Is algorithmic knowledge better preserved when transmitted by an exclusive expert
group (software "priests", according to the monopolistic Egyptian tradition of
knowledge transfer) than by printed publications?
The Department of Computing and Control of the National Museum of Science and
Industry in London, faced the challenge of the preservation of software as museum
object. Software is a new kind of cultural artefact: it is not a material object
anymore, but rather an executable file which unfolds only when being processed
(a truly processual time object). A computer as hardware can be traditionally
displayed as an immobile object, but its time-critical and bit-critical processes are
never in stasis, just like frequency-based acoustics (sonic evidence in museums)
need performance in time to take place - different from visual evidence which
persists in space.
Software belongs to the class of generic objects media. "One bit wrong and the
system crashes"; therefore "in archaeological terms the operational continuity of
contemporary culture cannot be assured" (Swade, 1992, p. 208f) as soon as the
material embodiment in which such a software must take place in order to actually
run is not available anymore. The solution to this material dilemma lies in
transforming the material aspect of computer culture itself into software, that is:
emulating past hardware digitally. Suddenly cultural tradition turns out to be an
operation of dematerialisation (German Verundinglichung), "logical replication as
distinct from physical replication" (Swade, 1992, p. 209). In fact, operational media
actually transcend material "things".
The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins transformed the notion of the "gene"
into the "meme" as an agency of cultural transmission, turning humans themselves
into channels of knowledge transfer. (Dawkins, 1989). Information thereby
replicates in the very act of communication over time and space - up to the World
Wide Web and the "viral" media sphere of today.
Archaeology versus history
It is not by coincidence that one of the first sciences in the humanities department
which applied computing has been archaeology. This is not by chance but reveals as
structural affinity. Archaeology, especially (appropriately so-called) prehistorical
archaeology, deals with pure material data, no narratives (textual tradition) like the
classics in Greek and Roman philology. In many ways, archaeology is close to
mathematics. Epistemologically, this becomes clear with Michel Foucault's
discourse analysis in terms of propositional logic (Kusch, 1989).
As opposed to figurative, narrative (hi)storytelling, archaeological processing of past
data concentrates on what used to be familiar as "antiquarian" modes of
representation under the auspices of digital computing (Ginouvès, Sorbets, 1978).
This leads to diagrams (with the prefix indicating a temporal vector) instead of
historiography. The implosion of the narrative frame has consequences on the form
of representation of the past. Instead of being governed by the apparently seamless
and unbroken literary text, figurated and effected by rhetorical moves and dramatic
emplotment, modular writing is governed by the non-discursive logistics of vector
wolfgang ernst technologies of tradition: between symbolic and material
(micro-)transmission
fields, graphically expressed by means of marks of the directing codes
<Steuerzeichen>: networking rather than narrating the evidence. Hermeneutics itself
becomes algorithmic:
"Archaeological data consists of recorded observations. These might be
measurements of the size of a hand axe, the stratigraphical relationship between two
layers or the geographical location of a site <»Ephesos»>. Whilst archaeological data
is frequently numeric, it can equally well be non-numeric, such as the name of the
material or colour of an object. It also comprises visual data, such as photographs,
plans or maps. Data processing is the name given to the manipulation of data to
produce a more useful form, which we shall call information. The sequence of
operations required to perform a specific task is known as an algorithm." (Richards,
Ryan, 1985, p. 1f)
Let us distinguish diagrammatic archaeography from more interpretative
archaeology in a narrower sense (Moberg, 1971, p. 533). The philological practice of
constructing genealogical filiations of manuscript tradition in the form of stemmata
applies a diagrammatic method.
On the other side, there is data processing as archaeology. Media archaeology is not
just a way of remembering "dead media", but rather a mathematical aesthetics;
modelling, statistics and especially cluster analysis (e. g. for the distribution of
objects in a grave field) is one the fields where archaeology made use of data
processing with electronic computers. All of a sudden, the memory of material
culture becomes related to mathematics instead of belle lettres. Mathematical
methods (like stochastics in "cluster analysis" of graveyards, f. e.) are being applied
in archaeology.
"Writing vs. Time": Lossless tradition, message or noise?
In every act of cultural transmission, there is a symbolical (code) level on the one
hand which is time-invariant, and an entropic, temporally decaying ("historical")
physical real(ity) on the other. Let us take as an example for symbolical tradition the
transmission of Euclid's Elementa from Greek antiquity to the European
Renaissance via Arabic translation (intermediation). Here, the name (the medium)
is the message: Elementa is the name for letters (the ancient Greek alphabet) and
numbers, which serve as the concrete symbolic medium of transmission. The subject
of this work, mathematical geometry, itself claims metahistorical truth (the
Platonic anamnetic knowledge), while the physical embodiment of this symbolic
knowledge, f. e. ancient book rolls, are subject to decay.
Techno-implicit knowledge8 traverses cultural history according to temporal laws of
its own - it is self-repetitive, close the model of "memetics" (a kind of cultural
memory gene, as defined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawson).
Let us look closely at a painting which sums up these conflicting energies of
tradition: Anton Raphael Mengs' painting Allegory of History (1772/73) on the
ceiling of the Stanza dei Papiri. It links the Vatican Library with the Vatican
archives in liquid times
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8 Different from Michael Polanyi's notion of "implicit knowledge": see Polanyi, 1958.
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