(L-R - Lego-man- Douglas Coupland has a strong interest in Lego and the fictional software OOP in Microserfs was a digital version of Lego, (middle) Douglas Coupland, (right) image of the coffee table book on digital heroine Lara Croft with a forward and fictional Lara Croft story by Douglas Coupland.)
"The critical question is, Will this Entity be something other than human? The artificial intelligence community admits it has failed to produce intelligence by trying to duplicate human logic processes. AIers are hoping to create life-mimcking programs that breed with each other, simulating millions of years of evolution by cross breeding these programmes together, ultimately creating intelligence - an Entity. But probably not a human entity modeled on human intelligence."
I said, "Well, Karla, we're only human - we can only know our own minds - how can we possibly know any other kind of mind? What else could the Entity be? It will have sprung from our brains - the initial algorithms at least. There's nothing else we could be duplicating except the human mind."
Todd said that the Entity is what freaks out his ultra-religious parents. He said they're most frightened of the day when people allow machines to have initiative - the day we allow machines to set their own agendas.
"Oh God, I'm trapped in a 1950s B-movie," said Karla.
WHO IS THIS DOUGLAS COUPLAND MAN ANYWAY?
The Douglas Coupland I talked about on-line with the Bogus Coupland discussion group and in real life, boring my non-Coupland enamoured friends to death, sprang to some extent from my brain, or more accurately was an entity I'd created from electronic source material.
The source material was also my point of contact for the Doug-entity. At the tour diaries at Coupland.com, I could log on each day and read a little more about Douglas Coupland's life and continue to construct my Douglas Coupland entity. Aiding this was an on-line Barnes and Noble discussion with Douglas Coupland. "Contact" may be an inappropriate word because between us was at least one screen (possibly Doug didn't actually sit in front of the screen to write his on-line diaries, several of the Europe versions are in fact faxs that have been transcribed and at the Barnes and Noble on-line discussion, he has problems with his lap top so one of the assistants takes up the job of transcribing his answers), a mass of circuitry and various coding and decoding of 1s and 0s.
There was also a delayed time difference. With the diaries, Coupland had no idea of my response. However the Barnes and Noble on-line interview I think was a form of contact. The format consisted of questions posted prior to the interview time. I posted a question and an hour or so later a (slightly unsatisfying) reply was posted. This was significant, not just because it was 2am on a Thursday, but I certainly reacted to it. I had sent out something, received a response and reacted. My reaction was that Douglas Coupland had provided a pretty glib answer to my carefully thought out question. It also wasn't an answer I liked. The thing that irked me the most however, was his initial response was "Blimey" since he had seen from the identity tag that went with my question that I was from London. Very Dick Van Dyke. I realised my annoyance was due to the fact that although I had a good idea who I was receiving an answer from, Coupland on the other side of the screen did not "know" me. Furthermore, the transcript shows in his next response he congratulated the post-er for asking such a good question. I found I had a personal reaction that he had found my question bad and felt extremely bad tempered to be up so late to receive a personal slight in this form.
Regardless of how Douglas Coupland perceived me, the Douglas Coupland I was discussing (the crueller of my friends would say obsessing over) was merged electronic images, text perceived in an electronic medium. It was certainly a virtual Douglas Coupland and possibly a post-human creation.
Slightly problematic in terms of this discussion, is that the entity I had created was not entirely from electronic sources. Douglas Coupland is a fiction writer. As well as the electronic "author" persona that is documented on several websites created by Coupland fans, in his web diaries and his own on-line persona in several interviews - there is Douglas Coupland the author that sits above the text of his hard copy books. (And perhaps sits by the listener of the audio tapes of his books read by actors- the exception being Life after God, which he recorded himself, so in this case I guess he's occupying a position somewhere in between the two earphones plugged into the listeners head, or hiding behind the car tape deck).
