7 ms·

What Is Digital Humanism?

78 points by colinprince 10y ago

westmeal 10y ago
Would SciHub count as an example in this case?
phoenixProgram 10y ago
You can't "improve" on the traditional teachings. You can distort them in a modern way and play with these distortions, but this doesn't cover up the fact that there was something there before you decided to "improve" upon it. The neo-modernists tend to some Judeo-Christian notion of doing good works as a transcendental connection to God. Essentially, the protestants believe that God is going to tell you what to do, on a personal level. You are somehow a mouthpiece for the will of god. So act like it. The idea is that God made the world with "some assembly required". So now, he is going to get personally involved in the lives of everybody and make sure that everyone understands that the world---which supposedly was made according to the orders of the will of God---now needs to be cleaned up by coordinating the efforts of all nations... ...who are going to make it clear what YOUR role is going to be, "willing servant of God" a.k.a. spiritual janitor This argument isn't fooling anyone. You can't ask people to clean up the spiritual lives of others. That would be protestant reformation-level social rot. It is the argument of a busybody. Injecting a crisis mentality of "old things need to be made new" does nothing more than stir up confusion. Consider the library: we were told that by adding noise-makers (desktop computers) to libraries, libraries would be improved Adding noise-makers to libraries gave young people the idea that bringing their own noise-makers (cell phones) into libraries would be a good idea. So they started doing that. Now young people are just going into libraries and making noise. They don't care about the library. They want to move in and assert their space and right to make noise. The "improvement" to the library merely turned the library into a zoo. Spreading traditional teachings to those who are not prepared to hear them is simply not a good idea, and there is nothing modernism can do about it. There is no way to improve upon the old teachings because the old teachings are not what you think. They are not pieces of a puzzle that can be translated into some modernist narrative of restoration and redemption.
baldfat 10y ago
THANK YOU Humanism NEVER meant Atheist anything till just a few decades ago. Stop destroying the meaning of a word that goes back centuries just because you don't want to use the word Atheist. Thank you
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  In many circles atheists are the new niggers and fags. (Secular) humanists might not be the phrase you like, but it doesn't surprise me at all that people want to avoid identifying as that word.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    You won't appease bigots by changing your terminology. "Secular humanist" has been just as much a curse as "atheist" for many years now, in some circles. There's more power in reclaiming slurs than retreating from them.
    - beaconstudios 10y ago
      I think the association of atheism with anti-theism does a lot more harm than good, and I'm an atheist. If you take a look at reddit's atheism sub you'll see that this is an ongoing problem.
      - lloeki 10y ago
        Throw agnosticism in and most people just get hopelessly confused. Atheism though is sort of ambiguous as it's sometimes used synonymously to anti-theism, of which it is a superset.
        beaconstudios 10y ago
        well, atheism is "I don't believe in a God". Then you get 2 strains of anti-theism on top of that: "I am against organised religion" and "I don't want anyone to be religious" (and it's related form, "I think anyone who is religious is stupid"). The problem is that people who claim to represent atheism are often of one of the latter two camps.
hackuser 10y ago
Speaking very generally (and based on slightly faded memory), one reason they liked old things in the Renaissance was because there was a point of view that the prior ~1,000 years, since the fall of Rome, was a waste intellectually, and that the way forward was to revive the Roman and Greek knowledge. I don't think the same conditions apply today, and IMHO perhaps Humanism's goals should be accomplished by other means than focusing on preserving or reviving the past. (Disclaimer: The following mostly is based on memory; details may be off a bit. Sorry.) Hegel said in the 19th century (paraphrased), "he would 'put on seven-league boots' in order to skip over the thousand years between the 6th and 17th centuries and, having at last arrived at René Descartes, said that now he could 'cry land like the sailor.'"[0] Even the name of that prior, wasted period, the "Middle Ages", was given to it by people in the Enlightenment: From their point of view it was the middle between two great periods: Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, and the Enlightenment. The Middle Ages ended, in a sense, with the reintroduction of most of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's works to Europe, where they had been lost for centuries. Aristotle was highly respected and presented a worldview that challenged Scholasticism, the philosophy of the Church. Thomas Aquinas, a name many recognize, made it a mission to reconcile Aristotle with the Church. It's a good reminder that civilization is a fragile thing, and we are stewards of it. We don't want the next 1,000 years to be lost, too. [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scholasticism https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scholasticism
- lloeki 10y ago
  > one reason they liked old things in the Renaissance was because there was a point of view that the prior ~1,000 years, since the fall of Rome, was a waste intellectually, and that the way forward was to revive the Roman and Greek knowledge Just to be clear, they were fond of old things not just merely because those were "old" and then back in fashion (like, oh those old things are hip, yay!), but because those old folks tried to reason about Nature (in the largest sense, including cosmos, mankind, metaphysics and politics) from first principles instead of sacred tomes brought upon us from heaven (and proceeding with silencing anyone who didn't agree with said tomes).
  - nebabyte 10y ago
Iv 10y ago
Kopimi is the Word. Kopimi is the way.
khana 10y ago
An inevitability.
alistoriv 10y ago
On a similar note, if you're interested in the sort of things the Renaissance Humanists were preserving the Ritman Library[0] has quite a collection that it's in the process of making available online. [0] http://www.ritmanlibrary.com/ http://www.ritmanlibrary.com/
dwe3000 10y ago
It's funny to me how comments on an article on digital librarians has strayed so far down a rabbit hole.

