Event Title
Friday Soapbox Session C
Location
CB1-212
Start Date
3-11-2017 11:15 AM
End Date
3-11-2017 12:15 PM
Description
Automated Technology and the Trouble with (Zachary Mandell) Using anti-humanist philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, I reveal the corrupt construction of humanism by the Romans and the marked difference in outcomes between the Romans and the ancient Greeks they borrow from. This paper seeks to problematize conclusions by some of the major Humanist philosophers like Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche and their relationships to our contemporary anxiety around technology. I argue that concepts like subjectivity, dualism, transcendental idealism, and the will to power have evoked our fears in automated technology that uses machine learning methods modeled by human culture. This paper reveals the foundation of Western ethics and their relationship to human anxiety over the application of automated technology. I reveal the underlying power dynamics constructed by the humanist philosophers and their implications for human-robot interactions. Further, I will provide an alternative ethics constructed by Post-Humanist theorists who provide a line of escape from a Latin-based humanist framework through an alternative ethic that adapts ancient Greek attitudes. I argue that the Roman attitude of control and domination have founded our fears on a technology that models itself after our own attitudes and that only by emphasizing a need for an ethic that nurtures emergence and spontaneity can we avoid confinement in this older system of domination. In order to prove the difference between the Roman philosophy and the Greek's, I will rely on an etymological analysis to show how the Latin construction of order alters the definitions constructed by the Greeks and how those definitions implicate the role of power. Further, I connect these Latin concepts to the philosophies proposed by the aforementioned Humanist philosophers and how the outcomes of those philosophies reinforce the Roman construction of power dynamics. I then critically analyze the consequences of those power dynamics through a lens of Techno-Nihilism to reveal the roots of human anxiety in the face of automated technology. Finally, I reveal Post-Humanist concepts that explicitly corrupt the Humanists' concepts to allow for a more co-existent environment for humanity and automated technology to live harmoniously. The central concern of this research is to persuade readers that the practice of domination for the of controlling one's environment, reinforced by Western cultural attitudes, is deceptive and enables far more destructive consequences than a willingness to adapt and alter this system of order to the needs of the environment. By producing technology that automatically reproduces these actions, the anxiety over the destruction of environment for the purposes of control and reliability are almost guaranteed. Without lines of escape, we are teaching our technology that reliability is more important that spontaneity. As a consequence, innovation will become incestuous by relying on a mono-culture to produce new techniques. Though Post-Humanism is not a utopian panacea, it does enable lines of escape from current attitudes that are not prepared to open to new definitions. It is the flexibility granted through those lines of escape that will enable Western culture to grow and innovate. The Possible Worlds of Reading and Virtual Embodiment in Digital Humanities: Why Reading is not being 'Re-Made' in the Technological Era (Danielle Farrar) A leading conversation in Digital Humanities (DH) addresses practices of reading and the subsequent challenging of these practices, particularly in the bifurcation of and distinction between what have become commonly known as "close" and "distant" (Moretti, 2000) reading. Sustained research seeking to demarcate close and distant reading has continued to question "traditional" or "institutionalized" (Ciccoricco, 2012) reading and systems of knowledge-making in the realm of literary studies and electronic textuality. While the protean nature of DH interrogates what reading is in the machine-reading age, this presentation argues that DH does not disrupt practices of reading but, instead, reinforces and recovers the phenomenological possibilities of reading as a form of virtual embodiment where "immersion is the experience through which a fictional world acquires the presence of an autonomous, language-independent reality" (Ryan, 2015). A consideration of reading as virtual embodiment collapses methodological and theoretical gaps between close and distant reading as these two seemingly distinct, DH reading practices, instead, experience a co-extensive dynamic. DH scholarship has not only sought to delineate how reading has changed in digital versus non-digital textual environments but also how DH has re-imagined the construction of meaning vis-à-vis reading processes. Martin Mueller (2007) and Matt Kirschenbaum (2007) have argued for reading in digital environments, including machine reading, as both "non-reading" and a "re-making" of reading, respectively, while David Ciccoricco suggests that "close reading conflicts dramatically [... with] a multi-modal digital artifact." Likewise, S. Jänicke, et al. (2015) call for a "bridge between distant and close reading," suggesting that "close" and "distant" reading are in contradistinction to one another while Ted Underwood (2016)—who implies that bifurcating close and distant reading is delimiting—ultimately argues for the concept of distant reading as a separate movement "part of a broad intellectual shift." Matthew Jockers (2013) has also worked to re-define distant reading itself with his concept of "macroanalysis," and Kirschenbaum insists that value in DH techniques are only enhanced when we recognize "different kinds of reading." Whether digital humanists are annotating a paperback by hand, analyzing and interpreting machine-driven data, and/or creating data visualizations to convey meaning for others to "read," DH work regularly reinforces and engages in "traditional" reading when considering the phenomenology of reading as contributing to the codification of subjectivity and the meaning-making process. Reading, thus, is not being re-made by DH or the technological era when we recognize reading as a mode of virtual embodiment where it is both virtual ("not that which is deprived of existence but that which possesses the potential, or force, of developing into actual existence" [Ryan]) and virtual reality (VR)—a context defined by a "combination of immersion and interactivity" (Ryan). This presentation suggests that DH [re-]consider reading as a form of virtual embodiment where immersion and interactivity are equal constituents of the varied reading practices that occur in DH approaches to literary analysis and that "re-made" forms of reading are not necessarily produced as a result of electronic textuality, the digital literary, and machine reading. The Influence of Digital Technology on Music Creation by Electronic Musicians (Jaehoon Choi and Norman Makoto Su) With its emergence in the 20th century, electronic music and its technologies presented a set of radically new features different from the tradition