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Because We Are Digital
crossing the boundaries
As members of a thinking community, we must accept this premise: we are no longer anticipating a revolution. It has already happened. It is time to build on its promise, transcend the inevitable losses, and become more comfortable, more human, with the change now wrought. This revolution has created the possibility of reinventing ways lost in history of interacting, thinking, and creating. This is manifest in the advent of the digital computer, and its accompanying methodologies, giving unprecedented new opportunities for working which emphasize relationships between bodies of knowledge and human minds. The computer is valuable in its ability to enable us to reconceptualize our relationship to knowledge, and to organize it, rather than merely accumulate information. The methodologies of the computer allow us to share a commonality of human expression which crosses disciplines. If approached openly by thinking people who hold the humanist tradition dear, they allow a means for creativity which will enable us to reinforce that which makes us human. The great achievements of man lie in the quest to expose the unseen, and the computer's value lies in its ability to further these achievements. The ways of working in the digital world, however, are not new, as we shall see. Indeed, precursors of multimedia and hypertext have been around for centuries. The present strength of the computer, its speed, flexibility and strength in retention of fact, only enhance what has already been embedded in the constant course of human intelligence - the desire to create new meanings through relationship. We posit a new creative individual, the creative interlocutor, a navigator of associative trails of thought and resource, who enables others to freely and creatively manage their human interests. This individual is one who is integrated: their creativity functions as an organic part of society, and they act to connect for the common good. The creative interlocutor is also an integrator in their ability to negotiate the disparate fields of human knowledge and bring them together in previously unimagined ways. In so doing, they enable others to further their creative potentials. Herein we will make the case that technology has always aided, rather than hindered, human expression and creativity. Human beings, however, have always had to overcome an initial hesitancy whether it be telegraph or the computer. Henry David Thoreau remarked "We are in a great haste to construct a telegraph from Maine to Texas. But Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate". Clearly, today one does not doubt the humanity of a grandmother in Maine who talks to her granddaughter in Texas. What we lament is the loss of content in that conversation. We seek to negate the self-fulfilling prophecy engendered by entrenched interests who lament the loss of their primacy by blaming the inhumanity of the technology. You can't touch it, you can't read in bed, it hurts my eyes and so forth. These regrets and fears, like all, are inhibiting. All to often they segregate the minds of humanists and artists whose creative input is vitally needed in the implementation of this new technology. The irony is that this feeling unnecessarily reinforces the power of the technocrats who then direct the design and implementation of the technology in a self-promoting way. Ask not what the computer can do for you, but what you can do for the computer. |
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This site ©2003 Charles H. Traub and Jonathan Lipkin. Maintained by webmaster@intherealmofthecircuit.com. | |
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| Hitchcock, Alfred :: Jainism :: Goethe, Johann von :: Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) :: Harlem Renaissance :: Stryker, Roy :: University of Timbuktu :: Universal Iconographic Repertory :: Holland, Frank :: Eastman, George :: Furby :: Smith, Adam :: Campbell, Joseph :: Ankor Wat, :: Hurston, Zora Neale :: Albers, Hanna :: Origin :: Codex Amitianus :: Mecca :: Khawarizmi :: | ||
