Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 83.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2024-07-31 08:12:44+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: precedents

Historian of technology Michael Mahoney argued that precedents, so often
identified for computing in deterministic time-lines, are
retrospectively invented as much as, or more than, found. No real
problem here--so long as we know what we're doing when we cherry-pick
from history to identify roots of computing as we know it. I am
wondering about whether anyone has done such digging recently for useful
precursors to the cognitive transformations brought about by the
artists, musicians, photographers, film-makers and writers in Europe,
Russia and the Americas following the end of World War I. Montage (about
which Sergei Eisenstein famously wrote a great deal) is an example.
Roger Shattuck, in The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in
France 1885-World War I (1961), brilliantly goes into the background;
see esp. his penultimate chapher, "The Art of Stillness".

Suggestions and discussion most welcome!

All best,
WM


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


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