1. Digital being 

Electromagnetic signals as natural beings (fu/sei o)/nta) are, however, in their natural state are not structured or discretely articulated in any form, but continuous. They can be represented mathematically by continuous functions of time (y = f(t)). Aisthaetic beings (Gr. ai)/sqhta, sensuously perceptible beings) are naturally (fu/sei) continuous. At first we always perceive a whole that is not articulated, e.g. we see a car drive past down the street. This is a continuous happening in time. A video camera can record this scene, and the video film can be broadcast on television. The television viewers will still perceive a whole, namely, the scene of a car passing by. Between the live scene and the perceived television sequence there lies the articulated dissolution or taking-apart or decomposition of the scene and its technical reconstitution as a moving image. 

So far, so good. This articulated dissolution of what is perceived requires, however, ontological clarification. What is happening, i.e. what must be already given a priori,(1) for digital technology to understand and gain an effective grasp? What does dissolution, decomposition or taking-apart (diai/resij) mean ontologically? What does the discreteness of digital beings have to do with beings as such? What does number have to do ontologically with beings as such? And what is the connection between the digital dissolution and the lo/goj (language, reason, knowledge)? 

In digital technology, there must be two different, constant signals, polarizations, bits, states of matter, or the like which can be understood as (interpreted as) 0 and 1. The categories of something (ti\) and another something (to\ e(/teron) in constancy (a)ei\ o)/n) are presupposed metaphysically. Furthermore, there is also unity (mona/j) and duality (du/aj). How are all these categories interrelated? 

We perceive and understand electromagnetic currents, states, etc. not only as such but as binary difference because these currents, etc. have from the start, i.e. a priori, been drafted and interpreted, say, by the technological knowledge of the hardware or the communication technology, as such binary differences. The enpropriating event of being able to perceive binary difference as such is an historical destiny, that is, the way in which in Western history the being of beings reveals itself. 

It is impossible to explain, say, the perception of a whole as a temporal process in the brain, for the categories of the whole (o(/lon), of something (ti\) are already 'visible' in advance, i.e. before any 'data' have been 'registered' by the brain. This a priori dimension must be attributed to the metaphysical power of human vision and has been traditionally the subject of metaphysics. The sciences, on the other hand, investigate their respective subject matters on the basis of an a priori understanding of the being of the region of beings into which they do research. Thus, for instance, the mathematical drafting of nature (about which much could be said) which made possible modern physics from the 17th. century on, is not itself a question within physics but rather is presupposed by it. Presumably, the same holds true of the digital dissolution of beings taking place today. These interrelations with metaphysics must be brought expressly to light. 

Not only Plato (and the Pythagoreans), but above all Aristotle are called upon for assistance. As a starting point for these considerations, I will take the following passage from Heidegger's Sophistês lectures in Winter Semester in Marburg in 1924/25. 

It must be noted here that for Aristotle, the primary [i.e. conceptual ME] determination of number insofar as it can be traced back to the mona/j as the a)rxh/ has a much more originary connection with the constitution of beings themselves insofar as the determination of the being of any being includes that it 'is' and that it is 'one'; every o)/n is a e(/n. Thus the a)riqmo/j in the broadest sense — the a)riqmo/j stands here for the e(/n — gains a more fundamental significance for the structure of beings as such as an ontological determination. At the same time, it enters into a relation with the lo/goj insofar as beings in their ultimate determinations are only accessible in a special lo/goj, in no/hsij, whereas the geometric structures are seen solely in ai)/sqhsij. Ai)/sqhsij is where the geometric contemplation has to stop, sth/setai, has a stand. In arithmetic, by contrast, the lo/goj, noei=n, is at work which abstracts from every qe/sij, from every intuitive dimension and orientation. (Gesamtausgabe Band 19 = GA19:117) 

2. Number and being 

For Aristotle, the mona/j is the a)rxh/ of arithmetic. It must not be confused with the e(/n, which belongs still to natural beings. When some people say that, according to Aristotle, numbers have to be plural, i.e. at least 2, in order to be numbers, this seems to me only sensible when one proceeds from the counting of a certain numbers. In any case, the passages in Aristotle on this point are by no means unambiguous (cf. Phys. IV 12;220a17). The distinction between mona/j and e(/n is more fundamental, however. Proceeding from the mona/j, one comes to two when counting as purportedly the first number. But the mona/j itself must already distinguish itself from something else, from nothing, a nil number, i.e. there must be a difference between 1 and 0 which corresponds to the difference between a unified something (ti\, e(/n) and nothing. Only from the principle of unity (monad) can arithmetic be built up. All numbers can be represented, manipulated and calculated on a binary basis. Such binary representation of numbers is the palpable proof for the Aristotelean insight that the mona/j is the principle, i.e. the governing point of outset, for counting and for numbers. Even continuity can be captured by a process of approximation by binarily represented numbers. Thus, ultimately, we also have the analytic geometry and differential calculus which Descartes, Newton and Leibniz discovered and developed. 

Heidegger presents the distilling or 'lifting off' of geometric and mathematical structures from natural beings according to Aristotle in his Sophistês lectures (GA19 § 15 Excursus: General orientation on the essence of mathematics according to Aristotle S.100ff). The essential, basic act of mathematics for Aristotle is xori/zein, separating and drawing off from the fu/sei o)/nta which all have a place, topos, locus (to/poj, xw/ra). The geometrical structures no longer have any place (a)/topoj), but they are posited, positioned (qeto/j). Geometric entities are no longer in place. The pe/rata are no longer understood as the limits of the physical body, but through the qe/sij they obtain a peculiar autonomy which then can be treated in geometry in this autonomy. This autonomy is heightened even more with numbers (a)riqmoi/), which have neither a place (a)/topoj) nor a position (a)/qetoj). Each number stands on its own, whereas the points of a geometric figure are all identical and are what they are only in relation to other points, i.e. in their position in relation to each other, i.e. they require in addition the determination of pro/j ti, of relation, to be geometrical. Whereas arithmetic entities are formed by sets of numbers in which each number is discrete, geometric figures are not simply composed of points (a line is not simply a collection or heap of points; a surface is not simply a collection of lines; a solid body is not simply a collection of surfaces), but rather they each possess a characteristic complex connected structure which Aristotle sets out progressively in seven steps. He is concerned with the differing ways of 'hanging together' of points where continuity, which is closest to the aisthaetic outline of natural beings, is the most complex. 

i. a(/ma = coincident; when things are in one place 
ii. xw/rij = separate; when things are in different places 
iii. a(/ptesqai = touching (in one place) 
iv. metaxu/ = the connected in-between or medium in which a movement takes place (such as the river in which a ship moves ) 
v. e)fech=j = the consecutive; between what comes first and what follows there is nothing in between of the same genus (origin in being) as what is connected. Thus, the houses in a street are in a row but in a medium which is not a house. This is the mode of connectedness of the mona/dej, the numbers which do not have anything in between. They do not touch each other like connected things, the sunexe/j, that which holds-itself-together (cf. vi) 
vi.  e)xo/menon = that which holds itself, a consecutive sequence which holds itself together and touches within itself; the ends of the elements come together, i.e. touch each other in one place, are contiguous (as in a chain, a concatenation) 
vii.  sunexe/j = continuum. Here there is no in-between, as with the e)xo/menon, thus, an originary e)xo/menon, a sunexo/menon, in which the limits of the individual elements not only touch but are identical with each other as, say, in a row of terrace houses in which the adjacent walls of the individual houses not only touch but are identical with each other. 

Heidegger also provides a review in the Sophistês lectures of Cat. 6: 'On Quantity' (po/son). Quantity is in some cases discrete (diwrisme/non or marked off from itself within itself), and in some cases continuous (sunexe/j or holding itself together within itself). (Cf. Met. V, 13: quantitative means what can be decomposed into several immanent components. That which is quantitatively countable is an amount; what is measurable is magnitude. An amount is potentially decomposable into discrete components; magnitude is potentially decomposable into continuous components). Continuity "is the ontological condition of possibility for there being something resembling length, me/geqoj" (GA19:118; cf. extensio in Descartes' metaphysical casting), and motion is only comprehensible when "continuous progress can be made from one point to another." (ibid.) The numbers and the lo/goi are marked off from each other, i.e. discrete, whereas the geometric figures such as line, surface, solid body, time and places are continuous. Discrete entities consist of parts which are not posited, i.e. they do not have any position; the continuum consists of parts which are posited, positioned. Their manner of connectedness or their unity therefore differ. The parts of numbers do not have any common o/(roj or limit. The number 10, for instance, has parts 5 and 5 which do not have any common limit; each part is for itself; the parts are marked off from each other, diwrisme/non, each is different, just as with 7 and 3. The mo/ria (parts) cannot be taken together; there is no koino/n (common element) with respect to which each number would be an instance, i.e., it is not possible to generalize the numbers. How, then, is a connectedness possible? Aristotle explains this using the example of the lo/goj: it is meta/ fwnh\ gigno/menoj, spoken with the voice. This speaking is articulated into individual syllables as its stoxei=a (elements) which are absolutely marked off from each other. There is thus a peculiar unity of a non-continuous manifold entity in which each part is autonomous, individual. The syllables are autonomous, individual. There is no syllable in general, and also no number in general. The unity of the manifold elements can only lie in the lo/goj or nou=j itself which gathers together and holds together the parts, for there is no merely sensuously perceptible connection, for instance, why certain syllables or numbers should stand next to each other. When the lo/goj appropriates beings in their self-disclosure, it articulates them at the same time into their 'articles'. A diairetic taking-part takes place which can be further articulated into numerical digits. The logic of the lo/goj ends ultimately in the digital de-ciphering of beings in toto, which is equivalent to an en-ciphering of beings. The decryption of beings in their being amounts then to en-ciphering them articulately into digits. 

