Re: deep humanities initiative

[Molly Hankwitz]

nce to broaden
> its field but also to escape its subservient role in med schools ectetera.
> But like critical digital studies it owes little to schools of computing
> (this comment might be out of order but it has in general been at the
> margins where computing meets HASS that the key work has been done).
> Critical disability studies didn't emerge from engineering schools tho it
> should have. HASS have changed the intellectual and ethical landscape of
> the 21st century at least as profoundly as STEM
>
> On the positive side, the scientists have been far better at communicating
> the arcana of quantum theory and DNA than in general we have been in
> communicating what HASS does to the general public (tip of the hat to Nick
> Mirzoeff for his efforts). Feminists and critical race scholars - Ta Nahisi
> Coates  - have done huge things here; Rebecca Solnit out of environmental
> humanities - but no big statements for several decades of what we
> collectively are doing and why.
>
> That is exactly what a major initiative should be doing. Broad is more
> important than deep
>
> seán
>
> --
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> Today's Topics:
>
>1. Re: deep humanities initiative (Ted Byfield)
>2. Re: deep humanities initiative
>   (d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2021 13:00:32 -0400
> From: "Ted Byfield" 
> To: Nettime-l 
> Subject: Re:  deep humanities initiative
> Message-ID: <5aba5930-4d5d-48c5-b323-c6fc37d98...@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"; format=flowed
>
> I have a few thoughts: the first has to do with these one-off comments
> about "deep," the second has to do with the gender aspect of this thread
> in just five messages long. They're related, in a way.
>
> (1) DEEP
>
> Somewhere in my piles of scribbles I have some notes for an essay on the
> poetics of "deep." tl;dr: no, *do* forget web, pockets, and Europe.
> Those associations are fine, but there are better ways to approach this
> kind of thing than a couple of guys dashing off whatever comes to mind.
>
> One of my favorite mini-methods for just-add-water cultural analysis is
> Google's autocomplete ? say, what it coughs up if you type in "deep
> a", "deep b", "deep c", etc. 26 searches is boring, but its rote,
> mechanical quality forces you to look at what other people are thinking.
> In this case it's pretty funny (part of me wants to say *deeply
> ironic*), because you're staring the problem right in its face: what do
> millions, maybe billions of people mean when they think "deep"?
>
> There are several ~layers of meaning, but I'll just get to a few:
>
> One is older, and has a miscellaneous quality because "deep" is literal:
> "deep pockets," "deep ocean," "deep end," etc. They're not so
> interesting, though "deep sleep" is one of them, and it was probably a
> basis for later, more metaphorical notions of deep."
>
> Then there's another layer where the marketing kick in, and you start to
> see more metaphorical phrases like "deep conditioner" or "deep tissue
> massage." This second layer is less miscellaneous because the marketing
> has a focus, the human body. In this sense, "deep" takes on a new,
> latent meaning through an implied contrast ? not just with a
> traditional antonym like "shallow", I think, but with something more
> like "superficial." It's not so explicit in this context, but this turn
> came with gendering ? I think because commercial representations of
> bodies tended to focus on women first, an

Re: deep humanities initiative

[Sean Cubitt]

The thread - on the way to dissolution - has been fascinating and I've not much 
to add except that the list of topics avoids almost every major achievement of 
the humanities (and therefore the reasons why governments, pressure groups etc 
like to attack them).

Feminism arose in the 1970s not from STEM but from HASS (humanities arts and 
social science). STEM did not propel postcolonial and decolonial studies or 
critical race studies - if anything they lent their support to the lie of 
biological racism. I always presumed that STS science and tech studies changed 
its name from History and Philosophy of Science to broaden its field but also 
to escape its subservient role in med schools ectetera. But like critical 
digital studies it owes little to schools of computing (this comment might be 
out of order but it has in general been at the margins where computing meets 
HASS that the key work has been done). Critical disability studies didn't 
emerge from engineering schools tho it should have. HASS have changed the 
intellectual and ethical landscape of the 21st century at least as profoundly 
as STEM

On the positive side, the scientists have been far better at communicating the 
arcana of quantum theory and DNA than in general we have been in communicating 
what HASS does to the general public (tip of the hat to Nick Mirzoeff for his 
efforts). Feminists and critical race scholars - Ta Nahisi Coates  - have done 
huge things here; Rebecca Solnit out of environmental humanities - but no big 
statements for several decades of what we collectively are doing and why.

