Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 412.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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Date: 2024-01-26 05:04:15+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: hardware and wetware
Those who have been members of Humanist for a while will know
that the same questions and topics recur and that I'm not rarely the one
who puts them into recirculation. Thinking about the apparently same
topic again and again I find quite effective in getting further with a
topic of interest. "Think again", we say when we're not satisfied with
prior thoughts--or we simply forget what's been said before :-). With
gratitude to Borges for "Funes the Memorious" notwithstanding,
there's all too much forgetting going on.
So here goes. I find it ironic that while substantial efforts are put
into tracking thoughts (a.k.a. 'cognitive activity') down their supposed
origins in the electro-chemical activity of the brain, we in applied
fields of computing, very much including digital humanities, seem ever
more determined to walk away from the question of what hardware has to
do with the results we get from it. Be that as it may, I want to raise
again the question of what hardware has to do with results, or to put
the question differently, what gets lost or left out by design of
digital circuitry that matters, and how it matters. Is there an
analogous question for wetware?
That's enough for now. But comments are most welcome.
Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
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