Subject: CASTAC - Computational Anthropology (Gessler & Hakken) Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:54:15 -0500 From: Joseph Dumit Reply-To: "Comm of Anthropology of Sci, Tech, and Computers" To: CASTAC-L@mitvma.mit.edu The following is a set of exchanges between Nick Gessler and David Hakken regarding Computation Anthropology and Hakken's response to it. Hakken asked me to post these to the CASTAC list. Nick Gessler writes: > Feb 23, 1998. >We need YOU as a "prospective member" for a new COMPUTATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY SECTION (CAS) of the American Anthropological Association. >COMPUTATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY is about writing and running computer programs which help us understand cultural processes. >It is about understanding the relationship between the individual and the group, the social and physical environment, the natural and artifactual world. It is about learning, cognition, development, evolution, and cultural transmission. It is about the interplay between ideas, cognitions, behaviors, materiality and nature. COMPUTATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY has applications in archaeological, biological, physical, social, cultural and linguistic anthropology. >Becomming a "prospective member" is free. When we reach 250, we will be given "probationary status" and a chance to recruit 250 paid members. It costs you nothing to give us a chance to become a section. >Wouldn't it be worth $10 expected dues for an opportunity to present your own work and hear about others' work in building computer representations of cultural processes? Wouldn't it be worth $10 to have access to a directory of anthropologists modeling cultures on the Web? Wouldn't it be worth $10 to have your research listed in our proposed "Computational Anthropology" website? Wouldn't it be worth $10 to become a "charter member" of a new section which can only grow as interest in modeling, complexity, non-linear systems, emergence, origins and evolution grows across the sciences? Wouldn't it be worth $10 to get in on the ground floor? Here is what we need from you NOW! >1) Your full name (required). 2) Your full postal mailing address (required). 3) Your full email address (if you have one). 4) Your full website address (if you have one). 5) Please distribute this call for members as widely as possible. >* PRESS REPLY. * FILL IN THE INFORMATION IN 1) TO 4) ABOVE. * PRESS SEND. >Check out our "prospective members" Website which is at: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/cas-aaa.html >Please join us... Thanks, Nick Gessler gessler@ucla.edu ----------------- David Hakken replied: Dear Nick Thanks for the invite. I will not be joining your section. My interest lie in the anthropology of computing (the culture of cyberspace, or the relationship between use of Advanced Information Technology and social change), not in computing in anthropology, clearly the focus of your organization. I have leared over the last eighteen years that this distinction is hard for anthropologists to hold on to, and, as someone strongly identified with the anthropology of computing, my involvement in your group would only add to the confusion. Nonetheless, I understand and provisionally support your effort. I would point out that the General Anthropology Division's Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing has successfully fostered the growing interest in the anthropology of computing without organizing a separate section. When chair of this group, I argued against such separate organization, because it further divides anthropologists from each other. This remains the reason why my support for your effort is "provisional." Should you find members of your group more interested in the anthropology of computing that computing in anthropology, I urge you to suggest that they join CASTC, which the can do without adding to their AAA membership bill (since it is not a formal section). Should you find, as was the case with David Sapir's previous effort to organized a "computing in anthropology' group, that a substantial portion of your membership is really more interested in the anthropology of computing, I urge you to find ways to work with CASTC rather than duplicating our efforts. Sincerely David Hakken Professor of Anthropology Director, Policy Center SUNY Institute of Technology PO Box 3050 Utica, NY 13504-3050 315-792-7437 (7503 FAX) hakken@sunyit.edu ------------------- Nick Gessler replies: >Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:56:31 -0800 >To: David Hakken hakken@sunyit.edu >From: Nick Gessler >Subject: CASTAC and CAS >Dear David, >Thank you for your thoughtful note. I agree with you that our groups interests are distinct, though complementary, and that the difference may be confusing to many. I understand that it makes good sense to keep your name associated with the "anthropology of computing" side of computing. >I have noticed a strong, small but growing interest in computer simulations of cultural (and human biological) systems both inside and outside of anthropology. CAS is designed to provide a forum for such research. I believe that computational anthropology will grow with our without our help - my concern is that it grow in the fertile and informed setting of our association as well as outside it. I will certainly try to keep the complemtarity / distinctiveness of CAS and CASTAC clear and would be happy to refer people to CASTAC if this is where their interests are. >I think, perhaps, that your concerns about not wanting to divide anthropologists may be more appropriate to CASTAC than to CAS, at least in the sense that the goals of CASTAC do not require as great a consideration of the kind of epistemological shift in the way science is done as is implied by computation. In other words, CASTAC research may be done using more-or-less traditional methods without the ethnographer being committed to understanding or adopting a philosophy of computation. So in this sense, it is appropriate to broaden the subject domain of anthropology without splitting off into topical groups. >With CAS, I believe there will be more of a feeling by its members that they are already outside, not just because of their subject domain (which may be closer to traditional anthropological subjects such as non-electronically-mediated-societies in CAS rather than wired communities in CASTAC), but because of the way they think about and represent anthropological phenomena. To some extent, CAS members will have to seriously entertain the epistemology of computation. I think CAS is hopeful that AAA membership will say, "yes, there is a computational philosophy out there in science, and yes, we want to give it a chance to fluorish in anthropology." I don't think that CAS is interested in dividing anthropologists, rather it sees itself as bridging the growing divide between traditional science and humanities on the one hand and computation on the other. It is an opportunity for anthropologists who have already been thinking in that direction to bring their interests and experience together with colleagues both inside and outside the AAA. In my view, CAS should be an interface between "anthropologists" and "computer scientists" who are interested in the origins and evolution of humans and culture. >It is not my intention that CAS duplicate CASTAC's efforts in the "anthropology of computing." I personally find the goals of CASTAC quite important and interesting. I was quite favorably impressed with the San Francisco session on the ethnography of Silicon Valley and was trying to encourage the participants to publish their work with MIT Press. I'm sorry I didn't have the opportunity to attend the CASTAC meetings in Washington, DC and I'm also sorry that they put our session in parallel with an anthropology of computing session. Charles Ostman, part of our DC session, did present a forward-looking "anthropology" of computation. This may have overlapped with CASTAC's subject area, but I believe his perspective was unique, coming as it did from a career in engineering and computing and from a science-writers participation in numerous technology conferences. His perspective, is one that few, if any, anthropologistshave. >Anyway, I hope we can keep in touch and work together to develop our common interests. I would like to see both groups fluorish through informed cooperation. >Sincerely, Nick Gessler Nick Gessler > ARTIFICIAL CULTURE: Experiments in Synthetic Anthropology (in preparation for MIT Press) >Founding Member - Coordinator COMPUTATIONAL EVOLUTION AND ECOLOGY GROUP CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE >Department of Anthropology University of California at Los Angeles c/o 11152 Lucerne Avenue, Culver City, California 90230-4244 Phone/FAX: 310-559-6661 http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/gessler