CRDM 701

Week 10 - Christin

Latour writes ?Do this, Do that, Behave this way, Don?t go that way.  Such sentences look very much like a programming language.? (263)  Whether you consider this as a set of instructions given to a human user/worker or a nonhuman groom, as he calls them, it?s an interesting thought.  Machines must engage us as machines in order to understand us, we must program machines with a set of instructions to try and simulate humans.  An interesting dichotomy we seem to have going, and I wonder which goal comes first?  Do we need to think like machines in order to create machines or did we need to create machines to think like humans?

It speaks to the whole idea of technological determinism, which Castells argues is not really an issue.  ?Indeed, the dilemma of technological determinism is probably a false problem, since technology is society, and society cannot be understood or represented without its technological tools.? (Castells 5)  He later stipulates, ?Yet, if society does not determine technology, it can, mainly through the state, suffocate its development.  Or alternatively, again mainly by state intervention, it can embark on an accelerated process of technological modernization?? (7) 

I?m not sure if I agree with Castells that technological determinism is as mute a point as I believe he?s making, but I do wonder with what he says in his next chapter on informational revolution.  I?m curious whether this revolution has occurred directly as a result of the growing number of grooms, as Latour calls them, taking on the role of human labor.  If we no longer need to open doors, then what really is a human worth?  As Castells mentions, we may not be able to replicate human brain and therefore our abilities with said brain are what we must then capitalize on.

This brings me to the Adams pieces for this week.  He states that ?Authorities are people whose communications are endorsed by society (not unanimously, but across a wide range of subject positions) as long as they touch only on certain issues.? (5)  Is it possible, then, for a computer to be an authority?  It must be, since we accept what computers tell us all the time as fact, especially in the sciences?

On a separate note, but one I wanted to mention, in Adams? other work he writes that ?Simulated (virtual) place is most obviously a place without walls, furniture, and bodies that can be touched; it looks like a place but does not feel like a place.? (99)  I don?t remember reading (and someone correct me if I?m wrong) that Adams outwardly states that we?re privileging, then, smell, taste, and touch as so-called ?real? senses.  Sight and sound could be thought of as ?fake? senses since not all that we sense from them is necessarily ?real.?  So my last question for this post ? if someone were able to create a digital environment wherein all your senses were able to perceive it, would it be real or virtual?

Posted at 05:31PM Oct 31, 2007 by caphelps in Week 10  |  Comments[0]