That is exactly what a major initiative should be doing. Broad is more 
important than deep

seán


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: deep humanities initiative (Ted Byfield)
   2. Re: deep humanities initiative
  (d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2021 13:00:32 -0400
From: "Ted Byfield" 
To: Nettime-l 
Subject: Re:  deep humanities initiative
Message-ID: <5aba5930-4d5d-48c5-b323-c6fc37d98...@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"; format=flowed

I have a few thoughts: the first has to do with these one-off comments
about "deep," the second has to do with the gender aspect of this thread
in just five messages long. They're related, in a way.

(1) DEEP

Somewhere in my piles of scribbles I have some notes for an essay on the
poetics of "deep." tl;dr: no, *do* forget web, pockets, and Europe.
Those associations are fine, but there are better ways to approach this
kind of thing than a couple of guys dashing off whatever comes to mind.

One of my favorite mini-methods for just-add-water cultural analysis is
Google's autocomplete ? say, what it coughs up if you type in "deep
a", "deep b", "deep c", etc. 26 searches is boring, but its rote,
mechanical quality forces you to look at what other people are thinking.
In this case it's pretty funny (part of me wants to say *deeply
ironic*), because you're staring the problem right in its face: what do
millions, maybe billions of people mean when they think "deep"?

There are several ~layers of meaning, but I'll just get to a few:

One is older, and has a miscellaneous quality because "deep" is literal:
"deep pockets," "deep ocean," "deep end," etc. They're not so
interesting, though "deep sleep" is one of them, and it was probably a
basis for later, more metaphorical notions of deep."

Then there's another layer where the marketing kick in, and you start to
see more metaphorical phrases like "deep conditioner" or "deep tissue
massage." This second layer is less miscellaneous because the marketing
has a focus, the human body. In this sense, "deep" takes on a new,
latent meaning through an implied contrast ? not just with a
traditional antonym like "shallow", I think, but with something more
like "superficial." It's not so explicit in this context, but this turn
came with gendering ? I think because commercial representa

Re: deep humanities initiative

[mp]

On 25/04/2021 20:07, Brian Holmes wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 10:53 AM Keith Sanborn  wrote:
> 
>> Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy,
>> analysts shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal
>> stratigraphy?
>>
> 
> That is exactly the claim. The geologists of the Anthropocene Working Group
> identify the stratum marking the end of the Holocene in radioactive
> isotopes left by nuclear fallout in the period of above-ground testing
> (1952-63). These can be identified in fine layers deposited in undisturbed
> lake beds around the world, and most precisely, in ice cores from
> Antarctica. Of course, geological markers based on the activity of living
> creatures are nothing new. What's new is that the creatures are humans, and
> the rate of change, particularly in CO2 concentration, is faster than
> anything previously recorded, by orders of magnitude.
> 
> The dating of the new geological epoch is hotly contested, and in my view,
> the other proposed dates (Industrial revolution, colonization of the New
> World) are full of significance.

Setting the date for a decisive human impact on the planet so late could
appear like a defense of all the extractive civilisations that in the
last 6000 years - again and again - separated culture from nature,
relied on irrigation, slavery, tax and debt, and expanded unsustainably
until the point of collapse.

As Scott writes:

"...While there is no doubt about the decisive contemporary impact of
human activity on the ecosphere, the question of when it became decisive
is in dispute. Some propose dating it from the first nuclear tests,
which deposited a permanent and detectable layer of radioactivity
worldwide. Others propose starting the Anthropocene clock with the
Industrial Revolu­tion and the massive use of fossil fuels. A case could
also be made for starting the clock when industrial society acquired the
tools- for example, dynamite, bulldozers, reinforced con­crete
(especially for dams) - to radically alter the landscape.
Of these three candidates, the Industrial Revolution is a mere two
centuries old and the other two are still virtually within living
memory. Measured by the roughly 200,000-year span of our species, then,
the Anthropocene began only a few min­utes ago.

