Technologies of Text (S12)

I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Bolin’s lecture “From Scrolls to Codex”.

From a historical perspective, I always found the progression of technology impressive.  Dr. Bolin did a fantastic job of explaining the early progression of text.  Perhaps one of the most memorable lines would be

“Writing is a luxury.  It’s easy to take advantage of it today.  When you are certain that you aren’t going to starve to death, you can start to write things down.”

His explanation of the history of the present day alphabet was both entertaining and educational.

Likewise, I thought class discussion was very insightful on 1/27/12.

We concluded that in a traditional education setting, the teacher/professor was the only one who had the facts.  The teacher/professor would give you the facts to memorize.  In the last fifty years, there has been a drastic change in the way information is shared and, thusly, processed.  Facts are so easy to come across, there is no real need to commit them all to memory.  People used to have to memorize the Iliad if they wanted to share the store.  Due to the creation (and subsequent progression) of writing, there is no longer a real need to memorize long and complex works.  The externalization of human memory is an interesting topic that  I hope we delve into further.

I also thought much more about  Alan Liu’s stance of “dejavu haunting” of new by old media is clear enough”.  Even the term “NEWS” was originally an acronym for “North, East, West, South” and denoted the compass rose and which directions the “stories” came from.

I enjoyed both of the videos Information R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us. I really liked how Information R/evolution started off their video. Starting with the typewriter, moving about the library and files, then switching to the computer shows how technology of writing and ways of organizing this information has changed in the recent decades. I wonder if things we’ve seen in our lifetimes will eventually become completely obsolete. Files with folders that are organized by categories containing physical documents and written information are already becoming digital documents stored on computers. Books are being scanned electronically and digital copies are becoming more available because of the internet. In the future will there still be libraries with physical books that people can hold in their hands?

I think this all goes along well with the topic our guest speaker introduced to us. Technology of writing has been altered dramatically since ancient times. Beginning writing with pictures and symbols and eventually transforming into an alphabet, writing has become more simple and flexible over time. Not only has the writing itself changed, the way of writing has too. Originally scratched into tablets, hand written on papyrus then paper, machine printed on paper via typewriter, to now being digitally typed on computers. There is so much information that keeps accumulating as years go by and we need better ways to keep and organize all of it. For now everything is going digital. All you need is one computer and you have access to thousands of documents, books, or any information you could possibly want.

The idea that technology keeps changing and growing makes me wonder what will come after computers and this digital age we are in. When we think of filing things in folders it makes many of us laugh. We think “Why would I keep a hard copy of this when I can save it in my computer?” What we don’t think about is how at one point in time, file cabinets were the new technology and way of organizing information. Hundreds of years from now, will people be looking back on our generation and laugh at our computers?  It’s hard to imagine what technology in the future will be, but could the Egyptians imagine us with laptops and cell phones? Are we at the height of our technology? If not, I ask, what’s next….?

Somehow, watching talking heads of Ramsay and Rockwell made me a little sad.

The language is generative. The generation of language is governed by the grammar. Computer languages differ from human languages mainly in the types of grammars they use. Computer languages are defined by formal grammars which are unambiguous. (see Chomsky hierarchy) “Code” and “language” are interchangeable, where both serve the same function: encode-transfer-decode. What goes before and after is where we have the “processing unit” or “the agent”. The difference between machine and human is in the structure of the code and the interpretative machinery, yet both are inseparable and represent a unified metaphor of the informational system.

Whether computer program is a form of discourse or not… This is where the dialog was one sided. When we talk about computers, we (pretend to) know precisely what we are talking about. Despite enormous complexity and stochastic nature of the external processes, at any instance we can halt the machine and examine it’s state bit by bit and determine precisely what and why happens. Hence, we can easily (or at least have comfort in possibility) understand what computer program is and how it is executed by the machine. This part was clearly addressed in the dialog. Program is a set of unambiguous commands interpreted and executed by the computer. Program is so formal that it can proven to execute in the most strict mathematical definition of the proof.

