representation, and only a syntax that makes up
a language unto itself. However, the reader may not grasp the point of the first
chapter, until reading the other chapters, where Evens raises the question of
the specter haunting digital technology and all its components, from chips,
drives, interfaces, and internet. The last chapter summarizes everything
before it and explains how the specter of the bit haunts everything even
though it has no “material” analog; and that is why I suggest reading the last
chapter first. The binary, and its bits, as the ultimate abstraction, though sepa-
rate from all the rest, inhabiting its own ontology, is the spooky element,
behind the action of the binary on everything digital, not merely at a great
distance, nor in some synchronous time, but in no time, because time and
space are inapplicable to the ontology of the bit. The time of the computer
clock is itself a sequencing of bits, and nothing like ordinary physical time.
How can the actions of the computer user at all work on the spooky bit
hiding behind everything, neither in space nor time, and having no direct
materiality? How can we touch the abstract ontology of the bit, if the abstract
ontology of the bit is not material but still haunting everything digital behind
the scenes?
In order to discuss the question of how to interact with the hyper-abstract
world of the digital, allow me to do some role playing. I will play a character
(an avatar) in the alternate reality PhilosophyCraft Game, the alternate virtual
reality philosophy game created by Aden Evens in his book about digital
technology as seen through the eyes of a virtual Heidegger. Right now I, as
an avatar, am staring at the screen, typing letters, and I don’t come into con-
tact with the “abstract domain.” I know the machine has a bunch of chips on
various boards that turn codes into signals, and that convert signals into codes
that are intertranslatable as machine-language, or as assembly-language, or
as interpreter-language, and so forth; that ultimately are composed into
Book Review 7

applications that are running through the main processors; that also convert
the signals created by the codes, into various forms of output recognized by
the computer operator as data, formulas, words, numbers, reports, docu-
ments, graphs, drawings, movies. How is this different from the telegraph,
the telephone, the radio, and the television that convert signals into sounds
and sights? Morse code was binary: (. . . ---. . ..) What abstract realm, of the
utmost abstractness, do the dots and dashes of Morse code occupy? It is the
abstract ontology of the digital perhaps foreseen without realizing it by those
who used Morse code! (-.-.--)
Now I leave my game character (avatar) in the PhilosophyCraft Game set
out in the virtual reality of Evens’s book, and return to myself, a philosopher
with a background in IT, or an IT person with a background in philosophy. I
think there is a problem that Aden Evens has recognized: it is the socio-
technical problem of how to use digital technology to enhance human cogni-
tive abilities, rather than to turn humans into dummies, estranged from their
own tools and inventions. However, I think that Aden Evens in his attempt to
philosophize the problem mystifies the problem. Evens converts the practical
problem we have with digital technology, soluble in the social, political, eco-
nomic, and technological arenas, into a hyper-inflated insoluble mysterium.
There is no judgment here: I am speaking for myself and find the book
difficult to comprehend, but worth the effort, in that the book does under-
score, in a language that many philosophers do appreciate, a serious practical
human, social, problem with digital technology. The more perspectives on
the problem that different schools of philosophy can provide, the more wide-
spread the recognition of the problem. Solving our practical problem with
digital technology is another matter; recognizing the problem of the misfit of
digital technology for humans is not equivalent to taking steps in “actuality”
to transform the socio-technics of digital technology.
Evens sees the fundamental problem raised by the onto-logic of digital
technology as: can we “negotiate” in our materiality with the digital, in its
abstractness, so we can create a bridge across the divide between the digital
and the “actual”? In Aden Evens’s own words: “How there can be any edge,
how a rapprochement between actual and digital becomes at all possible, that
is the pressing question of a digital politics.” (153). Digital Politics: perhaps,
the take of Evens on the onto-logic of the digital is not that far from my socio-
technical take on digital technology as embedded in a social world as well as
a technical world where we can change both the social and the technical. Is it
fair to ask Evens the question: how can we develop a politics for “a rap-
prochement”? As well, is it fair to ask Evens, can we even go so far as devel-
oping an alternative analog technology for computers that enhances humanism
in, of, and for humanity?