I propose an alternative point of departure that is far deeper
historically. Accepting the premise of an Anthropo­cene as a qualitative
and quantitative leap in our environmen­tal impact, I suggest that we
begin with the use of fire, the first great hominid tool for landscaping
- or, rather, niche con­struction. Evidence for the use of fire is dated
at least 400,000 years ago and perhaps much earlier still, long
predating the appearance of Homo sapiens. Permanent settlement,
agri­culture, and pastoralism, appearing about 12,000 years ago, mark a
further leap in our transformation of the landscape.
If our concern is with the historical footprint of hominids, one might
well identify a "thin" Anthropocene long before the more explosive and
recent "thick" Anthropocene; "thin"
largely because there were so very few hominids to wield these
landscaping tools. Our numbers circa 10,000 BCE were a puny two million
to four million worldwide, far less than a thousandth of our population
today. The other decisive pre-modern invention was institutional: the
state. The first states in the Mesopotamian alluvium pop up no earlier
than about 6,ooo years ago, several millennia after the first evidence
of agriculture and sedentism in the region. No institution has done more
to mobilize the technologies of landscape modifi­cation in its interest
than the state..." (in Against the Grain, 2017: 2-3)

The institutional arrangements have changed little in this period -
especially when contrasted with non-extractive civilisations such as
those found in the Amazon, which expanded while enriching their habitat
- and the continued ploughing, or scarring of the earth, until the soil
is entirely depleted, combined with cutting down trees incessantly,
until the rivers run dry, is arguably the crux of human destruction.

Remove fossil fuels, capitalism and all the rest of the modern package
and you would still be stuck with those self-destructive patterns of
behavior that profoundly alter the landscape and cause climate chaos.







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Re: deep humanities initiative

[Brian Holmes]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 10:53 AM Keith Sanborn  wrote:

> Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy,
> analysts shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal
> stratigraphy?
>

That is exactly the claim. The geologists of the Anthropocene Working Group
identify the stratum marking the end of the Holocene in radioactive
isotopes left by nuclear fallout in the period of above-ground testing
(1952-63). These can be identified in fine layers deposited in undisturbed
lake beds around the world, and most precisely, in ice cores from
Antarctica. Of course, geological markers based on the activity of living
creatures are nothing new. What's new is that the creatures are humans, and
the rate of change, particularly in CO2 concentration, is faster than
anything previously recorded, by orders of magnitude.

The dating of the new geological epoch is hotly contested, and in my view,
the other proposed dates (Industrial revolution, colonization of the New
World) are full of significance. Colonialism inaugurates a form of
domination, the enslavement of people on plantations, that allowed early
cycles of capital accumulation to proceed through the plunder of the rest
of the planet. The formally "free" labor of the Industrial Revolution could
only compete with colonial domination because the life of previous
geological epochs was brought out of the ground and sent back into the
atmosphere by the burning of coal and oil.  However, the big changes in
atmospheric and oceanic chemistry only become clearly measurable in the
1950s, and they are correlated with the particular form of technological
development that begins in the US during WWII, then spreads around the
planet afterwards. The contemporary US state is brought to account with the
1950s date, along with all those that emulate it. The present US
administration shows some dawning awareness of these things. If you're
interested, I and a couple friends made a short video and a long text about
these issues:

https://vimeo.com/374696808

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053019620975803

Basically it's a depth interpretation of the Superman festival held every
year in the tiny town of Metropolis, Illinois

best, Brian
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Re: deep humanities initiative

[John Hopkins]

Hey Keith -

Planetary survival? How about the temporary (fleeting!) dominance of a messy
species with brains that allow it to apprehend what it is doing, but seemingly
w/o the ability to overcome evolutionary mandates to stop its consumption of
available energies. With a (solar) system life-time of perhaps an additional 10
billion years, there is ample time to have many more tectonic cycles that will
wipe the slate clean and provide all new hydrocarbon resources for the next
big-brained species to consume at some point. Though it seems overwhelming to us
in our anthropocentric hubris -- that which humans have wrought -- Gaia is a
far, far more deep and wide phenomena than those tiny short-term fluctuations.
Our understanding of deep time requires science, which is only one way of
mapping the nature of reality, but one could accept that the metaphor is based
in scientific facts that require deep study and imagination to comprehend the
scales of the geophysical realities that rule us.

In the sense that stratigraphy is the accumulation and lithification of crustal
detritus, but that is driven by the forces of gravity and Light about which we
know very little, and is only one minor mechanism in the cycling of energy and
matter in the cosmos, yes, that would put 'our' history in it's proper minor
place in a schema that is clearly and profoundly beyond our comprehension: we 
are detritus, earth to earth, ashes to ashes.


etc.

JH

On 25/Apr/21 09:53, Keith Sanborn wrote:> Interesting that at a time when
planetary survival is in jeopardy, analysts

shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal stratigraphy?

--
+++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc,
MFA, PhD subscribe to the neoscenes blog::
http://neoscenes.net/blog/87903-subscribe-to-neoscenes
+++
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Re: deep humanities initiative

[Keith Sanborn]

Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy, analysts shd 
return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal stratigraphy?

