Metaphors

In Chesher’s article he references a metaphor made by Bruno Latour that a ‘Great Divide’ of knowledge exists between Modernity and everything before it. Although Chesher has a very critical view of this divide, There certainly is a vast change in the way information is shared and the rate at which technological advancement is made with the transition into modernity. Whether or not Latour is recognizing the “other forms of knowledge” Chesher refers to, the ability to exchange vast quantity of information between scholars, scientists, or any other thought driven individual has lead to an almost exponential increase in all forms of knowledge. I believe this is the divide that Latour is referring to.

A second metaphor touched on but not fully unpacked in the article is computer intelligence. A computer does not think in the way of a human, but man strives to achieve mimicry of that thought process through it. The term logic is applied to the processes that a programming language goes through in order to reach it’s outcome but to say the computer is “thinking” is merely a way for humans to relate to it easily. As Chesher states, this is a way of bringing “the high-tech back to earth”.

A very prominent metaphor used in Chesher’s piece is that the Digital Computer is dead, and that it is replaced by invocational media. He argues that the essence of how a user interacts with a computer through modern day programs strays far from both digital and computational. He says the elements of simulation, random access, and non-linearity are all more related to invocation than to the current term. But what is in a term? Shakespeare posed the question would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Does a computer renamed bear any relevance to society? On a very base level even the modern day computer programs and interfaces are digital and computational. The humans who create these merely strive to make them seem like real world counterparts.