Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 457.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2025-04-11 07:00:33+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: source of fascination?

A motivational question. I would assume--painfully obvious, no?-- that
nowadays very few people involved at the technical side of digital
humanities work directly with 'machine language' or 'assembler
language'. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that those terms need
explaining to those younger than I. In the 1960s I worked for years 
writing routines in such language and so thinking in terms of the most
primitive commands, such as 'shift left accumulator'. I found that work 
utterly fascinating, was attracted to computing machines in that way, 
imagining the mechanical operations, enjoying the illusion of direct,
hand-on control.

So my question: what attracts people now about working with digital
machines? People like us? Do those in digital humanities these days 
know enough about the machinery to be as charmed as I was--indeed,
still am?

Some here may know of the anthropologist Alfred Gell's "The technology
of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology", in The Art of 
Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams (Oxford: Berg, 1992). Gell argues 
that "Magic haunts technical activity like a shadow" (p. 181), drawing 
on the complex, highly skilled woodcarving found on the prow-boards
of canoes from the Trobriand Islands. In the Trobriand islanders' culture, 
these carvings are intended to fascinate their trading partners to such 
an extent that they will lulled into giving the canoe owners much better 
deals than they would otherwise be inclined to do. I was never that 
charmed by assembler language, but I do have some sense of what the 
victims of that wonderful carving fell prey to.

Comments and biographical snippets welcome :-).

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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