Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 340.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2023-12-08 06:11:36+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: how (or when) does the all-or-none matter?

Chris Chesher's new book, Invocational Media, raises an interesting
argumentative question: how does the all-or-none origin of
computationally produced phenomena matter? Jim Keller, in his interview
with Lex Fridman, talks about the extraordinary effort and ingenuity
required to transcend the quantum phenomena in silicon microcircuitry to
produce the deterministic machine. Similarly, equally extraordinary
engineering makes it possible for us to ignore the digital--or, to use
von Neumann's term, the all-or-none--output of the deterministic
machine, and so turn to Chris' invocational metaphor. But I am left
wondering whether it is wise to pretend and declare that (as Brian
Cantwell Smith once also argued) the digital doesn't matter.

Would it not be better, more productive to ask in what areas of human
experience and thought does it make absolutely no difference, in what
others is it significant?

Comments?

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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