1. Digital Humanities - Bocconi 2016 - Luca De Biase
Media ecology How to be human
in the info-sphere
http://blog.debiase.com/per-corsi/bocconi-2016-media-ecology/
2. Content
❖ Facebook, Whatsapp, Google Maps are now basic tools for the daily life. A smartphone that is going
out of charge makes people feel uneasy. Humans live connected by digital tools in an infosphere that
is defined by digital media.But what do we know about the media ecology that is emerging? The
media frame the vision that shapes any decision making.
❖ Questions emerge: is the growing complexity of the media affecting human ability to learn, think,
decide, live together? Are the media limiting or empowering societies? Is there such a thing as a
“collective intelligence”? What are “big data” and the “internet of things” going to do to the
economy? How is changing the role of newspapers in this environment? Algorythms and robots are
going to take over intellectual jobs? How can people make the most of the digital opportunity?
❖ In a knowledge economy the debate is growing: the course is designed to discuss and share a critical
approach to the matter, by refusing any banalizing hype as well as any depressive prejudice:
innovation is a process, it is not a given. Students will actively participate to the discussion. No
special technical skills are required. Suggested readings will help the discussion. Of course, it is not
mandatory to read them all, and particularly so books by the teacher. Some information about the
teacher (both in English and Italian) can be found at: http://blog.debiase.com/about-me/
3. Digital Humanities - Bocconi 2016 - Luca De Biase
The info-sphere
“Frequently the messages
have meaning”.
Claude Shannon
8. ❖ DIGITALLY RECORDED KNOWLEDGE:
❖ 2000: 25% ———> 2013: 98%
❖ In 2013, 98% of information recorded by humans was in
digital format; in the year 2000 it was 25% - Martin
Hilbert, quoted by Victor Mayer-Schönberger and
Kenneth Cukier in BIG DATA 2013
9. And we use new tools
that are now part of our body
10.
11. ❖ The Supreme Court has decided that the phone is part
of human anatomy
17. Information
❖ Information has a history. Digital information theory starts in 1948. And it
changed a lot of our lives. At present, a sort of info-sphere is our new
environment: a digital ecosystem in which we both live and learn. There are
consequences that we should think more about.
❖ Luciano Floridi, Information. A very short introduction, 2010
❖ Paolo Vidali e Federico Neresini, Il valore dell’incertezza, Mimesis 2015
❖ James Gleick, The information, 2012
❖ Claude Shannon, A mathematical theory of communication, 1948 http://
worrydream.com/refs/Shannon%20-%20A%20Mathematical%20Theory%20of
%20Communication.pdf
18.
19. A Mathematical Theory of Communication
By C. E. SHANNON
❖ «The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing
at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at
another point.
❖ Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are
correlated according to some system with certain physical or
conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are
irrelevant to the engineering problem.
❖ The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from
a set of possible messages. The system must be designed to operate
for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be
chosen since this is unknown at the time of design.»
20. BIT: unit of information
❖ Information is a reduction of
uncertainty. Information is
associated to the message, it is
not the message
❖ In a situation in which it is
possible to have more than one
message, there is uncertainty.
❖ Information is then linked to
that one message that arrives
and reduces uncertainty
21. BIT: unit of information
❖ “Information is a measure of
the freedom of choice that we
have when we choose a
message. If the situation is very
simple, if we only have to
choose between two
alternatives, then we say that
the information coming from
this kind of situation is a unit
of information” - This is the bit
22. Information: a flood
❖ Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents
an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to
information has transformed the very nature of
human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual
journey through the history of communication
and information, from the language of Africa’s
talking drums to the invention of written
alphabets; from the electronic transmission of
code to the origins of information theory, into
the new information age and the current deluge
of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the
way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including
Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse,
and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our
understanding of information is transforming
not only how we look at the world, but how we
live.
23. Information: a flood
❖ Humans have come a long way from
developing the first oral language that
allowed them to structure and share
thoughts. We moved on to writing things
down, publishing them, sending them
along wires and encoding them into
computer switches. The direction has been
one of increasing fidelity and certainty, but
the process of creating language, writing
and the modern programming, network
infrastructure and devices that make our
computerised world has not been
straightforward
❖ http://www.theguardian.com/science/
2012/nov/22/the-information-james-
gleick-review
24. Luciano Floridi
History of information
❖ We live an information-soaked existence - information pours into our lives through television, radio,
books, and of course, the Internet. Some say we suffer from 'infoglut'. But what is information? The
concept of 'information' is a profound one, rooted in mathematics, central to whole branches of science,
yet with implications on every aspect of our everyday lives: DNA provides the information to create us;
we learn through the information fed to us; we relate to each other through information transfer -
gossip, lectures, reading. Information is not only a mathematically powerful concept, but its critical role
in society raises wider ethical issues: who owns information? Who controls its dissemination? Who has
access to information? Luciano Floridi, a philosopher of information, cuts across many subjects, from a
brief look at the mathematical roots of information - its definition and measurement in 'bits'- to its role in
genetics (we are information), and its social meaning and value. He ends by considering the ethics of
information, including issues of ownership, privacy, and accessibility; copyright and open source. For
those unfamiliar with its precise meaning and wide applicability as a philosophical concept,
'information' may seem a bland or mundane topic. Those who have studied some science or philosophy
or sociology will already be aware of its centrality and richness. But for all readers, whether from the
humanities or sciences, Floridi gives a fascinating and inspirational introduction to this most
fundamental of ideas.
