A critical, analytical framework for the digital machine

ABSTRACT

The Faculty of Digital and Computational Studies (DCS) at Bowdoin College proposes a critical, analytical framework, referred to as the ‘4As,’ as an interdisciplinary means to interpret, evaluate, and create the data, operations, and devices of computing across all domains of knowledge production. Following other disciplines that have developed in symbiotic relationships to one another, DCS puts computation in conversation with fields from across the arts, humanities, physical, and social sciences. Our foundational premise is the bidirectional influence between these disciplines and digital artifacts and computation. The 4As (artifact, architecture, abstraction, and agency) benefit from both the scepticism of the liberal arts in the face of ubiquitous digital processes and the analytical opening for examining questions pertaining to creative and imaginative alternatives to the digital and computational status quo. We provide an ultra-contemporary case study to demonstrate the framework in use.

KEYWORDS:

• Abstraction
• analytical framework
• computation
• computational social sciences
• digital humanities
• liberal arts
• epistemology
• 4As

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Crystal Hall

Crystal Hall is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at Bowdoin College where she teaches courses on the relationship between technology and scholarly practice. Her research specialization is Renaissance and Early Modern Italy, and her digital project on Galileo's library builds on both the research completed and the questions raised by her first book, Galileo's Reading (2013). As a founding member of Digital and Computational Studies, she contributes to several campus committees, regularly conducts outreach to colleagues from all academic disciplines, and acts as a liaison with the offices of Information & Technology, Academic Technology & Consulting, and Bowdoin Libraries.

Eric Chown

Eric Chown is the Sarah and James Bowdoin Professor of Digital and Computational Studies at Bowdoin College, a program that he helped found. Chown won an NSF CAREER grant in 2001 for his work on computational models of space, and another NSF RUI grant in 2010 for his work in robotics. His general areas of research also include computational models of human learning, the human emotion system, cognitive robotics, and most recently how people create and understand metaphors. He spent 12 years as the team leader of the Bowdoin College Standard Platform League (SPL) RoboCup team, the Northern Bites, that won the World Championship in 2007, and had several other finishes in the top 3 in the world.

Fernando Nascimento

Fernando Nascimento is Assistant Professor in Digital and Computational Studies at Bowdoin College teaching courses on philosophy of technology and hermeneutics. His research is organized in three interconnected academic axes of ethics, hermeneutics, and digital technologies and has the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur as its main theoretical reference. Prior to his academic positions, he worked for almost 20 years in the telecommunication industry developing software for mobile devices worldwide. He is currently co-director of the Digital Ricoeur project and director of the Society for Ricoeur Studies.