Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts
Half a century into the digital era, the profound impact of information technology on intellectual and cultural life is universally acknowledged but still poorly understood. The sheer complexity of the technology coupled with the rapid pace of change makes it increasingly difficult to establish common ground and to promote thoughtful discussion.
Responding to this challenge, Switching Codes brings together leading American and European scholars, scientists, and artists—including Charles Bernstein, Ian Foster, Bruno Latour, Alan Liu, and Richard Powers—to consider how the precipitous growth of digital information and its associated technologies are transforming the ways we think and act. Employing a wide range of forms, including essay, dialogue, short fiction, and game design, this book aims to model and foster discussion between IT specialists, who typically have scant training in the humanities or traditional arts, and scholars and artists, who often understand little about the technologies that are so radically transforming their fields.
(Source: University of Chicago Press catalog)
CONTENTS
Introduction
Thomas Bartscherer and Roderick Coover
I. Research, Sense, Structure
How Computation Changes Research
Ian Foster
We Digital Sensemakers
Mark Stefik
Scholarsource: A Digital Infrastructure for the Humanities
Paolo D’Iorio and Michele Barbera
Responses
“We Will Really Know”
Alan Liu
On Scholarship
Graham White
II. Ontology, Semantic Web, Creativity
Switching Partners: Dancing with the Ontological Engineers
Werner Ceusters and Barry Smith
The Semantic Web from the Bottom Up
James Hendler
Logical Induction, Machine Learning, and Human Creativity
Jean-Gabriel Ganascia
Responses
Relating Modes of Thought
William J. Clancey
Intelligence and the Limits of Codes
Albert Borgmann
Interlude
Figment: The Switching Codes Game
Eric Zimmerman
III. Panorama, Interactivity, Embodiment
The Digital Panorama and Cinemascapes
Roderick Coover
Re-place: The Embodiment of Virtual Space
Jeffrey Shaw, Sarah Kenderdine, and Roderick Coover
Response
Rewiring Culture, the Brain, and Digital Media
Vibeke Sorensen
IV. Re/presentations: Language and Facsimile
Electronic Linguistics
George Quasha in dialogue with Gary Hill
The Migration of the Aura, or How to Explore the Original through Its Facsimiles
Bruno Latour and Adam Lowe
Responses
The Truth in Versions
Charles Bernstein
Pamphlets, Paintings, and Programs: Faithful Reproduction and Untidy Generativity in the Physical and Digital Domains
Judith Donath
Epilogue
Enquire Within upon Everything
Richard Powers
List of Contributors
Index
