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The Role of Humanities in our Modern Technological Society Gregory H. Davies 22pp Paper presented at the Annual Meting of the Community Colleges Humanities Association

"This paper advocates that the humanities retain a place or have primary importance in the education system. It presents a history of philosophic and religious perspectives regarding science and technology, ranging from embracing technology to protecting it" (EH)

In the first pages of the paper, Davis presents a background of the emergence of technology beginning with the Greek myth of Zeus and Promethus. He then focuses on early Christian attitudes towards technology. He attributes much of the creation of modern technology to scientist Francis Bacon

"Francis Bacon called for a new science capable of application for the dominance of nature like his predecessors Roger Bacon and Hugh of Saint Victor, he associated his new science with human recovery from the Fall. His appeal for power over nature meant that henceforth, the laws of nature obtained from his new, experimental method in science. The modern interpenetration of science and technology had thus begun" (3-4)

Davis suggests that morality is "the culture of the humanities" (6)

Davis outlines a brief history of the progressive perspective and cites Karl Marx's beliefs regarding the relationship between the humanities and technology:

"At each developmental stage in history, Marx stated that human consciousness and intellectual culture depended on material forces. The humanities, therefore, were of secondary importance, and technology and economics were of primary importance." (11)

"According to Karl Marx, technological changes automatically bring social, cultural, and political changes. Langdon Winner, a contemporary American writer, has emphasized this broader impact of specific technological innovations by calling them "social forms." (16)

Davis concludes by suggesting that technology is attempting to destroy the humanities, and that scientists are "trained, rather than educated" which will lead to the end of the world.

"Modern science deals with the quantifiable and the repeatable, for the purpose of manipulation and control. The humanities deal with phenomena which are ambiguous, complex, and unique, escaping prediction and control. They deal with love, which science and technology have banished, in conformity with Bacon's requirement of objectivity and goal of domination. They are needed to counter-balance, question, and criticise technology, to preserve the idea of a richer existence". (21)

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From Papyrus to Hypertext Toward the Universal Digital Library by Christian Vandendorpe

“Since text exists only in relation to reading, changes in text will have repercussions for reading, just as changes in reading will necessarily lead to the development of other modes of textuality” (1)

“we do not read hypteretext the same way we read a novel, and browsing the web is a different experience from reading a book or newspaper” (1)

“Whereas a book intrinsically has a totalizing function and aims to cover a whole are of knowledge, hypertext encourages the use of a large number of links in order to explore associations between ideas, to “spread out” rather than to “dig” in the hope of engaging readers whose interests are constantly changing, moving from association to association” (2)

“languages are made to be spoken, writing serves only as a supplement to speech; if there are some languages that are only written and that one cannot speak, belonging only to the sciences, it would be of no use in civil life” Rousseau, Emile

“Indeed, once a text is perceived as a visual entity, and no longer as primarily oral, it lends itself much more readily to criticism. The eye, given the richness of optic nerve endings in the cortex, can mobilize the analytical faculties more easily and more precisely than the ear.” (36)

“[visual tabularity] is obviously highly developed in electronic publishing, as seen on the Web pages of major newspapers, magazines, and encyclopedias. In addition, through a hybridization of publishing techniques, the layout of books or magazines increasingly borrows from the methods of electronic publishing, such as the use of color, underlining, and marking of text elements, with cross-references to thumbnails or sidebars” (39)