Defiling Folders – on the Ontology of Digital Beings

I have been working for over two weeks now on a post following my presentation on how the 5 Senses are simulated online and on the relationship between sensual experience and interface.

While I am somewhat overwhelmed with the numerous examples and the immense details i have to plow through when it comes to simulating senses online (and the reasons why taste and smell are so much more difficult to represent and replicate on any interface/ machine) – I started thinking about a new project – submitting a paper to a special issue of the magazine “The Philosophy of Computer Science” dedicated to Minds and Machines (scheduled for Fall 2010).

The call for paper (CFP as academics like to call it) lists no less than 27 topics – but question no. 7 immediately grabbed me:

“What kinds of things are digital objects? Do we need a new ontological category to house them?”

Thinking about the ontology of digital being and on “digital identity matters” as some researchers already put it, threw my brain into a conundrum and started that tickle that i guess i am addicted to.

After sometime i realized that even though i may not know much about Computer Science i am rather familiar with digital beings and i’d love to think about how they occupy space in the world, the relationships they hold among themselves, and the differences between digital and physical objects.

I’d like to do a George Perec inspired exploration – and to move from smaller objects (or spaces) to larger ones. Georges Perec was a French writer and a structuralist who experimented not only with language and content but also with form. For example, he wrote a book without the letter E (La Disparition), a 500 words long palindrome and composed crosswords for living.

Georges a un chat

The first item that i’d look at will be the autograph, from there i’ll move to letters (or e-mail to be more specific, including spam), folders, books and finally – libraries. Initially i wanted to write about songs and images as well, but they’re less textual based and the topic is already huge.

There’s also a song i like, which is just perfect for this post – it’s conveniently called “Folder” (!) by a band called “Plastic Operator” and the animated music video for the song was directed by Pete Circuitt.

to be continued…