Method and Technology

One way to ask about the place of computing in the humanities is to ask about method. I am reading Plato and the Good by my old prof Rosemary Desjardins. The second chapter nicely teases out Platonic dialectic from the Philebus in a way that can fits what I am going to call neon-baroque theories of folded interruption. Dialectic involves division of the stuff of the continuum into threads (analysis or digitization) and then the weaving of these threads into a fabric (synthesis or processing.) The problem with dialectic that Rosemary teases out is the problem I have with Deleuze’s interruption of the flow – how do you get a flow to divide in the first place?

To the weaver, therefore, we now put our question: what must be the case in order that she be able first to pick out the appropriate fleece, secondly to measure off the divisions that will yield the the threads of warp and woof, and then finally to interweave those threads so as to produce the web of the finished fabric? (p. 42)

Method is not just analysis and synthesis of a continuum, just as humanities computing is not just digitizing and processing the analog. Method, from meta (above, after) + hodos (way, path) involves a capacity to forsee the form you want to generate in the confusion. This is a looking back (after the way) so as to look forward (above the path.) You need to have an idea of what you want to weave before you start dividing (pro-video) and that comes from a recollection of what has been done. Thus Rosemary connects dialectic to Socratic recollection. Method in the humanities is circular – it involves a re-searching – a looking back to look forward. To analyze the flow into discrete digits you need to pull a flow out of chaos – you need to create a particular continuum for sampling, whether it be a flow of of sound or colour.
How does this help us with computing in the humanites? Well … lets go slow here and leave that to later.
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Giving up Empire, Cold Turkey

Vika blogged an essay by Vonnegut, Cold Turkey that rails against our addiction to oil and suggests that what is happening now is an empire desperately securing a last fix of petrochemicals before it has to go cold turkey.
What stands out for me is the anger of Vonnegut’s essay, an anger I find in myself. Such anger is a warning, but not rightious. This anger mirrors the fury Republican’s felt about Clinton – an anger that was more than partisan pretense – it included a deep sense of insult accompanied by an intolerance of the other intolerant.
As James Hynes describes Lamar, Texas in Kings of Infinite Space, there are three parts to disfunctional America (and this includes Canada):

There are the musicians, slackers, aging hippies, computer entrepreneurs, and academics in the arboreal old city north of the river; the Republican, Texas two-stepping, cowboy boot-wearing, SUV-driving Baptist middle managers in the sun-blasted suburban prairies south of the river; and the Hispanic and African-American gardeners, nurses, fast-food workers, and day laborers crowded into the crumbling streets east of the interstate, among the taquerieas and truck depots and tank farms. (p. 37)

Lets call them the Whigs, Tories, and Immigrants. These three ghettoes are closing on each other – the signs are that each have their story to tell of the other enclaves, each have their cultivated anger, each are erecting their own types of gates (ironic or ironware) and each have reason to avoid really engaging the other. Vonnegut voices the apocalyptic discourse of Whigs afraid of an empire managed by Tories.
The virtue of Hynes’ book is his refusal to let the Whigs off the hook, or for that matter, the Tories (I don’t know yet how he will deal with the third and disempowered class). He damns us both, and our intolerance of the other, to a Texas hell where, as in The Island of Dr. Moreau, we are asked again and again “Are we not Men?” by those we forgot.

Open to Providence

One of the ideas that mystified me in Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova (New Science) was the importance of divine providence to his new science. Like piety in Plato, providence in Vico seemed an anachronistic idea in an otherwise modern work.

Now I know less – which is better. Providence is a looking-before. It is the foundation of open (source and research) movements. It is a trust in things working out if you get your part right and open up right to the unexpected. Providence is a making ready for the unexpected future, which unlike teological philosophies that try to control/predict the future, does not presume to know.

Providence is not blind trust in market forces to cure that which we have given up trying to fix. That is a turning away from looking before that is used to justify short term gain. It is a rationalization of selfishness – “if I look after myself here and now the hand of God will fix the downstream consequences”. Providence is a middle way between complete control and abandonment.

The open movements are trying to find that middle ground where you frame a project in a way that leaves it open for others to contribute in unexpected ways.
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Slow Food, Slow Code

Slow food is a movement (and registered name) that celebrates hospitality, long slow meals, the preservation of culinary heritage, and rest (after a long meal.) The movement organizes “conviti”, an old Renaissance term of a symposium of ideas while eating (and drinking.)
What about “Slow Code”? Isn’t it time to celebrate the slow appreciation of coding? Rather than be extreme about coding, I think we should slow the pace of programming, slow the pace of new releases, and slow down our computers.
As Willard McCarty has pointed out, you learn so much more when you take your time marking up a text. The encoding journey is its own reward. Why not take longer, learn more, and have a glass of Barolo while you are at it.
Read on for the Slow Code manifesto.
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Empire by Ferguson

“Yet imperialism did not have to pay to be popular. For many people it was sufficient that it was exciting.” (p. 211)

Empire: the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power is by Niall Ferguson who teaches at NYU and Oxford. I read the book right after Confusion by Stephenson, and it makes a good companion since Empire provides a well written tour of the birth and evolution of the British Empire that maps to the themes of Confusion. The Empire was born in piracy, benefited from slavery (which made possible the exploding taste for sugar), survived by evolving sophisticated economic (monetary) and bureaucratic systems, and staid popular at home by developing global communication systems. The Empire didn’t benefit the brits (except for those who emigrated), it entertained them. I should reread Innis Empire and Communications which is one of the first of the works to develop ideas about information technology determinism – the so called Toronto School. (McLuhan was Innis’ student.)
Stephenson is weaving (con-fusing) entertainment out of the birth of the British Empire. What he leaves out is the taste for sugar.
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Fiormonte: Genetic Machines

Another great paper at the Brown conference was by Domenico Fiormonte on “Textual genesis and the writing process: The Magrelli Genetic Machine”. After giving us a background on philology and textual criticism in Italy, he showed a Flash variant machine that allows one to see manuscript and text interact. Domenico led the development of the Digital Variants site at the University of Edinburgh which has information about tools, theory, texts, and projects.
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