Thoughts Before Class - Week 8

I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve always been more of a humanities person than a science person, but something about the idea of looking at and discussing the humanities from a mechanical and technological perspective just doesn’t feel quite right to me. I’m not sure if this just makes me a little uncomfortable because it is out of my comfort zone or what. In reading Reading Machines, Ramsey makes a lot of points that fall out of my comfort zone; however, I feel like I kind of get what he’s saying.

Ramsey spends a lot of time discussing computers and how important they have been, specifically in regard to literary studies. I was specifically drawn in by one of his observations about computers and why they were so revolutionary.

Ramsey states, “The computer revolutionizes, not because it proposes an alternative to the basic hermeneutical procedure, but because it reimagines that procedure at new scales, with new speeds, and among new sets of conditions. It is for this reason that one can even dare to imagine such procedures taking hold in a field like literary criticism” (31).   

As I was reading this, I started thinking about my own ideas and feelings about new ideas, tools, technologies, or anything that might possibly upset my own comfort zone. Thinking about the significance of the impact the computer, and more specifically, the home computer, had on the literary world is really an amazing thing. It boggles my mind to think about writing, printing, publishing, anything along those lines without a computer. However, all of that new technology must have been extremely uncomfortable and perhaps frightening to those who had to learn to adapt to its use.

However, as Ramsey points out here, it wasn’t just the creation of the computer that was so influential, it was how the computer affected standard practices and procedures that made this such a monumental advancement.

Yet, Ramsey doesn’t stop with pointing out the enormity of the advancements that occurred as a result of the computer. He takes this discussion a step further in asking the reader to consider the impact that a similar procedural shift could have on the standard ideas and practices in literary studies. A new procedure in and of itself may not have much of an impact, but a ground-breaking, earth-shaking procedural shift that completely rethinks the normal, standard practices could really influence fields like literary studies. This just makes me wonder, exactly what type of technological development and/or procedural shift would have to happen for the field of literary studies to experience such a revolutionary change as occurred in the wake of the development of the computer?

Work Cited

 Ramsey, Stephen. Reading Machines. Urbana, U of Illinois Press, 2011.