On the other hand, one point is like all others. A line has another mode of unity. One can remove something from it and address it in the same way as any other part. The points are all the same. But a line is more than a multitude of points; the points are put in position (qeto/j) and they hold themselves together (sunexe/j). This is missing in the sequence of numbers which is only determined as e)fech=j (consecutive, sequential) and where no medium in between is necessary. Number is therefore ontologically prior to the points in their continuum. Number is still free of orientation and position and is therefore autonomous and must be taken in and comprehended without ai)/sqhsij only by means of the nou=j. As ontologically simpler and more originary, number is set in an originary connection with the simplest categories such as the something (ti\) when one asks for the structure of beings (to\ o)/n). "This is the reason why Plato's radical ontological determination starts with number." (GA19:121) Nevertheless, for Aristotle arithmetic is not the most originary science of beings in their being, for the a)rxh/ of number, i.e. the unit (mona/j), must be clarified metaphysically in its connection with the one (e(/n). And this connection provides the key for the connection in essence between number and the metaphysical access to beings as o)/n lego/menon in general. 

The Aristotelean ontological structure of point and number, of the geometric and the arithmetic dimensions, shows how the calculating logos onto-logically liberates itself from sensuous beings. The logos and number are both not only without place — like the points —, but also without position. This liberation from such determinations gives arithmetic calculation an enormous power which even exceeds the power of geometric knowledge with its tie to the aisthaetic, i.e. the sensuously perceptible, dimension. The digital world as the consummation of this orbit first sketched out by Aristotle is a world of numbers separated off and 'lifted' from natural beings which can be manipulated and calculated arbitrarily (today, by computers) by the lo/goj, i.e. the logismo/j. Today, this world of numbers is assuming the form of the computer-controlled, telecommunicative world characterized by an arbitrariness of place. The indifference with respect to place is at the same time an indifference with respect to the body; cyberspace is for the body a space abstracted from natural beings. Insofar (but only insofar), it is justifiable to talk of 'virtual space' (cf. 4. Spatiality of the electromagnetic medium). 

One may think that just as the Greeks 'lifted' or 'drew off' mathematics from a useful connection with fu/sij, today we are lifting or drawing off mathematics from its conceptual connection with the human intellect (nou=j) and the human body and removing it, no longer to a theo-logical place, but to a techno-logical place. But such fuzzy notions are not well thought through, for in Aristotle's thinking there is an ambiguity in the essence of its metaphysical investigations as the investigation of beings as such, on the one hand, and as an investigation of the supreme being (god), on the other. In the metaphysical investigation of number and the geometric entities, however, the supreme being plays no role at all, and therefore, any talk of the theo-logical dimension in this connection is irrelevant. Rather, it becomes manifest that today's digital technology already has its metaphysical origin precisely in the beginnings of metaphysics which thus sketched out the occidental future in advance. Moreover, natural beings are not removed to any place; rather, an abstraction is made from them, something is 'drawn off' them. They remain where they are. Today's digital technology does not in any way 'lift' natural beings from "their cognitive connection with the human intellect", but rather, digital technology itself is first and foremost a way of human thinking as it is enpropriated over to being. There is a stepwise abstraction from what is naturally given to geometric entities (which are still aisthaetic but without place), and then on to mathematical-arithmetic entities (which are neither aisthaetic nor in a place nor positioned). Only with the second 'lifting' does calculation become completely liberated from natural beings. And it is this calculative thinking which is then 'outsourced' into computing machines 'made available' by digital technology and thus made independent, autonomous. Mathematical abstraction is a metaphysically pre-scribed or pre-sketched way in which beings as a whole are revealed, i.e. decrypted and made manifest, to Dasein. 

Insofar as physics is mathematical, it relies on the discreteness of numbers; however, numbers can also be made to approximate the fu/sei o)/nta arbitrarily closely. That was the great discovery of the mathematical differential/infinitesimal/integral calculus by Newton and Leibniz, for only in this way were natural beings made arbitrarily calculable, i.e. the arbitrarily close approximation of number to the continuum became possible. For a long time, physics has been marked by a dispute about the fundamental nature of physical beings: wave or particle (atoms)?, continuous or discrete?. This dispute is not decidable within physics itself because the distinction has to be clarified in ontology itself (i.e. coming from being) where the distinction between the continuous and the discrete, i.e. that which holds itself together within itself, on the one hand, and that which is marked off from itself from within itself, on the other (cf. GA19:118), can and must be interpreted as modes of being. 

It is a surprising difference between numbers and points, that each number is autonomous, whereas all points are the same. The analogy between number and logos is also striking and has essential consequences for grasping the being of beings. In the preparatory section of his Sophistês lectures, Heidegger emphasizes the access to the being of beings through the logos for the Greeks. For Plato and Aristotle, Heidegger maintains, a being is o)/n lego/menon, i.e. beings as they are said. At the same time, with the phenomenon of sophistry, it is a matter of beings in the first place being uncovered or covered up and distorted by the logos as speech, even though for Aristotle, the highest form of knowledge, sofi/a, is said to come about through the nou=j, which is said to be a)/neu lo/gou (without logos). 

If number as well as logos are both abstracted ('drawn off') and lifted from the aisthaetically given, sensuous beings, then in this discrete taking-apart or decomposition of beings there is simultaneously a distancing from beings which makes it possible for beings to be made present by the logos (and by number) in a different way from the way they show themselves of themselves (aisthaetically). With the logos, another way of making beings present is given. Heidegger writes, for instance, in a very striking formulation, "This invasion of the lo/goj, of the logical dimension in this strict Greek sense, into this question concerning the o)/n is motivated by the fact that the o)/n, the being of beings itself, is interpreted primarily as presence and the lo/goj is the way in which I primarily make something present, namely that about which I am speaking." (GA19:225, italic emphases by Heidegger himself) 

Here, the sense of being as presence uncovered by Heidegger, and the entanglement of logos and being are at work. The primary sense of being, ou)si/a or what underlies, i.e. the u(pokei/menon, is what lies at hand for speaking about it in the present. What I am interested in here is that the early Heidegger seeks or hints at an access to being without the logos. What does he have in mind? To start with, this approach can be marked off against Gadamer's ("Being that can be understood is language."): 

The hermeneutic phenomenon throws, so to speak, its own universality back onto the ontological constitution of what is understood by determining this ontological constitution in a universal sense as language and by its own relation to beings as interpretation. Thus, we speak not only of a language of art, but also of a language of nature, indeed in general, of a language which guides things.(2)

Time, being-in-time enables an access to being, i.e. it holds it open, without the logos, or prior to the logos. The temporality of Dasein cannot be clarified by following the guiding thread of the logos, but rather, the logos and its hegemony as ontology can only be clarified by starting from Dasein's temporality. Time, however, is not logically discrete; it cannot be dissolved and grasped digitally, because it does not lie before us a something present from the start. It does not lie before us like a u(pokei/menon to be spoken about; it is not a something (ti\, ou)si/a) lying before us to be spoken of, for a something lying present at hand is only present, which would reduce time to the now (nu=n). "From the hegemony of this concept of being it becomes clear why Aristotle interprets time itself starting from the present, the 'now'." (GA19:633) Does this mean that the decomposing taking-apart (diai/resij) of natural beings performed by the logos and mathematics depends essentially on the state of beings as things lying before us as present? Yes, indeed. Whereas Dasein has to be interpreted in the full temporal three-dimensionality of its existence as a cast and encasting already-being-with..., in order to adequately capture the phenomenon as it shows itself, what is already lying ready before us to be spoken about can be clarified, starting from this fully unfolded interpretation of Dasein, as a derivative mode of temporality. 

3. Digital beings 

In order to clarify the essence of digital beings a step further, they have to be viewed from digital technology which up until now has been left out of consideration. The binary code of a digital being is writing, script, i.e. it is the inscription of a lo/goj into a medium where this lo/goj can also contain numbers, i.e. a)riqmoi/, and thus can have mathematical character in the narrower sense. "In knowing and speaking, the truth of beings, their disclosedness, is appropriated." (GA19:276 emphasis in the original; cf. 274, 391) Technology, in turn, is essentially a knowledge which provides insight into beings. Productive technology or te/xnh, i.e. knowing poi/hsij, is a knowledge of how an envisaged product can be brought forth. Such knowledge can be written down. Written-down knowledge was first of all read by humans who appropriated and applied the knowledge for their own purposes, e.g. in production. With digital technology, however, knowledge is not only written down in a written script legible to humans, but in a written script which can be read by a machine as a sequence of machine commands. The written script itself can be input into a machine to control it and thus to bring forth an effect. Written script thus becomes a digital program, or literally, a pre-writing or pre-script, which controls a machine of one kind or another and is 'productive' in this sense of bringing forth an effect such as a change of state. Written script as binary code or as a finite sequence of discrete binary numbers (for any written script at all can be represented in binary code) is 'read' sequentially by the machine, i.e. each digital character or each group of digital characters serves to control the machine by means of commands. 

A simple example of such control is when a binary-coded, digital text is 'read' by a digital device such as a word processor or PC, etc. in order to represent or reproduce the text on a screen. The pre-script in this case is not merely the text itself in a digital form, but the word processing program and the control characters embedded in the text which together enable the text to be reproduced on a screen by means of control instructions. The program pre-script used to control a machine is always a 'logically' fixed knowledge insofar as the lo/goj appropriates beings in their truth. There in this regard no restriction to the kind of knowledge, e.g. whether it be a know-how or a know-that, apart from the knowledge having to be technical in the broadest sense. The essential characteristic of digital technology is that knowledge can be outsourced by the pre-script of a program into a machine where it then automatically brings about effects. The knowledge is a theoretical pre-understanding of a certain matter or state of affairs which, as a digital program, enables certain predefined procedures to be automated. 

Since the onset of modernity, in which beings were cast as res extensa for the first time, the theoretical access to beings in their being was enabled through measurability. The theoretical appropriation of beings is then a disclosing of beings by quantitative measurement. The way a given matter behaves is then graspable and knowable theoretically through quantitative relations, and this knowledge can then be programmed in computing machines in the broadest sense which further calculate what is measured on beings in accordance with a theory. The further calculation then serves either a deeper knowledge of the matter and/or the (possibly automatic) control of a process already set up in which the measured or further calculated matter or state of affairs is input into the process as a control variable. 

