tional technology may be attributed in part to the “two cultures” epistemic paradigm, it is also caused by the wider cultural and epistemic shifts brought by current techno-logical developments. The analysis draws on the ideas of philosopher Luciano Floridi (2010), of media scholar Lev Manovich (2013), and of technology writer and commen-tator Kevin Kelly (1998). The chapter begins with a historical overview of the ongoing
“information revolution”, followed byan account of its epistemological and cultural impact. The next section discussesthe impact of computational technology over art;
whereas the last section analyses the origins of the “two cultures” myth and shows how it continues to influenceart scholars’ views towards science and technology. Overall, the chapter shows why art scholarship needs to shift its attitude towards technology — and particularly towards computers, while offering the reader the historical and epis-temic context to engage the issues discussed in subsequent chapters.
1.2 More than a technological revolution
Human survival and development have always depended on information.² Percep-tion, movement, and cognitive abilities rely mainly on our brains’ capacity to gather and process large amounts of data — primarily in the form of chemical and electrical signals emitted by our sensory organs (Volkenstein [1986]2009). Preserving and ex-changing information, in the form of ideas, knowledge, culture, and technology has been crucial for the survival and evolution of societies. Human groups or communi-ties who are unable to communicate with others or to maintain a relationship with their past risk destruction or, at the very least, some form of cultural erosion or stag-nation (Diamond1997; see also Pinker2003). Being able to share knowledge such as how to track and kill animals, how and when to seed and harvest crops, in which di-rection to navigate, or how to build a shelter have been crucial components of our evolutionary success. For millennia, the only way to keep track of this information was by storing it in our biological and collective memories through images, stories, songs, and poetry. The invention of writing systems took the role of information to an entirely new level, signalling the beginning of many technological revolutions that would lead us into increasingly complex social systems.
²A proper discussion on the complexity of the term, as well as its various definitions will be offered inSection 4.4.
1.2.1 The information age
By definition, what we call History began some6, 000years ago with the arrival of the written word (Floridi2012b; Flusser [1983]2006). Writing systems enabled humans to record meaningful data and make them available for future reference, thus reliev-ing short-term memory, and enhancreliev-ing long-term memory. Writreliev-ing also enhanced our thinking and communication capacities; it revolutionised commerce, education, engineering, technology, and philosophy. Writing systems may be considered “one of the biggest advancements in neural enhancement” (Levitin 2014) and — under a sufficiently broad understanding — humanity’s earliest information technology or IT (Floridi2009a). It follows that History itself may be regarded as synonymous with the
“Information Age” and that humans have lived not through one, but throughmany “in-formation societies” (Floridi2010) with varying degrees of complexity and dominated by a particular IT.
1.2.2 Three stages in the evolution of IT
According to Floridi, information technologies have three primary functions: (1) recording, (2) communicating, and (3) producing information. Throughout history, each of these functions dominated a particular stage in the development of ITs.
As previously mentioned, the earliest IT — the “degree zero”, so to speak — are writing and numerical systems, which enabled humans to accumulate information diachronically as “non-biological memory” (2009a, 227). In the West, this first stage in the evolution of ITs may be divided into two periods:
a. The first one, which constitutes the emergence and evolution ofrecording tech-nologies, spans roughly from Plato to Gutenberg (fourth century BCE to fif-teenth century CE, approximately);
b. in the second period, which was significantly shorter (roughly from 1751 to 1780), ITs experienced “a vast process of reorganisation & restructuring” (2009a, 227), marked by the exponential growth of written materials.
The second stage began in the nineteenth century with the emergence of the telegraph and spanned well into the twentieth century culminating with TV. The development of optical, electric and wireless telegraphy, followed by telephony, cinema, radio, and television defined ITs as (mass) communication technologies. The third and current
1.2 More than a technological revolution
stage in the development of ITs began in the middle of the twentieth century with the invention of the computer: the first appliance capable of producing information
“by processing data electronically and automatically” (2009a, 228). It is important to highlight that information technologies generally evolve not by replacing functions, but byaccumulatingthem.
Whenever ITs reach a new stage of development, it appears as if previous functions become obsolete; it happened with telegraphy, with photography, and with every sub-sequent IT system. As Floridi notes, cinema, radio and TV are usually described as mediums of mass communication, but we should not forget they are alsomediums of “massive recording” (2009a, 228). Like writing, electronic mass media are capable of storing information; yet, despite being more efficient at transmitting it, they never made writing obsolete — contrary to what some extremely pessimistic accounts sug-gest (e.g. Sartori2015). In fact, quite the opposite happened: in part thanks to text messaging and social media platforms, morepeople than ever before in history are communicating daily through writing.³
Having reached the third stage of development, our most advanced form of IT now harbours all three functions associated with information. The computer, an appli-ance which may be described as history’s first “metamedium” (Kay and Goldberg1977;
see also Manovich2013) or “super-medium” (Berry2011), assumed all the tasks previ-ously scattered through various information technologies. Websites, e-books, video streaming, podcasts, email, instant messaging, etc., serve more or less the same pur-pose that physical books, letters, radio programs, TV, and cinema played at a given time in history.⁴By allowing us to register, communicate and process information, IT has spurred the emergence of myriads of other technologies (Floridi2012b).
