Mémoire de la technique et techniques de la mémoire

Abstract

Computing technologies have provided us with new tools for storing, distributing and managing knowledge. Hypertexts are a very illustrative example of these new possibilities : several knowledge sources can be integrated into a single knowledge pool one can consult and browse for information. As a conclusion, it appears that computing technologies enrich our knowledge sources and empower our thinking capabilities. As the prefix “hyper” suggests, computing technologies promise us an era of hyperthinking and hyperknowledge. However, current practice teaches us that hypertext users get desoriented while browsing these systems.Computing technology provides us only with new possibilities that are not yet turned into reality. Hypertexts must be, for the time being, considered as hypotext rather than as hypertext.The reason why such technologies are deceiving can be explained by the fact that computing technologies are a new paradigm for knowledge and concept formation, as writing and printing were technical discoveries that changed in their times the ways of thinking. The conception of the current hypertexts still relies on concepts and approaches that are inherited from the writing and printing culture. However, dealing from now on with digital document deeply changes how they can convey meaning. Digital documents are a new kind of knowledge vehicles that require the development a specific theorisation of their possibilities.This change of paradigms, from the writing to the computing technologies, can help us understand the role of technologies in the constitution, in the phenomenological meaning, of our concepts and our rationality. The emergence of a new technological paradigm must then entail the constitution of a new way of thinking. As one spoke of a graphical rationality, one can speak of a computational rationality that is currently emerging.A basic distinction can be made between technologies that program a gesture or a physical action and technologies that program words. The first ones program what to do, the second what to say. For example, a hammer has a physical structure that specifies how to manipulate it and how to nail down. On the other hand, printed documents are technical tools that program in a way the words that I must have in mind while reading them.Technologies programming words rely on the constitution and manipulation of signs. Since these signs are material, they deserve a technical approach. The technical treatment of signs determines the way they can convey meaning and can be interpreted. The writing technology is of a particular importance and can help us understand how the materiality of signs participates to their meaning. As Goody has shown in his anthropological studies, the apparition of the writing technologies helps the constitution of some specific concepts. These concepts are those of list, table, tabular, matrix. Associated to these concepts, the notions of grammatical categories, conjugation, and the like. The basic reason for the emergence of these concepts relies in the fact that, instead of hearing the oral voice, one can see and read the graphical representation of voice. As soon as the oral content is projected on a writing space, it inherits a graphical structure that makes sense for who is looking at it, while this structure cannot be adequately described only by oral means. As a consequence, the graphical representation of oral content adds something new to this content (while something else is loosed : for example, the meaning associated with mood, intonations, and etc.). There is a supplement to the initial content that is proposed by the technical treatment of the oral expression : its writing on a graphical medium. Goody speaks of a graphical rationality to designate the specific supplement provided by the graphical writing.This idea must be generalised : if the material nature of the content medium is a supplement for the expressed meaning, there must be a specific supplement associated with every kind of material medium. As a conclusion, one must consider a specific rationality for the oral means of expressing content, and define the concept of oral rationality. Similarly, one must consider a computational rationality to designate the new way of thinking entailed by the computational supplement.What is new with the computational medium ? What is the supplement in this case ? Basically, the possibility of accessing to everything that can computed from a given knowledge expression. While the graphical supplement consists in enabling somebody to see at the same time related expressions, for example every component of a conjugation so that he can learn it, the computational supplement consists in enabling somebody to see at the same time not only what is inscribed on the same surface, but what can be computed to be presented on the same surface. For example, it is possible to see on a same screen information that has been computed regarding the specific context. What is seen depends on context and the computing resources to exploit it.A closer look at the very nature of computers helps understand the new perspective opened by the computational rationality. Basically, computers are automatic formal systems. They manipulate formal symbols that have as such no meaning. Symbols have an operational content insofar as formal computations can apply on them. Computers are autothetic systems : symbols mean nothing except the computation to which they can participate. Their only meaning is themselves. However, in practice, symbols that are used belong to natural language and can receive a meaning. But the performed computations do not depend on the linguistic semantics they may have. What is computed is independent to what is meant. In fact, modelling work consists in reducing the gap between computation and linguistic semantics. However, since computation rules are not linguistic laws, there is a priori no warranty that every computation can produce a meaningful and foreseen symbolic construction. Computers manipulate symbolic expressions and build new expressions from old ones. Since these expressions are symbolic and built with symbols borrowed from natural language, computed expressions are always linguistically interpretable by a human being who understands something while considering these expressions. Since computations are formal and do not rely on a linguistic base, computed computations receive a meaning that does not formally or nomologically depend on the symbolic and formal computations. Hence, what is understood by a human being is not formal consequence of the performed computations. Under these conditions, it is possible that a symbolic expression whose interpretation corresponds to something new can be computed. There is a possibility analogous to what is offered by the graphical rationality : while one writes on a surface the oral content, something can appear that has been previously never heard : a graphical structure that makes sense. According to the computational rationality, something new can be computed that has previously never been written and, by the way, thought.Hypertexts rely on the promises opened by the computational rationality. However, hypertexts do not really offer new perspectives since the relationships that are potentially meaningful for the user are presented one after another in an order that does not make sense for her. As a consequence, she is desoriented. What is needed now are tools for reading while browsing, that enables the user to define how the proposed symbolic expressions are meaningful for her in order to build a real reading from her browsing in the hypertext system.This paper proposes an analysis of the computational rationality in the perspective of a philosophy of the technology. An analysis of the very nature of the computer medium is followed by the consideration of digital documents. While considering hypertext principles, we propose how current hypertexts, that are for us hypotexts, can be turned into actual hypertext. The paper proposes a theory of reading and concludes of a revisited philosophy of the technology.

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