Letters to Editor (2)
For years I have resisted all temptation to respond to Blithe Spirit argumentative material. With age seems to come some softening of resolve. The ‘Letter from Winford 2001’ (BS11/2), at last provoked a response. His argument, on which I want to focus, seems to go beyond mere Luddite-ism. For me this is all the more difficult because I respond positively to the author’s style and many of his previous observations and ideas.
In the ‘humans v computers’ debate, he advocates the dominance of humans over machines and almost hysterically ‘beseeches you’ to fight hard against the ‘proposed intrusion of scientific method into matters so non-scientific’. Jesse quotes the case of a job-padding scientist looking for research projects… This occurs in every field. How many Art or English teachers take their creative work that seriously once securely paying their mortgages? The random fluttering of butterflies is both admissible and charming. To confuse these with the moth-to-the-candle motivation of the critic mistakes resemblance for correspondence. It is also a certain route to the errors of the non sequitur and a parochial approach that ignores the implications of the creative acts of many scientists, artists, musicians and writers. Against unquestioned convention, they are the momentum for positive developmental and revolutionary progression.
For this debate, we must distinguish between the role of ‘computer-as-tool’ and a human desire to believe in a perceptive and comprehending ability beyond reality. My concern is with human limitations. If we believe that ‘we do recognise a good haiku when we meet one in the hedge’ then, conversely, we know what to reject. The problem is that, together with the brief poems of limited quality, we would also be rejecting the intelligently creative but problematically new and different, which may assist the evolution of the genre.
I suspect this human approach owes much to our early learning that taught most of us to conform and offer obedience to those with ‘the knowledge’. Practising and understanding the process of creativity was not an integral educational ingredient. The result makes our reactions more subjective, predictable and limited than we often care to acknowledge. A computer, on the other hand, is no more than a very sophisticated tool designed to aid human understanding and decision-making. The results need to be questioned and interpreted and are not there to be accepted unconditionally. Importantly, they are at worst neutral and at best more ‘objective’ than we not-as-fully-maturated-as-we-often-kid-ourselves humans can possibly be. Imagine a joiner who refuses to use anything other than a hammer and nails, themselves more useful than banging with a most human of fists! A saw and plane seem essential components of the toolbox. What we should be most aware of is not the ‘negative’ powers of the computer but human self-delusion.
As this discussion gets further and further away from its starting point, we run the risk of losing the sense of what it’s all about. David Platt’s article outlining his way of assessing the quality of haiku by computer program is printed in BS 10/2. David’s investigations began in a workshop run by Annie Bachim to begin which she asked IS THERE AN OBJECTIVE WAY TO ASSESS HAIKU? Neo-Luddites and Computer illiterates might like to see this issue’s editorial for the plain person’s paper guide to the origins of David’s masterful program…
Page(s) 63-64
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