In addition, there is Douglas Coupland the celebrity, who hangs out with Spike Jonze, does Hello magazine interviews, bitches about the trouble he's been having getting Microserfs made into the first ever digital movie (Babe 2 bombed so they've delayed the project at Paramount, however John Malkovich has bought the option on Shampoo Planet) and has his own range of designer coffee tables which he sends as tokens of admiration to people like Damien Hirst. He's not exactly the latest new rock star breed of writer, but one suspects he aspires to be so.
Multi-identities. I was overrun with replicants. Good thing Douglas Coupland has been reading Andy Warhol since he was nine years old. He probably has a better understanding of the obsession this society has for replication than I do.
Somehow though, the author, the subject of the electronic
diaries and the electronic interviewee merged into one identity for me.
This was easy to maintain when I was in daily discussion with a group of
other Douglas Coupland readers who also referred to the Doug identity that
they too had created. Before long I was speculating on Douglas Coupland's
next move (furniture design or writing), whether he really had good sex
and where Doug was planning to spend New Years eve. A discussion
of Coupland texts without reference to the author as a person (or a buddy,
as we began to think of him) was rare. In short, I had been assimilated.
I JOIN THE BORG COLLECTIVE
I had not joined on-line discussion groups before. I'd come across message boards, but this was a more direct form of contact. An email to the group would be sent to all subscribers mail boxes. The Coupland group turned out to be a fairly serious group of mainly 20-25 year olds from all over the globe. He seems to have a particularly strong following in Scandinavia, or perhaps the Scandinavians are just more comfortable joining the on-line discussion groups. #Note 1
I stayed in lurk-mode for a while, noticing that although some discussion of Coupland's style and themes would occasionally spark up, mostly the postings tended to be about the people who were actually posting. There seemed to be an identification with Coupland's characters which united this group, rather than an interest in deconstructing his texts.
I also realised after a while I would find myself quoting some of these emails to physical world friends as if this was a conversation I'd had with somebody at work. I'd begun to categorise the Coupland group as acquaintances. I also realised I had begun to recognise the email styles and when I read their postings an identity behind the postings was beginning to emerge.
My fellow-posters were for the most part 10 or more years younger than me and tended to be quite enthusiastic about life and love and strangely Ikea furniture (and Coupland). They seemed quite comfortable in developing on-line friendships. I think two of them had met their boyfriends on-line and flown to different parts of the world to meet them. (If I recall it was Sweden, there's that Scandinavian link again). There was a warmth behind most of the messages and greetings to the group as if greeting friends. I discovered when I posted I tended to be much friendlier electronically than I would be in real life. A friend from the physical world even commented I tended to be more "real" in my email communications than in my physical incarnation. #Note 2
I found I had begun to think of the Coupland group as a part of the web where I could communicate with people, generally interested in the same kind of things I was into. This differs from the Cyberworld Julian Dibbell describes in My Tiny Life, because it was not in real time and people were not creating alter-identities (as far as I knew). These were emails that I would pick up at various times of the day. At first I subscribed under my work email but found the volume of mail too much to deal with at work, so switched to my home email at AOL, which I could also log on and check from the AOL site if I wanted during my work day. In that instance I suppose it was literally an on-line part of cyberspace I was visiting, however for the most part, emails were downloaded to my C drive. To my home. This was a difference again from the experience Dibble describes in My Tiny Life, I was not entering a space or location to meet these people, I was bringing their postings to my space and accessing when I wanted.
Gender was present and from my experience (ahem, participative research) gender unquestionably exists in cyberspace - although it may be constructed differently from the physical world core persona. I think most of the email names people chose gave away what sex they were, or they would sign off their emails with their real name. Several members of the group posted photographs so we would "know" who we were talking to. There is apparently a shared files area at the e-group domain where these photos reside. It seemed the connection people were looking for was an electronic friendship, rather than an electronic (possibly leading to physical world) sexual relationship.
