Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 75.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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        Date: 2019-06-09 05:32:21+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty 
        Subject: how to restrain the new?

In a recent workshop a fellow participant objected to my notion of value
in computing derived from finding the new. He noted that we are
bombarded with novelty constantly. Indeed, something going wrong with
your brain can lead to a massive deluge of raw data that renders you
helpless. Some people, for example, lack the ability to limit their
empathy with others and so are overcome by feeling what they feel -- to
a degree that challenges theories of perception. (Forgive me for
forgetting the name of this condition.) The point is that mere novelty
gets us nowhere. My response was to revise my statement by shifting the
focus to the creative function of constraints or filters, if you will.
In terms of Viktor Shklovsky's 'defamiliarisation', that which jolts us
out of habitualisation is not merely the opening of a door but something
else. Intelligibility requires more.

Where might I go to learn more about this selective liberation?

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
(www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist (www.dhhumanist.org)




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Editor: Willard McCarty (King's College London, U.K.; Western Sydney University, Australia)
Software designer: Malgosia Askanas (Mind-Crafts)

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