Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 368.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Öyvind Eide <oeide@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.360: flip/flop into 2024 (81)
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: between flips and flops (58)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-01-03 14:53:06+00:00
From: Öyvind Eide <oeide@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.360: flip/flop into 2024
Dear Willard,
the question is interesting. It can indeed be discussed at different levels when
the digital is relevant, and in which way
There is a difference between using the digital as a library giving access to
expressions we relate to and analyse in an analog form, and expressions we
analyse digitally; that is, between listening to music which has been run
through a digital--analog converter and reaches your ears as sound-waves
generated by loudspeakers, and analysing the audio signal in its digital form.
In the former cases the digital may be close to irrelevant for the experience,
depending on resolution. Comparable distinctions can be made for visual art and
other types of media.
Many computer games are expressed as state machines. It is still a question if
the digital (or the discrete nature) is always relevant to the gaming
experience. When one('s avatar) moves through a 2D or 3D landscape with a
sufficiently high resolution, the pixels and the binary basis for the landscape
we move though may be as irrelevant to our experience as the molecules are for
my walking to the library.
All the best,
Øyvind
> Am 30.12.2023 um 08:25 schrieb Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>:
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 360.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2023-12-30 08:14:04+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: where the all-or-none matters, and will in 2024
>
> Back in mid December, specifically in Humanist 37.340-343, we tossed
> around the question of whether, and if so when, the all-or-none nature
> of the binary signal matters, or when we make it matter. Perhaps this
> bundle of questions has faded from our minds, but I'm still teased by
> it, and so would like to ask for specific instances in which it does. An
> enormous amount of effort and ingenuity goes into making clean bunary
> signals; see (as I've mentioned) Lex Fridman's interview with the
> microelectronic chip designer Jim Keller on Youtube.
>
> Consider the following, if you would.
>
> We say that we turn a tap (faucet) on or off, and so make in language
> and thought binary that which is not in the kinaesthetics of the
> operation. An electrical switch has two states, though again the
> kinaesthetics is non-binary, like the momentary mechanics inside the
> switch. So we conceptualise a non-binary experience and so render it
> binary. Such plays out through many life-experiences. What about
> listening to digitally reproduced music? Some persist in hearing the
> difference between that and music experienced through analog equipment.
> The concert hall raises other questions. And so on and so forth.
>
> In research, however, when do we make something out of the binary/analog
> difference? Text encoding is, I'd think, an obvious example, or can be.
> Like the light switch we in some instances studiously overlook some or
> many of the qualities of a word, phrase or page-design when adding
> metatext, once again rendering binary that which is not, and in doing so
> operate like the digital machine. Indeed, do we not when considering an
> object of research in some computational aspect or other, move towards
> becoming machine-like?
>
> Comments and arguments welcome, as always. And a Happy New Year to everyone!
>
> Cheers,
> WM
> --
> Willard McCarty,
> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
> Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
> www.mccarty.org.uk
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-01-03 08:54:28+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: between flips and flops
Germane to the question of binary is the ineffable, subject of the
brilliant writer and former contributor to the London Review of Books,
Jenny Diski (1947-2016). To fill in a gap, the LRB has begun publishing
a series entitled "Missing Parts" with Diski's "The Je Ne Sais Quoi", at
<https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n24/jenny-diski/diary?utm_medium=email&utm_
campaign=20240103MissingPiecesI&utm_content=20240103MissingPiecesI+CID_061f2f04d
8d74388a3818a1c069cb856&utm_source=LRB%20email&utm_term=Read%20more>
which I hope you can access.
Diski writes that,
> "the ineffable is another kind of unknown altogether. It’s not simply
> something that isn’t known. It is that which is personally
> experienced but for which no words can be found. Something of the
> senses which can never be translated into language. You can see it,
> hear it, taste it, touch it, smell it, but you can’t say exactly what
> it is, not the essence of it. It escapes definition even though it is
> inescapably present. Love and hate at first sight, attraction,
> repulsion, something desired, a shape or a texture, a taste
> underlying the obvious one, a hint or a ghost of something that you
> can never put your finger on. Knowledge, we can take or leave to
> others, but the ineffable is a more personal affront to our
> individuality. It refuses to be known – quite. At least in the way we
> like to know things, which is by naming them. I don’t know why I love
> you but I do ... What is this thing called love ... That old black
> magic has me in its spell ... Because he’s just my Bill ... The
> effects are there. We know but we can’t say. It’s on the tip of our
> tongue. It produces emotional disarray and yet we can’t define it.
> The ineffable rocks the world, says Pascal: ‘Whoever wishes to know
> fully the vanity of humankind has only to consider the causes and
> effects of love. Its cause is a je ne sais quoi ... And its effects
> are appalling.’"
I leave you to read more, but for those who are not familiar with her
work, the LRB's sidebar on her will help:
> Jenny Diski was born in London in 1947 and went into foster care at
> the age of eleven. As a teenager she spent time in psychiatric wards,
> before being taken in by Doris Lessing, the mother of a schoolfriend.
> When the LRB’s first editor, Karl Miller, met her in the early 1990s,
> Diski had been divorced, published five novels and was writing a
> column about supermarkets in the Sunday Times called ‘Off Your
> Trolley’. Her first piece for the LRB was a Diary about her
> ‘ex-Live-in-Lover’. She went on to write six more novels and more
> than two hundred pieces for the paper, on subjects as diverse as
> Roald Dahl, disgust, Jewish seafaring, Mrs Freud and Mr Thatcher,
> Antarctica and UFOs, but her best subject was always herself.
Cheers,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
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