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AlgoMantra wrote:
>> nevertheless they don't exist "inside of computers", although in the
>> modern world computers form an important part of the substrat of
>> social reality - but it is exactly due to their ability to represent!
>>
>
> Dear Artem,
>
> Very respectfully, I do not agree at all with you here. I have tried very
> hard, my friend..:)
>
> Computers are cultural artifacts too - the use of the English alphabet is
> almost ubiquitous
> in computing. It is hardwired and encoded, burned into the very heart of the
> device.
>
> On the other hand, India has 500+ recognised languages, out of which NASA
> has a study on ancient Sanskrit - citing it as a promising computing
> language for knowledge
> representation in NLP.
>
> Your statement only reflects the political plateau of the last 300 years,
> not the centuries before
> that, or the one we have just begun. This is not about Asian pride, but
> having a global outlook. I would
> live in Africa if I could afford the frikkin ticket.
I don't see how that disagrees with my statement.
I didn't say all of the social reality is now magically moved to
computer-based medium, I leave that to Matrix-conspiracy-theorists.
It's more like
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artm/2185389392/ (I didn't
mean sizes to reflect anything, just don't have much space at the moment
to make show the picture in perspective. And I wanted Shiva to stay
"readable" :)
My email client that you see on a laptop screen could be showing Russian
or Arabic text, about Indian culture or African mythology. But i could
make Shiva mean Jesus Christ, now could I?
Neither voltage levels not magnetic properties of harddrives nor use of
binary code to represent numbers are culture specific (well, OK, binary
code could be traced to India I guess) and the fact that so much of them
are used to *REPRESENT* anglophone/western artefacts just reflects the
state of the world, but isn't innate to computers.
And I see what you argue, it's just that I don't agree that your
argument contradicts mine :)
My keyboard only has english("latin") letters on it and i don't have to
configure them because i prefer english versions of my OSes.
... but need to distract myself from this thread and reflect some ...
to be continued :)
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Received on Fri Jan 11 2008 - 12:58:24 GMT