To return to the simple example of a book compared with a digital being consisting of binary code: the difference between a book and a digital being is that books still have to rely on the stampable mass (e)kmagei=on), paper, for its replication, whereas today's digital beings only need an electromagnetic medium (floppy disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, etc.) which moreover is also replaceable and reproducible. In the possibility of replication there is also an arbitrariness of place, even for manuscripts that can be copied. This is ontologically possible only because of the essential placelessness and discreteness of the logos itself which can call the beings which are being spoken of to presence anywhere. Digital code, too, as essentially related to the logos, participates in the essential discreteness and placelessness. Whereas the spoken, expressed logos calls beings to presence in a situation, i.e. a place of togetherness (Mitsein), a book or digital code only calls beings to presence in being read where, with respect to digital code, 'reading' here is always a processing of what is envisaged and foreseen in the program pre-script. The writing preserved in a book or the stored binary code, however, is also a being in itself which is stored in some place or other, even though this place is completely arbitrary, or at least the place where a book or a digital being is stored is a place in the topological complex for Dasein where it is kept 'ready-to-hand'. In any case, digital te/xnh lifts a logical-digital structure from the natural beings where there is no longer any topos, i.e. place, where the digital being would 'naturally' belong and towards which it would 'naturally' tend. 

Digital beings still require a material, namely, an electromagnetic medium, which is situated somewhere, but this place is arbitrary and stands at the disposition of Dasein which orients its world as it sees fit. Or, alternatively, the digital beings are placed at the disposition of the set-up and arranged according to the circling according to the standing orders for all beings. Cyberspace itself has its own peculiar spatiality; it is not merely 'virtual' but has its own orientation and dimensionality (cf. 4. Spatiality of the electromagnetic medium), and in this cybernetic space, the digital beings can be arranged, moved and reproduced arbitrarily at will. In a certain way, digital beings, insofar as they are viewed merely as ordered sequences of binary code, are nothing other than written 'texts' which are kept in the electromagnetic medium and can be called up arbitrarily at will. 

Such arbitrariness of place comes from the fact that, viewed metaphysically, logos and number are both attained by a 'lifting' from natural beings. Whereas the written logos preserves knowledge, i.e. in this context, primarily technical knowledge, with the executable digital character sequences, knowledge is converted into an automatic form which allows it to bring forth effects and to control processes. The logos in the form of digital code thus enters back into beings in order to manipulate them. Here a distinction can be made between digital beings which are in some way or other read by humans, and digital beings which are employed to automatically control some process or other, i.e. digital beings which are productive in the sense of bringing about an effect. Digital beings which are legible for humans comprise not only text-like files, but all code sequences such as images, sounds, moving images which, when they are re presented by the appropriate hardware, have effects on the senses and can be taken in and understood by sensuous perception. Machine code, on the other hand, only has to control processes in pre-calculated ways. To do this, the process itself must already have been understood in a mathematically calculable way. The programmer transforms this understanding into machine-readable digital code (for every programming language must be ultimately translated into digital machine code in the narrow sense which consists exclusively of binary bits) which then brings forth calculable control effects in a definite, foreseen context. Thus, cybernetic-technical knowledge becomes automated and tendentially makes itself independent vis-à-vis humans for, although each program can still be read and understood individually, the possible implementations of automatic control are well-nigh unlimited and thus lead to complex, non-transparent control complexes. Moreover, control processes which are no longer co-ordinated with the particular context foreseen, automatically bring forth nonsensical or even detrimental effects. An understanding programmed in digital code can thus possibly turn into a severe misunderstanding with serious consequences. If each digital program can be conceived of as the implementation of a partial understanding of the world, then the possibility of arbitrary replication of binary code means that the digitized cybernetic knowledge transformed into software is available and can be called up anywhere. The placelessness of the logos thus assumes a new meaning: not only is arithmological knowledge attained by an abstraction that 'lifts' measurements from beings, but this knowledge now assumes the garb of binary code in a technically omnipresent form. Knowledge is then not only universal in the sense of a universal comprehensibility and applicability but also materially universal in the form of universally accessible binary code. 

A medium is something through which other beings can move. The technically produced electromagnetic network enables technically the free movement of digital beings through the medium of the network. Every place in the network can be specified by co-ordinates. Since the electromagnetic medium is homogenous (every place is thus equivalent to any other place), each place in the network can be specified by purely numerical co-ordinates. Networking means only that all co-ordinates are connected with each other directly or indirectly in such a way that digital beings can move freely from one arbitrary co-ordinate place in the network to any other arbitrary co-ordinate place in the network. The restrictions to this movement are of a merely technical nature which, in turn, can be overcome technically. The homogenous medium of the electromagnetic network means that digital beings are available globally to be called up. This results in a kind of global 'library' whose 'books' or 'written texts' consist of pure binary code. These binary 'written texts' consist not only of legible texts in the normal sense but also of sensuously experienceable representations and executable machine code. The natural beings in the world are thus appropriated in multiple ways and on multiple levels, and technical knowledge of the world is also transformed multifariously into automatically executable programs which only have to be 'read' by computing machines in order to unfold their effects. Such programs consisting of digital machine code represent materialized, automated cybernetic knowledge which can be called up at any time. Whereas the logos that is spoken and read by humans brings the beings which are spoken of to presence, i.e. calls them into presence, binary cybernetic machine code executes cybernetic control processes unseen in the background. Only the effects of cybernetic processes are brought forth into presence. The technical knowledge hidden behind these cybernetic processes can be 'forgotten' since the processes themselves proceed automatically. 

In this way, a forgetting is encouraged which goes beyond the forgetting which Plato had in mind with the Theuth myth in Phaidros. In this dialogue, the invention of writing is rejected by Thamus, the Theban, with the argument that it "will abandon learners to a forgetfulness in the soul through a carelessness of memory because, in relying on writing, they will recall externally through an alien inscription but not inwardly through themselves." (275a) With the program pre-script of a digital being, not only is the process of reminding oneself by independently passing through the matter itself done away with, but even a careless reading of the written script is superfluous since the program pre-script as cybernetic machine code only has to be read by the computing machine to bring forth its effects. In this case, the truly knowledgeable one (ei/)dwn; 276a) is the programmer who is able to follow through and understand the program on the basis of a theoretical knowledge. Such forgetting of technical knowledge in the broadest sense can be observed today everywhere, such as in the circumstance that people are no longer in a position to carry out simple arithmetic operations but rather have to reach for a pocket calculator to do so. 

In a computer program, technical knowledge itself is made into something lying present to hand or at hand, i.e. it is then available as something that can be called up, and it is a being which is good for something (mode of being as being-(good)-for...). Whereas the 'logical' or logos-like call-up of beings takes place by language calling beings to presence, thus making them present, with the digitally decomposed beings this presencing is different, for here, binary code which embodies a technical knowledge of beings, is called up through the electromagnetic medium, i.e. de-distanced or approximated(3), in order to be processed further, e.g. read, or in order to unfold its programmed effects. In what they are, digital beings offer us a view just like the Platonic ideas, for digital beings are beings, i.e. drawn and outlined by being. The fact that digital beings are our own construction only by virtue of the digital casting of the being of beings through which technical knowledge becomes embodied in binary code, does not play any essential role on this primary, fundamental level. One could only say that for the construction of many kinds of digital beings, natural beings serve as models, for binary code represents technical knowledge of the world in some respect or other. Natural beings are brought to presence in knowledge through the numbers and language 'lifted' from them in a way different from their presencing of themselves for aisthaetic perception. When, moreover, the knowing appropriation of beings in numbers and language, i.e. arithmological knowledge, is inscribed in a computer program, natural beings too then become manipulable and that not only merely by a technically skilled human hand, but by automatic machines controlled by binary machine code, where such machines can also assume inconspicuous forms of appearance such as biochemical nano-machines. As cybernetic programming, arithmological knowledge intervenes 'in writing' in the world of things. Arithmological knowledge not only enables a technically productive manipulation of beings, but arithmological script as cybernetic program transforms this arithmological knowledge automatically. Such automatic cybernetic systems represent a hybrid between fu/sij in the sense of beings which bear the governing source of their own movement within themselves, on the one hand, and a technique under the control of a human hand in which the governing source of movement lies in another being (the producer), on the other, for these automatic systems have something fu/sij-like in their nature. In automatic cybernetic systems, the governing source of movement has been built into the beings knowingly (i.e. through knowledge) as if these systems themselves had souls and were in this sense animated (anima = soul). 

Digital beings, no matter whether they be text files, sound, image or video files legible to humans, or executable, cybernetic program script, are stored in the electromagnetic medium through which they can move freely. The electromagnetic medium is the e)kmagei=on (stampable mass) par excellence for inscribing binary number sequences. This technically produced medium is continuous and omnipresent, i.e. it allows digital beings to come to presence arbitrarily and ubiquitously. This arbitrariness enables the disposition over digital beings, the standing reserve of the set-up, which stands continually at disposal. This new casting of being is not essentially new but is rather precisely the essential consequence of the 'lifting' of the logos and number from natural beings which was already thought through in the first beginning with the Greeks, that is, with Aristotle. If the set-up as the gathering of all the ways of setting up beings constitutes the essence of modern technology, in which all beings are made to stand in place as standing reserve at the disposal of production, then digital beings correspond to this essence in an exemplary way because they can be called up arbitrarily to stand at disposal through the electromagnetic medium, set loose from any natural place and any natural particularity. 

Has the being of digital beings now been clarified? There is probably still quite a bit to say about the origin of digital beings in an ontological sense, for the traditional Aristotelean and Platonic ontology is oriented toward the lo/goj, i.e. the o)/n lego/menon, i.e. toward beings as they lie before us to be spoken of. Insofar there is already a difference from a digital ontology because the latter 'sees' primarily the measurable numbers on beings. Nevertheless, traditional ontology too proceeds from the unity of o)/n, e(/n and ti\ (being, one and something), only that now, in digital ontology, the oneness of any something is taken as the starting point for digitally decomposing beings. To be sure, and to emphasize it once more, we must become clear about the fact that with the invasion of digital technology today, nothing new has happened, but something very ancient which was cast inceptually already in the first Greek, metaphysical beginning. The monads (digitally unified beings) are calculable (in processors) and thus technically incorporated by a knowledge which understands cybernetic calculation. What lies between us today and Aristotle, to say it in an overly abbreviated way, is the ontological intermediation of a Descartes. 

