[1] From: Matt Kirschenbaum (30)
<mgk3k@jefferson.village.virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: 13.0169 humanities computing
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (48)
Subject: after the Revolution
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 1999 09:09:49 +0100
From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mgk3k@jefferson.village.virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: 13.0169 humanities computing
> Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 22:37:42 +0100
> From: Hope Greenberg <hope.greenberg@uvm.edu>
> >
> Re: The Legitimacy of Humanities Computing
>
> Two questions:
>
> What happens to Humanities Computing when computers go away (i.e., when
> they are no longer "The Box" but are truly ubiquitous and remarkably
> invisible)?
My own opinion is that this is a false predicament. The so-called
"technological base" is an ever-receding plateau. Witness the Apple G4,
which cannot be legally exported to certain countries because it is
technically classifiable as a supercomputer. What will humanists do with
a supercomputer on their desktop? There will _always_ be pockets of
high-end users who refuse to permit their tools to become transparent.
> What happens to arguments of "is it book/text/media" when it's all bits?
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, that depends on how you define "it." ;-)
> - hope.greenberg@uvm.edu, U of Vermont
Best, Matt
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Assistant Professor, Department of English
Research in Computing for Humanities Group
http://www.rch.uky.edu
University of Kentucky
Technical Editor, The William Blake Archive
mgk@pop.uky.edu
mgk3k@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 1999 09:10:06 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: after the Revolution
In Humanist 13.162, Hope Greenberg mischievously (I assume) asks,
> What happens to Humanities Computing when computers go away (i.e., when
> they are no longer "The Box" but are truly ubiquitous and remarkably
> invisible)?
and
> What happens to arguments of "is it book/text/media" when it's all bits?
These are questions asked many times before -- but still interesting to
consider and reconsider. I think of the implied argument as a "withering
away of the State" assertion, which is not an unintelligent thing to
imagine, just to assume or act as if it will ever actually happen.
I'd think that if computers were to become ubiquitous, the questions to
which we are occasionally awakening would be considerably more urgent
because more widely instantiated in the things of academic and daily life.
There is, however, a partially hidden assumption in the idea that
computation will be invisible in scholarship, at the edges of rational
thought where what can be said in computationally recognisable form breaks
down into what we know but cannot say how we know -- though we know we must
keep on trying. (Ah yes, thank you, Mr Eliot, "The rest is not our business.")
As John Searle notes in his discussions of the Chinese Room parable -- for
example, in the brilliantly accessible Minds, Brains and Science: The 1984
Reith Lectures (read it tonight!) -- the problem fundamentally has nothing
whatever to do with how powerful the machine is or how clever the algorithm
-- or how cheap the product. For us as humanists, in other words, there
will always be interesting problems, though we may quickly be able to put
to bed the uninteresting impediments to reaching them. (Yes, I see the
metaphor struggling to free itself to better use -- please be patient.) For
us as human beings, I dare say, we will continue as long as we are *alive*
to spend our lifetimes in unpacking such mad, totally unjustifiable
utterances as "I love you", however thoroughly these might be collocated
with all other things we have said, thought, done, or however quickly such
utterances may be flashed across the distances separating those who would
communicate.
Ok, computation is all around me and I don't think about it much, in my
microwave oven, in my clock-radio, in the machine that gives me money too
often. Ceasing to think about these, as I will again in a few minutes, they
become invisible -- though they are part of a world I wonder about
consciously for much of the time I am awake. But more importantly, I think,
it's not that the target of thought has vanished, rather it has moved on.
In mathematicians' terms, a problem has been rendered trivial (which
doesn't mean I can solve it, just that I know it has been solved, so I can
move on). Since with computers the problem has always to do with the fuzzy
boundary between computation and knowledge, there's no threat to us, only
opportunities. Do we have the wit and energy to realise them?
When all books are bits? Oi veh es mir! I urge you to look again at The
Bed, <http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi97/proceedings/short-talk/cd.htm>,
formerly brought to your attention in Humanist 12.609, and meditate on why
this provokes (I very much hope) a profound uneasiness.
Yours,
WM
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