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at The Evergreen State College

Synthesis and Comprehension of Electronic Data

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Some might argue that although we have been in situations similar to the modern educational opportunities and debates, the latest developments in information technology—specifically digital data management and storage—alter the tone and mode of the debate. This is fundamentally true: The primary transportation for knowledge through time, the physical book, has become increasingly secondary to modern screen technology. At the least, it is not fast enough to match the demands of a population increasingly more strapped for time. Still, the change is more intrinsic, altering our information ontology at its very core. “Electronic information, then, affects the organization of humanistic knowledge and the social basis of its production in some fundamental ways.

  • It changes the central humanistic artifact (the CPU, we might call it) from printed book to digital display. It changes what we mean by author.
  • It undermines the basic idea of originality we inherited from the Romantic Movement.
  • It changes what we mean by text.
  • It radically compromises the cultural authority of the text.
  • It metamorphoses the marketplace of humanistic inquiry in ways so radical we can scarcely yet find our way.
  • It desubstantializes the arts and letters in much the same way that the information society has desubstantialized the industrial revolution.”


Confronted with such ground-shifting, real-world ramifications, it is only natural to assume that because the implications are specifically new, so is the underlying problem. In the bigger picture, humans are now forced to confront their own creation in a way that has been discussed for centuries. For example, take the story of Frankenstein’s monster, or the myth of Icarus: digital information is simply the latest in clay wings and reanimation technology. Still, the changes affected by such radical growth in information availability and information transparency cannot be downplayed. Of all the alterations Richard Lanham sets forth in his article, what is the real-time significance? With all the implications, it seems to be an extreme shift in the quantitative amount of time it takes to produce and later reproduce a piece of writing, imagery, or sound. In congruence, this is ontologically altering what it means, for example, to “write” or to “play music,”:

“In such a digital electronic world, ‘the social basis of production and dissemination’ has indeed changed. ‘Musical talent’ in such a world means something quite different from that in the world created by the Renaissance. The physical talents and training necessary for performance have been radically democratized in range and altered in kind. And the ‘performance’ of a piece of music resembles far more the act of writing than the high-wire act of professional concertizing.”

In a sense, Lanham is illuminating both the benefits of the new information era, as well as what may easily be lost. It is a result of a phenomenon that could be called “time compression.” Time compression could be defined as the difference between production time by a creator and the reproduction time of a consumer, i.e., 20 hours spent writing a paper versus the one spent reading through it. The most noticeable and dramatic shift in time compression caused by the information revolution is, without a doubt, present in music. Using software-programmed instruments, prerecorded loops and samples, and a small amount of computer music interface management nearly anyone can produce a musical piece without the slightest knowledge of scales, chords, or any other music theory, faster than most conventional musicians can originate a simple musical idea. New electronic instruments such as the Korg Kaoss Pad or the Roland SP-555 sampler allow modern “musicians” to create new pieces instantly at the touch of a buttons and the twist of a few knobs. This crunch in the musical learning curve morphs the meaning of what it is to be a musician while simultaneously creating new routes toward, and niches for musicianship. In some undeniable aspects music is at the vanguard of the digital information revolution.


Sources:
The Implications of Electronic Information for the Society of Knowledge