78 points by colinprince 10y ago

Would SciHub count as an example in this case?

You can't "improve" on the traditional teachings. You can distort them in a modern way and play with these distortions, but this doesn't cover up the fact that there was something there before you decided to "improve" upon it. The neo-modernists tend to some Judeo-Christian notion of doing good works as a transcendental connection to God. Essentially, the protestants believe that God is going to tell you what to do, on a personal level. You are somehow a mouthpiece for the will of god. So act like it. The idea is that God made the world with "some assembly required". So now, he is going to get personally involved in the lives of everybody and make sure that everyone understands that the world---which supposedly was made according to the orders of the will of God---now needs to be cleaned up by coordinating the efforts of all nations... ...who are going to make it clear what YOUR role is going to be, "willing servant of God" a.k.a. spiritual janitor This argument isn't fooling anyone. You can't ask people to clean up the spiritual lives of others. That would be protestant reformation-level social rot. It is the argument of a busybody. Injecting a crisis mentality of "old things need to be made new" does nothing more than stir up confusion. Consider the library: we were told that by adding noise-makers (desktop computers) to libraries, libraries would be improved Adding noise-makers to libraries gave young people the idea that bringing their own noise-makers (cell phones) into libraries would be a good idea. So they started doing that. Now young people are just going into libraries and making noise. They don't care about the library. They want to move in and assert their space and right to make noise. The "improvement" to the library merely turned the library into a zoo. Spreading traditional teachings to those who are not prepared to hear them is simply not a good idea, and there is nothing modernism can do about it. There is no way to improve upon the old teachings because the old teachings are not what you think. They are not pieces of a puzzle that can be translated into some modernist narrative of restoration and redemption.

baldfat 10y ago

THANK YOU Humanism NEVER meant Atheist anything till just a few decades ago. Stop destroying the meaning of a word that goes back centuries just because you don't want to use the word Atheist. Thank you

Consultant32452 10y ago
In many circles atheists are the new niggers and fags. (Secular) humanists might not be the phrase you like, but it doesn't surprise me at all that people want to avoid identifying as that word.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  You won't appease bigots by changing your terminology. "Secular humanist" has been just as much a curse as "atheist" for many years now, in some circles. There's more power in reclaiming slurs than retreating from them.
  - beaconstudios 10y ago
    I think the association of atheism with anti-theism does a lot more harm than good, and I'm an atheist. If you take a look at reddit's atheism sub you'll see that this is an ongoing problem.
    - lloeki 10y ago
      Throw agnosticism in and most people just get hopelessly confused. Atheism though is sort of ambiguous as it's sometimes used synonymously to anti-theism, of which it is a superset.
      - beaconstudios 10y ago
        well, atheism is "I don't believe in a God". Then you get 2 strains of anti-theism on top of that: "I am against organised religion" and "I don't want anyone to be religious" (and it's related form, "I think anyone who is religious is stupid"). The problem is that people who claim to represent atheism are often of one of the latter two camps.

hackuser 10y ago

Speaking very generally (and based on slightly faded memory), one reason they liked old things in the Renaissance was because there was a point of view that the prior ~1,000 years, since the fall of Rome, was a waste intellectually, and that the way forward was to revive the Roman and Greek knowledge. I don't think the same conditions apply today, and IMHO perhaps Humanism's goals should be accomplished by other means than focusing on preserving or reviving the past. (Disclaimer: The following mostly is based on memory; details may be off a bit. Sorry.) Hegel said in the 19th century (paraphrased), "he would 'put on seven-league boots' in order to skip over the thousand years between the 6th and 17th centuries and, having at last arrived at René Descartes, said that now he could 'cry land like the sailor.'"[0] Even the name of that prior, wasted period, the "Middle Ages", was given to it by people in the Enlightenment: From their point of view it was the middle between two great periods: Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, and the Enlightenment. The Middle Ages ended, in a sense, with the reintroduction of most of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's works to Europe, where they had been lost for centuries. Aristotle was highly respected and presented a worldview that challenged Scholasticism, the philosophy of the Church. Thomas Aquinas, a name many recognize, made it a mission to reconcile Aristotle with the Church. It's a good reminder that civilization is a fragile thing, and we are stewards of it. We don't want the next 1,000 years to be lost, too. [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scholasticism https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scholasticism

lloeki 10y ago
> one reason they liked old things in the Renaissance was because there was a point of view that the prior ~1,000 years, since the fall of Rome, was a waste intellectually, and that the way forward was to revive the Roman and Greek knowledge Just to be clear, they were fond of old things not just merely because those were "old" and then back in fashion (like, oh those old things are hip, yay!), but because those old folks tried to reason about Nature (in the largest sense, including cosmos, mankind, metaphysics and politics) from first principles instead of sacred tomes brought upon us from heaven (and proceeding with silencing anyone who didn't agree with said tomes).
- nebabyte 10y ago

Iv 10y ago

Kopimi is the Word. Kopimi is the way.

khana 10y ago

An inevitability.

alistoriv 10y ago

On a similar note, if you're interested in the sort of things the Renaissance Humanists were preserving the Ritman Library[0] has quite a collection that it's in the process of making available online. [0] http://www.ritmanlibrary.com/ http://www.ritmanlibrary.com/

dwe3000 10y ago

It's funny to me how comments on an article on digital librarians has strayed so far down a rabbit hole.