Machine language is unambiguous in such a way that we can see how each command translates into the action of the automaton, be it shifting a bit in the memory register of an mp3 player or releasing a missile from the airplane drone.

Farther, there is no difference between the machine and the program, hard-coded solid-state hardware and software instantiated in the configuration of electromagnetic fields are one and the same. They both can be sufficiently described by the same formal language. Computers can emulate other computers by executing programs which are software metaphors of some other hardware or even themselves.

Now, how about the human language… Generation of human language is also governed by the grammar, but grammar not as strict as machine languages. Humans use ambiguous code for communication. The discourse does not transform itself into easily observed action as well. Ramsay and Rockwell noted this correctly. And yet, this is not where difference is to be sought.

The part we are missing is the interpreter and the execution unit, the metaphoric analog of the CPU, the wetware, the mind, the consciousness, the self-aware agent.We do not know a squat about our own minds. Rockwell admits to that. We do not know how languages are interpreted into the meaning. Hey! We don’t have the most important part of the metaphor of human languages, we do not know how we interpret them, how words and sentences transform into meaning, we have no clue! Yes, we know a great deal about the grammars, how to classify and design them. We can recover dead languages (like Phoenician) and invent new ones (like Esperanto).

However, we have no clue what does it mean to “understand”. We do not understand how to understand the understanding.

The hardware is inseparable from the software, they are essentially one in the Turing machine (universal model of the computer). It is probably so for human language.

And thus, how the incomplete metaphor of human language can be compared to the complete metaphor of the software/hardware monad of the Turing Machine? Both serve the same encode-transfer-decode cycles, but what performs this cycles is the real question. The machine language describes both hardware and software. Yet, we do not know how to capture one’s consciousness in the language, something is amiss in our self-expression. Why than we venture in the futile speculations over the nature of things we clearly do not understand and pollute clear and well-defined metaphor of formal languages with our incomplete metaphor of the discourse? This is why I am sad.

If we had the capacity of language compared to that of the Turing machine, we would be able to project our complete self through the language and thus replicate ourselves into the language. The text would be indistinguishable from the self, and self could exist in infinite copies. We would be able to make copies of ourselves n our own thoughts, so our thoughts would be as self-aware as we are.  Neither of it ever happens though (Plato points to it too), there is something in our minds we utterly cannot put into the language, there is something in us that stays fixed in the stream of discourse, struggling to make itself understood and striving to understand others. Somehow, our languages are not as suited for us as machines and their codes. As if we cannot establish the identity between the perceived realty and the self, as if they are irreconcilable, disjoint, alien. Language fails us to reflect its agent completely. Language certainly reflects perceived reality, but language reflects only partially, if reflects at all, the self that utters it. So, if language reflects the reality, language must inherit the properties of reality by isomorphism, so what we attribute to the reality must be attributed to the language. So, we can say for once that language is objective and real. Now, if self is not reflected by language, is self not real? Or does self belong to the part of the reality which is not reflected in the sensual reality and thus cannot be captured by the language? If only Ramsay and Rockwell could figure this out in their dialog, it would be much more interesting.

