I spend a good amount of time in front of a computer, inevitably, and of course it is the primary means for me to engage on a daily basis with friends and associates around the world. Yet I am profoundly aware of how technology, driven by. Moore’s law, is pushing us to do everything via computers, even activities best done by hand. We see our very discourse, our concerns and conceptions of the problematic, shaped by the specific, and limited, medium. That medium is not neutral; it transforms the questions we ask and the answers we receive. Part of the problem comes from the switch from a carbon-based system (the human brain) to a silicon-based system (the contemporary computer).
We still are somewhat fuzzy about what the differences are, but it is entirely possible that if an increasing amount of calculation and the exchange of information is carried on between computers, there will be an inevitable pressure on human minds to follow similar patterns to those found in computers. But of course humans are not computers and the thinking patterns will be less creative and less effective.
One of the most central of the transitions in our time is the switch from the analog system for storing and processing information to digital systems for doing so. Analog forms of information imply, embody, a direct relationship between an event or phenomenon and the representation of it. The mind can trace a direct line between the original phenomenon and the resulting data which is stored. Light projected onto a negative; sound recorded on a record as analogous ridges. But the digital representation offers no such relationship. The process of rendering information in digital format does not involve any correspondence between what happens and what is recorded. Although there is an initial relationship between photons emitted and data input for a digital camera, for example, thereafter, the information is stored (and can be readily modified, without any reference to the original act). In many cases there is no means to trace alteration.
As a result, the relationship between data available and actual phenomenon becomes far more contingent today. That shift has a metaphysical component: One might ask whether a growing blindness of citizens to the consequences of their actions can be traced back to the spread of digital rendering of information. Such a process could result in an entirely internalized reality for most citizens wherein information about the outside world is mediated by internal desires to a degree unprecedented in human history. In the worst-case scenario, there would be no relationship between information and reality. If one has many friends on Facebook, they serve as possible links to the outside world. But we find increasingly that those individuals on Facebook are avatars, not real people. That trend will only increase, and it is entirely possible that the avatars will have more appeal than real people. The avatar can better satisfy human needs than humans. The digital revolution threatens to short circuit the process of interaction with the physical world.
Of course there is great appeal in the possible uses of the internet and digital systems in education. I must say I find the process compelling myself. “Digital humanities” is now sweeping across the country. The English department at Harvard, for example, has increased from zero to three positions advertised under the rubric of “digital humanities.” These experts of “digital humanities” will presumably use computers to conduct reserach. Scanning through millions of pages of text, they are able to find overarching patterns otherwise invisible. They may conduct work such as tracking the characters in War and Peace and through the process gaining new insights into the nature of literature.
One can map out events and incidents in thousands of books into very compelling representations beyond the capacity of a single reader through the applications of technology. The approach has its merits, and I have on occasion seen promising results. But the long-term consequences of such an approach warrant concern. It is no longer the content of the literary work, or even the words, but rather larger patterns in the overall structure that become the focus of attention. We are drawn to pretty patterns that represent reality at one remove; we are led to believe that those pretty patterns, graphs and charts, are somehow more real than the text itself, or its infinitely complex context.