<nettime> The Sprawling Disconnect of Mirror Worlds

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Not so long ago, an academic called David Gelernter published an
influential book called Mirror Worlds (1991). The core idea was simple:
computers would create miniaturized images of real-world institutions,
allowing individuals to navigate sprawling and otherwise inaccessible
systems. The intricacies of complex societal functions would be revealed in
interactive diagrams; stultifying bureaucracies would become transparent
and democratically governable.

In the mid-Nineties, without any knowledge of things digital, I traveled
from France to California in a bid to convince my profs at Berkeley that I
was still alive, still writing and about to turn in my almost-completed PhD
thesis. Only one of them, I knew, gave a damn about it, yet I could barely
catch his attention during the half-hour visit that had motivated me to fly
halfway around the world. "I need to download special software to fulfill
the university requirements," he grumbled. "But damn, I can't download the
software until I fulfill the university requirements."

Flash forward to 2026. In order to grasp what is being pumped out into the
air every day by a metal shredder smack dab in the middle of a Chicago
neighborhood, I find myself confronted by dozens of categories and
thousands of numbers coming from the Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency and from a private company. Most of the numbers are in a bare-bones
spreadsheet with no explanation whatsoever, and the really critical ones
(from the private company as you would expect) are buried somewhere in a
photocopied pdf 380 pages long. I turn to AI for assistance. I feel
compelled to make a simple online R Shiny app that will at least allow the
other members of the local environmental justice group to consult these
numbers, which are about to serve the shredder as a justification for
continuing to spew lead, manganese, benzene, chloroform, trichlorethelyne
and an entire alphabet of toxic substances directly into our lungs. To
build the app I have to understand, not only the metal-shredding operation,
but also the highly politicized and often obfuscatory science of the
Illinois and US EPAs. If I could get it right - if I could correctly apply,
for example, a THQ=1.0 risk screening value to a toxic substance profile -
then maybe our group could talk coherently about the numbers game that is
about to determine the health of some thirty thousand fellow residents.

The app started to take form. It grew in complexity as I explored the
issues. Soon it embraced all the information available to us. "This," I
thought to myself, "is definitely a mirror world."

But what exactly does it mirror?

The incredible thing about the US EPA is the profusion of science-based
public health analysis. It turns out that even when you split hairs into
microscopic pieces, they are still likely to be covered in
nanograms-per-cubic-meter or parts-per-billion-by-volume of toxic
substances. What's more, the toxicity of those substances is anything but
clear. It depends on whether the exposure is subchronic, chronic or acute.
What's more, it depends on how many other substances you may be exposed to.
If you live in what they call an "EJ neighborhood" - which means a place
where poor and largely non-white residents are bathed in industrial
cocktails by industries whose owners would never dream of living there -
well, then, gee, maybe you had better apply a THQ-0.1 coefficient to obtain
your risk-screening values. Fortunately you can do that in R, just add
another toggle, presto. However there is one caveat, and it is underscored
at every turn of the EPA webpages. The result of your calculation will say
nothing, that is, nothing legally binding, about the health outcomes of
whatever you may be breathing, at whatever level of subchronic, chronic or
acute exposure and in whatever concentration of nanograms-per-cubic-meter
or parts-per-billion-by-volume. Because in the great majority of cases the
EPA, both state and federal, has only been empowered to suggest what your
risk might be under certain circumstances - not to set enforceable
standards that could mitigate that risk.

The amazing thing is the contrast between the EPA numbers and the private
company numbers. The EPA measured emissions at the fence line for years,
marshaling an extraordinary scientific effort. They showed clearly
unacceptable levels of many different toxins. Then after the metal shredder
installed some new containment hoods in the spring of 2025, the same
Illinois EPA declared they didn't have to monitor anymore - even though the
levels of emissions barely changed during the half year that followed the
equipment installation. Now it's time to grant a permit to the shredder so
that it can go on spewing for another decade or two. For that, it's enough
to do three tests inside the smokestack, for a short list of metals
excluding the worst one (magnesium), plus a single category covering all
the volatile organic compounds (your benzenes, chloroforms,
trichlorethelynes and the like). The foregone conclusion - which we don't
accept - is that this permit will go through. We will contest it to the
best of our abilities, with numbers, testimonies, people power etc. The
next few weeks will tell the story on that one.

In the meantime I am wondering about all the mirror worlds that have been
created since the 1990s. All the climate models, all the big data on hidden
biases, all the toxicology and endocrinology and oceanography and
everything that claims to make a big bad dangerous world small enough to
fit in your cellphone and simple enough to understand at a glance. I myself
seem to spend half my time creating such mirror worlds. With the help of
AI, they have started to sprawl uncontrollably, occupying ever more
reticular and psychic space. Such that now, things have been anything but
simplified. Instead, there are on the one hand massive, complex,
consequential and thoroughly opaque bureaucracies that determine real-world
outcomes, often at the behest of oligarchs who can easily put their
minions' fingers on the scales. And on the other hand, inside computer
networks completely disconnected from this real world, there are
increasingly complex, sprawling and exhausting mirror worlds of idealized
bureaucracies that are only empowered to produce unenforceable measurements
and representations that look great on a screen.

"If only I could download this stuff into reality and change the world," I
find myself grumbling. "But damn, I would have to change the world in order
to download it."
-- 
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