Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 560.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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[1] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: on AI and DH (65)
[2] From: John Postill <jrpostill@gmail.com>
Subject: NEW BOOK. The Anthropology of Digital Practices: Dispatches from the Online Culture Wars by John Postill (44)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-04-20 06:28:10+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: on AI and DH
In Humanist 37.494 I reported on Paul Taylor's review of Suleyman and
Bhaskar, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21st Century’s
Greatest Dilemma, and Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity,
Exploration and Discovery at the Dawn of AI. Taylor refers to "AI
Doomerism".
To that we can now add an interview with Li (by Sarah Frueh), "AI Is a
Tool, and Its Values Are Human Values", Issues in Science and Technology
40, no. 3 (Spring 2024): 26–29, https://doi.org/10.58875/LBZG7966 (with
a link to a pdf).
Li is not blind to the dark side of 'human nature', as we say. We can
hardly be surprised by her Silicon Valley'd emphasis on progress, with
its back turned to the history of smart machines. But is there not a
role here for digital humanities liberated from its fixation on impact?
Writing on the machine-centred history of these smart machines, Michael
Mahoney wrote:
> With some recent exceptions, the history of computing has been
> centered on the machine, tracing its origins back to the abacus and
> the first me¬ chanical calculators and then following its evolution
> through the genera¬ tions of mainframe, mini, and micro.... Once
> invented, the computer evolves naturally into the PC as its present
> most visible form, rather than into a variety of coexisting, mutually
> supportive forms (as if mainframes disappeared with the invention of
> the minicomputer). Its progress is inevitable and unstoppable, its
> effects revolutionary.
>
> Chronicling the revolution, that machine-centered history reinforces
> the hype and with it what one might call the “impact theory” of the
> rela¬ tion of technology and society. There is society strolling
> along, minding its own business, and, wham!, it gets impacted and is
> left reeling by a revolutionary technology, which changes everything
> overnight or in some similarly short time. “The ominous rumble you
> sense is the future coming at us,” wrote one management systems
> expert in 1953...
>
> The question is not whether new technology involves social change,
> but how it does. In particular, it is a question of agency. As a form
> of technological determinism, the impact theory leaves people
> reacting to technology, rather than actively shaping it. Much of the
> thoughtful history of technology over the past twenty years has aimed
> at getting people back into the picture or, to change the metaphor,
> into the driver’s seat.*
Is that not where a digital humanities worth the candle should be
sitting--and driving, or at least riding shotgun?
Comments?
Yours,
WM
-----
*"The Histories of Computing(s)", Chapter 4 in Histories of Computing,
ed. Thomas Haigh. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011, pp.
55-73. Originally: Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30, no. 2 (2005):
119-135.
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-04-19 05:00:08+00:00
From: John Postill <jrpostill@gmail.com>
Subject: NEW BOOK. The Anthropology of Digital Practices: Dispatches from the Online Culture Wars by John Postill
Dear all
I am very pleased to announce that my new book *The Anthropology of Digital
Practices: Dispatches from the Online Culture Wars* (Routledge, 2024) is
now out.
The book connects three distinct research areas – digital ethnography,
causal ethnography, and media practice theory – to explore how we might
track the effects of new media practices in a digital world. It invites
media and communication students and scholars to overcome the field’s old
aversion to ‘media effects’ and explore the messy, complex, open-ended
effects of new media practices in a digital age.
Based on long-term ethnographic research and drawing from recent advances
in the study of causality and ethnography, this book tells the ‘formation
story’ of the anti-woke movement through a series of critical media events,
namely Trump, Covid-19, George Floyd and Ukraine, with a Postscript on the
Israel-Hamas war.
The study argues that digital media practices (e.g. podcasting, YouTubing,
tweeting, commenting, broadcasting) will have ‘formative’ effects on an
emerging social world at different points in time. One important task of
the digital ethnographer is precisely to distinguish between the formative
and non-formative effects of specific media practices.
The key dramatis personae include Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris,
Tucker Carlson, Bret Weinstein, and Heather Heying.
I hope it will be useful in both undergrad and postgrad teaching, incl. in
media/digital anthropology, media and communication studies, digital
politics, social movements research, and qualitative methodology. Happy to
do guest talks on it.
More info here:
https://www.routledge.com/The-Anthropology-of-Digital-Practices-Dispatches-from-
the-Online-Culture-Wars/Postill/p/book/9781032370828
If you're on Twitter/X, please like or retweet this post:
https://twitter.com/JohnPostill/status/1779804487680671788
Best wishes
John Postill
RMIT University, Melbourne
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