❖ https://www.academia.edu/256681/Information_A_Very_Short_Introduction
25. Luciano Floridi
Philosophy of information
❖ Luciano Floridi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of
information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with (1) the critical investigation of
the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics,
utilisation, and sciences, and (2) the elaboration and application of information-
theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. This book lays
down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for this new area of research. It does
so systematically, by pursuing three goals. Its metatheoretical goal is to describe what
the philosophy of information is, its problems, approaches, and methods. Its
introductory goal is to help the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and
multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to information. Its
analytic goal is to answer several key theoretical questions of great philosophical
interest, arising from the investigation of semantic information.
❖ https://www.academia.edu/256684/The_Philosophy_of_Information
❖ If you have time watch Luciano Floridi at TED
29. Infosphere
❖ We live in an environment
enriched by data, using
prosthetics that connect us to it
and everybody else
❖ Media and the environment are
blurring
❖ Media and the body are
blurring
36. Hyperhistory
❖ Every single human act is registered (important or not;
new idea of importance is ex post)
❖ Floridi thinks that it is an ICT dependent age https://
ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/
files/Contribution_Floridi.pdf
37. Hyperhistory
❖ Every single human act is registered (important or not;
new idea of importance is ex post)
❖ Floridi thinks that it is an ICT dependent age
❖ Martin Hilbert, as we have seen, shows that 98% of
registered knowledge in 2013 is in some digital memory
(it was 25% in 2000) - http://annenberg.usc.edu/news/
future-media/phd-student-calculates-how-much-
information-world
38. Hyperhistory
❖ If everything is written…
❖ … power shifts from deciding what to write…
❖ …to writing the algorithms that manage information
39. Hyperhistory
❖ The problem is now:
❖ which platform controls the information flow?
❖ and what are its algorithms and its interests?
40. Hyperhistory
❖ PLATFORMS CAN BE:
❖ open, commons and neutral
❖ proprietary and non interoperable
❖ ALGORITHMS CAN BE:
❖ known to all
❖ unknown to most
❖ BUT THE NEW WRITING IS WRITING ALGORITHMS
41. Freedom is not about what we can
do: it only starts with what we know
43. Digital humanities scholars use computational methods either to answer existing research questions or to
challenge existing theoretical paradigms, generating new questions and pioneering new approaches.
Traditional goal was to systematically integrate computer technology into the activities of humanities
scholars,[10] as is done in contemporary empirical social sciences. Such technology-based activities might
include incorporation into the traditional arts and humanities disciplines use of text-analytic techniques;
commons-based peer collaboration; and interactive games and multimedia. (Wikipedia)
The new concept of digital humanities is different. We don’t think at digital as something that happens in
the future. We think at humanity as it is now in a digital environment.
Digital Humanities
44. ANNE BURDICK JOHANNA DRUCKER PETER LUNENFELD
TODD PRESNER JEFFREY SCHNAPP
https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/
9780262018470_Open_Access_Edition.pdf
Digital Humanities
45. ❖ WE LIVE in one of those rare moments of opportunity for the humanities, not unlike other great eras of
cultural-historical transformation such as the shift from the scroll to the codex, the invention of
moveable type, the encounter with the New World, and the Industrial Revolution. Ours is an era in
which the humanities have the potential to play a vastly expanded creative role in public life.The
present volume puts itself forward in support of a Digital Humanities that asks what it means to be a
human being in the networked information age and to participate in fluid communities of practice,
asking and answering research questions that cannot be reduced to a single genre, medium, discipline,
or institution. Digital Humanities represents a major expansion of the purview of the humanities,
precisely because it brings the values, representational and interpretive practices, meaning-making
strategies, complexities, and ambiguities of being human into every realm of experience and knowledge
of the world. It is a global, trans-historical, and transmedia approach to knowledge and meaning-
making.
❖ Yet there remains a chorus of contemporary voices bewailing yet another “definitive” crisis in
humanistic culture, yet another sacrifice of quality on the altar of “mere” quantity. Our response is not
just a counterargument in favor of new convergences between quality and quantity, but also one in favor
of a model of culture embodied by this book itself. We do not think the humanities are in perpetual crisis
or imperiled by another battle for legitimacy with the sciences. Instead, we see this moment as marking
a fundamental shift in the perception of the core creative activities of being human, in which the values
and knowledge of the humanities are seen as crucial for shaping every domain of culture and society.
46. Matthew Gold, Debates in the digital humanities: http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates
Digital Humanities News at King’s College: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/news.aspx
Center for Digital Liberal Arts, Occidental College, Los Angeles: http://oxy.edu/center-digital-liberal-arts
Digital Humanities
47. Media ecology theory centers on the principles that technology not only profoundly influences society,
it also controls virtually all walks of life; it is a study of how media and communication processes affect
human perception and understanding. Ecology in this context refers to the environment in which the
medium is used - what they are and how they affect society. The theoretical concepts were proposed by
Marshall McLuhan in 1964, while the term media ecology was first formally introduced by Neil Postman
in 1968. (Wikipedia)
Media ecology
48. Assumptions of the theory: 1. Media is infused in every act and action in society. 2. Media fixes our
perceptions and organizes our experiences. 3. Media ties the world together.
Marshall McLuhan used the phrase Global village to describe that "humans can no longer live in
isolation, but rather will always be connected by continuous and instantaneous electronic media". This
global village let mankind step into a new "information age" in which human communication is
"growing so fast as to be in fact immeasurable,” (Wikipedia)
Media ecology
49. How do we think?
❖ If we live in an info-sphere and if we are changed by
our tools, we need a new mindset to decide
❖ A mindset that makes us able to live through a fast and
complex history
❖ The new way of thinking is a new way of linking the
“now” and the “future”
