Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 335.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance) (47)
Subject: Re: 14.0325 Chomsky on the Internet
[2] From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@statistik.uni- (20)
dortmund.de>
Subject: Professor Withrow's Speculation on the Future
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 07:05:03 +0100
From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: Re: 14.0325 Chomsky on the Internet
Interesting, N. Chomsky's "intuitive" speculations on the nature of
electronic communication posit conversation as the core criterium of
success. However, the Internet is more than e-mail or conferencing. We
could do well to remember its archival function. We could do even better
to think of file transfer protocol as a mechanism that enables a flow of
objects (taken in the anthropological and not strikly computing sense)
along the lines of the research conducted by Mary Douglas.
However, Chomsky has fetishised eye contact. Even before the advent of
telephony, there was a place for non face-to-face communication. I don't
just mean the screen in the darkened cubicle of the Catholic confessional.
To close one's eyes while in the embrace of a lover... The blind in
Chomsky's world can never be whole. We are not what we behold. We are not
what we perceive.
If anything computer-mediated communication heightens a collective
understanding that all communication is mediated which understanding, if I
may say so, is the basis for the growth of healthy personalities (and a
couple of morbid pathologies). Sloppy nostalgia does little directly
to heighten understanding except remind us how easily we too may fall.
> Question: What do you (Noam Chomsky) think about the Internet?
> Answer (of Noam Chomsky): I think that there are good things about it, but
> there are also aspects of it that concern and worry me. This is an
> intuitive response--I can't prove it--but my feeling is that, since people
> aren't Martians or robots, direct face-to-face contact is an extremely
> important part of human life. It helps develop self-understanding and the
> growth of a healthy personality. You just have a different relationship to
> somebody when you are looking at them than you do when you're punching
> away at a keyboard and some symbols come back. I suspect that extending
> that form of abstract and remote relationship, instead of direct, personal
> contact, is going to have unpleasant effects on what people are like. I
> will diminish their humanity. I think.
The type in the passage above is telling: "I will diminish their humanity
[...]" My humanity includes a place for Martian robots, the music of
Patti Smith and the cries of Yoko Ono and the essays of a Paul de
Man and the art of a Francis Bacon and such occidental cultural rituals as
Halloween and Mardi Gras where both colourful and dull grey incarnations
of Maritan robots might look without blinking a wannabe nominalist
imperialist in the verbal eye to produce a syntagm of encounter. And the
linguist, captivated by the look, just might not reflect the gaze back.
A little coda inspired by With Martin Jay's opening to his _Downcast Eyes:
The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought_
(U of California Press, 1993).
*wink*
--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
Member of the Evelyn Letters Project
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~dchamber/evelyn/evtoc.htm
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 07:05:48 +0100
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: Professor Withrow's Speculation on the Future
Greetings All,
HI..below are some more thoughts and critics of Prof. Withrow, that I
would like to share with all of you--
----
It is great that we have the ability to reach out and touch people all
around the world. I don't pretend to know what the end results will be, but
it is exciting to be living and working in a world where the potential to
somehow touch each of the six billion people of the world exists. I am
accutely aware of the inequities and that at least a fourth of the world's
population does not have access to a telephone or for that matter even
seen a telephone.
In the 1890s the most optomistic futurists thought that there might be one
telephone in every USA village. It was inconcievable that the telephone
companies would be advertising "family celphone." What the next century will
bring is hard to guess. Kurzweil believes by 2020 we can have Mindprints,
i.e. dump our brains into computers. Other futurists tell us it is not
inconceivable that we will have direct brain to machine
communications. It's a wonder future world. The challenge is for us to
make the best of it and not squander it.
Sincerely Yours
Arun Tripathi
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