[fuzzy logic]

"We - you/I - are neither open nor closed. We never separate simply...Between our lips, yours and mine, several
voices, several ways of speaking resound endlessly, back and forth. One is never
separable from the other. You/I: we are always several at once...One cannot be
distinguished from the other; which does not mean that they are indistinct." Luce Irigaray,This Sex Which is Not One, 209.

Lastnight I watched the first installment, "Kill Me if You Can," of a new BBC series entitled Psycho. A very interesting story developed concerning two teenage boys, a chatroom, and their imagination.
In short, the younger boy John, a 14 year old, created fictitious characters designed to appeal solely to one person in particular, Mark, a 16 year old boy who also frequented the chatroom. The narrator of the series was at pains to remind viewers that these were "normal" boys doing "ordinary" things. Some examples of such mundane activities for the boys were watching the local footie team with his dad (the older boy didn't have a dad), doing well in school, having friends, and not missing school. But it was obvious, well at least to viewers, that both boys were lonely and uneasy with life and both sought affirmation (of themselves and, to a certain extent, of their lives) in another arena: an internet chatroom.

As the boys became more comfortable with themselves and the online environment they became "consumed" with the chatroom. Both boys would be in the chatroom for 12 hours a day - before school and throughout the night. [One question: where were the parents?] Eventually the Mark made friends with "Rachel", a female teenager also in the chatroom. Shortly after meeting Rachel, the Mark became very "close" with her and told parents and friends he had a girlfriend. In the chatroom Rachel introduced Mark to the John; before Rachel introduced them, they had not spoken. Soon afterwards another "character" appeared calling himself Kevin and proclaiming himself a stalker of the worst kind. A few days later Kevin logged in and told Mark that he had kidnapped Rachel and would kill her unless he masterbated with his webcam on for the chatroom (and Kevin) to see. Mark apparently thought this was the way to "save" Rachel and performed the request. Kevin signed in later and said he had released Rachel. Rachel then promised to meet Mark and thank him for saving her. A week or so later Kevin logged in claiming he had raped Rachel and then murdered her. Mark was distressed upon hearing this news but made no effort to tell his mum, friends, or police. [Now, is this really the action of a "ordinary" boy?] As a result of the loss of Rachel, he quickly became firm friends with John. The would chat all the time online and met in real life (RL). Soon Mark was approached by Janet Dobinson "spymistress." She wanted to recruit Mark to come work with her for the Secret Service. But, (there's always a but!) the boy first had to prove his worth, for a fee of course. The tasks that Janet set for him began simply and grew to acts of a sexual nature - Mark would have to perform certain acts on the younger boy. [A "normal" person might wonder why one earth would a spymistress use a teenagers chatroom? Why would she ask someone to perform sexual acts on another teenage boy? etc...] Finally, having passed all these tests, Mark was promised £300,000 and sex with Janet the spymistress if he murdered the younger boy. Mark was promised that as soon as he completed the act, Janet would appear and exhonerate him, pay him, and have sex with him. All of this was in the interest of national security. In case something went wrong, Janet told him of an escape code: "6969"!! [c'mon! what a code?!] Anyway, Mark took the younger one out for the day, as friends do. He bought a kitchen knife - for his mum - and then, at the end of the day, took John down an alley-way being sure to side-step all the cctv cameras he'd been warned about. He stabbed John. Mark then rang police thinking Janet the spymistress would appear as promised. She didn't. Ten days after being in police custody, Mark finally explained that he'd been recruited for the Secret Service. The police thought it was a joke until they took a look at Mark's hard drive. Lines and lines of conversations between the 16 year old and Janet appeared. The police then began a search for Janet. After extensive examination, experts discovered a typing mistake that appeared in all of Janet's communiction and then in "Rachel's" and "Kevin's" and...in John's. All these characters spelt "maybe" as "MYBYE". Ooops. John was found out. As he was recovering in hospital police slowly pieced together what had happened. John had written a story aimed directly at the older boy. He wrote the story so well, the older boy believed it. Both boys were not given jail sentences but are not allowed to go near chatrooms and cannot use the internet unsupervised. But I have a question, if you're a parent, would you not check to see what your kid was up to? I mean with the risk of peadophilia and bullying wouldn't you want to be sure she or he was safe? Wouldn't you keep track of her or his buddy list? And put the computer in a high-traffic area (like kitchen/living room) to prevent late-night usage? I wonder about these parents and how "normal" they really were?

Of course, hearing of situations like this causes people to distrust technology, evoking an either/or mentality. That is what the quote at the top of this post refers to. People can't, like Aristotle, take away the "middle". Aristotle called it the "law of the excluded middle." Life is much more complex with copious grey areas. This is where fuzzy logic comes in. Answers are not either true or false but a bit of each. Fuzzy Logic (as I understand it!) modifies the rules for membership to sets of information. Thus elements don't belong soley to one set but can belong partly to different sets. Example, A is both a letter and a sound. This kind of thinking allows for flexibility which is important for difference and change as Irigaray so succinctly says.