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MACHINE DREAMS

Alexei Taylor, Author

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What makes an observer modern? : Morgante Pell

The modern observer is simultaneously subjective and sentient. This model of the "modern" observer can be traced to the 19th century with experiments in the physiology of observation, particularly of color. As science developed a more sophisticated conception of the physical process by which the world is transmitted into our minds, philosophers used these insights to inspire new theories about the relationship between observer and observed. In this new theory, the observer gains the power: she is no longer a spectator receiving the world around her, but an observer crafting observations about that world. Thus, she has become both subjective and sentient.

Our modern observer crafts her observations internally and creates a culturally-attuned (Taussig 17) and personally-calibrated version of the world she observes. Thus, no two observers create the same observations. In this sense, the modern observer is thus a subjective observer: what she creates as an observation (even within her own mind) is uniquely relative to her particular techniques of observation and background. The fallacy of the objective observation has been eliminated. Just as science tells us that the copy of the outside world reflected within our eyes is dependent upon the particular characteristics of those eyes, this new philosophy tells us that the observations crafted within our minds are dependent on the characteristics of those minds. Thus, the modern observer is subjective.

Yet, she is also aware of that subjectivity and thus sentient. In some sense, a camera might be crafted to be subjective: a particular filter imposes a particular view on that which is seen through the lens. But that camera never becomes sentient: as far as it is concerned, what is seen through that distorted filter is what exists outside. Our modern observer, on the other hand, is conscious of crafting her observations through her particular mental lens. Thus, the modern observer has been transformed from a passively "objective" receiver into an actively subjective observer. She creates her own version of the world outside and she's aware of doing so.
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