> On Apr 25, 2021, at 11:27 AM, Brian Holmes  
> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 3:27 AM  wrote:
> 
>> 
>> This depth narrative has never been without its critics later 
>> structuralists and post-structuralists inverted the story by celebrating 
>> the surface at the expense of depth. [...] From a visual arts standpoint 
>> I have always seen this tussle as echoing the arrival of Warhol on the 
>> scene whose slippery serious anti-seriousness effectively disrupted 
>> Abstract Expressionism’s existentialist claims to psychological depth.
> 
> I think the notion of "depth" stands in for interpretation, aka hermeneutics. 
> There can be a liberating effect when a dominant hermeneutic is swept aside, 
> but then, disorientation ensues. I experienced that pretty strongly in the 
> 1980s, when both the post-structuralist "free play of the signifier" and the 
> recombinant commercial imagery of pop art (eg, Jeff Koons) were at their 
> height in the US. At the time a novel by Don DeLillo, "Mao II" which directly 
> references Warhol, allowed me to understand the relationship between those 
> two trends.
> 
> Today, most societies are affected by profound disorientation in the face of 
> inequality, climate change, and their knock-on effects (fascistic populism, 
> revolt of oppressed peoples). In the US right now there is a pervasive 
> concern with hermeneutics or so-called grand narratives. The analysis of big 
> data is supposed to reveal the hidden mechanisms of social interaction - 
> that's one version, a mathematized hermeneutics. The history of colonialism 
> is supposed to reveal how racialized injustice is rooted in White 
> subjectivity - that's another version, connected to highly active minority 
> struggles. Broader histories of the rise and fall of civilizations (Hariri, 
> Tainter, even David Graeber) are supposed to reveal what comes after the fall 
> of liberal empire. All of these are, for sure, secularized versions of the 
> interpretative practices of religion, particularly Christianity which is 
> hermeneutic to the core.
> 
> I don't think this hermeneutic turn can be brushed away. For people in 
> distress (and that's a lot of us) finding "meaning" is nothing other than 
> reconciling your perception of a damaged world with your aspiration to a 
> better one. Currently I belong to a group called Deep Time Chicago. Its aim 
> is to understand how the relative stability of the earth system is disrupted 
> by the "fossil institutions" that we can see at work in our city - the steel 
> mills, the refineries and petrochemical industries, the airports and 
> freeways, the water and sewage systems, the conversion of all the arable 
> hinterland to GMO agriculture for global trade, etc. Our approach comes 
> directly from geology (the model of scientific depth interpretation, as David 
> pointed out), but it's a geology that in its turn has been transformed by a 
> full-fledged master narrative: earth system science, also known as Gaia 
> Theory.
> 
> Struggles over interpretation are difficult and fractious. But if you want to 
> set a collective course toward a viable existence, I am not sure there is 
> another way.
> 
> thoughtfully, Brian
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Re: deep humanities initiative

[Brian Holmes]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 3:27 AM 
wrote:

>
> This depth narrative has never been without its critics later
> structuralists and post-structuralists inverted the story by celebrating
> the surface at the expense of depth. [...] From a visual arts standpoint
> I have always seen this tussle as echoing the arrival of Warhol on the
> scene whose slippery serious anti-seriousness effectively disrupted
> Abstract Expressionism’s existentialist claims to psychological depth.
>

I think the notion of "depth" stands in for interpretation, aka
hermeneutics. There can be a liberating effect when a dominant hermeneutic
is swept aside, but then, disorientation ensues. I experienced that pretty
strongly in the 1980s, when both the post-structuralist "free play of the
signifier" and the recombinant commercial imagery of pop art (eg, Jeff
Koons) were at their height in the US. At the time a novel by Don DeLillo,
"Mao II" which directly references Warhol, allowed me to understand the
relationship between those two trends.

Today, most societies are affected by profound disorientation in the face
of inequality, climate change, and their knock-on effects (fascistic
populism, revolt of oppressed peoples). In the US right now there is a
pervasive concern with hermeneutics or so-called grand narratives. The
analysis of big data is supposed to reveal the hidden mechanisms of social
interaction - that's one version, a mathematized hermeneutics. The history
of colonialism is supposed to reveal how racialized injustice is rooted in
White subjectivity - that's another version, connected to highly active
minority struggles. Broader histories of the rise and fall of civilizations
(Hariri, Tainter, even David Graeber) are supposed to reveal what comes
after the fall of liberal empire. All of these are, for sure, secularized
versions of the interpretative practices of religion, particularly
Christianity which is hermeneutic to the core.

