Astronomical phenomena seem eminently predictable, always "in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks" (Musil 3). The movements of the planets act like a model of Newtonian predictability, in which an absolute, total knowledge, and the creation of laws based on this, allows accurate predictions into an endless cyclic future. However, even gravitational astronomy, though predictable for "many centuries" (Wiener 30), involves frictional processes that eventually change, modifying the solar system (Wiener 36); not every variable can be accounted for, and apparently constant cycles mutate or dissipate. The weather is even less likely to be predictable. There is too much data to obtain (an impossible amount), and too many variables to compute (Wiener 33). Yet attempts to predict the weather still exist, we tune in for our nightly forecasts (or turn the television off to avoid them). Newtonian constants and ordered cycles cannot be found, so the meteorologist has turned to statistics, from certainties to probabilities: "the atmospheric temperature was in proper relation to the average annual temperature" (Musil 3).

In a society obsessed with statistical calculations slippages between possibilities and certainties soon emerge, the desire for total control and programmatic development reasserts itself, as is illustrated in Musil's The Man Without Qualities. When a man is run over by a lorry the characters can only comprehend this, not as a chance occurrence, but as something expected, something that "could be fitted into some kind of pattern…a technical problem." (5). Eventually one of the characters is able to completely remove any element of the exceptional from the incident as statistical calculations already predict such incidents ("'according to American statistics…" (6)). Indeed, the incident seems part of a regulated pattern, and an organised system seems to assert itself as a "clean and tidy" ambulance duly arrives, efficiently removing the body (6). A culture of statistical expectations soon finds itself drawn toward the idea(l) of total knowledge, certainties, constants, absolute order and infallible predictions.

Musil represents this attitude in his characters, and in the culture in general, but only to undermine such determinations. Musil mixes order and disorder, and draws attention to the partiality of knowledge (for example, we think we know the characters' names, but then realise that we do not) (Serres 17). Attempts at order seem vain emerging only briefly out of a more 'fundamental' disorder, as is evident in the description of cities: "irregularity, change…collisions… perpetual discord and dislocation of all opposing rhythms" (Musil 4). But is Wiener able to similarly resist the quest for predictability based on established parameters and constants? Is the search for programmatic outcomes really under attack? Let us look more at the science of cybernetics.

In a sense, Wiener's cybernetics challenges certain assumptions (or 'givens'). The boundaries of human/animal and organism/machine, that have long been considered absolute, are disputed and discarded. However, Wiener does this only to replace these constants with a new one, as "cybernetics" becomes the new given, the new certainty that underlies and unifies human/animal/machine, as they all are examples of the cybernetic, that is, they are all (considered to be) servo-mechanisms of communication and control. It is Wiener's theorizing of this element of communication that is of particular interest to the present context. (Phew! Just when it seemed as though we would never get to the topics of 'language' or 'reading'; topics that it seems only fair for one to expect to find on the pages of this web site).

Wiener is interested in the perfection of communication; the mechanisms he discusses rely on the efficient transmission of information, the movement of signals without the interference of noise. Cybernetics was developed through military funding as part of the war effort, and a useful example of the cybernetic mechanism is the cybernetic approach to the development of anti-aircraft artillery (see Wiener 3-6, 14, 43). In this approach, the missile and the target are not considered separate but are defined as part of the same system. There would be a feedback mechanism in which new information regarding the statistical prediction of the (moving) target's position would be constantly relayed back to the missile, which would be adjusted accordingly, the new position of the missile then being related back to another prediction of the target's position, and so on; until the inevitable, deadly, conclusion. Computation, statistical probability, and the transmission of perfect communication come together to produce programmatic and fully predictable conclusions. The communication is perfect because it can only be interpreted in one way, the (dead) accurate transmission and reception of data is what allows the system to be maintained and for prediction to occur. But is such transparent communication possible?

In the epigraph to Given Time, Derrida takes an apparently simple statement and opens up the possibilities of its meaning, meanings that cannot be arrested by intention, yet remain nevertheless, and this possibility is present in any use of language, in any communication. Noise is unavoidable. Communication is not the pseudo-gift of exchange, always answerable to an origin that would contain the 'true' meaning, its possibilities always calculable and calculated. Rather, Derrida is able to open up the aporia of the letter fragment because all communication (or language) is the 'true' gift, that is, the gift without return: unpredictable, severed from an origin and so 'outside' of the logic of exchange that would always return the gift to its source and, hence, annul the gift. Serres pushes Musil and Wiener together, making unexpected connections beyond any initial 'intention' of either author. Similarly, this web page is itself uncertain of its final position in a web of links. Where this text may lead others, or how it may be lead by others, is indeterminable as it opens itself up to the possibilities of the ('other') gift. The text is never stable, and is always open to a future without conclusion and the possibility of chance encounters.

The connections that have been made here (Serres-Musil-Wiener-Derrida-Gleick (to name only those most obviously ‘present’)) may, at times, seem fortuitous; but fortuity, and the constant possibility of this, is here the point.

Kyle Weise