1.2.3 From prehistory to “hyperhistory”
The evolution of IT has taken humanity from prehistory — a term coined in the mid-dle of the nineteenth century — to history and, more recently, to what Floridi (2012b) calls “hyperhistory”. By definition, prehistoric societies lack ITs or, at least, the means
³The widespread use of instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram despite the ubiquity of alternative forms of real-time audiovisual communications (e.g. Skype or FaceTime) is proof of the resilience of humanity’s oldest IT.
⁴The fact that many of the “old” ITs continue to be used (and thrive) alongside more recent ITS is, once again, proof that ITs tend to accumulate, modify, or expand — rather than substitute — the functions of their precursors.
to record information. While there are controversial reports of communities in the Amazon forest which still live prehistorically, it is safe to say that most of the world’s population now lives “historically” (2012b, 129). Meaning that their use of IT is limited to recording and transmitting data and that their livelihood continues to depend on industrial technologies. Particularly, those devoted to processing natural resources and generating energy. There are, however, other regions in the world where peo-ple now live “hyperhistorically”. In these societies, IT took over industrial technolo-gies, becoming the “necessary[emphasis added] condition for the maintenance and fur-ther development of social welfare, personal well-being, and intellectual flourishing”
(2012b, 130). Within these post-industrial “service economies” information and its by-products have becomethefundamental resource.
By the mid-1970s, the average supermarket in the United States sold close to 9, 000 different products; four decades later, the number has risen to nearly 40, 000 and counting (Levitin 2014). Although contemporary societies are flooded with myriads of new industrial objects, future technological development is (paradoxically) geared to dematerialisation (Kelly 2010). The World’s most developed regions are increas-ingly dependent on assets produced through information-processing such as online businesses, software products & services, property services, communications, insur-ance and fininsur-ance, and entertainment (Floridi2010). Their public sectors (including ed-ucation, public administration, and health care) and policy-making are increasingly driven by data-analysis, with automatisation playing ever more critical roles in areas such as transportation and energy. All countries in the G7 Group now qualify as hy-perhistorical information societies since at least70%of their GDPs now depend on intangible information-based products (2010, chap. 1). Whereas developing regions still rely heavily on the outputs of human-powered manufacture, agricultural outputs, and fossil fuels.
1.2.4 Big Data
Every new object, idea or person that comes into the world generates data. The more we interact with ITs, the more data we produce. Our data footprint grows bigger every time we visit a website, check our email, post to social media, buy groceries on-line or at the supermarket, or withdraw money from an ATM. Thanks to data-mining processes, every click and every transaction, every opinion, every “like”, comment or (traceable) decision we make generate new information. In 2003, it was estimated that
1.2 More than a technological revolution
in the period spanning from the invention of writing to the arrival of the electronic digital computer, humans had produced roughly twelveexabytes(EB) of data,⁵which is equivalent to a50, 000year-long DVD-quality video (Floridi2010). By the year 2011, thetotalamount of information stored by humanity had grown to approximately300 EB (Levitin2014). But as Aiden and Michel (2013) note, no matter how unfathomable these datasets might seem right now, they are merely “the tip of the iceberg” since hu-manity’s data footprint doubles each year. In 2013, the world’s annual output of data was close to one terabyte (TB)per capita(2013),⁶and by the end of 2015, the total amount of information produced was estimated at8zettabytes(ZB),⁷and it is now expected to grow up to35ZB by 2020 (Floridi2015b). “Big Data” is getting exponentially bigger.
The data “exaflood” has grown into a “zettaflod” (Floridi2010).⁸
Information overload, however, is by no means a new phenomenon. As journalist Clive Thompson (2013) notes, the arrival of every new information technology has given rise to a cycle of (a) data overproduction, (b) anxiety about how to manage the surplus, and (c) subsequent development of novel ways to process and index them.⁹ From an epistemological standpoint, Big Data holds enormous possibilities and, to borrow the words of physicist Adam Frank (2013), it can very well constitute “the steam engine of our times”. Just as Sadi Carnot’s¹⁰modest attempt to understand steam en-gines and calculate their efficiency led to a new branch of science¹¹that revolutionised our understanding of physical, biological, economic and informational phenomena, Big Data holds a similar promise for this century. By enabling humans to find new patterns and relationships amongst seemingly disparate phenomena and to develop previously unimaginable models, Big Data and information technology are transform-ing ourentireepistemological edifice. That is, how much we know, how much we can know, and how we communicate and take advantage of this knowledge. Due to the profound implications of these changes, Floridi (2010,2014) refers to this ongoing
pro-⁵One exabyte corresponds to1018bytes or one million terabytes.
⁶To put the number in perspective, if one was to write by hand in a straight line all the0𝑠and1𝑠 potentially contained in one terabyte, the line would “extend to Saturn and backtwenty-five times [emphasis added]” (Aiden and Michel2013, Chapter 1).
⁷A zettabyte is equivalent to1021bytes or1, 000exabytes.
⁸Admittedly, as Floridi (2015b) points out, a considerable amount of this data is meaningless or worth-less, but most of it is also potentially valuable.
⁹A particularly interesting example isflorilegia; systematic collections or “clippings” of passages that offered scholars in the Middle Ages abridged and commented versions of books, and which Thomp-son (2013) compares to contemporary review blogs.
¹⁰(1796–1832) French military engineer and precursor of the field of thermodynamics.
¹¹More on the influence of thermodynamics (and its Second Law) over our understanding of complex systems inSection 6.8
cess as the “Fourth Information Revolution” in human self-understanding.