What, however, is the relation between the digital calculability and representability of beings as a whole and the mathematical casting of beings in their totality in modernity? Does the digitizability of beings merely signify that a mathematical, axiomatic understanding of being in the broadest sense can be, and has already been, translated into digital bit code? Or is there here an essential difference between differing world castings? It seems to me that the modern Cartesian casting of being has blazed the trail into digital ontology in that Descartes laid down the "rule" for certain knowledge through intuition and deduction (Rule 3), i.e. through the only reliable actions of understanding for finding the truth according to Descartes, which states that everything to do with beings has to be brought into the form of proportions and equations. And only that can be brought into the form of an equation "which admits of a more or less, and all this is comprehended under the term 'magnitude'" (Rule 14.4)(4). I.e. only that is which can be either measured or counted. And what can be measured or counted can also be digitized. This ontological requirement of measurability proceeds beyond Aristotelean ontology in that i) natural beings are cast as res extensa and thus ii) not merely a (countable) number (a)riqmo/j) is 'lifted' from natural beings, but rather a (continuous, real) number as measurement. The mathematical theories of modernity which com prehend, i.e. grasp, beings in knowledge, are mathematical in the broadest and most multifarious sense, and such mathematical theories can be 'materialized' as digital computer programs of many and various kinds, i.e. they can be translated into binary program pre-scripts and inscribed in an electromagnetic medium where they can then automatically bring forth their cybernetic effects. 

What happens, for instance, when a voice is recorded? Its vibrations are measured, i.e. reduced to numbers by numbers being 'lifted' from the natural being called 'voice'. These numbers can be stored and then, by applying the appropriate program pre-script, they can be calculated arbitrarily by a processor, so that one finally hears the voice again through an amplifier-loudspeaker system which again transforms the measurements into waves that vibrate in the loudspeakers. The numbers are taken or 'lifted' from the fu/sei o)/n (ai)/sqhton) and then the numbers are translated back into an ai)/sqhton (sound, image, text, etc.). And this technical procedure is only made possible by a scientific theory which rests ultimately on equations between measurable quantities. The to-and-fro between the digital dimension and the aisthaetic dimension is constantly available, which is necessary insofar as the interface between humans and the digital dimension has to be aisthaetic because of the sensuous constitution of human being. The digital beings, however, can also 'communicate' with each other digital beings themselves, without this aisthaetic detour, but controlled ultimately by humans (by means of the program's lo/goj) insofar as the program, i.e. the pre-script, first has to be written on the basis of a mathematical, techno-scientific knowledge. The technical lo/goj is necessary in order to disclose, i.e. decrypt, beings in such a way that they can be reduced to numbers (represented in numbers) which can be arbitrarily reconstituted, but what then takes place factually are electromagnetic measurements, signals, etc. which are represented in numbers and generated from numbers. The 'lifted', stored numbers control the reconstitution, the re-presenting of an ai)/sqhton, a sensuously perceptible being, or they control some automatic system or other such as the traffic lights at an intersection or a camera at an intersection which automatically photographs cars driving through a red light. 

4. Spatiality of the electromagnetic medium

The electromagnetic medium is presumably precisely an a)nai/sqhton which accepts all possible impressions and can be written over again at will. The impressions, however, are digital, i.e. binary code, i.e. electromagnetic differences, which we understand as 0 or 1 and which can be represented in various sensuous ways with various contents and differing functions. The bits are invisible in themselves, but they can be transformed into ai)/sqhta by the appropriate hardware and software which are then accessible to the human senses. Itself neither air, water, earth nor fire, the electromagnetic e)kmagei=on is able to allow beings to "appear" (fai/nesqai 51b). 

In which sense, however, can one speak of the electromagnetic medium as a space? The electromagnetic medium is a stampable mass which is able to take in digital beings. Digital beings, however, can also move freely through this medium and find a place in it. Insofar, the electromagnetic medium is, like the xw/ra, a space for accepting digitally, i.e. arithmologically decomposed or dissected beings. The electromagnetic medium as a dimension that can be passed through thus deserves the name cyberspace which now has to be investigated more closely. The treatment of space in Heidegger's Being and Time will serve us as a guiding thread. 

As spatial being-in-the-world, Dasein is characterized by approximation(5) and orientation (SZ:105). "Approximating is at first and for the most part circumspective nearing, bringing close as acquiring, making available, having to hand. But also certain types of purely epistemological discovery of beings have the character of nearing. In Dasein there lies an essential tendency to nearness." (SZ:105) And in a marginal scholium from Heidegger's personal copy we can read on the same page: "Nearness and presence, not the size of the distance is essential" (ibid.) Approximation is thus a bringing-into-presence. "Dasein is essentially approximating; as the being which it is, it causes, in the given situation, beings to be brought into nearness." (ibid.) The second existential which characterizes Dasein's spatiality, i.e. orientation, is described in the following way: "Every nearing has a priori already taken up a direction into a region from which what is approximated nears in order to be found in its place. Circumspective taking-care-of is oriented approximation. In this taking-care-of, that is, in the being-in-the-world of Dasein itself, there is a need for 'signs'; this equipment takes on the express and easily applied specification of directions. It holds the circumspectively used regions expressly open, the place in each case of where something belongs, of going-to, of bringing-to, of picking-up." (SZ:108) With regard to an electromagnetic medium such as a network, the role of the direction-giving "sign" in the electromagnetic "region" is taken on by the (ultimately: numerical) network addresses which are only possible because Dasein is essentially approximating and orienting. 

The essentially approximation and orientation of Dasein means that it is 'always already' away from its bodily place of sojourn and that Dasein as oriented-approximating is always already extended spatially towards faraway places and that this is the condition of possibility for it being able to be there also factually (bodily, or medially through speech, writing, voice, image). We approximate bodily by reaching for, looking at, going to, etc. Hearing speech, however, approximates — through the presencing of speech — also what is to-hand or that with which we have dealings in the world. Heidegger even uses the example of the electromagnetic medium radio: "All kinds of increasing of speed which today we go along with more or less under coercion push towards the overcoming of distance [Entferntheit, in contrast to Entfernung, approximation; ME]. With the 'radio', for instance, Dasein today performs an approximating of 'world' by way of an extension and destruction of the everyday world surrounding us which is not yet assessable in its sense for Dasein." (SZ:105) 

This passage provides an important hint for thinking through the multimedia in their spatialness, especially since it also poses the question of the "sense for Dasein" of the electromagnetic media in general, for it does not make any difference in this connection whether one is speaking of radio, television or the internet. The "everyday world surrounding us" is not only extended but also destroyed by the telemedia; there is thus no change or extension of the everyday world without loss, which, however, should not mislead us to make critical pronouncements on civilization or about the destructive nature of technology. Hearing a report on the radio is an approximating of the region itself from which the report comes. The media allow other regions of the world over there to presence here through approximation. Later, too, with the example of the "ear-piece of the telephone", the "inconspicuousness of what is at first to-hand" (SZ:107) comes into play. Dasein is always already far off beyond what is close at a physically close distance. The acquaintance with whom I am talking on the telephone is closer to me than the telephone's ear-piece which I am holding physically and bodily in the hand and to my ear. Accordingly with the internet too: the entire hardware and software which is used as medium is "inconspicuous", far away, but enables, through electromagnetic approximation, the encounter with beings and other Dasein which are then close to and present for Dasein. 

The approximations of regions, however, has various modes; there is, for instance, a difference between seeing/hearing a live report from Moscow on the internet or on television, and reading about it in the newspaper, or reading about Moscow in Tolstoy's War and Peace. These are different ways for presencing the city of Moscow. Live reports on television are accorded a high ranking only insofar as they are nurtured by the sense of being as presence in the now (simultaneity) and the priority of the sense of sight. The 'immediate', 'simultaneous' presence of a live television report, however, is highly mediated (through the electromagnetic medium)! The medium, however, is inconspicuous and in the main even an a)nai/sqhton, unless there is a disturbance, such as a flickering of the image, which draws attention to the medium itself. When one walks on the street, the medium for walking, the street "slides underneath, so to speak, certain parts of the body, the soles of the feet." (SZ:107), i.e. this medium can at least be experienced bodily whereas movement on the internet is experienceable in a bodily way only through clicking on the pointing device (mouse). This is an approximation without movement or, in other words, one moves through cyberspace with a minimum of bodily involvement. The approximating of Dasein does not depend on the physical, bodily movement, but can also be performed without an involvement of the body. "The spatiality of Dasein is therefore not determined by specifying the point at which a body-thing is presently occurrent." (SZ:107) In other words, the spatiality of the internet is a genuine spatiality appropriate to Dasein and is not merely virtual. Dasein orients itself in this space and is able to purposefully approximate digital beings through this space. Even more than that: the internet is only possible because Dasein is spatial a priori. 

If digital technology 'advanced' so far as to be able to decompose the body itself into electromagnetic waves (and not merely take measurements on the body by 'lifting' numbers from the body) and to reconstitute the body at will, then, to this extent, there would no longer be any bodily experience of space at all, but there would still be an experience of space in the sense of Dasein. Then, the finger movements of clicking on the pointing device, which serves to orient and approximate in the electromagnetic medium, would also be done away with! The history of the technical overcoming of distances is simultaneously a history of the smoothing out and elimination of the bodily experience of space. Even with the transition from the horse to the automobile, the bodily experience of space through approximation regressed, for there is a difference between riding on a horse or gliding through a region sitting comfortably in a motorized limousine. On the internet, spatial orientation is provided by URLs (= DNS = a number) and signposts (with links). Approximation is done by clicking a pointing device. The pointing device points to what is to be approximated. Insofar, cyberspace is a very simple space, but nevertheless a space to which both the essential existentials of orientation and approximation specified in Being and Time have to be attributed. 

In Being and Time, the place where equipment belongs is given through the totality of applications, i.e. the understood interconnection in which the various useful things stand in relation to each other. Equipment must be in its proper place for it to be to-hand and so that it can be put to use. Each piece of equipment thus belongs somewhere in its place. This is quite different from the way in which Aristotle thinks the belongingness to place of natural beings. We also do not cease to be in the mode of taking-care-of... when we approximate things in a different way in a digital medium. When, say, we call up a digital being which then flickers on the screen and can seem to us to be very near or very far, this seeming is not merely virtual or subjective, but rather: "Only in such 'seeming', however, is the world in each particular situation properly to-hand." (SZ:106, italics in the original) This means that digital beings and the electromagnetic media can also be interpreted from being-in-the-world and not merely from the standpoint of the arithmological casting of being. This also implies inter alia that the electromagnetic medium represents a mode of Dasein's being together with other Dasein. Insofar it is erroneous to speak of a merely virtual being-together in the network, for being-together means fundamentally a sharing of the truth of being by Dasein and other Dasein and not merely a bodily adjacency at one point in space. 

