Ach, who doesn’t wonder from time to time what will
remain? Not just of our individual
selves, but rather of what we value, not just of an individual life, but of an
entire age with its struggles & beliefs.
Anyone with some interest in (art) history, knows how sheer
material contingencies play a crucial role in the survival of cultural artefacts
and texts. (1) The choice of supporting
material (stone or organic), a wet or a dry climate, quality of varnish, … And on the immaterial side – how transient fame
can be, how difficult to predict the continued consideration felt for a tradition,
or the continued belief in a metaphysically sanctioned message.
Now, what will still be understood of our digital age, say,
1000 years hence? What posterity
will there be for our massive collective,
distributed effort to digitize everything, to put “everything” on line –
from fleeting private expressions to commercial banalities - from a garish dark web to edifying massive online
courses, to scientific networks …
What will happen with the ever swelling mass of digital data
stored on numerous servers? (2) Will all data that haven’t been accessed for some
time, at some point be systematically deleted? (just as even so-called perpetual cemetery
plots are finite, if no one renews the lease). Will there be an artificial
intelligence able to make sense of the gigantic mass of data? Will “history writing algorithms” assess
historical relevance of data based on numbers of views and followers? So
that a make-up video tutorial on YouTube or a contagious 15 sec goofy dance on
TikTok will be considered as emblematic for our age?
In the early days of internet much was made of its encyclopedic
scope - it was compared to a universal
library accessible to all, hyperlinking everything and easily searchable through search
machines. But since no single human is able to digest it all, on the internet the individual mind is easily outdone by "big data" crunching algorithms.
Will artificial intelligence create some sort of new collective mind, a "mind of
the hive"? (Not a coincidence that
there’s an AI company called Hivemind).
How different the 21st C Internet of everything &
everyone is from a library purposefully built by erudite and sensitive individuals.
How different the Internet is from the 20th C
archetypical library: the Warburg Library; made up of pictures & books obsessively brought together by an
individual reflecting mind, continuously
seeking meaning, establishing affinities & correspondences between historical
images.
“venir en aide à l’historien d’art qui a perdu ses repères dans une
masse inerte de données […] leur donner un sens dans le contexte de l’histoire
de la culture […] Warburg n’avait pas de méthode, mais il avait un
message » (3)
« que l’histoire de l’art importe encore non
pas en tant qu’accumulation de faits, mais en tant que témoignage des
souffrances et des triomphes de l’humanité » (4)
In order to find their bearings in the massively accumulated
data, future (art) historians will need the help of algorithms with superior
data-digestion capabilities.
But how could we expect from algorithms to understand
the meaning - the aesthetic, moral and emotional meaning - of the data they crunch?
How will they be able to convert these big data again into
testimonials that at some point in the future might still appeal to organic
specimens of humankind?
Artificial Notes
“from the sixth through the eighth century some 67.000 manuscripts were produced in the Latin West […] From the entire eighth century less than 2.000 manuscripts (or fragments) have survived”
The cost of making books was high so “the early-medieval manuscripts that have come down to us all represent considered decisions to make a copy of a text or to write a text […] That is why every manuscript book from this period is worth studying."
(picture from Wikipedia page with list of key works of Carolingian illumination)
2) some figures & thoughts on 21st C “content production” : “As of May 2019, more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. This equates to approximately 30,000 hours of newly uploaded content per hour” www.statista.com. “More than 95 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day.” “More than 1 billion videos viewed on TikTok every day” .
The trend may be versus more ephemeral social media (such as snapchat, instagram stories) with eg programmed deletion of content after it has been viewed – that would help stop the exponential growth in saved data.
3) quoted from the French translation of Gombrich’s book “Aby Warburg – Une Biographie intellectuelle”.
Translated again into English by an algorithm – which doesn’t understand the meaning of language but is uncannily competent all the same : “to help the art historian who has lost his bearings in an inert mass of data […] give [the data] meaning in the context of the history of culture […] Warburg had no method, but he had a message “
4) “ that art history still matters not as an accumulation of facts, but as a testimony to the sufferings and triumphs of humanity ” (also translated by ab algorithm)