I don't think this hermeneutic turn can be brushed away. For people in
distress (and that's a lot of us) finding "meaning" is nothing other than
reconciling your perception of a damaged world with your aspiration to a
better one. Currently I belong to a group called Deep Time Chicago. Its aim
is to understand how the relative stability of the earth system is
disrupted by the "fossil institutions" that we can see at work in our city
- the steel mills, the refineries and petrochemical industries, the
airports and freeways, the water and sewage systems, the conversion of all
the arable hinterland to GMO agriculture for global trade, etc. Our
approach comes directly from geology (the model of scientific depth
interpretation, as David pointed out), but it's a geology that in its turn
has been transformed by a full-fledged master narrative: earth system
science, also known as Gaia Theory.

Struggles over interpretation are difficult and fractious. But if you want
to set a collective course toward a viable existence, I am not sure there
is another way.

thoughtfully, Brian
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Re: deep humanities initiative

[d . garcia]

On 2021-04-24 08:10, Geert Lovink wrote:

And do not forget the term 'deep Europe', one of the many inventions
coming from the nettime scene… neither East nor West or
continental… https://v2.nl/events/deep-europe/view


We could track contemporary versions of the so called ‘depth narrative’ 
back to structuralists such as Levi Strause arguing that beneath the 
surface of the social world is a structure or a grammar. As well as 
seeing the antecedence of Marx and Freud who don’t believe that whats 
happening on the surface tell you as much as knowing what is going on 
below in the depths. Geology is the model here for way of knowing about 
how shape of the landscape came to be the way it is by digging below the 
surface.


This depth narrative has never been without its critics later 
structuralists and post-structuralists inverted the story by celebrating 
the surface at the expense of depth. Particularly Barthes who was 
famously uncomfortable with “meaning”, which he described as heavy, 
sticky declaring that “I’ve always wanted to be exempt from meaning the 
way one is exempt from military service”. “ As a realist he recognised 
that he couldn't escape it altogether but applies for some kind of 
temporary exemption, a rest from meaning.” From a visual arts standpoint 
I have always seen this tussle as echoing the arrival of Warhol on the 
scene whose slippery serious anti-seriousness effectively disrupted 
Abstract Expressionism’s existentialist claims to psychological depth.


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Re: deep humanities initiative

[Ted Byfield]

I have a few thoughts: the first has to do with these one-off comments 
about "deep," the second has to do with the gender aspect of this thread 
in just five messages long. They're related, in a way.


(1) DEEP

Somewhere in my piles of scribbles I have some notes for an essay on the 
poetics of "deep." tl;dr: no, *do* forget web, pockets, and Europe. 
Those associations are fine, but there are better ways to approach this 
kind of thing than a couple of guys dashing off whatever comes to mind.


One of my favorite mini-methods for just-add-water cultural analysis is 
Google's autocomplete — say, what it coughs up if you type in "deep 
a", "deep b", "deep c", etc. 26 searches is boring, but its rote, 
mechanical quality forces you to look at what other people are thinking. 
In this case it's pretty funny (part of me wants to say *deeply 
ironic*), because you're staring the problem right in its face: what do 
millions, maybe billions of people mean when they think "deep"?


There are several ~layers of meaning, but I'll just get to a few:

One is older, and has a miscellaneous quality because "deep" is literal: 
"deep pockets," "deep ocean," "deep end," etc. They're not so 
interesting, though "deep sleep" is one of them, and it was probably a 
basis for later, more metaphorical notions of deep."


Then there's another layer where the marketing kick in, and you start to 
see more metaphorical phrases like "deep conditioner" or "deep tissue 
massage." This second layer is less miscellaneous because the marketing 
has a focus, the human body. In this sense, "deep" takes on a new, 
latent meaning through an implied contrast — not just with a 
traditional antonym like "shallow", I think, but with something more 
like "superficial." It's not so explicit in this context, but this turn 
came with gendering — I think because commercial representations of 
bodies tended to focus on women first, and conveyed a sort of 
double-bind message: your body is a chronic problem / this product will 
fix or maintain it /  turn your body into a promise. Lather, rinse, 
repeat, as they say.


