The Digital Turn of Knowledge:
on the future of Humanities
Hidetaka Ishida ( Professor The
University of Tokyo)
Introduction
I entitled my talk “The
Digital Turn of the Knowledge: on the future of Humanities”.
My topic today will
follow 5 moments:
1 First I will situate the Transformation
of the Humanities in media age
2 In second moment, I will develop a little
about Media Revolution and Media studies since 20th century
3 In third moment, I will present my point of view on Technological
grammatization and problems of semiotics
4 In fourth moment, I will present my researches on Information
Semiotics and Digital studies
5 Finally
I will discuss about Digital Turn as Perspective on the future of
Humanities
1 Transformation of the Humanities
Today
the transformation of Humanities is evident, necessary and inevitable.
This
evening, I have no time to develop about the history of Humanities. I’m obliged
to proceed to an oversimplification: I try to define the Humanities from three points
of view :
1)
Historically, that is a
tradition from the Western Renaissance
Humanitas and Humanism, opposed to
the theological vision of the knowledge. That means a human knowledge of the
universe - universal knowledge - by the
man, including scientific knowledge in modern sense.
Is
there another model of Humanities in Asian cultural tradition? This question is
very interesting, exciting issue especially here in China or more generally in
east-asian cultural tradition like Japan and Korea. I’m much interested by this
question but today we have no time to bifurcate toward this issue.
2) Institutionally, the Humanities
constitute the base of knowledge of the modern citizens, so the aim of the
modern university is to provide these basic knowledge for future citizens. The
Ideal of Bildung in Humboltien
universities comes from this Humanities tradition. So we are all concerned by
this issue of the Humanities. I belong to the faculty of the humanities, you
too. Etc.
3) Epistemologically and technologically,
and this is the point that I would accentuate in my talk, the Humanities are
knowledge by/of the “typographic man”, so outlined by the thinker of the media
studies Marshall McLuhan.
The
Renaissance coincides with the Gutenberg
Revolution, with its secularization-rationalization process （M. Weber） with the cognitive revolution by the
printed books, etc. Modern sciences are founded by this technologico-cognitive
revolution of the printing. The Humanities were so naming of the studious ethos of this epistemic transformation.
The man comes au center of this change so that the name of Humanism. The subject of the knowledge is the man: his intellect
founds the knowledge of culture, society, law, economy, all things of the
universe and also the knowledge of the man himself. So the philosophy occupies the central place
of this system of knowledge, as Kant synthesize it by his three critiques. The
man occupies the central position of the knowledge defining both the empirical
and transcendental.
Please
forgive me this extreme simplification and schematization of the Humanities problematic. This is to make
a preamble for my argumentation. This humanistic tradition continues until now
in our academic world, and of course still valid now. Almost part of our
knowledge is written in books, the man is the center of the activity of
knowing, and even for natural sciences, the
fundamental knowledge is written in and transmitted by books.
But
this historical configuration of the civilization is challenged since the last
decades of 19th century. At the turning of the 19th to 20th
century, there had been already a general crisis of the Humanities and
Humanism. This has been the problematique of the End of the Book and the Crisis
of Humanities.
Let
me talk a little about my own research career, I directed the translation in
Japanese of the works of the French philosophe Michel Foucault, I published
also books on the Contemporary thoughts of 20th century.
There
is a famous book of Foucault The Oder of
Things Les Mots et les Choses (1966) . This monumental book is subtitled
“archeology of human sciences” and it became famous because of its conclusion
about the End of Man.
“….as the
archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date.
And one perhaps nearing its end. If those arrangements were to disappear as
they appeared… as the ground of classical thought did at the end of the
eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like
a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.” (Order
of Things, p. 387)
The
periodization by Foucault of the central figure of the man is certainly more
recent, but all the study of the Order of Things situates the question of
Humanism as question of archeology of the problematique of letters, signs,
books and language since the Renaissance.
The
epistemological problem of “human sciences”, -- ie. psychology, sociology,
linguistics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, etc. -- is located by Foucault at
the limits of the Humanism.
Nowadays
can one assert that contemporary linguistic is human science ?, and psychology,
cognitive psychology, human science ? And anthropology , evolutionary
anthropology, human science ?
The
epistemological work of Foucault questioned the structuralist moment of the Episteme, as symptom of the End of Humanism.
Jacques
Derrida, another important thinker of the second half of the 20the century
started his Grammatology (1967) by
declaring the “End of the Book” and “beginning of the writing”.
“The idea of the book, which always refers to
a natural totality, is profoundly alien to the sense of writing. It is the
encyclopedic protection of theology and of logocentrism against the disruption
of writing, against its aphoristic energy, and [...] against difference in
general.”