Possibly this was not a key issue because of the nature of the discussion group. Coupland's texts are not what you'd call sexually charged. He has a habbit of depicting movie sex in his books. You know the chapter finishes as soon as the lights go out. His characters, several people noted in discussions, were not strongly alpha male types and in fact most females also found male characters easy to identify with. Generally his female characters tend to be a bit wooden. However there was a sense of majority agreement that Doug is not interested in gender differences. One member of the group felt that Coupland is possible intentionally trying to un-gender his characters, to create a "human" character. Several members of the group particularly identified with one of the Coupland characters in Microserfs who meets his ideal partner through a discussion group and claims that it is irrelevant whether the person he eventually goes to Las Vegas to hook up with is male or female. (To keep it simple she turns out to be a cute girl and its all kept strictly PG). The notion of humanness rather than gender boundaries seemed to be embrassed by the group and fitted within the kind of collectiveness that we were beginning to exhibit. However this was not an overwhelming impression and varied from post-er to post-er.
Coupland himself was engendered. There were a couple of discussions as to why there seems to be so little sex in his books and whether he may be gay, however there was not major interest in this. Coupland is quoted in one on-line interview when asked why there is not many explicit sex scenes in his work by saying many of the writers he admires, such as Evelyn Waugh, tend not to include them. The general conclusion of the Coupland post-ers seemed to be, like Coupland, they didn't consider explicit sexual descriptions and strong gender boundaries that important.
To some degree Coupland was engendered in the same way a pop star is engendered. Occasionally somebody would post that they were in love with Coupland, usually meant in an ironic way, but there was certainly a strong sense of admiration/hero worship in a lot of the postings which concerned Coupland himself. At one point there was a heated debate over advance copies of Miss Wyoming, where some members suggested that maybe it wasn't the greatest thing Coupland ever wrote. One reaction suggested quality was immaterial they owed it to Doug to read it. #Note 3 The fact Coupland was not in the group, but was the centre of the group's existence, seemed to create this fan club sensation. We could follow more or less what he was up to from various internet articles that would appear or be emailed from the group, but he was not part of the group. More than once we occasionally, with a heavy sense of irony of course, referred to ourselves as cyber stalkers.
A curious thing happened shortly before Miss Wyoming, the latest novel was released. A new posting occurred from somebody with the email name of IAM. He engaged in several long posts with Erik, the founder of the Coupland group, and then abruptly announced he was going On the Road to a place where not even laptops could be used.
While I was musing, just where the heck that could be - Iam must be off to join a cult, somebody posted a more interesting question: did anyone else think Iam might be Coupland. The name I am, being just the kind of post-ironic thing our Doug would come up with. It was generally felt that it was unlikely that Iam was Douglas Coupland but wouldn't it have been great if it was. Furthermore it later turned out Iam had emailed a couple of members off-group to their personal emails and he was definitely not Douglas Coupland. In fact he sent Anne a copy of his passport proving Iam was a nickname for William. Iam was also spending New Years Eve in Las Vegas while somebody posted a link to an article about how Douglas Coupland was spending New Years Eve driving around Vancouver with his buddies trying to guess why the other people in cars were driving around at midnight on the last day of the century instead of celebrating.
This incident, I think, shows that the Coupland discussion group was not focused just on Coupland's texts, there was certainly an interest in Coupland the entity. I think too there was also an interest in searching out clues to the real Coupland and a desire to connect with the real Coupland in some way. In the same way I think the level of posts concerned with personal detail also showed an interest in defining the post-er's identity and interest in connecting with the other post-ers.
It occured to me if the Doug we were discussing was some kind of replicant Doug constructed in cyberspace, then the discussion group was beginning to resemble some borg collective. I'd hesitate to say there was a desire to merge identities into a single organism like the borg, but several of the more active post-ers (which had begun to include me now!) began referring to the group as "the Couplanders" or the "Coup kids". We'd named ourselves, so I think this suggested that there was a recognition that the group itself had a common identity we could use as a tag even if we were not completely assimilated.