On the syllabus for January 30th we were supposed to watch two videos in class. However, we watched one called The Machine is Us/ing Us. This video was good and very insightful however I thought it lacked a clear understanding of the point it was trying to get across (digitalizing pretty much everything!). I took it upon myself to watch the other video outside of class and man was there a difference. The second video, Information R/evolution was awesome! The video started on a type writer and then the piece of paper went to a library. From there, it went into a file cabinet and so on. It went to great measures to show you how hard it can be to find certain bits and pieces of information without the internet.
The video provided tons of really useful and useless information depending on who you are. For example, if you type in the letter A on a google search, 9,120,000,000 index pages were found. The video then went on to tell you that those results are equivalent to about 5 trillion words and almost 500 billion links. The amazing part about this number is that it was from 2007. If you do it today, it’s at 25,270,000,000 index pages and counting. Think of that, in just four short years it grew over 15,000,000,000 more results. Thats 18 trillion (18,000,000,000,000) words! Man people have been busy on the internet.
After this information, the video went onto Wikipedia. It was similar to the video we watched in class but went more in depth and gave greater detail about what Wikipedia actually is and how it serves so many people. For example, I had no clue that it was (in 2007) roughly 15 times bigger than the next largest encyclopedia. Also, the video made a point that anyone and everyone can contribute to Wikipedia. He did this by changing the number of contributers on the wiki website to one more and then copy and pasted it right away to other websites were it will be stored for as long as he wants.
In the video, the author does and excellent job showing that the internet is soon going to be all that we need when it comes to finding information. There’s is no more need for shelf space or libraries when everything you can find is online. One piece of the video that really stuck in my head was that we don’t find information anymore. Instead, the information finds us. I never really thought of it that way but when you do think about it (myself at least), a lot of the information I find is from the front page of Yahoo, USAToday, FoxNews, ect ect ect. I never really have anything to type in anymore because there is now enough information given to me to look through until well, the rest of my life!

After class today, I was following random DH tweets and some how stumbled upon a blog by Stanley Fish at nytimes.com. I found it cute that he admitted to blogging because he seemed to be offended by the mere word “blog”. I decided to park on this article because I had noticed a lot of banter on twitter about this Fish guy and was curious to why everyone in the DH community was so defensive when discussing his views. I found that first, I really like his style of writing. It is articulate and even though he was not supportive of digital humanities, he did it with reasons, actual issues that I’ve thought about. Whether or not you like Fish, the issues he brought up in his blog post were relatable to a skeptical student who is still trying to understand the field. Regarding “text in progress”, Fish said something that made me think of the Machine is Using Us video, “Meaning everywhere and nowhere, produced not by anyone but by everyone in concert, meaning not waiting for us at the end of a linear chain of authored thought in the form of a sentence or an essay or a book, but immediately and multiply present in a cornucopia of ever-expanding significances.”  This quote reflects my struggle for understanding because I really feel like I’m trying to hit a moving target. Some of the topics in this blog post were concerns about permanence, authorship, ownership and observations about tendencies of DH. Fish even said some positive things about DH such as how open access to scholarship may win over the public’s support because of the open invitation where in past decades, the humanities were exclusive to academics. Another way Fish thinks DH may be useful is that it can teach students skills that future employers will value. Here’s the link if any of you want to take a peek.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/the-digital-humanities-and-the-transcending-of-mortality/

            On another note, class discussions are going really well. I was thinking about the presentation on ancient writing and couldn’t help but think of psychology. When we are infants, we have the capacity to learn all the phonemes in the world. By a few months of age we already drop or collapse phonemes if the distinctions they make aren’t important to our first language. Language is a technology that informs writing which informs culture and this relationship is circular so I find it difficult to distinguish what started what or which technologies developed the others. When we were listening about writing as a technology, I was thinking language itself is a technology. It’s a tool we use to make our lives easier, more efficient, and productive. I thought that it was interesting that even in ancient Egyptian writings they thought it was important to use colophons, which I thought sounded like our discussion on data and metadata. So even back then, organization was important and it still is. That is why the Machine is Us/ing Us video scared me a little. The part where it inquired to who will organize all this data frightened me because it seems like such a daunting and enormous task. I think when I learn more it might not be so bad but for now, I’m still scared… but just a little.

Who knew video games could be the answer to a more streamlined and productive firm?  There is a new concept that has been floating around since its inception in the not too distant past; that term is “gamification”.  Wikipedia’s definition of gamification is the “use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences”.  Companies now add video game features to their company culture in order to create a larger bottom line.