of acoustic music. Digital technologies such as MIDI, digital synthesizers, algorithmic music, generative music, etc. are now an essential part of a modern musician's toolkit. Therefore, this research aims to understand the influence of digital technology on the creation and perception of music by electronic musicians today. In addition, this research will contrast the compositional practices of electronic musicians and acoustic musicians. In this work, we employed qualitative research methods. Semi-structured interviews with both formally trained and non-formally trained electronic musicians, observations of their working process and demos, and field work of live performances were conducted. This study provides an interdisciplinary perspective into how digital technology shapes music composition today which contributes to the interdisciplinary conversation for Digital Humanities in music. This research illustrates how digital technology connects with the heritage of electronic music that started from the 20th century. Finally, our work surmises the future direction of electronic music. STEManism: Current and Future Horizons of Interdisciplinary Collaboration between the Humanities, Digital Humanities, and STEM (Alex Ayris, Richard Paris and Haley Adams) Ethical dilemmas – such as the trolley car example or the age-old question "Would you steal bread to feed your family?" – are popular and effective pedagogical tools. They present complex scenarios that expose unconscious thought processes and value judgments, thereby making us more aware of the ways in which we think. Ethical dilemmas are theoretical, but what if we could somehow make people feel like they really are in such a situation? The three authors (one a graduate student in Religion and two graduate students in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) have been asking such questions in an attempt to foster greater interdisciplinary collaboration on the campus of Vanderbilt University between humanists and STEM scholars. Our paper first points to the pressing need for increased dialogue between disciplines as the proliferation of new technologies is raising urgent questions that require technical expertise from STEM scholars as well as theoretical input from humanists. It then draws from the authors' experiences and respective disciplines to point towards potential future collaborations, specifically regarding the uses of IVR (Immersive Virtual Reality) and teaching in courses addressing political theory and ethics. This "soapbox," we believe, fits excellently with the theme of the 2017 HASTAC conference ("The Possible Worlds of Digital Humanities") as it draws attention to the reality that new technologies inevitably produce new questions, which require collaboration and diverse expertise to fully address. These technologies, however, can be harnessed as powerful teaching tools. As such, it continues the trend of interdisciplinary collaboration by both drawing attention to ongoing efforts as well as future horizons for cross-disciplinary research and teaching. A Cultural Scripts and Prototype Theory Approach to Studying the Digital Humanities in Different International and Intercultural Contexts (Kirk St. Amant) This presentation overviews how individuals working in the digital humanities can apply theories from cognitive science and linguistics to map the contexts in which individuals create, interact with, and critique digital humanities work in different cultural and linguistic contexts. Specifically, the presenter will examine how we can employ script theory (from cognitive science) to identify items affecting how we perceive of and discuss the digital humanities in different cultural settings around the globe. The presenter will also discuss how we can use prototype theory (from linguistics) to devise strategies for identifying, assessing, discussing, and crating digital humanities materials that address or meet the design and communication aspects of other cultural groups or audiences. In examining these ideas, the presenter will -- Overview script theory and how it helps individuals understand the contexts in which audiences from different cultures engage with, create, and study the digital humanities and how these individuals define "digital humanities" in different cultural contexts -- Summarize prototype theory and how it helps individuals understand cultural expectations that affect how the members of a culture respond to, react to, and critique digital humanities work in specific cultural contexts and in greater international or global contexts -- Explain how a combination of script theory and prototype theory can guide individuals in the digital humanities in how to create digital humanities, work study such work, or engage in collaborations around such work in different international and intercultural contexts to create an increasingly global ecosystem in which one develops such work Attendees will gain a familiarity with employing theory to better understand how different cultural and linguistic factors can affect how individuals perceive of and thus how they collaborate in relation to digital humanities work across national and cultural lines and in greater global settings. A Database for Embodied Technology (Andrew Iliadis and Isabel Pedersen) This talk explains how the push for innovation in the wearables market introduces several sociotechnical problems, including greater uncertainty about future efficiency trade-offs and the need to uncover and track them. Using Vandrico Inc.'s popular Wearables Database as a case study, we frame the current wearables market as an innovation-driven industry whose main goal is to achieve greater efficiency in areas of life and activity. We introduce the concept of embodied technology to describe emerging varieties of body-centered computing excluded from the Vandrico database and explain the emergence of FABRIC, a novel database we constructed over the course of a federally funded, multiyear research project for tracking the evolution embodied technologies over time. FABRIC consists of multimedia related to the embodied technologies market – including patents, instructional videos, and articles – that are sorted using a custom metadata framework, featuring user-curated collections on sociotechnical problems relating to embodied technologies. We end by explaining how FABRIC provides a critical alternative database for studying embodied technologies, their trade-offs, users, and developers.
Friday Soapbox Session C
CB1-212
Presentations include:
- Automated Technology and the Trouble with (Zachary Mandell)
- The Possible Worlds of Reading and Virtual Embodiment in Digital Humanities: Why Reading is not being 'Re-Made' in the Technological Era (Danielle Farrar)
- The Influence of Digital Technology on Music Creation by Electronic Musicians (Jaehoon Choi and Norman Makoto Su)
- STEManism: Current and Future Horizons of Interdisciplinary Collaboration between the Humanities, Digital Humanities, and STEM (Alex Ayris, Richard Paris and Haley Adams)
- A Cultural Scripts and Prototype Theory Approach to Studying the Digital Humanities in Different International and Intercultural Contexts (Kirk St. Amant)
- A Database for Embodied Technology (Andrew Iliadis and Isabel Pedersen)