Heidegger writes that, according to Plato, we have two different ways of appropriating beings, namely, through the lo/goj or in pra=cij (GA19:274). In le/gein, the object is not changed, ou)de\n dhmiourgei=. It is also not transposed to another place (e.g. into consciousness), but rather, it remains "where it is" (GA19:276). Whereas the to/poj belongs to natural beings, the fu/sei o)/nta, Aristotle separates off from these the geometric and arithmetic entities, that is, the point (stigmh/), which is placeless (a)/topoj), and the unit (mona/j), which is both placeless and positionless (a)/qetoj). All three (lo/goj, stigmh/, a)riqmo/j) are ways of xwri/zein; something is taken away from or lifted off natural beings. The words which are said about a being are like the geometrical decomposition of a sensuous object or the arithmetical grasping of a being; they appropriate the being in its self-disclosure and free themselves from it. Even though the le/gein does not handle the being about which it speaks, it is "a way of appropriating the being in its appearance". (GA19:276) As already cited: "In knowing and speaking, the truth of beings, their disclosedness, is appropriated." (GA19:276 emphasis in the original) For the lo/goi too, there is a consecutive sequence of syllables and words which, like the numbers, are placeless and positionless. Not only words, but also numbers are discrete and therefore onto logically simpler and more originary than the continuous geometric figures, which are ontologically more complex, as we have already established (cf. 2. Number and being). The onto-logical access to the being of beings is also a discrete, 'lifting' appropriation of beings in their being. Because of the ontological primitivity of the logos and number, there is a metaphysical identity of o/)n and e(/n: every being is one being — there is a unity in every being, i.e. a discrete, distinct independence, in the logos. Only for this reason is the logos able to appropriate beings in language in a discrete way. 

Of what kind, however, is the uncovering (a)lhqeu/ein) performed by the attributing and repudiating logos? For Aristotle, the lo/goj a)pofantiko/j remains tied back to ai/)sqhsij and also fantasi/a, i.e. by the return from the separating abstraction to the sensuously perceptible things as they appear to us. In order to return, there must first be a movement away from, i.e. a separating, an abstracting. For Aristotle, there is xwri/zein in the lo/goj a)pofantiko/j just as for Plato with his so-called 'theory of ideas'. The difference consists in the fact that Plato makes the separated-off ideas autonomous and therefore thinks the tying-back to sensuously given beings as a degrading. What is the situation, however, when beings are appropriated by decryptive language and numbers and this appropriated residue is then transformed into a digital being, either merely as information about the appropriated being or as executable binary code which itself brings forth cybernetic effects? Such digital beings can be inscribed in the electromagnetic medium, say, in a network. Is the global network itself to be thought as a genuinely geometric structure or as an arithmetic structure? What we put into the network are digital beings, i.e. beings which consist of digital code and which have been produced on the basis of a knowledge of how to deal with digital code, so that the digital beings behave in a precalculated way. Digital code is nothing other than ordered numbers which can be calculated in various ways in computer processors as executable commands. 

Does the electromagnetic medium as a global network have a geometric (qeto/j) or a purely arithmetic (a/)qetoj) character? If one conceives of or represents the network as points which are connected or not connected by lines, then it has a geometric character which is called a 'graph' in mathematics. Graph theory today is an autonomous area of mathematics. But is the specifically geometric character of networks relevant here, or can the points and lines of a (global) network be represented purely arithmetically or numerically? It seems to me that this is indeed the case, since we do not at all have to conceive of the electromagnetic network in a geometric or aisthaetic way, but rather, it suffices to represent the network with its connections by numerical co-ordinates (vectors) such as (n1, n2, n3, .... , nk), i.e. only the numbers and an ordering of these numbers is necessary along with a mathematics (a calculus) for calculating with these numeric entities. Can the network be represented as a kind of matrix calculus? Indeed it can! The electromagnetic medium is representable as a matrix where the matrix = mother = Plato's "wet-nurse of becoming" in a digital guise. So-called analytic geometry, which was developed by Descartes (today we still speak of Cartesian co-ordinates), is based on the fact that all geometric objects can be dissolved into (a calculus with) numbers if the numbers assume the form of co-ordinates. Co-ordinates, however, are simply ordered numbers which can be computed in a matrix calculus. What remains of the posited character of geometric figures is the indispensable order of the co-ordinate numbers, e.g. the point (2, 5, 5) differs from the point (5, 2, 5) even though the same numbers occur in both co-ordinates. The task of mathematics consists in calculating with these co-ordinates whilst respecting the order of the numbers contained therein. This problem has long since been solved by mathematics. Only for this reason can arbitrary geometric figures in n dimensions be represented in computers, for computers only compute, calculate; they cannot deal with geometric figures as such because computers are not aisthaetic but rather calculative (in their mode of being). 

If this is the case, the electromagnetic network is placeless, and positional only insofar as the co-ordinate numbers preserve an order (ta/cij). It is not a genuine geometric structure, or rather: all geometric structures can be represented arithmetically and thus become representable and manipulable by computing machines. If these thoughts are cogent, then the global electromagnetic network itself can be represented as a mathematical, i.e. digital, structure which accordingly can be controlled in a mathematical, calculative way. The technically constructed world of cyberspace would thus be a mathematically comprehensible space in which beings appropriated by mathematical knowledge circulate and which Dasein experiences as an independent spatial dimension in which it can orient itself and also approximate digital beings, and which also maintains interfaces with the surrounding natural-physical space of the world. 

The further question is posed here as to how the being of beings is thought in a digital ontology differently from Aristotelean and also Platonic metaphysics. For a digital ontology views beings neither from a super-sensuous topos nor from fu/sij, but ultimately from the mathematical dimension from where natural beings only appear insofar as they are measurable and thus can be taken apart digitally. In the everyday world, it may very well happen that digital beings gain a precedence over the sensuously perceptible, 'analogue' beings, which means that dealings with the medial dimension of the electromagnetic medium wins the upper hand vis-à-vis other possibilities of existing. For instance, the practice of reading news reports digitally could gain the upper hand over reports which are simply printed on paper and circulated. The reading of newspapers actually printed on paper in the literal sense could thus die out since, in the digital world the messages and news only continue to circulate in digital form. Or digital products such as computer games can make youths completely insensible to what is going on outside the digital dimension. Their life-world would then be totally absorbed in the digital dimension. If, however, through digital ontology it can be seen that digital beings still represent something abstracted from the sensuously experienceable world, then the digital beings would appear as the constructions which they are in truth, i.e. in the complete uncovering of their being. For, despite all the digital technology, humans remain bodily, mortal beings which experience the world sensuously with its dust, dirt, blood, sweat, wine, meat, light and its fragrances and colours, etc. and can also sometimes bash the table forcefully, take a walk through woods, etc. And even digital beings have to taken account of the bodiliness of Dasein, e.g. that messages and images have to be legible to the physical eyes, and a computer or a mobile telephone has to be operated by hand. Despite all the abstraction that makes calculation possible, digital technology comes back to humans as bodily, sensuous beings and sensuously experienceable beings. 

The question now is whether all these sensuous bodily aspects in their beings are only admitted as being when they appear from the digital dimension. Like any other casting of being, digital ontology makes an absolute claim which cannot be made relative simply by referring to ontic givens (dust, fragrances, walks, etc.). In my opinion, such a relativization is only possible by repeating the 'call' of other castings of being and keeping it alive and awake so that the various castings of being can also be knowingly seen in their difference. The dispute among the castings of beings arising in this way open up again the gigantomaxi/a peri\ th=j ou)si/aj (Plato), the question of being as to how beings as such are to appear in their truth. If we, say, comprehend everything as matter or as spirit or as life, etc., the labour of thinking consists precisely in discussing and questioning these castings of being as such. This leads ultimately to the question posed by Heidegger as to the 'place' where the question of being is posed, that is, to 'Da sein', and also to the insight that Dasein is fundamentally open to outlining by being as a casting of beings in their totality. The 'ontic givens' therefore referred to above and which do not properly fit into the digital casting of world serve merely as an indication that the question concerning who we are has to be posed more fundamentally than how it is implicitly answered by the digital casting of world which is only able to grasp, i.e. to see, humans from the possibilities and potentials of digital technology, right up to biotechnology with its genetic code and its genetic understanding of 'life'. 

Let us return to the question of the spatiality of Dasein with regard to the global electromagnetic medium. What is fundamental is Dasein's potential to be there with far off beings as such. Only because Dasein is always already there, is it able also to perhaps approximate the beings situated there in various ways by going there or by acquiring or bringing the beings situated there to itself. Bow and arrow is a physical way or a means (but not a medium) of approximating, say, a bird. Reading news about a far-off city is another way of approximating, or acquiring, through the appropriation by the lo/goj. Dasein participates in the openness of being in which beings shows themselves as such. This openness of being is spatial (and also temporal). Being-in-the-world means also being-spatially-in-the-world, and this spatialness of Dasein constitutes the condition of possibility for Dasein being able to approximate any being as such. Approximation is a fundamental, namely, the spatial way in which Dasein comports itself toward beings as such. The 'as such' is essential in this connection because, say, other living beings do not comport themselves toward beings as such even though they obviously participate in some kind of openness. Dasein's bodily approximation by reaching out for, grasping, going to, etc. is only one mode of approximation. The appropriation of beings through the lo/goj, i.e. by speaking of things, is another mode insofar as far-off beings can be brought close, i.e. approximated, and thus brought into presence. Such 'logos-like' approximating, and here this means: such bringing to presence, takes place, for instance, through letters and newspapers. Here, the words written on paper is the medium in which the approximation takes place. The logos, i.e. language, frees itself from the beings about which it speaks and makes itself independent vis-à-vis the physically given, bodily experienceable beings. A medium is fundamentally a dimension through which beings (here: written or printed words on paper) can move. Words enable a different mode of being-with-beings from bodily presence alongside them. 