There are several ways to incorporate video game design and structure into a company. The one that I thought made the most sense was the incentive system.  I own an Xbox 360 and as you complete in-game achievements you get what are called “gamer points” that accumulate and are displayed to everyone in the Xbox Live community.  The same incentive method could be used in a company workplace.  As an example, a weekly report can get turned in to a supervisor and the supervisor increases that employee’s name on a leader board.  This system can break down long term goals into more manageable and reward-driven tasks.  Employees may become more active in the company network and this can fuel productivity and cooperation.  The incentive system can also lead to healthy competition around the office.

Another reason for the use of gamification is that almost everyone in America has played a video game at some point in their life.  Whether it is the new Call of Duty game or a classic like Super Mario Bros, Americans are familiar with a public leader board system.  This would allow for an easy transition into the workplace if employers implements gamification.

Finally, the blog summarized the “three F’s” that will make gamification successful for a company.  These F’s include feedback, friends, and fun.  Feedback encompasses the incentive system; friends refer to the team bonding and collaboration that may occur.  Finally, fun is the hardest to achieve.  Every employee may not have the same definition of fun, so it is an objective measure.  Gamification can create a strong company culture of engagement and reliability.

The blog articles I read to create this post are from Gamification.

Thanks for reading!

I found the video, The Machine is Us/ing Us as very interesting.  It really got me thinking about how far the world has come with technology, the internet, digital text, and how we share information.  In today’s society the Internet allows us to stay connected in such a way that was not possible before its time.  Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have become such a big part of how we communicate and stay in touch with others.  With these forms of social media we are able to find people that we may have never otherwise been able to locate.  Through these websites we can communicate with others with ease, share and tag pictures, chat with others, notify others of what is going on in our lives, etc.  Facebook also allows us to make groups that pertain to our lives.  For example, it is common for people to create a group on Facebook for the people of a graduating year of high school or college or other forms of school or work.  Twitter allows us to follow our favorite athletes, celebrities, and people across the world.  It allows us to post our daily thoughts and ideas for others to read and comment on.  These sites have given us so many ways to follow our friends, family, and role models that we can now stay informed of just about anyone or anything we find important.

Websites like YouTube have changed the way we communicate.  YouTube’s website composed of videos on just about anything and everything are constantly viewed by so many people in today’s society.  The website has essentially given us endless opportunities to learn and teach one another through the video’s we watch and post.  YouTube has brought forth a different way students can study and learn material for school, it has presented a new way to convey  ideas and messages, it has given people a much easier way to display their talents, etc. YouTube has even made people famous that might not have otherwise been noticed.

The video, The Machine is Us/ing Us reminded me of how the internet is evolving with how we use it.  When we type things into a search engine like Google we are telling the machine what we find interesting and what we are interested in.  We are teaching it what is important to us and our society and what we would like it to provide more of.  The websites that our society visits the most is what the people of the internet want to provide more of.  We feed the machine by going on our favorite websites and the machine in turn makes more websites similar to our favorites and adds even more onto the one’s we visit most.

Technology will never stop moving.  The internet has given us a simple yet incredible way to share information with one another.  Our world today, somewhat revolves around the internet.  I myself am very happy we have internet and I am sure many others are too.  I cannot even imagine what new technologies the future holds for us and what advancements will be made with the internet.

One subtle theme I’ve noticed from this classes this week has been the theme of paper- or lack there of. It’s not exactly the “intended” theme or issue that we’ve been talking about or that I was initially going to blog about, but celery paper got me thinking and reflecting on the issue.

One obvious thing we’ve been losing with the progression of technology and text is the ability to tangibly hold all of the awesome documents we share. Just the other day, I was trying to mail something to someone abroad, but they said that the postal service is quite neglected in the past several years to the point that they wouldn’t get the letter for about a month. My friend suggested that I take a picture of my letter (that I had already spent the 20 more minutes writing, rather than typing) and send it via facebook or email. That’s just no fun!