Derrida
is discovering the “writing before letter (écriture avant la lettre in french)”, traces
which constitute originary level of signs, “program” before gram. Architecture
of the Book as recipient of the Metaphysical Truth is a occidental cloture
which must be deconstructed by the traces of what he calls ecriture and
archi-ecriture. This is the situation of the letters in the derridien deconstruction. If Humanities are
knowledge of/by letters, we understand the stake of derridien deconstruction.
Humanities are object to deconstruction in their economy of letters of the
metaphysics of presence.
2 Media Revolution and Media studies since 20th century
I
worked longtime on this epistemological question of human sciences, and
examined how became possible the inauguration of modern linguistics by
Saussure, the invention of the Psychoanalysis by Freud, the foundation of Phenomenology
by Husserl, etc.
Pursuing
the work of Foucault and other philosopher, like Derrida, Deleuze, etc. but
also inspired by more contemporary theorists as Friedrich Kittler, and Bernard
Stiegler, now I think that this epistemic
change at the turn of the 20th century, presuppose the technological shift of media condition.
These
great thinkers of the beginning of the 20th century, Saussure,
Husserl, James, Peirce, Bergson, Freud, all these people belong to the period when
the properly human activities, like language, consciousness, psyche, memory,
perception, etc, began not to be studied and registered with only human
handling apparatus; I mean with letters and books.
For
example, Saussure’s phonology studies human language with phonograph and telephone:
Husserl studies the stream of consciousness by means of phonograph and he
dictates him self by stenography instead of writing letters ; Freud models his
psychic apparatus with phonograph, photography and certainly cinematography.
The
revolution of knowledge which gave birth to the human sciences in the beginning
of the 20th century was technological
revolution. The knowledge is not written no more only by human letters and
books, but by technological writing apparatus that we call media devices.
To
explain the epistemological and cognitive shift – change of episteme in Foucault’ s sense -- , we
must take in account the change of medium for the knowledge. I call this change
at the second half of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th
century the Analog Revolution of
grammatization (cf. the Technological
revolution of grammatization by Silvain Auroux).
I
insist that these all media technologies are graph technology, so a new species of writing, it is no more the
man who writes, but the machine. Their
naming photo-graphy, tele-graphy, phono-graphy, cinemato-graph,
attest that they are well writings or traces which are wrote or traced by machines.
（Cf. Friedrich Kittler’s Gramophone,
film, typewriter ）.
Replacing
human hands, machine begins so to write.
Phonograph writes the speech, and so
linguists discover phnemes: the modern linguistics will no more be philology which
was historical studies of human language by means of books and written
documents. Phonograph writes the
melody and Husserlien phenomenology discovers the phenomenon of “internal time
consciousness”. Cinematograph writes
movement and perception of movement, then Bergson discover durée, devenir
and image-movement. For Freud, the
human “psychic apparatus” is like a assemblage of photographic camera lens: the
unconscious is structured like a cinematographic projection.
We
understand why these thinkers are unclassifiable in Humanities. Freud is not
psychologist nor philosopher. Husserl nor Bergson are not mere philosophers . Because
they are in fact thinking on the base of another medium; they doesn't think on
the base of letters and papers: in that sense, they are post-humanists.
We
must consider thus problem of the technological
unconscious that determines the cognitive and epistemological change occurred
around the 1900. Friedrich Kittler will call this epistemological break Aufschreibensystem 1900.
These
media technologies invented since 19th century, I call them technological grammatization. The proper
of these analogic grammatization consists in that they operate - inscribe or write -- under the conscious
level of human being. For example, when you are photographed, you can not see the very instant of shutter’s release. But you make
afterwards a consciousness-memory of the
past moment from this photographic instant that you never assisted. The camera
operates at the unconscious level while you make afterwards your remembrance at
the conscious level: this unconscious act of the machine produce human
consciousness. This mechanism is general for the cinematograph, television,
etc. The cinema consists of a flow of 24 still photograms per second, TV, a
flow of 20-30 frames per second: humans cannot see each photogram nor frame so
that they can see flows as movements.
You can see because you cannot see. The cognitive gap between the machine and
the human make it possible that the human undergoes a passive synthesis of his
consciousness.
The
technological unconscious begins to
produce consciousness of modern mass. This cognitive gap between human and
machine comes at the center of the dynamics of culture industries of the 20th
centuries.
You
may understand thus the crucial stake of media revolution.
This means that media problem is prior to
the synthesis of human conscious. The technological unconscious escape the
conscious level of human knowing.
This
wasn't the case for the letters, literal grammatization, because that was human
being who writes letters and pictures: the man – the typographic man – was at the
heart of the knowing activities. The letters and books were thus apparatus of
the conscious truth.
But
if media constitute human psychic phenomena, as to consciousness, remembrance, movement-image,
vision, time consciousness, etc. , human reality begins to escape the very
human knowing activities; then the human world began to escape the control by
typographic man. This is, I think, the
very fundamental cause of the crisis for the humanities.