What can be designated as a technicization of approximation is the point where te/xnh comes into its own with regard to spatiality. Te/xnh rests always on a mode of disclosing or decrypting beings and therefore also on an understanding of being which is mostly implicit and thus forgotten as such. It is always a knowledge that enables a know-how and can and must be implemented in technical devices. In particular, the various media such as paper, the printed word, etc. are enabled by technical knowledge such as printing technology. The digital electromagnetic medium is the highest consummation of all technical media insofar as it not only appropriates beings in arbitrary far-off places through the logos, in 'lifting' the logos from beings, but also appropriates them through numbers which then also enables further calculation. The beings situated there are given a digital (i.e. basically arithmetic) representation through calculation, whether it be in words, sound, images, video, which can then be sent at will to any place through the electromagnetic medium. Thus, digital, electromagnetic approximation arises which of course presupposes the knowledge of digital technology as well as the mathematical casting of the totality of beings. I.e., situated a priori or 'before' technical knowledge is the (mostly: implicit) ontological understanding of the arithmological decomposition and appropriation of beings which has come down to us from Aristotle via Descartes. 

There are thus two steps: first of all, the digital, calculative appropriation of beings through which they attain a purely numerical representation in digital code, and secondly, the digital medium through which the digital beings can pass through and 'measure through' as their own di mension. Because digital approximation takes place through the electromagnetic medium without bodily experience of space, this kind of spatial experience is somewhat ghostly. Dasein spirits bodilessly through the electromagnetic medium without having to leave its place bodily. This signifies in a certain way a collapse of all places into one place which insofar destroys the possibility of farness. But that has always been the case with technology; it destroys an old world by opening up a new one. The special feature of the digital, electromagnetic medium is that it is a mathematical space which can also be represented numerically. Since, however, numbers are not only placeless but also without position, the movement of Dasein in cyberspace is reduced to a game of numbers even though the user interface presents itself to Dasein in a sensuous form, say, with graphic elements, etc. The interface with Dasein must adapt itself to the sensuous, bodily givens of Dasein, which is, however, only an illusion. Behind the interface there is merely a numerical representation of the beings shown along with the network which is physically spread over the entire globe without the geographical scattering being sensuously experienceable as such, and without the user having to understand anything about digital code. Nevertheless, Dasein knows that it is approximating beings from all over the world and thus appropriating them. 

The two steps named are supplemented by a third which, however, goes far beyond the first two. This third step, as already explicated, is the further cybernetic calculation of the beings appropriated in digital form in computing machines of all kinds, such as PCs, movement sensors, robots, implanted microprocessor chips. I.e. it is not simply a matter of presenting the appropriated being merely as linguistic or image information (which, of course, also presupposes a certain amount of further processing of the digitally captured beings), but, furthermore, the measurement data obtained are processed further in a digital program (which always represents a certain, fixed pre-understanding of the data) in such a way that control functions are triggered in a cybernetic system. For instance, numerical data on traffic flow on various roads are automatically gathered through electronic sensors by telematics services and calculated and processed in such a way that the driver of an automobile can be offered a graphic representation of a congestion-free route on the screen of the car's navigation system. This example shows how the spatiality of the digital-cybernetic network and the spatiality of bodily being-in-the-world intermesh and interplay. 

As already pointed out, the electromagnetic medium is a kind of e)kmagei=on. It is perhaps not uninteresting to note that whilst dreaming we are situated in a medium in which some of the remarkable properties of cyberspace occur such as the immediate, 'instantaneous' relation to spatially far-off places. These remarkable properties have something to do with our bodiliness, for normally, in a waking state, we move bodily through space; our body participates in this movement and itself performs movements through space. This bodily co-performance of movement, however, is obviated in both cyberspace and when dreaming. Cyberspace has a genuine spatiality in which we orient ourselves and approximate beings (cf. Being and Time as presented above), but in this space we move bodily by merely clicking with a finger and do not experience any bodily presence of what is called up. Even bodily clicking could be made redundant by having signals sent directly from the brain to the computer, which, for instance, is already the case today for some severely disabled people. The movement of an eyelid or even mere brain activity is then sufficient for steering oneself through cyberspace. The parallels to dreaming are thus pronounced. Lying in bed, we fly to any arbitrary place and approximate to ourselves everything in the world without having to make a passage through time or through physical space — which we can also do on the internet as long as there are no technical disturbances in the network. Movement and approximation through the electromagnetic medium is ghostly and banal at one and the same time. It is ghostly or eery because a space is opened up in which we can move without our bodies, and it is banal because we move in this space so matter-of-factly, without really knowing, i.e. ontologically, in what kind of dimension we are moving. 

What is truly remarkable about digital technology is that it not only appropriates the world in its truth like the lo/goj does, but, through the appropriation itself, it brings forth a further 'preprogrammed' digital being; e.g. the data received through the network are automatically represented in colour in a graph. The appropriating lo/goj is 'embodied' or embedded in the program which receives the data (the binary code) from beings and is thus in a position to further process these givens. This is in general the basis of cybernetic technology, that the state of the system automatically controls the subsequent state, i.e. that the preprogrammed interpretation of the data triggers a further function. The computer program, namely, now understood in a broad sense as pre-script for processing binary data in the microprocessor of some device or other, is the precipitate of the knowing mathematical lo/goj which automatically calculates the data fed in, which means that it has also interpreted the data a priori. The interpretation of the world then takes place factually in the interpretative processing of what is given by the world (data) and is already latent in the pre-script of the program itself. Viewed thus, a computer program pre-script is a pre-interpretation of (a restricted segment) of the world written down by us which is ready to receive data at any time in order to calculatively interpret the world, on the basis of the data fed in, in a certain predefined direction and to control some system or other on the basis of this interpretation. Dasein, for which the world opens up in understanding, can today outsource to a computer its interpretation of the ontically understood world in segments into binarily programmed pre-interpretations of the world, where the understanding of world itself already has to be compatible with a digital decomposition. Such a world understanding is oriented toward setting up and controlling the totality of beings. To use an older metaphysical way of speaking, we could speak of a digital outsourcing of the spirit, intellect or nou=j in computing machines. The computer programs inscribe the understanding of world, say, in the hard disk of a network server, and make the interpretation of this understanding processable and calculable by a microprocessor. The digital capture of the totality of beings thus goes qualitatively beyond mechanical technology, which is still oriented toward physical movement, into the dimension of the control of systems, which can also include the control of physical movements, but must be conceived of much more broadly. Moreover, technical knowledge which has been captured or grasped once in binary code can be re-produced at will in the electromagnetic medium without further ado. 

Even though the hardware which is required to make an electromagnetic network has its own physical, visible, palpable, etc. form, the electromagnetic medium is still completely formless, i.e. without digital difference, vis-à-vis digital beings themselves and the dealings with digital beings in the network, and therefore infinitely ready to accept what is given (data). Only when one looks from the outside, from the physical-bodily world, onto the hardware can it be seen that the electromagnetic medium as a technically produced being also has a certain form (and consists of certain formed materials such as metal, plastic, wire, etc.). What is decisive is whether one moves within or outside the electromagnetic dimension, i.e. within the natural world or the digital world. It is always possible to move in and out of these worlds. As long as one is looking through the interface window into the network, one is dealing with digital beings which move through in invisible, sensuously non-experienceable medium. This means that we move in different castings of beings simultaneously even though we do not perceive them as such and have always already forgotten them. The mathematically in formed, electromagnetic e)kmagei=on thus becomes a dimension in its own right. It is the xw/ra in which the digital beings are inscribed and where they are located. Thought in a Platonic way, this space intermediates between sensuous beings (from which a digital abstraction is performed) and super-sensuous beings (here: mathematical, technical knowledge). These beings, stamped thus, can move freely in the medium, and the supersensuous mathematized knowledge has thus been materialized in the digital electromagnetic medium.

5. Digital technology and capital 

In particular, it is instructive to see how the (implicit) un covering of the digital casting of beings as such has its effects in the world of capital, i.e. in the economy. There, in turn, to date there are two exemplary industries which are affected primarily by the new dimension of cyberspace and digitization in general: the telecommunications industry, and the banks or the finance industry, and this for reasons which have to do with the essence of digitization itself. The telecommunications companies are subject to the compulsion to techno logically bring forth the unified, all-comprehensive (o(/lon) dimension of the electromagnetic medium, to open it up and to make it available so that the digital beings can move freely and without borders and limits. This dimension must encompass the entire globe if such a capital is to survive in the long run. The digital entities must be able to move through cyberspace anywhere on the globe without resistance; this is the final sense, the teleology of networking. At present, the huge transnational capitals in the telecommunications industry are working on this. Under the coercion and discipline of competition they are corresponding to a metaphysical destiny without inkling at all that they are doing so. "They do not know it, but they do it." (Marx) The essence can remain unknown — and as a rule it remains unknown — whereas the phenomenal forms of appearance thoroughly correspond to it nevertheless.

The other industry which is affected significantly by digitization is the banking or finance industry. The banks are also forced to completely explore and exploit the one, unified dimension of the electromagnetic medium, and they can and must do this because the 'commodity' which they trade in, namely, money, on the one hand, as universal equivalent of commodity wealth, is universal and, on the other, it can be stamped into an arbitrary material as a number. Coins are already stamped material; today, it is enough for a (state sanctioned) number to be stamped into the electromagnetic medium and that this number, which is owned by someone or other, can be transferred from one owner to the other. This is already money and in this form it can move freely as capital.

Capital needs the dimension of value-being(6) which is also determined in an abstract, quantitative way. Only in this quantitative dimension of being which admits of a more and less is money what it is, and only in this quantitative dimension can and must capital calculate. All economic phenomena can be grasped quantitatively, i.e. measured, and this circumstance forms the essential precondition for all economic phenomena potentially and necessarily being taken into the grip of digital technology, whether it be, say, through macroeconomic simulation models based on econometric data, or through decisive statistics such a inflation rates, unemployment rates, etc. which provide guides to (cybernetically) steering the economy. The essence of capital is a movement of objectified value which is also essentially quantitative, and the competition among capitals has to correspond to this essence and thus also obey the movements of the value-numbers. From here comes the compulsion for banks to merge. Either they do so, or they go under, or are swallowed by a larger capital, for the cost savings are achieved mainly by the relentlessly increasing masses of monetary calculations which can be processed most efficiently by computer in the electromagnetic network. Since the business of banks to a large extent consists of monetary transactions and monetary movements, such movements can be registered electronically in a digital form and thus executed in such a way that enormous costs can be saved. Bank customers too must be enticed, partly through monetary incentives, into learning to deal with digital technology and thus into contributing to their banks' cost-saving drives.