Dr. Bolin mentioned today how much a font or the details portrayed in the font also give important meaning to the text. We miss that, or are limited with certain fonts and styles when we are typing things on a computer and not writing it out by hand. My group in the lab exercise on Monday noticed that it would be really hard to capture the fonts, colors, decorations, and styles from the old Norbertine diary and “translate” it to a computerized word document. I also really liked Jaclyn’s point in her blog, pointing out the fact that it really affects our handwriting skills today. It also can potentially affect the time and effort and thought that we put into what we write. I can’t imagine learning keyboard skills before handwriting skills, but who knows?  Handwriting things may just become a luxury just like reading an actual book or letter is a treat/luxury.

A quick disclaimer- I’m open to the advantages that our technology advances bring: saving paper, saving time, saving space, and creating more connections worldwide (the list goes on…). We just have to remember and maybe be aware of some of the qualities that we are missing by using computers over papyrus or celery paper.

Today in class Dr. Bolin came in to teach us about “Writing Technology in the Ancient Near East”. He taught us about the earliest forms of writing, where they came from, how they were developed/used, and why people were able to start writing. Writing first came from permanent settlements that had plenty of resources. This abundance of resources allowed them to pursue “fun” things, because they didn’t have to worry so much about surviving. I had never really thought of this perspective, but it makes sense. Why would you take the time to develop a new “extra” technology if you needed to find food and shelter first? If it had been several days since I had a good meal, I would be contemplating how to get more food, not how to write down my thoughts.

The earliest writing was pictographic. These “pictures” were eventually rotated 90 degrees, and after that became symbols/signs that were representations of the earlier pictures. My question is, why did they rotate the pictures 90 degrees? Why didn’t they go from the straight pictures to symbols/signs?

Dr. Bolin provided many picture examples of the text technologies from Mesopotamia. I liked how the clay tablets could fit in the palm of your hand, and was amazed at others that were extremely small and detailed. I realized when looking at the “palm-sized” tablets that the physical size of this technology has stayed fairly consistent. The clay tablet is the same size as a memo pad, PDA, and Ipod Touch. It’s all based around the size of the human hand. You’d want the technology to be convenient and comfortable to use, otherwise it would be a hassle. (images courtesy of Google Images)

It was amusing to see that ancient people had to practice handwriting, too. At least they didn’t have eraser residue everywhere; they could just wet their clay tablet or paint over their board.  Our society is becoming used to using keyboard or touch-pads to “write”. As we become more electronics-based, less emphasis is placed on neat handwriting. Will handwriting in contemporary society eventually become obsolete? I guess we’ll find out in the future.

I’m looking forward to discussing our semester projects!

-Jaclyn S.

Tech of Texts Norbertine Study challenges:

metadata: Gartner Diaries, Vol 1. Gartner, Maximilian John, 1846-1858, written by the Austrian Norbertine priest while traveling, arrived in Wisconsin until called back to the Witn Abbey in 1858. Diary Written in German

• columns
• numbered lists
• headlines
• font and size changes
• paragraphs
• tabbing
• page numbers
• underlining and bold formatting
• capital letters
• color for title pages
• roman numerals vs numbers
• note the water damage
• on page 19, images of clock drawings, compass
• parentheses
• brackets
• paragraph alignment, formatting (ex: centering, left side)
• tables
• fractions
• greek lettering/symbols
• note that the pages were thin, you can see the print on the other side
• front cover has a broken clasp
• leather binding with gold paint
• cross with design on binding
• calendar with declaration of intention could be turned into a digital calendar
• differentiate the language differences
• note the corrections: ex “West” crossed out and changed to “North”
• underlining with red
• numbering lists with 3^rd smaller font
• some dates written in with different colors and different means, ex not pen
• written in black ink

By: Kelly Levenhagen, Tori Chenault, Laura Alderson, Maria Dzurik