Algorithms, Meta-data and Prefiguring Existentialism

First, I want to use the space that I have here to express what time would not allow for in class. As everyone knows, our assignment was to familiarize ourselves with three technologies that were designed to enhance our research capabilities. I raised a few objections in class, noting that certain kinds of externalities accompany technologies of any sort. In his Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger considers, among other things, the possibility that while each technology uncovers things that were not seen--a revealing--they also cover over things that were seen--a concealing. The heart of this assignment, for me, was to utilize these tools in order to know what they could reveal and possibly conceal. So, as I am considering the tools before us (Internet Archive, Alex and Google NGram Viewer), I am also extrapolating or reading these technologies into the future.

Revealing
I am often dumbfounded by the pervasive technologies available to us in almost every situation and context. Sure, there is validity in analyzing IA, Alex and NGram with a view towards optimization. With that critical lens, we see what might be done to improve the technology itself, which is useful. When, however, that is the only lens we use, this becomes problematic. I will give a brief but personal example.

My grandmother is inching her way towards 90. She lived through the Great Depression and experienced a different world--certainly a different America--than many of us. One of her sisters died from something that a dentist could treat in a matter of minutes; another died from something that could be treated with rudimentary antibiotics; still another died in an overturned wagon accident. Wagon accident? Mind you, this is not some alien that I am talking about; this is my grandmother. In some ways though, she is, or her world of experience is, alien to me. The current technological age is foreign to her as well. I try to keep her in mind as I tinker around with technologies and their affordances. It may sound like a very unacademic approach, but it is fruitful in its own way. It gives me what Bertol Brecht might have considered distantiation. That distantiation allows me to see the thing and allows it to remain strange to me (Verfremdungseffekt).

So, as I was using Alex's concordance option, I was blown away. Again, this is due to the fact that I am not comparing it to other technologies in its own class but considering it in a de-contextualized manner. I click a few buttons, type a word and bam! The work is done for me. Mind you, this is work that would take me ages to do if unassisted. This technology searches the entire text in less than a second and generates multiple options for viewing the results. The labor, most of the toiling has been automated for me. It almost seems like magic, for lack of a better term. And, for all I know, NGram is magic. All of that meta-data at the click of a few buttons? Scholars living before the internet age would have spent their entire lives and careers trying to trace the kinds of movements that Jason and I analyzed in mere moments. I can see so many possibilities there that were not there before--both for academicians and practitioners alike.

For academicians, we can use analytical software to perform semantic and linguistic analyses that are far more reliable than ever before. At a recent conference I attended, the fusion of (what was previously tedious) technology and the humanities was apparent. As I mentioned in class, Steve Johnson gave a TED talk where he mentioned how Charles Darwin had the complete idea for his theory of evolution years before noticing it (link to that talk is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html). What might he have done with the analytical software of today? If he was inclined to help cure cancer, he might use if for that. It would not be a stretch. IBM has already developed "Watson," the supercomputer that defeated the best Jeopardy! contestants, so that it may be used to "read" and "analyze" every piece of literature on cancer research. Watson can process this information in seconds and generate models for treatment that can be applied by oncologists. Are "big data" and "supercomputing" our ways forward? Possibly.

The fervor surrounding technology must be tempered though. Kant, for his part, critiques the "technologies" of his day. We do not often think of government or religious institutions as technologies--certainly Kant did not use this particular descriptor--but they are, broadly speaking, systems for controlling the flow of information and action. Kant takes issue with the automation of his day:
It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. (p 41)

Kant continues by stating that people have "become fond of this state" of automated immaturity--a state where all of the heavy lifting is outsourced to "guardians" (p. 41). Kant asserts that humanity will remain in "shackles of a permanent immaturity" if we strictly operate according to the "Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids" that subvert our "natural gifts" of reason and faculty (p. 41). His answer to this dilemma is another kind of technology: freedom. He writes, if the public "is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable" (p. 42).

While Kant was not an existentialist per se, he certainly prefigures Sartre in this matter of freedom. We hear Kant saying (before Sartre) that it is up to humankind what humankind will do and become (p. 42). For Kant, wo/maankind is doomed to freedom but of a different sort than Sartre or even Kirkegaard. In Kant's model, hell is not being with other people, as it is with Sartre. Community or "the crowd" is not untruth, as it is for Kirkegaard. In fact, Kant comes a bit nearer to Erasmus' view that for the good of all involved, there comes a need for and corresponding willingness to sacrifice: my freedoms for our FREEDOM. Kant writes: Now in many affairs conducted in the interests of a community, a certain mechanism is required by means of which some of its members must conduct themselves in an entirely passive manner so that through an artificial unanimity the government may guide them toward public ends, or at least prevent them from destroying such ends"(p. 42). Humanity needs freedom in order to achieve enlightenment but must sacrifice some personal freedoms for the sake of cohesion. How do we strike that balance though? Whose rights do we honor when there are competing interests?

As we have discussed at length, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca attempted to answer that very question with a system of rhetoric that was aimed at coming to terms with the sloppiness of human affairs. Make no mistake, issues of concerning rights and who should have them and which ones are valued or not gets very problematic--often devolving into shouting matches. Kant's solution to this seems to call us, as academics, into the service of the greater good. Yes, we must acquire knowledge. That is simply the first step though. We must become public intellectuals, capable of suggesting and critiquing community, government, religion and freedom itself. It is "as a scholar" that we "publicly express [our] thoughts regarding the impropriety or even the injustice" of things (p. 43). It is us, as scholars, who have "complete freedom, even the calling, to impart to the public all of [our] carefully considered and well-intentioned thoughts concerning" the world (systems) around us (p. 43). What a generous notion.

Maybe Dr. Graban was right when she said [in reference to the cramped quarters that are our classrooms and offices] that academia often runs itself as a "third world" enterprise. I wonder how this might be different if we had more impact on government, economics and ethics. That question is not to suggestion that academics do not work towards those ends, just a musing. It is a musing like the one I had about composing vs. writing. Composing sounds so much more exciting and enriching--both for me and hopefully others. Public intellectual has that same ring to it. Taking ideas to the mean streets, the polus.

The technologies we used this past week caused me to consider what the future of academia and medicine will look like. Will they ultimately remain human endeavors at all? It is open for debate. We must, therefore, enter that debate before it is concluded for us by [cue the ominous sounding music] the guardians and market-driven imperatives. Whatever the case, it seems unavoidable that rhetoric will play its part.