I'll fast-forward past a bunch of other mutations in the micro-poetics 
of depth, rooted in things like the rise of certain styles of 
audio-production (especially in "industrial" music), "deep ecology" 
(first used in 1973 but only widely adopted in English in the '90s), the 
rise of aerial and satellite surveillance (which promoted a vertical 
perspective that made high-resolution a matter of "depth," and not just 
in the optical sense of depth of field — see William Burrows's seminal 
book on space-based intelligence, _Deep Black: Space Espionage and 
National Security). But those things would all need essays in their own 
right, some of which have been written.


One sign the poetics of depth was catching on was the glut of movies and 
TV in the '90s: Star Trek — Deep Space Nine, Deep Cover, Deep Impact, 
Deep Blue Sea, Deep Rising, The Deep, etc, etc.


For me, the key shift was the use of "deep" to describe statecraft or 
the appearance of it. The obvious reference is the "deep state," which 
was first used in Turkey in the '90s, and a decade or so later started 
to become a staple of US political vocabulary — probably an 
interesting history of how that happened, but one that'll likely never 
be written. But part of the reason it worked is that "deep" had been a 
staple in paranoiac rightist ideas about "deep cover," "sleeper cells," 
and "Manchurian" this and that — some of which vaguely referred not 
just to anti-Soviet ideas but also to anti-Chinese kookiness about 
"brainwashing," dating from the Korean War. That background might 
explain why the name of a '72 porn movie was adopted as the pseudonym 
for the Watergate informer "Deep Throat" in the same year.


There were other, more progressive uses, like Pauline Oliveros's phrase 
"deep listening," which was both a pun. IIRC see coined it around '90 or 
so after a recording experiment in some subterranean chamber — but it 
also referred to a more deliberate but also open focus, which is related 
to emerging ideas about "immersive" experiences — another implicit 
reference to depth, but one that also tacitly invokes intensifying 
modernist ideas about rising distraction (cf. the 2016 self-help book 
Deep Work about avoiding distraction). I think Oliveros probably was 
tapping into the kinds of thinking that characterized ideas like "deep 
ecology," with their emphasis on forms of connection and engagement that 
eluded conventional and technocratic ways of slicing and dicing the 
world.


Also: Deep Thoughts is the name of the computer in Hitchhiker's Guide to 
the Galaxy, which probably accounts for a huge swath of "deep" names in 
tech, even if the bros don't know it (let alone know it was a joke).


So those are the main clusters of cultural noise that were available or 
in the air when tech bro culture started to tag things as "deep": deep 
web (not to be confused with the d

Re: deep humanities initiative

[Geert Lovink]

And do not forget the term 'deep Europe', one of the many inventions coming 
from the nettime scene… neither East nor West or continental… 
https://v2.nl/events/deep-europe/view 

Geert

> On 24 Apr 2021, at 8:36 am, Michael H. Goldhaber  
> wrote:
> 
> Is it more closely related to the “deep state” or to “deep pockets “? Both?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Michael via iPhone, so please ecuse misteaks.
> 
>> On Apr 23, 2021, at 7:09 PM, Ted Byfield  wrote:
>> 
>> On 23 Apr 2021, at 19:11, Molly Hankwitz wrote:
>> 
>>> What is “Deep Humanities”?
>> 
>> This seems like your basic Silly Valley 'branding' proposal powerpoint, 
>> right down to the gobsmacking conceit that what they're doing is 'deep,' 
>> which implies that what everyone else has been doing — like for the last 
>> century or two (or twenty) — is shallow. Without fail the opposite is true, 
>> but there are the words, right there in front of you, and they say the 
>> opposite, so reading things like this always involves a fleeting doubt about 
>> who's insane, you or the authors.
>> 
>> The bullet points follow a formula, which is to toss out a potted definition 
>> that might be at home in a catalog description for an intro-level undergrad 
>> course, followed by an effort to make it relevant to tech bros. For example:
>> 
 Culture: not as a stable set of practices to be manipulated or overcome, 
 but as a dynamic site of struggle for meaning; as a form of “artificial 
 intelligence” that enhances and extends human intelligence and 
 capabilities.
>> 
 Ethics: ethical ways of conceiving and connecting with the Other all its 
 planetary diversity; integrating ethics into STEM/STEM education, 
 business, politics, planning, and policy.
>> 
 Language/communication – communication/language in human/non-human; human 
 cognition/intelligence as well as AI and machine learning, including 
 notions of context, common sense, and critical thinking.
>> 
>> I'm not *even* going to touch the one about "reality."
>> 
 At its most profound, Deep Humanities aims to bring our cumulative 
 accumulated knowledges about the practice of being human to engage the 
 urgent issues of our times.
>> 
>> As opposed to all those shallow humanities. And, yes, I saw the thing about 
>> "cumulative accumulated knowledges."
>> 
>> I don't think the authors are insane. I sympathize with how difficult it 
>> must be to teach humanities in a setting like San Jose, where everything, 
>> everywhere, in every moment radiates the boundless, inbred naive confidence 
>> of tech wealth and power. Even very strong people would need to make serious 
>> accommodations to survive. This initiative seems like a product of those 
>> accommodations.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Ted
>> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
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Re: deep humanities initiative

[Michael H. Goldhaber]

Is it more closely related to the “deep state” or to “deep pockets “? Both?