Secondly in common with the borg there was an ability to quickly come up with any information through the use of group resources. Somebody would post a question on what groups were playing in London on a particular weekend that they would be in town and within a few hours, a list would appear or a link to a Time Out site with the information they needed. One member of the Coupland discussion group actually worked for Douglas Coupland's publishing house Harper Collins. Jeremy "The Insider" was a very helpful resource for Doug information - when and where would Douglas Coupland be reading in England, an anecdote about a narcoleptic incident on Douglas Coupland's last book tour and feedback on where to go to see the latest reviews. #Note 4
However, whereas the Borg is a collective of all parts of equal status summing to a whole, a traditional family-unit structure began to form with the Coupland discussion group. The founder of the list Erik was occasionally referred to as the Daddy of the list. AML (Anne) a friendly highly intelligent Manhatten based post-er was frequently referred to as Den-Mom Anne. The tag "Coup-kids" may well have been applied in a kind of college fraternity/Famous Five gang kind of way, but may also have been used to denote we were the children of Anne and Erik. I also got assigned a role in our family construction - Grandma Walton.
During the time that I was part of the Coupland discussion group, several ideas for an essay topic presented. #Note 5 In the end I thought the Coupland discussion group remained the best bet for an essay topic, despite my increasing involvement with it. I sketched out a few ideas about the comparison to a Borg Collective which are included above. However with the launch of Miss Wyoming in January, the theme of the essay altered. For one thing the virtual Doug began to grow as the web became more and more populated with articles on Douglas Coupland, internet on-line interviews and the web diaries restarted when he went on tour. Furthermore several members of the Coupland discussion group went to the readings and had met the real Douglas Coupland and relayed their reports and posted their "Me and my close personal friend Douglas Coupland" scanned photographs. I made plans to go to Douglas Coupland's London readings and wondered if meeting the "real" Douglas Coupland would cause the virtual Coupland to change at all. I thought this could be the focus of the essay.
As I made plans, several other members of the group, particularly the Scandinavians who had been left off the Douglas Coupland world tour itinerary, announced they would also be in London. AML had been so impressed by Douglas Coupland when she saw him in New York she was travelling to London specifically for the reading. With this kind of poverty jetsetting going on, it seemed impossible to resist the suggestion that when we all arrived in London to see the "Real" Doug, the Couplanders/Coup kids/Borg Collective, should also meet up in the (gulp) flesh.
The European tour itinerary had been posted at the Coupland.com site for some time and the date selected was Friday 3rd March to enable the out-of-towners an opportunity to stay for a weekend in London. As the date approached, it gave me an uncomfortable feeling. I had enjoyed a virtual relationship with these people. Able to log on and receive their messages whenever I chose. Coinciding with this AML also got herself an AOL account and was able to now hail me in real time everytime I ventured on-line as some foreshadowing of how a real life discussion would vary from the virtual discussions we had been having. No time to check the reference books before responding. No editing for sensitivity. And, oh God, we'd all have accents. Would we even be able to understand one another?
I think mostly this anxiety was connected with the realisation that almost all my friends these days had @ as a middle initial. I wasn't sure if I remembered how to maintain a real life friendship. Most of my flesh and blood friends had either been deported back to New Zealand or met with unexpected sudden deaths (or both).
It was as significant as the moment I accepted Dr Jeff's little black box and the notion that an intelligent machine was a possibility. I realised I was posthuman. I preferred dealing with people with screens and time lapses between us. I preferred the intelligent machine.
I also realised I was the only one in the Coupland group who hadn't posted a picture (I didn't want them to know I was old and fat, as if the Grandma Walton tag hadn't given enough away), nor had I bothered downloading all the pictures they'd been posting to get to "know" each other. In 24 hours half a dozen complete strangers would be in a pub and I had know idea how we were going to recognise each other.
Life can be extremely complicated when you mix real
and virtual lives.
Next - The post-posthuman moment...
I was curious to see how much email this would generate. At the same time I found myself in the One-List portion of cyberspace, I joined two other discussion groups. A Star Trek Voyager group - anticipating hundreds of obsessed Star Trek emails to follow and The High Chaperal discussion group - as this was a short lived 1970s Western TV series I didn't expect to hear much on this.
As it turned out the Star Trek Voyager
group must unload their theories at conferences, very few emails trickled
through. The High Chaperal group turned out to be a lively group of mainly
US women, including the sister-in-law of David Lynch (got to be something
worth pursuing there!) who posted several times a day.
