Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
European Computing and Philosophy Conference
2010 - Technische Universität München
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
•  Situating this Project in a Larger Context
•  Floridi’s Four Revolutions
•  Four Information Revolutions
•  The Age of Automated Information Machines
•  The Emergence of Multimedia Information & Information Networks
•  Early Uses of the Telephone & Wireless Broadcasting
•  Some Quick Conclusions
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
Mechanical vs. Symbolic Computation: Two Contrasting Strategies for
Information Processing, Society for Machines and Mentality, Eastern
Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, New York
City, December 27th-30th, 2009.
In the Beginning Was the Word and Then Four Revolution in the History of
Information. In Luciano Floridi's Philosophy of Technology. Edited by
Hilmi Demir. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology Series (Springer,
2012), in process, forthcoming.
Alan Turing: Mechanist and Mathematician. In Alan Turing: His Work and
Impact, edited by S. Barry Cooper and Jan van Leeuwen (Elsevier, 2011), in
process, forthcoming.
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
Copernican Revolution – heliocentric cosmology removed
humanity from the center of the universe
Darwinian Revolution – the theory of evolution removed
humanity from the center of the biological kingdom
Freudian Revolution – psychoanalysis showed that we are not
transparent to ourselves
Information Revolution – our current environment, which is
inviting yet another transformation in the way we understand
ourselves (Turing Revolution)
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
Epigraphic Revolution – the invention of writing and the
alphabet effect
Printing Revolution – the mass production of writing
Multimedia Revolution – the industrialization of information
through mechanical means
Digital Revolution – the widespread use of digital information
following the arrival of the personal computer
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
By Multimedia Revolution we mean the period from the
invention of telegraphy (1836) and the Daguerreotype (1839) to
the arrival of the personal computer (late 1970’s).
Thus, it ultimately includes, among other things, radio (1906)
and television (1926).
As a motto, it could be described as the era in which
information was made to move. That is, information was
decoupled from the exigencies of the means of transportation.
The flow of information was itself industrialized!
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
1836 – Telegraphy
1839 – Daguerreotype
1856 – Telegraphic Printer
1863 – Stock Ticker
1877 – Telephone
1878 – Phonograph
1880 – Light Bulb
1880 – Photophone
1881 – Wireless Telegraphy
1881 – Wax Cylinder
1891 – Motion Picture Camera
1898 – Rotary Telephone
Digital Humanities Laboratory
1906 – Radio
1906 – Teletype
1914 – Telescribe
1926 – Television
1927 – Electric Phonograph
1928 – National Broadcasting System
1928 – Magnetic Tape
1948 – Cable Television
1958 – Cassette Tape
1963 – Touch Tone Phone
1966 – GE Color Television
1969 – Video Cassette Recorder
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
1. Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without
the aid of a stenographer.
2. Phonographic books, which will speak to blind
people without effort on their part.
3. The teaching of elocution.
4. Reproduction of music.
5. The "Family Record"--a registry of sayings,
reminiscences, etc., by members of a family in
their own voices, and of the last words of dying
persons.
1878
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
6. Music-boxes and toys.
7. Clocks that should announce in articulate speech
the time for going home, going to meals, etc.
8. The preservation of languages by exact
reproduction of the manner of pronouncing.
9. Educational purposes; such as preserving the
explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil
can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or
other lessons placed upon the phonograph for
convenience in committing to memory.
1878
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
10. Connection with the telephone, so as to make
that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission
of permanent and invaluable records, instead of
being the recipient of momentary and fleeting
communication.