Best,

Michael via iPhone, so please ecuse misteaks.

> On Apr 23, 2021, at 7:09 PM, Ted Byfield  wrote:
> 
> On 23 Apr 2021, at 19:11, Molly Hankwitz wrote:
> 
>> What is “Deep Humanities”?
> 
> This seems like your basic Silly Valley 'branding' proposal powerpoint, right 
> down to the gobsmacking conceit that what they're doing is 'deep,' which 
> implies that what everyone else has been doing — like for the last century or 
> two (or twenty) — is shallow. Without fail the opposite is true, but there 
> are the words, right there in front of you, and they say the opposite, so 
> reading things like this always involves a fleeting doubt about who's insane, 
> you or the authors.
> 
> The bullet points follow a formula, which is to toss out a potted definition 
> that might be at home in a catalog description for an intro-level undergrad 
> course, followed by an effort to make it relevant to tech bros. For example:
> 
>>> Culture: not as a stable set of practices to be manipulated or overcome, 
>>> but as a dynamic site of struggle for meaning; as a form of “artificial 
>>> intelligence” that enhances and extends human intelligence and capabilities.
> 
>>> Ethics: ethical ways of conceiving and connecting with the Other all its 
>>> planetary diversity; integrating ethics into STEM/STEM education, business, 
>>> politics, planning, and policy.
> 
>>> Language/communication – communication/language in human/non-human; human 
>>> cognition/intelligence as well as AI and machine learning, including 
>>> notions of context, common sense, and critical thinking.
> 
> I'm not *even* going to touch the one about "reality."
> 
>>> At its most profound, Deep Humanities aims to bring our cumulative 
>>> accumulated knowledges about the practice of being human to engage the 
>>> urgent issues of our times.
> 
> As opposed to all those shallow humanities. And, yes, I saw the thing about 
> "cumulative accumulated knowledges."
> 
> I don't think the authors are insane. I sympathize with how difficult it must 
> be to teach humanities in a setting like San Jose, where everything, 
> everywhere, in every moment radiates the boundless, inbred naive confidence 
> of tech wealth and power. Even very strong people would need to make serious 
> accommodations to survive. This initiative seems like a product of those 
> accommodations.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ted
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
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#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: deep humanities initiative

[Ted Byfield]

On 23 Apr 2021, at 19:11, Molly Hankwitz wrote:


What is “Deep Humanities”?


This seems like your basic Silly Valley 'branding' proposal powerpoint, 
right down to the gobsmacking conceit that what they're doing is 'deep,' 
which implies that what everyone else has been doing — like for the 
last century or two (or twenty) — is shallow. Without fail the 
opposite is true, but there are the words, right there in front of you, 
and they say the opposite, so reading things like this always involves a 
fleeting doubt about who's insane, you or the authors.


The bullet points follow a formula, which is to toss out a potted 
definition that might be at home in a catalog description for an 
intro-level undergrad course, followed by an effort to make it relevant 
to tech bros. For example:


Culture: not as a stable set of practices to be manipulated or 
overcome, but as a dynamic site of struggle for meaning; as a form of 
“artificial intelligence” that enhances and extends human 
intelligence and capabilities.


Ethics: ethical ways of conceiving and connecting with the Other all 
its planetary diversity; integrating ethics into STEM/STEM education, 
business, politics, planning, and policy.


Language/communication – communication/language in human/non-human; 
human cognition/intelligence as well as AI and machine learning, 
including notions of context, common sense, and critical thinking.


I'm not *even* going to touch the one about "reality."

At its most profound, Deep Humanities aims to bring our cumulative 
accumulated knowledges about the practice of being human to engage 
the urgent issues of our times.


As opposed to all those shallow humanities. And, yes, I saw the thing 
about "cumulative accumulated knowledges."


