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Samenvatting van het vak 'Digital Reason'
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DIGITAL REASONIntroduction: We have always been digital
“We have never been modern” < Bruno Latour
we have always been digital
a split in the study of nature (study of things) and study of human society (study of words)
Ada Lovelace: first computer programmer idea of ‘poetical science’ = importance of intuition and
image in mathematics and science by observation, interpretation and integration which are still
relevant today
o She became the first person known to have crossed the intellectual threshold between
conceptualizing computing as only for calculation on the one hand, and on the other hand,
computing as we know it today: with wider applications made possible by symbolic
substitution.
The digital turn
o effect on the material medium we use to express our feelings
o effect on the dynamics of community formation and deformation (eg. social media)
o effect on meaning/purpose (=what does it mean to be human?)
The long-term historical perspective is relevant in defining what it is to be digital
humans are symbol-using, hyper-social animals
This long-term perspective should be complemented with a shorter-term perspective: responses to
material and social realities of historical modernity (late 18 th C-…) & fading and displacement of
religion as an undisputed answer to the question of purpose.
We have always been digital: we have always used tools (like animals but in a more sophisticated and
intense way)
o our technologies have amplified our activities far beyond what we can think of as ‘natural’
singles out humans among other animals
o Vaidyanahtan (echoing McLuhan): “technologies are extensions of ourselves”, allowing us to
“supplement” and “extend” activities we were already doing
o McLuhan: in order to properly understand technologies, we must ‘denaturalise’ them: e.g.
piece of chalk and computer keyboard are both ‘unnatural’ technologies + both do ‘digital’
work in different ways
DIGITAL ≈ digitus (Latin: finger) <-> meaning now: refers to the electronic storage and transmission
of data in binary form, BUT makes sense to reconnect it to our fingers: to denaturalise what we have
been doing with our fingers all along
technologies allow us better to perform tasks that fit into the four Fs of natural animal life using:
feeding, fighting, fleeing and fornicating (or 5: freezing)
Humans have always been digital
Throughout time, we have amplified our activities far beyond the natural Four F’s.
Some activities extend the four F’s, other activities can’t be reduced to the four F-regime
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, o Framing distinguished humans = the human tries to make sense of the past/present/future
and is engaged with thinking about its future (special ability of humans to build a community,
network that leaves material traces in time and space, eg. writing)
o Humans aren’t divorced from nature, but they have been moved to the periphery of animal
behavior because of the practices that they use
Oldest probable evidence of traces deliberately left by humans (oldest evidence of digital human):
found on a flake of stone from the Blombos Cave (South Africa) from 73.000 y. ago
a crayon was used to drawn patterns (pigment intentionally applied to the flake)
we don’t know what the design may have meant, but what matters is thát it very likely must have
meant something. (=framing)
oldest symbolic activity in human society + oldest piece of digital art
Pufferfish: makes intricate “mystery circles” that are neither symbolic nor art (and not digital), but to
attract mates
only humans can write in symbols
o Jacques Derrida: writing precedes speech
spoken language is marked by same features that are considered characteristic of
written language only: are typically taken as evidence of inferiority/secondariness of
writing to speech
language as a system of symbolic communication can only do its work when it
functions as if it were always already writing + system of symbolic communication
(=human language) can only work if it works in radical absence of both sender and
receiver of signifiers
potential of language as a technology used by humans to transmit their intentions
through time and space by producing symbolic traces (like the Blombos design)
o The potential of language in general to transmit intentions through time and space by
producing symbolic traces
o White-spotted puffer fish show creativity in animals (but it is to lure mates = fornicating only
functionality) – only humans write
The digital tun is just a further extension of the human capacity for symbolic technology use
PART 1: MASS MEANING
Public intellectuals: science, culture & society, democracy, education
Immanuel Kant
o Adam Smith
o Matthew Arnold
o Thomas Henry Huxley
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,o Aldous Huxley
o Julian Huxley
o Immanuel Kant (18th-19th C)
o Adam Smith (18th C)
o Matthew Arnold (19th C)
o Thomas Henry Huxley (19th C)
o Aldous Huxley (19th-20th C)
o Julian Huxley. (19th-20th C)
they are all WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic); all western
intellectuals (is problematic)
starting point: late 18th C (because of Enlightenment, IR, massive population growth and
later on the upcoming of the digital turn (around 20 th C)
they (those men) have some things in common:
shared their questions about science, culture and society with the public sphere
and the wide reading public
are all intrigued by concept of democracy and its consequences
approach issues with education
PART 2: MEDIUM
o Natural evolution (about genes) vs. human history (about memes – unit of cultural
transmission)
o “there are no digital medium’: be able to answer at end of chapter (mogelijke examenvraag:
akkoord of niet) thesis by Mitchell
o Exploring the word ‘medium’:
digital vs. non-digital medium: relationship?
what’s the definition?
media-medium
o “Meaning is use”
PART 3: COMMUNITY
o focus on impact of digital media on political action, activism, social movements
o who are we online about self-presentation through texts and images
o Image hunger and neuro-ideology: be careful with the manipulation of scientific produced
images (eg. to prove existence of God)
PART 1: Mass meaning
1. Starry sky and moral law
1.1 The purpose of historically modern humans
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, oOur digital condition in the 21st century is different from the digital condition of our
ancestors
Technological infrastructures in communication
Changes characteristic of historical modernity
Demographic expansion
Modern democracy
Industrial revolutions and service revolutions
Institutionalization of formal education
Globalization
The rise of science as a new truth regime (vs. philosophy, religion…)
Achievements of engineering
o The question of human purpose – what does it mean to be human in modern times?
o 3 fundamental developments that characterize (Western) Modernity:
1. The spectacular rise of science as a truth regime (late 18th-19th century)
Cf. Bruno Latour – origin of modern science in the 17th century
replacing religion, philosophy…
2. The emerging notion of the human as a self-determining autonomous agent (the
subject/the self): the human as an independent member of the democratic community
he begins to speak for itself (cf. Kant – enlightenment: the subject uses its own
reason)
self-determining, not subject to other people/rules
3. The need to involve a rapidly growing population in public discourse (all human beings
must be participants in the public sphere)
Thomas Jefferson – declaration of independence: he cut out a word of the
document and changed it by “citizens”. The word he cut out was “subjects”
subjects is the name used for those who are servants to the king (vs Kant –
“subject”)
Importance – the question of education (How should we involve all of those who
are part of the state in an education to citizenship? How do we get them aboard
in the project of modernity?) = an intent to develop a technology of education
Digital turn = it is a matter of communication and involvement of huge
quantities of people in an organised way (cf. today we worry about the
lack of structure in the digital world)
The rhetoric of public discourse? The rhetoric of reason? What stylistic
figures do they use? = importance and drawbacks of certain figures or
textual elements in the texts of a few people
in our research, we focus on the rhetoric (texts) about this discourse from
multiple authors
These developments challenge the debate of the purpose of modern humans
o The Difference Engine (1990)– William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
What would’ve happened if there were computers in the 19th century?
Is the prehistory also a precondition for the digital turn? Would there have been
a digital turn without these circumstances?
Charles Babbage – Difference Engine and Analytical Engine designs = first
precursors of modern computers
o Why do we start at the end of the 18th century?
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