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Which could have
sent me in the direction of Jean Claude Baudrillard's writings on the internet
being a place of hyper-reality, but I had a word limit to adhere to (and
if anyone is interested, here is an essay somebody else has already written)
Hyper-reality
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See Polaroids
from the Dead. I have read this. I too, presumably, feel
I owed it to Douglas Coupland.
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However, the most uncanny experience where this occurred was on the High Chaperal discussion group site, where they were discussing TV themesong lyrics (this sprang from a dicussion about how Hoss, Little Joe and Ben Cartwright had actually recorded the theme song to Bonanza). I asked whether anyone knew if there were words to the theme song Haiwaii 5-0, half an hour later an email appeared with the lyrics reprinted, an acknowledgement to the writer and a reference to a recording of Don Ho singing them. This brought home the fact with the aid of the internet the Borg Collective already exists.
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For example, the one-list form of communication, was it just a more immediate form of letter writing? Simple answer is, that it is exactly like the communication form of letter writing, discussing opinions in writing. However the immediacy probably dictates the form of the writing - brief responses rather than planned letters. Quick responses in the time it takes to type a few lines and press the send button kept the debates immediate. Also it involved multi responses, rather than the one to one approach with letter writing. However this didn't present itself as a particularly interesting topic to pursue.
I toyed with the idea of the one-list discussion group acting as a kind of confessional (who then is omniscent Douglas Coupland?) in that quite revealing and personal information was occasionally posted. Or perhaps Baudrillard would suggest this is part of the hyper-reality of the net. By posting just the key bits of our identity or essense, we are distilling ourselves into a hyper-real version of our root-persona. Dr Sherry Turkle concludes that electronic psychotherapists make good listeners, perhaps the medium makes people more open to post detail in that it is a human:machine point of contact, not human:human.
Examples of the net as a kind of confessional box presented many times for example, at a different Coupland list at list-bot (yes there's more than one!) the Christians were furiously posting about how prozac had made a difference to their lives. In fact on one occasion during a discussion on journal writing (prompted Douglas Coupland's tour diary and the internet diary kept by one of the other members at Womanhatten.com) and whether all writing was potentially public, I revealed how a friend had committed suicide a year ago and instead of leaving a note, had left a letter I'd written him on his bed. Other friends who attended the funeral said the letter was being passed about and analysed at the wake. The experience had left me convinced that no writing, even encrypted email, was completely private. However after I'd pushed the send button, I wondered why I'd shared something quite so personal, plus I'd been griping about how something that personal was made public at a wake, now I was sending it out like an electronic message in a bottle to the one-list archives and the discussion group. I put it down to an overkill of Jerry Springer during a week off with the flu, but I suspect it was more about the notion of sending a message into cyberspace and waiting for the healing replies to provide redemption. However, that seemed a little bit too up close and personal for an essay topic.
I also thought about topics unrelated
to the group, such as creating several different email accounts with genderspecific
names and then going on-line using AOL. AOL have a slightly intrusive
programme called Instant Messanger which enables anyone on line to instantly
send a message to anyone who has a profile in the AOL membership list.
I'd found whilst on line as KiwiMaria (my main email account) I would frequently
receive messages from complete strangers with oddly no reason to think
I would respond to them. Until I figured out my glib response to
the hobbies question " no hobbies, just personal obsessions" probably provoked
unwanted interest. I created accounts as Lolita Barrymore, Cody Cassady
(yes Jack Kerouac, Cody Pomeray were already taken and my first choice
Fight Club's Tyler Durden had obviously been snapped up) and the non-gendered
Borg236. However I found after one nights worth of instant messages
to the 20 year old Lolita Barrymore (catchphrase "tell me what you want
what you really really want") exhausting and difficult to sustain.
Against my expectations my own identity kept exerting itself and I found
it difficult to lie on-line. So although I can see how the net represents
freedom and a liberation from fixed identity for many, I found I yam what
I yam. Going on-line as male Cody Cassady and non-gendered Borg 236
provoked about the same level of interest, none. Draw your own conclusions.
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