I don't think the authors are insane. I sympathize with how difficult it 
must be to teach humanities in a setting like San Jose, where 
everything, everywhere, in every moment radiates the boundless, inbred 
naive confidence of tech wealth and power. Even very strong people would 
need to make serious accommodations to survive. This initiative seems 
like a product of those accommodations.


Cheers,
Ted
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

deep humanities initiative

[Molly Hankwitz]

By way of - perhaps this list will take an interest in this initiative:


What is “Deep Humanities”?


– By Dr. Revathi Krishnaswamy –

Silicon Valley’s tech titans not only dazzled the world with brilliant
technological inventions and innovations, but also captivated the world’s
imagination with idealistic talk of social justice and utopian visions of a
brave new world.  As the tech boom transformed Silicon Valley into a gilded
gated community, the economic, political, and cultural power of the tech
titans remained largely unquestioned.  But the alarming invasion of
privacy, misinformation, “fake news,” sexual harassment, racial
discrimination, and economic disparity in recent times are raising profound
and pressing questions about Silicon Valley (Berlin 2017, Cohen 2017,
Greene 2018, Kleeman 2017, Lyons 2018, Spencer 2018).

Is technology the answer to humanity’s problems or a threat to humanity as
we know it? Who gets to define technology or determine its role in the
world? Are social media and e-commerce enriching or impoverishing us?  Will
automation spread the pleasure of leisure to all or will robots take our
jobs? How are AI and other emerging technologies redefining what and how it
means to be human in the digital age? Are the tech titans promoting
empathy, diversity, and inclusion or embracing a radical libertarian
individualism hostile to women and other minorities? Is the tech industry
optimizing for profit and disrupting for dominance at the expense of our
humanity, environment, democracy, decency, and morality? What role can the
Humanities & Arts play in these turbulent times?

All too often, the Humanities & Arts are reduced to “soft skills,”
“business ethics,” and “product design,” handmaids to the “hard,”
male-dominated/masculinized STEM fields. Humanistic traditions of
creativity and contemplation are appropriated to boost corporate
productivity and profit while complex biocultural practices of wellbeing
and happiness are extracted to enhance elite health and fitness. A
delirious presentism spread by corporate media/communication networks,
induces historical amnesia, leaving us awash in information without memory,
outrage without perspective. The crisis is so serious that even tech
companies eager to develop more disruptive futuristic technologies like
biochips and AI-bots are now beginning to turn to the humanities/arts for
answers and insights. Recent moves by NSF, Partnership for AI, Mozilla, and
Google to integrate ethics into computer science curriculum and reward work
in socially conscious product design attest to this turn.  In the face of
such immense challenges, there is an urgent need to reinvent the humanities
& arts, redefine their relationship to STEM, and revitalize their role in
our lives. The Deep Humanities & Arts Initiative is conceived to fill this
need.

Deep Humanities is not an updated or upgraded version of the old humanities
but a critical posthumanism predicated on deep interdisciplinary and
intercultural engagement (Botz-Bornstein  2012, Bannerji & Paranjape 2016,
Jackson 2017). Deep Humanities radically restructures the foundational
relationship between human, nature, and machine. Instead of a bounded human
entity exalted to the center or the top, Deep Humanities envisions a more
interconnected or dispersed being situated in proportion to and imbricated
in “right relations” with the Other (animal, plant, machine). As part of
this fundamental restructuring, Deep Humanities deconstructs the hegemonic
Cartesian model of the human (as "above nature and other than
machine") historically produced and universalized by European Enlightenment
thought (Rees 2018), and reconstructs a more complex, integrated, symbiotic
model by crossing disciplinary boundaries between the human sciences/the
natural sciences/engineering, and drawing critical insights from other
emerging paradigms and alternative traditions of thought.

Paralleling the notion of deep learning in computer science and deep
ecology in environmental studies, Deep Humanities draws on deep structures
of history, myth, and culture, networks of language, communication, and
interpretation, patterns of affect, belief and bias, representations of
cognition and consciousness, theories of ethics, art and aesthetics to
develop multilevel, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural models of complex
problems in order to reach higher levels of critical thinking,
experiencing, understanding, and solving.  At the most general level, Deep
Humanities seeks to reconceptualize culture itself as a form of
(artificial) intelligence that enhances and extends human capabilities. At
its most profound, Deep Humanities aims to bring our cumulative accumulated
knowledges about the practice of being human to engage the urgent issues of
our times.

Key topics/issues the Deep Humanities & Arts Initiative proposes to tackle
(in alphabetical order):