3 Technological grammatization and problems
of semiotics
Since the 20th
century, thus, the man is not anymore a transcendental
subject of the human condition, this is the very meaning of the “End of the
man” by Foucault. The man is not at the
center of the modern episteme. Another writing – écriture – before the letter is always
already writing human conscious phenomena, this is the very meaning of the
proposition of grammatology by
Derrida.
The
knowledges of the man or human phenomena are conditioned by the unconscious
technological process. So to know the human phenomena, we must understand how
they are made by the media condition. They are made by language, more generally
different signs, images, or information. So at the heart of the human
condition, you discover the effect of new “writing technologies” that are
modern media technologies.
Here
I introduce my specialist issue, my research on a new science of sign,that I call
information semiotics.
Because
I think we must reinvent a general science of signs, not the semiology and
semiotics that were effective in the structuralist moment of the modern human
sciences in the middle of 20th century.
Semiotics
or precisely semiology, as you know, was
a general science of signs proposed by Saussure for one part at the foundation
of modern linguistics. When phonographic media technology began to write the
human language, the language turned out to be a system of signs. That means
that the phonography functioned as a semiotic technology to note or
mechanically write and analyze the human speech. Because the language is a
principle mental activity for human being to control his mental and social
life, this semiotic knowledge of language made possible to revolution the understanding
of human culture and society. This revolution of human sciences, was named
structuralism and gave after that post-structuralism, that took part for the linguistic turn of the knowledge of the
20th century.
The
modern semiotic inaugurated by the genevien linguist Saussure and the American
logicist Peirce was the basic general science for this cognitive revolution of
human sciences in the first half of the 20th century. But it has
expired.
Why?
Because the media revolution since the 20th century has two phases. In
the age of the structuralist human sciences, that was the analog media revolution which introduced the epistemological break
making possible structuralism and so on.
But
after the second half of the 20th century, another huge media
revolution took place that is the digital
revolution.
All
media technology became based on digital technology, all media apparatus became
computers in reality. Almost totality of analogic signs based on analog media technology
are now translated or transcoded in digital signs.
The
computer has come at the heart of the epistemological account of human culture with
the digital revolution.
For the structuralism and the post-structuralism, the semiotics and /or
semiology in Saussurien and/or Peircien sense was the core project of basic
general science never accomplished and now almost abounded .
Scholars have forgotten the semiotic project. But there is a paradoxical
situation.
The semiotics is dead but the world has become semiotic.
I
means by this that almost all media devices are now semiotic machines in
certain sense: they all are, not analog but digital semiotic machines
We
must remember the history of the knowledge. The semiotics has a long history.
The modern semiotics with Saussure and Peirce is from epistemological and
technological point of view, semiotics of analog media revolution. But the
semiotics has a more long history and if you go back further in history you
rediscover the general science of logic and signs Semeiotike by John Locke and especially the Characteristica universalis of G.W. Leibniz, that was the very
project of the universal semiotics, which constitutes the philosophical
invention of the idea of computer.
4 Information Semiotics and Digital studies
To
reinvent a new basic science of signs, I think we must return to the Leibniz
moment of semiotics.
In
our world, the human semiosis -- that is the term of Peircien semiotic to
designate semiotic meaning activity -- is mediated and treated by computing
process. This situation made needs to change paradigm to interpret human
semiosis.
I
proposed this new field of research naming it Information Semiotics. If the 20th century semiotics was
inaugurated by Saussure and Peirce, we must remember that the conception of
computer was invented far earlier than the modern age, in the baroque age by
the great thinker G.W. Leibniz. He called this art of universal notation and
calculation Characteristica universalis,
that was the name for a semiotic science of the baroque age. That was the other
baroque thinker John Locke the very rival of Leibniz who called for a Semeiotike, general science of signs and
logic.
To
respond to the challenge of computer mediated world, we must go back to the baroque moment of semiotics to reinvent
a new science of signs apt to explain the semiosis of digitized world. （This is like a “Long
jump” sport, to jump longer, we must recede longer to meke possible a longer
approach run. ）
This Information semiotics is a study of the interface between human
world and computer system, because we are now constantly in interface with
computer network : while the man follows the semiosis, the machine is operating
the information processing. The information semiotics is first of all a study
of this semiosis in interface with information processing. But it is also a
methodology with this interface: it is a study of the semiosis in interface
with information processing but it is also an exploitation of the heuristic
potential of this interface semiosis/information processing. In this sense, my
formulation of the Information semiotics is a semiotics of and by IT.
In
this epistemological interface, I think, we could make junction of Information
technological process with cognitive resources of human sciences, and
furthermore with more classical knowledge of Humanities. This is from this
optics that I consider concretely inscription of my personal research in
Digital Studies fields.
