This week we read chapters from “The Poetic Computation Reader” by Taeyoon Choi. Choi takes us a little outside the general discussion of computers and how the technology works to consider the beauty of how they work. Computers have their own story and path that they have taken in the last century and a half and like people, have evolved. They are in many ways, more a partner or a child. We have given birth to the technology that makes today’s computers possible and then married them together.
Choi, in discussing his handmade computer project, states “I had to endure repetitive soldering and wiring. In a sense, the laborious process was a search for the poetics of computation.” Computers are created by us, he says, in part to do tasks that are laborious for us to do or that we do not wish to continuously repeat. So if this is the case, are we losing something by using computers? I do believe that there is a poetry to simple tasks ore repetitive ones. But that is mostly because it becomes a meditation. We think on one thing and focus on one thing and the rest of the world falls away. So if we look at our computers as entities so focused on their tasks that they are meditative, what then does that say about what we have lost and computers have gained?
Our computer chips, I think, our small architectural wonders. I’ve looked at memory cards and thought they were little pieces of art just from an aesthetic standpoint.If I didn’t know what it was, I could have thought of it as sculpture. Choi takes these ideas further when talking about Futurists and then quoting Walter Benjamin, “This storm is what we call progress.” Technology and art can create and glorify destruction. It has been our history that good and evil can come from the same thing and every one judges what is good and evil subjectively. Choi believes that artists can be a counter narrative to mainstream media.
I like Choi’s discussion that humans were the first computers and I remember in “Hidden Figures” the women that were hired to work on the computations at NASA were called “computers.” The definition of computer is really one who computes. So does that similarly relate to an abacus or writing pad. I don’t think so, but Choi does. I think of them more as computer parts.
Human memory vs computer memory. The computer has tried to capture how the human mind works, building connections and dropping things into folders that are easily found. It doesn’t work the same way as our brains obviously as sometimes I have no idea why one thing reminds me of another and our senses are also a big part of our memory and computers as of yet that I know, do not have our additional senses. So in some ways a computer memory is better and in some ways worse. Both human and computer memory can fail and corrupt. But I dont think the human mind would corrupt just because it has too many thoughts/memories. Its about the ability to recall the information not the memory itself. Some would say that every memory is in our subconscious. Some people, like Marilou Henner, with hyperthymesia are able to recall every day of life somehow. Her recall is controlled by processing by date. Not everyone with the condition is as lucky as they are prone to getting lost in memories. Our subconscious may be protecting us from too many memories so we may move on with our lives. Just like playing too many video games or living in a virtual world may make us not want to live in our current one.
The discussion on privacy and its importance is most interesting to me in the section where Choi quotes the students. Student 1 says that privacy is insulation from social norms, and allows one a space to develop ideas and grow and perhaps act differently than they would otherwise. Of course privacy is important for these reasons. The darkside to that as everything else, is that technology allows for a certain anonymity that has given birth to online trolls and people that feel free to say terrible things about others without fear. It can bring forth the worst sides of people because of an increased ability to isolate ourselves from technology. As we hide, we also lash out.
Alina Learns to Code 