Of course, the revolutionizing effects of the total digital casting are not restricted to only two exemplary branches of industry, but these two industries are particularly suited for illustrative purposes because they themselves are so digitally abstract, i.e. in the one case, they do their business with the 'formless' electromagnetic medium itself, and in the other, they do their business directly with money which is determined quantitatively in its form. In electronic commerce, it is primarily and decisively the monetary side (order processing, accounting, ordering new stock, etc.) which is exclusively carried out in the digital dimension and automated as far as possible, whereas the goods ('unfortunately') still have to be produced, packaged, despatched, etc. physically, of course with the assistance of a massive employment of digital technology in logistics. In the finance industry, the commodity itself is a money-form or a money-near form, and this then does not require any physical supplementation (transportation, etc.), but rather the trade can be carried out completely within the digital-arithmetic dimension with all the accompanying advantages of cybernetic automation.

The entire phase of economic globalization we are going through today is borne by the digital casting of being (whereas the historically first phase of globalization was presumably enabled inter alia by the technical development of ships, i.e. by an approximating technology with global reach). It is this casting of being which, through digital technology, abolishes distances and levels time differences and enables the world as a unified, 'simulataneous' globe in the first place. In the cor-respondence to the digital casting of being, we humans are forced to keep up with the new opening of world. One aspect of this is that, because of the acceleration brought about by approximating technologies and cybernetic automation, we have less and less 'time'. The time-saving technologies do not lead to any time-saving for humans. The digital casting of being is ambivalent; it opens up existential possibilities for us on the one hand, and on the other, it makes us into mere cogs in developments which roll in over us. We mesh in like cogs and run along, somewhat breathlessly, behind the 'developments'. In all the hype (idle chatter) about globalization today, the essence, of course, is not seen at all. People are ontologically completely blind and forgetful in this regard and are satisfied with sociological explanations. It is still unfathomable, incalculable and unforeseeable how the digital casting of beings will further unfold, say, in the next fifty years. What is most questionable, however, is that the origin in being of digital technology is not a question at all. We have lost sight of the indispensable role of philosophical knowledge which, in Hegel's words, consists in "investigating what is normally regarded to be well known". "But such well-known phenomena are usually the most unknown." "The business of philosophy consists only in bring expressly to consciousness that which, with regard to thinking, has been valid for humans from ancient times. Philosophy thus does not set up anything new; what we have brought out through our reflection is already the immediate prejudice of each individual."(7)

At this point we still require further consideration of the essential correspondence between the essence and the essence of capital(8). Both belong to the same Aristotelean-Cartesian, ontoarithmological casting of the totality of beings, to the dissection (or taking-apart or decomposition) of beings into logical bits which, as placeless, calculated beings can be inscribed arbitrarily in the dimension of the electromagnetic network and can be made to present themselves in the present everywhere. In particular, in money, the value-being of beings is embodied quantitatively in a reified way. Money as the "universal equivalent" is an arithmetic (and therefore a)/qetoj, a)/topoj) abstraction which can be calculated, and as such it corresponds to the digital casting of being and thus also to the world-encompassing, unified, techno-arithmologically produced cyberspace; it is absorbed in this medium and the circuits of capitals assume in virtual reality too their own, independent life, just as Marx analyzes this in the fetishism section of Das Kapital and elsewhere. This is autonomization of capital vis-à-vis human existence and it is enabled in its consummate form only through the digital casting of being, for both capital and digital beings are in their essence arithmo-logical, i.e. they both have a numerical, calculative, calculating nature. 

For Marx, fetishism means that the products of human labour as commodities, i.e. grasped and revealed and decrypted from the dimension of value are imbued with a 'magical power'. Under the commodity form, the products themselves (which can, of course, also be service-products and by no means have to assume a palpable form like industrial products) assume the ontological character of values. In the exchange relations on the market, commodities as embodiments of value take on a life of their own. Fetishism is most blinding in the value-form of money, for money itself as a thing seems to have a magical powers, whereas 'in truth' this power as general equivalent for all commodities has an origin in being itself which does not lie in the thing 'money' itself but rather, according to Marx, in the social relations (and more originarily in the value-being of beings themselves according to which beings disclose themselves to the human essence as valuable, and so beings as a whole and the human essence are transpropriated to each other in this dimension of value). A further form of fetishism inheres in interest-bearing capital which 'of itself' brings forth an interest yield. 'In truth', however, i.e. in the full uncoveredness of its essence, the interest yield is a form of appearance of the valorizing augmentation of value, i.e. of the quantitative growth of reified value through its productive circuits. Everything thus depends on clarifying the ontological origin of value, i.e. on entering thoughtfully into the value dimension itself as a dimension with a life of its own. Whether Marx adequately conceived of value ultimately as an abstractly socialized objectification of human labour, and thus sociated human labour itself as what is ultimately valuable, is for the time being another issue. For a deeper, postmetaphysical thinking, namely, it turns out (as already mentioned) that value and value-being hold sway from a deeper-lying essencing which I call the win, from which all beings are disclosed, i.e. decrypted, as valorizable for the sake of winning profit. The value-being of commodities inheres in their suitability for making a profit, and this profit-making potential is measured above all quantitatively and reifiedly in money. 

Marx's concept of fetishism includes the thought of the loss of human control, for the value dimension in Marx's thinking is traced back ultimately to social labour (which is thus implicitly proclaimed to be that which ultimately is solely valuable) and it is shown that, because of the commodity form predominating in capitalist societies, consciously organized social labour as such does not serve as the basis, i.e. as the subject, of human economic activity, but rather that this subject role is taken on and even usurped by objectified labour itself as capital. This Marxian retracing back to the essence is located in modernity's metaphysics of subjectivity in the form that the sociated human is postulated and cast as the ultimate subject of the totality of beings. Only within such a metaphysics can capital be designated as something resembling an (alienated) 'human product'. In no way, however, can capital be thought adequately simply as a human product, and still less as a technology, nor does capital, as some socio-philosophical or social scientific theories would like to have it, have a 'purely purposefully rational character', for it is a 'non-purposeful' principle of economic activity, namely, from a sum of capital comes more money, i.e. money-making appears as an end in itself, which is 'irrational'. Nor can capital be addressed at all as a technology, but rather it could at most be brought into a connection with Platonic te/xnh kthtikh/in contradistinction to te/xnh poihtikh/ (cf. Sophistês 219c and GA19:272ff). The fetishism of capital therefore has nothing at all to do with technology and technical products or any autonomization of suchlike. That would be a complete misrecognition of the phenomenon of economic fetishism as first brought into view by Marx. Rather, the origin of fetishism has to be sought in the ontological dimension of value, and the phenomenon of technology must be brought in indirectly via this value-dimension, for instance, as a factor for enhancing valorization(9). Value-being itself, the decryptive disclosure of beings as valuable, is not a human product, not a human machination, even though humans necessarily participate in the value dimension in the same sense as they 'participate' in the ideas. 

It is often said that modern technical systems are highly complex and therefore non-transparent, which then leads to a certain autonomization. If, proceeding from this fact, one tries to clarify the non-transparency of the capitalist economy (which is not merely a technical system) for oneself as a complexity, then being (and that means in this context: the ontological dimension of value) is lost sight of and instead an ontic explanation is offered. The being of capital can never be captured or clarified by a concept of complexity or a concept of system, since such concepts blindly skip over the question of being and explain being in terms of beings. Early on in the Marxian presentation of the analysis of the essence of capital in Das Kapital, capital is determined on the basis of a concept of value as an "automatic subject" in the sense of the self-valorization of value. This does not mean, however, that capital is anything resembling an artificial subject, for it is neither artificial in the sense of 'imitative' nor is it produced by art, that is, by technology. The subject-character of capital must be sought via the concept and dimension of value. 

Capitalist economic activity is undertaken under the principle (a)rxh/) that from advanced capital (money), more capital (money) is supposed to flow back. This principle is by no means complex but rather, extremely simple, and its origins do not lie in the 19th century but already in ancient times. Aristotle already thinks about the endless striving for riches by way of chrematistics. The principle of the valorization of money, its self-augmentation, comes to us from a far-off origin (as a sending from destiny), just as modern technology comes from te/xnh as a poietically knowing mode of decryptive disclosure. Marx says expressly that since Aristotle not a single step has been taken forward in clarifying the concept of value. That sounds similar to Kant's parallel remark regarding Aristotelean logic. "Destiny" here does not mean anything like a fate in the sense of an alien power which decides on our fate, but rather the disclosure of world sent from being which we can never completely fathom nor control and which sometimes makes unexpected leaps (that is, it is not a smooth, unfolding, 'evolutionary' development). This disclosure is the various ways in which we can encounter phenomena and address them and how we permit ourselves to be addressed by them. It is always a matter of a transformation in the way in which world discloses itself decryptively to us. Destiny is not a being, but must be understood as a sending and receiving, a giving and taking to which humans belong as recipients. 

To return to the question of complexity. Marx investigates the complexity of capitalist economies only in the second volume of Das Kapital, The Circulation Process of Capital, where the opaqueness and complicatedness of the economic whole is dealt with, which leave open many possibilities in the overall process for frictions to arise in the intermeshing of the many individual capitals, etc. But even the value-form itself is essentially contingent and incalculably unpredictable since what or rather, how much, a commodity is worth is only determined in the exchange relation itself on the market. The analysis of the essence of the commodity and capital forms is already carried out in the first two chapters of the first volume of Das Kapital. Formulated in the language of Heidegger's thinking of being, there, the being of capital is clarified ontologically (of course, in the language of metaphysics). Nevertheless, in the determination of the essence (the principle) of capital as valorization of value, i.e. as self-augmenting value, it becomes clear that this circling principle confronts humans as an alien, alienated power (akin to the will to will as the principle of movement of the set-up), not because of the complicatedness of the economic system, but because of the fathomlessness of the value-form and ultimately of the win itself, to which, however, the human essence belongs. In the capitalist casting of being too, there is an essential incalculability inherent in the simple value-form itself, i.e. in the circumstance that commodities have to 'prove' themselves on the market, and that whether and at what price commodities can be sold remains exposed to a fathomless incalculability. Herein lies an essential limitation to cybernetic technology. The endless circuits engendered by standing orders, which Heidegger speaks of extensively(10) in connection with the essence of technology, are in essence of the same kin as the circuits of capital, and this not even necessarily in another phenomenal form, especially since it is the capitals, that is, the enterprises themselves, which forcefully promote the development of technology and control technicized production. Not only with technical progress, but also with capital accumulation there is an endless augmentation for the sake of augmentation at work where the two tendencies intermesh with each other.