To illustrate more concretely my talk, I would
present you very shortly two examples of achievement of my laboratory projects.
1) Critial PLATEAU project
Since the 20th century, all aspects of our everyday life are
dominated by cultural industries, TV, cinema and animation film, radio program,
and now by many kinds of social media.
These media have characteristics that I have described: they function with
the logic of technological grammatization and the technological
unconsciousness. The semiosis by media machine surpass our cognitive capacity.
If
you are in the age of the Gutenberg galaxy, ie. in the civilization of the
book, you are not exposed to these huge flows of images and informations. You
can analyze your self with your memory, the books you have read, try to reason
with your jugement faculty by reading journals, by dialoging with colleagues,
etc. But after the 20th century, with development of media culture,
that is not the case anymore. You are not in the Gutenberg galaxy in McLuhan’s
terms.
So
we are exposed to overflow of images and information. We, as with our own human
capability, we can not seize exactly the process of meaning of the media
communication.
For
example, every day we look at TV programs. But as I have said, we cannot
determine each photogram composing the flow of
TV images. Nor we cannot see all TV programs, because if you have seven
channels on TV like in Tokyo for national broadcasting, you cannot look at
several channels at the same moment. So the total view of the TV communications
escape our cognitive capacities: that is too speedy and too huge !
Once, I said myself that to become capable to say something exact about
TV semiosis, how can I procede ? The critique in Kantian sense is it possible
with TV communication ?
I
wondered if we could exploit a cognitive potential of computer machine for
analysis of TV program, we could realize a quite rigorous analysis of TV
semiosis, since if human cannot seize each frame of TV image sequence, you will
be able to do that if you delegate the task to a computer.
And
that was the starting point of the Project for a platform for madia analysis.
2) The second example, is a proposal of hybrid
reading environment for a New Library Project of the university. I was
responsible of a New Library Project of the University.
Today, our semiosis pass by hypermedia environment via interface devices
like i-Pad, i-Pad, etc. The books are more than more digitized and so become
inseparable with computer devices. The activity of reading today happens in
interface with hypermedia environments. And this project aimed to create an
technological environment for what I
called Augmented Reading: the reading
assisted by computer environment but also a environment to read – the
hypermedia semiosis – by aid of semiosis by book. Because I think fundamentally
the cognitive potential of books can note be surpassed by any other computer
devices. This connection for AR is I think important to conceive a possible
future of Humanities. We could transpose the bookish reading ethos in another
digitalized environment.
5 Digital Turn as Perspective on the future of Humanities
In
fact, what these examples of the Critical PLATEAU and the Hybrid Reading
Environment, show positive to understand the situation of the Humanites today?
The
modest example of Critical Plateau illustrates the situation of the critique of
media text today.
Let’s
compare with the critique by literal grammatization. When you began to write
human language, the language became a objet of grammatization. By virtue of
this writing criticality, you discover a grammatical regularities ruling the
language production. The grammar as knowledge forms. It also regulate the
linguistic production. Language become literate language. You begin to form a
literate knowledge like grammar, rhetoric, logic, and you begin to form a
literate culture like literature, history, law, etc.
Analogic
grammatization gave cultural industries and popular culture, new artistic
genres, massive journalistic communication, etc. The major parts of these
cultural production escape the literal critique and then the man’s conscious
control. You are not able to analyze the media production yourself.
If
you have not a text that you hear, you can not verify and analyze it. You
cannot make critique of the text.
Nowadays in the new media technological
configuration of digital revolution, we must make possible the critical usage
of technologies which will make us possible to evaluate the new media semiosis
of the digital technology.
Digital
media is ubiquitous today, Social media, IoT,
we are connected 24/7 to digital network, all cultural production is
digitized, huge archives as Google, relational technology as Facebook, etc.
McLuhan
said that the history of media is a stratification, one media doesn't replaced
another older one but proceed by stratification
It is important to keep the cognitive and
epistemological connection with older strata of culture and knowledge and make
possible usage of both new technological environment and classical humanist
knowledge. My example of the hybrid and augmented reading is to illustrate this
necessity.
The Humanities are a huge accumulation of
knowledge about the human, the society, the culture, the politics, etc.
Nowadays
there are spread of the Digital Humanities around the world.
But it is not always sufficient to
transpose the humanities categories on the digital media practice.
That
must entail a more essential transformation of the knowledge. This
transformation will be done in interface of the new environment and the
classical knowledge. And to make possible a true evolution of knowledge, we
must invent a new epistemological paradigm to think human and machinic
interactions. And here intervene a huge necessity to work on the conceptual
level for invention of new categories. I think that it is in this
epistemological moment that the Digital Turn of Knowledge is necessary and
inevitable for the future of Humanities.