North American Review, June 1878
1878
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
News Reports
Train Arrival Times
Church Services
Wake-Up Calls
Concerts
Telemarketing
Weather Reports
Election Campaigning
Sporting Event Reports
Lullabies for Babies
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
1910
Digital Humanities Laboratory
“What we might call the telephonization of city
life, for lack of a simpler word, has remarkably
altered our manner of living from what it was in
the days of Abraham Lincoln. It has enabled us to
be more social and cooperative. It has literally
abolished the isolation of separate families, and
has made us members of one great family. It has
become so truly an organ of the social body that by
telephone we now enter into contracts, give
evidence, try lawsuits, make speeches, propose
marriage, confer degrees, appeal to voters, and do
almost everything else that is a matter of
speech.” (The history of the telephone 199)
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
With the advent of radio broadcasting on
the “wireless” around 1906, the telephone
began to take on its modern role …
… and multimedia information took to
the airwaves.
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
Year
Telephones
Population
Percent
1877
778
50.1 million
.002%
1900
801,000
76.2 million
1%
1920
8.7 million
106 million
8%
1940
18.3 million
132.1 million
14%
1960
63 million
179.3 million
35%
1983
150 million
226.5 million
66%
Figures for the United States from Porticus.org and the U. S.
Census Bureau
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
1897
Digital Humanities Laboratory
“There is no doubt that the day will come, maybe
when you and I are forgotten, when copper wires,
gutta-percha coverings, and iron sheathings will
be relegated to the Museum of Antiquities. Then,
when a person wants to telegraph to a friend, he
knows not where, he will call in an electromagnetic voice, which will be heard loud by him
who has the electro-magnetic ear, but will be silent
to everyone else. He will call, ‘Where are you?’
and the reply will come, ‘I am at the bottom of the
coal-mine’ or ‘Crossing the Andes,’ or ‘In the
middle of the Pacific’.” (Fahie, 1900, vii)
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
Recognizing the facts laid out here, we see clearly that a rich and
vibrant global information network was already in place prior to
the Digital Revolution. Thus, digital technologies cannot be
credited for inaugurating the information age.
As long as there have been people, there have been information
networks. With the industrial age, decoupling information flow
from transportation increased the spread and speed of information
on these networks to bring a world of people closer together.
What, then, is novel about the Digital Revolution?
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
Information processors existed on the network prior to the arrival
of the computer in the form of human beings. However,
automated information processors did not, and thus, they are new.
Furthermore, when automated and human information processors
appear together on the same network, rich interactivity between
them is possible in a way that it was never before.
Because of both of these, computer-mediated social relationships
are now possible. Thus, for the first time, semi-autonomous
machines dramatically effect the shape and texture of human
interactivity, and, therefore, the meaning of human identity and
our understanding of our place in the …
Anthony Beavers & Brent Sigler
Digital Humanities Laboratory
The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress: 1862-1939. Retrieved from the U. S. Library of
Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ bellhtml/bellinvent.html, August 1st, 2010.
American almanac and treasury of facts, statistical, financial, and political, for the year 1882. Edited by A. Spofford.
New York: American News Company.
Brooks, J. 1976. Telephone: the first hundred years, New York: Harper and Row.
Brown, C. 1991. “The Bell system.” In The Encyclopedia of Telecommunications, Volume 1, 65-86, edited by F. E.
Froehlich and A. Kent. New York: Macel Dekker, Inc.
Casson, H. 1910. The history of the telephone. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.
Edison, T. 1878. U. S. Patent 203,016. U. S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Edison, T. June, 1878. Retrieved from the U. S. Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/
edcyldr.html, August 1st, 2010.
Fahie, J. 1900. A history of wireless telegraphy, 1828-1899, including some bare-wire proposals for subaqueous
telegraphs. London: William Blackwood and Sons.
Fischer, C. 1991. America calling: A social history of the telephone to 1940. Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Floridi, L. 2009. "The information society and its philosophy: Introduction to the special issue on 'The
philosophy of information, its nature and future developments." The Information Society 25.3, 153-158.
Hodges, A. The Alan Turing Internet scrapbook. Retrieved from http:// www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/
ace.html, August 4th, 2010.
Kingsbury, J. 1915. The telephone and telephone exchanges: their invention and development. London: Longman,
Green, and Co.
Turing, A. 1937. "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem." Proceedings of
the London Mathematical Society 2.1, 230-265.