|
|
|
contact | mailing list | |
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Because We Are Digital
crossing the boundaries
page 5 of 7Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of modern computer science, in a like manner has portrayed the mind as a society of tiny components forming a magnificent puzzle of evolving imagination. In his book the Society of Mind he cites Papert's principle, the notion proposed by Seymour Papert regarding mental growth wherein Papert theorized that intellectual progress is based not simply on the acquisition of new skills but on the acquisition of new administrative ways to use what one already knows . Our conception of the computer as an artmaking and communication device is just that - a tool which fosters and encourages the creative readministration of information. Dewey envisioned an educational system which imparted pragmatic information without elitism. In order to allow education to become a tool that enables humanity to cultivate and reorganize our work and culture, we must abandon authoritarian methods of educational practice, where the teacher is the endowed disseminator of privileged knowledge. Humanists must remember that computer is a tool of multimedia communication between the source of information and the user, without giving authority to the selected few. This communication becomes an ongoing ebb and flow of escalating meaning/communication which engages and empowers the inquisitive user. As a tool for art-making and scientific thinking it is unique, and allows us the potential to realize Dewey's vision. More than at any other time in history, it is important to educate students with tools, both technical and intellectual to formulate new patterns between the details of knowledge rather to expect them to accumulate information like books on a shelf. Cybercommunication must be made to be the intelligent extension of human capability for new discovery. Communication is education. DATASET: ALL ART IS IMAGE Whether communication takes the form of vocal utterances, ink on paper, or modulation of radio waves, the intention has always been the transfer of meaning from one individual to another. This creates an image which will convey idea. It is in our humanism that we attempt to make manifest some facet of experience/content and communicate it to another person or persons. Up until now, the medium has determined both the audience for the message and its destination. Thus oil paintings were destined for the museum, text for the printed page, music for the radio. Subcultures have grown up around these destinations, and these subcultures have become insular and self-referential. Yet, the separations are artificial, imposed by the restraints of the technology and mostly by the lack of vision of those working within politically defined fields. These boundaries between media also forced a separation of audiences, creating the artificial divides of high and low culture. Evolution of media allows an evolution of audience. With its virtual writing spaces, the computer positions us to transcend these restraints, and to reunite all experience within its algorithms, to recognize the common humanism within all communication. The digital computer, when combined with the optical scanner, the music sampler, and a myriad of other computer input devices, allow us to reduce all physical media to a virtual binary digit. At this point, when we have digitized sound, or photographs, or film, it is all equal in the cathedral-like space of the computer, without dogma. Images become reduced to a dataset, merely a sequence of numbers; nothing more, nothing less. Every digital movie, every digital image, every digital sound is nothing more than a sequence of zeros and ones stored in the memory of the computer. These numbers can now be seamlessly combined and juxtaposed. In the computer's virtual spaces, all forms of communication are equal. The computer in its use of multimedia merely reinforces common and historic human themes. In order to communicate in the interest of evolving the human condition, there must be access to the creative tools-the computer network-to all interested. The computer has the ability to structure all communication to the common and accessible lvel implied within the language of the dataset. Hence, it empowers the user to also reorganize any message in new ways which allow for pattern thinking, trans-disciplinary intercourse, and the visualization of the unseen. |
|
||||||||
 |
This site ©2003 Charles H. Traub and Jonathan Lipkin. Maintained by webmaster@intherealmofthecircuit.com. | |
| ||
| Kuhn, Thomas :: VisiCalc :: Anderson, Laurie :: Philadelphia Zoo :: Dresden Codex :: Deists :: Goldberg, Rube :: Whitman, Robert :: Hall, Sir Benjamin :: Cunningham, Merce :: Notre Dame :: Bible :: Bell, Alexander Graham :: Reuleaux, Franz :: Dreiser, Theodore :: Hammurabi :: Rashid, Hani :: Tomkins, Calvin :: Johnson, James Weldon :: Polaroid :: | ||