With regard to the essential contingency and incalculability of the value-form, the question is posed as to its connection with Heidegger's characterization of the consummation of subjectivity as the "securing" of the will to will. He writes, for instance, "Humans of themselves align their essence with security in the midst of beings, against them and for them. They seek security amidst beings through a complete ordering of all beings in the sense of a contriving a planned securing of standing reserves, which is how setting up in the correctness of security is to be performed."(11). Here, Heidegger's gaze is directed at totalizing cybernetics which, however, has to be uncovered as a self-delusive illusion insofar as cybernetics only calculates and can only calculate with beings, for it is impotent vis-à-vis being which transcends or surpasses beings. Being itself, including value-being, is unfathomably incalculable and beyond any cybernetic control. The dimension of value-being in its economic sense, however, is never a subject in Heidegger's writings, and we have to learn this in a re-reading of Marxian texts inspired by Heidegger. Inherent in the win is an essential limitation to cybernetic technology, for technology is essentially not able to steer and control the augmentation of value. The value-being of beings is not technically producible. 

There is now the further question whether with the a priori digital casting of beings and, inter alia, the digitization of the economy resulting from it, something fundamental has changed, similar to the transformation of pre-mathematical (pre-Newtonian) Aristotelean physics into Cartesian-Newtonian physics. Does such a change amount to a transformation of essence or does it belong rather to the unfolding of essence of an orbit that has long since been pre-scribed? As already outlined above (cf. 3. Digital beings), the digital casting of being is a further unfolding of the Cartesian mathematical casting of being which, in turn, represents a possibility within the Greek metaphysical beginning. The digitization of the economy runs in conformity with the valorization movement of everything that can be valorized and ordered, for the movement of valorization can be determined quantitatively and is in its essence quantitative, i.e. arithmological, even though the quantitative value-being of beings itself cannot be produced or controlled by digital technology, but can only be technically depicted or registered in retrospect. The value-being of things is their monetary being, and this is quantitatively determinate. The fact that things are always already opened up toward the universal exchange relations performs an abstraction from their sensual givenness to quantity, i.e. to number. The circuitous movement is also a quantitative. movement M1—C—M2, where M2 > M1 should be the case. More money is supposed to flow back than was advanced. If not, such a circuit of value is impossible in the long run because it consumes and annihilates itself. Such quantitative movements of value can be registered digitally even though there are no 'laws of motion' for such movements of value corresponding to the laws of motion in physics, for value-being itself eludes any technical grasp. 

Because of its conformity with the digital casting of being, the digitization of the circulation of commodities using digital technology gives the movement of valorization of capital a powerful forward thrust, a forceful expansion because, despite all the fundamental and fathomless incalculability of value-being, the entire monetary side of the movement, which always runs in parallel (and counter) to the material movement, can be registered and controlled in automatic systems which, in turn, accelerates the circuitous movement (and thus the augmentation of value), and so ceteris paribus enhances the productivity and profitability of the total process. The arithmological decomposition of everything that is finds its consummation, so to speak, in the total cash flow which is to be monitored and controlled as far as possible. Arithmological ontology opens up the access to things also in the sense that it makes everything indifferently and equally valid in precast, abstractly quantitative value-being. The only remaining differences are of a quantitative kind, measurable in monetary units. As mere numbers according to their value-being, things no longer have a place; they are a/)qetoj and arithmetically taken apart (diai/resij) as pieces in the standing stock of circuits of capital. Seen from this perspective, capitalism is the arithmological decomposition and evaporation of beings practised in economic life. Marx says, "Everything with a status and a stand is vaporized..." (Manifesto of the Communist Party MEW4:465). Everything is scarcely still standing? The digitization accelerates the vaporization, but the digitization itself comes from a long way off and is in a certain sense nothing new, but rather an off spring of the first beginning. The movement of capital in the broadest sense (that is, not merely monetary movements, but also commerce, turnover and revenue earnings of capital) begins to make itself at home in the electromagnetic, digital medium.

Everything that is opens itself to us as valuable in the broadest sense (including also that which is value-less, worthless) and is released to appropriation or acquisition according to certain rules of the game. This value-being comprises not only being-useful (being-(good)-for...), but also everything which affects people in such a way that they treasure it (including, say, icons, art works, white beaches, 'untouched' nature in general,...), and it comprises all this in such a way that it shows itself in its profit-making potential. Money is the mediator in this dimension of quantified value-being, the medium which enables access to acquiring what is valuable. It is inconsequential in this context whether what is valuable is a thing, a human service (e.g. labour), a piece of nature or — in a derived way and, so to speak, of second order — money itself (interest). Money is then, as the representative of wealth in general, the universal key to what is valuable by means of exchange. All possibilities of existing are made possible by valuable things and therefore entertain, directly or indirectly, relations with money as mediator. In any appropriation of valuable things in the broadest sense by Dasein, a more or less is disclosed from the perspective of the win; therefore money, as the abstractly universal representative of what is valuable must be quantitatively distinguished within itself; it must have the form of pure number (a)riqmo/j). As universal mediator of what is valuable, money itself is valuable, and therefore access to it must be regulated. Money must be acquired according to certain rules for acquiring it (property rights). The rules of acquisition constitute the framework of the gainful game in which Dasein must participate if it wants to exploit its options for existing. The gathering of all these possibilities of gaining money and thus what is valuable holds sway from the dimension of value-being disclosed decryptingly to Dasein which is called the win. Everything that is, is gathered and e-valuated a priori in the win and thus exposed to the gainful game. 

The way of viewing everything from the perspective of money, which allows beings to be in a certain way, means that money is something resembling the precipitate of a general dimension in which value-being discloses, i.e. decrypts itself quantitatively. For even when we send a satellite into space or make observations of distant galaxies, etc., or do research into the sub-atomic world, we are guided by flows of money, i.e. money mediates the dimension within which we also measure and fathom our existential possibilities and limits. Money and value-being, too, distinguishes us from animal being insofar as we are exposed to fathomless value-being and thus to greed and desire. Animals do not have any desire, but only drives. They do not look at anything as valuable. Only we humans can be voracious, and voracity as a way of Dasein comporting itself is a possible way of corresponding to (answering) the win and the gathering of all possibilities of winning (of course, including also the 'negative' or detrimental possibility of losing). Money has assumed historically differing garbs such as gold, silver, state paper money and today, strictly guarded numbered stored in the electromagnetic medium. Digital money is the pure consummation of money in its purely quantitative value-being. These numbers and their flow (cash flow) steer all possibilities of Dasein's existence either directly or indirectly. Without a flow of money, Dasein itself cannot move in its existence. 

We could also formulate the fundamental principle of a capitalist economy in the following way: Nihil est sine valore — Nothing is without value, in resonance with Leibniz' principium grande: Nihil est sine ratione — Nothing is without ground or reason. This means that everything has its value in the sense that all beings are open, disclosed towards value-being. Like every principle, this fundamental principle is itself ungrounded, i.e. there is no founding ground or reason why all beings should have a value and also no reason or ground for value, measured in money as price, having a definite quantitative magnitude. The principle posits of itself — fathomlessly, from the very depths of being — a mode of disclosing beings as a whole. If the value of a commodity is without ground and thus also quantitatively indeterminate, then it is also the case that nothing is without risk. The entrepreneurial risk familiar to capitalism is then itself grounded in such a fundamental principle of the groundlessness of values. Above this groundless abyss and before the horizon of the being of exchange-value, the actors in a capitalist economy act, above all, however, the entrepreneurs themselves who, as the main actors and initiators of a circuit of capital, are exposed to the essential contingency of value-being. Having and spending money is indeed a dimension of our existential potential for being. Money, however, is not simply a technical instrument but the ontic precipitate of an ontological dimension, namely, the dimension of value. Money as capital is the autonomized movement of the augmentation of money, i.e. the tendential increase of the monetary numbers into immeasurable heights. Since money and capital as embodiments of value-being are infected with a groundlessness, there are no laws of motion for the economy analogous to the laws of motion for natural beings. To the extent that we surrender ourselves to this groundless automaton of value-augmentation, we are not a match for it, but rather at its 'mercy'. Only the step back from the technical-economic way of thinking could enable the retraction of the capitalist world or at least its relativization vis-à-vis other possible world-openings.

If we then also reflect on the fact that the circuitous movement of money is in an interactive relation with knowledge as information, then we can see that information keeps us in form by keeping us up-to-date in the game of winning. It discloses what is worth knowing for Dasein in its possibilities of casting itself in everyday actions, in taking care of everyday affairs and in striving for gain. With the assistance of appropriate digital technology, Dasein has to calculate which path leads it most profitably through the multifarious possibilities of the digitally technicized world so that it is recompensed for its efforts. The new, emerging digital economy facilitates the mediation between commodity and money even further by decreasing the distance between them (without, however, being able to abolish the quantitative incalculability of value). Thus, the measurelessness of valorization, which eludes Dasein's control and which Aristotle calls chrematistics, as poihtikh\ plou/tou, i.e. the art of acquiring wealth, is fulfilled even more in today's reality. Then it becomes apparent that our desire (for money) can only be the aspect turned towards us of that which is inherently im-measurable in itself (the openness of being itself). Money is an expression for this immeasurable dimension in the sense that it is a horizon for all measuring according to which all things, beyond all their (essential) qualitative differences, are identical. Money is thus the groundless value-measure for everything that is which is accessible to us when we view things (natural things and the technically produced commodity products) outside the interrelations in which they are. When all things fall out of the perspective of their natural place and come to appearance, i.e. to visible being, in the universal electronic digital medium as commodities, where they circulate, then not only can they be counted from the abstractly value-less viewpoint of a)riqmo/j, but they can be simultaneously measured as value-things. The universally valid measure of value harks back to a placeless, positionless unit (mona/j) and number (a)riqmo/j) which, however, are themselves groundless. This groundlessness must be the interface where capitalism is wed with nihilism. 

6. A global communication network?