1.1 From Digital Humanities to Speculative Computing - UCLA ...

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Calculation is based on numerical information and the ability to perform certain functions that can be readily automated through mechanical and digital means. Calculation is limited by its inability to represent any content other than quantitative values. Charles Babbage’s 19 th century devices, calculators, and office machines are not computers, only automated calculators. xlvi Computation links automated processing to the symbolic realm. Computation makes use of signs whose values can represent any information, even thought their ability to be manipulated through a fixed set of protocols is determined by a succinct formal logic. The addition of an extra level of articulation in coding symbolic values onto binary entities that could be processed electronically made the leap from automated calculation to computation possible. This leap disconnects semantic values (what symbols mean) from their ability to be processed (as elements in a formal system). Information, as Claude Shannon famously demonstrated, is content neutral. xlvii Digital processing enacts that logic through step-by-step algorithmic procedures, many specified by programming languages and their different functionalities and syntax. Alan Turing’s design for a universal computer transformed this basic capability into an inexhaustible computational engine. xlviii Classification systems build a higher order linguistic signifying structure on that formal base. The use of digital surrogates (themselves digital artifacts inscribed in code) reinforces the disposition to imagine that all code-based objects are self-evident, explicit, and unambiguous. Schemes for nomenclature and organization come out of library sciences and information management, as well as long traditions of typologies developed in the encyclopedic and lexicographic traditions across the sciences and humanities. xlix 1.1 History / 3/2008 / 49
Electronic communication approaches assume information functions in a transmission mode – encoded, stored, and then output. The fungibility of information and the function of noise are certainly taken into account in theoretical discussions, even when these are transmission-based and highly technical approaches to electronic communication, such as those of Shannon and his collaborator, Warren Weaver. l Bit by byte, the digital approach reinforces a mechanistic understanding of communication and representation. Knowledge in this context becomes synonymous with information, and information takes on the character of that which can be parameterized through an unambiguous rule set. This basic terminology is premised on the cultural authority of code and an engineering sensibility grounded in problem-solving. Because it has to be used for functionality, the “unquestionable” nature of the code base of computational activity is full of ideological agendas. Most fundamental? The formal, logic required becomes naturalized – not only as a part of the technical infrastructure, but as a crucial feature of the intellectual superstructures built to function on it. I’ve reiterated this several times because this is the crux of our motivation to differentiate SpecLab intellectually from digital humanities. Now of course not all digital humanists take this literal-ness without question. Considerable self-reflexive thought about objects of study has pulled theoretical philosophers of all stripes back into discussions of digital projects. li Calling assumptions into question is the name of the digital epistemological game as much as it is the standard of conference papers and publications elsewhere in the humanities. Likewise, the study of artifacts in a digital environment is just as apt to prompt discussions of race/class/gender 1.1 History / 3/2008 / 50
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