On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 12:35 PM, roger malina <rmalina@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> I would like to make the assertion that relying on digital simulations
> is creating
> a situation where we focus primarily on processes that are theoretically
> simulatable or computable=
> whereas there are many other processes that are just not
> simulatable and there is a danger that we are developing huge blind spots
> (similarly there are parts of the universe that are theoretically unobservable
> eg the interior of a black hole, or the universe further away than
> light could travel since the birth of the universe)
>
> the work of artists , with its emphasis on triggering subjective
> experience.and exploitation of phenomena that may be unsimulatable may
> open up interesting
> areas of research that computer scientists are not focused on
>
> are there any examples ?
we need cognitive scientists or/and some more anthropologists! :)
as this is a problem that is truly similar to the international
discussion on "how do we go beyond ethnographical writing?"
or: anthropological reports are an incomplete simulation. They
represent the point of view of the anthropologist and, in that, they
are, allow me to make it simple, novels. With that i do not mean that
they "are not good", i just mean that they are "incomplete", as we
know since the works of Mead and Bateson that "completeness" is a
concept that is somewhat awkward to define, and probabily the key to
describing it is to let it describe itself, by not trying to define it
and by finding ways in which the multiplicity of voices and
perceptions, and the network of relations, and their evolution in time
and space can express themselves. And also getting ready to accept
that a "system" (self-)described in this way is not coherent, static,
or objective. As roger said: there is not shortcut.
yet again the most interesting parts (for me, obviously :) )of the
scientific research in this field are those that are creating a
short-circuit between "the map and the territory", by using the
territory (and its inhabitants, and cultures, and relations, and
expressions...) as the map itself through technologies that allow both
reading, writing and interpreting the world in its "entirety" (at
least theoretically, as it would require *everything/everyone* to be
technologically connected). In this perspective: the simulation of the
system is the system itself and, thus, can become simulatable.
ciao!
s
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