<nettime-ann> What is the New Computer Science?

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

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// Date: Tue, 8.12-2009
// Time: 20:00
// Freier Eintritt | Entrance free
// Sprache: wenn nicht anders angegeben in englischer Sprache
// Language: mainly in English if not advised differently

What is the New Computer Science?
It is essential to engage in a reflection on the relationship between  
computer science and the history of ideas. Existing computer science  
is based on 17th century ideas (philosophy and scientific method). The  
entire history of ideas of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries has been  
excluded from computer science, which has established itself as an  
engineering and technical discipline starting from this foundational  
exclusion.

Interdisciplinarity and the New Classification of Knowledge
To bootstrap itself, work on the New Computer Science will proceed in  
two dimensions. One dimension is the writing of code. The other  
dimension is the project of the comprehensive rethinking of the entire  
classification system or categories of knowledge in the West  
(beginning with the division between the natural sciences and the  
human sciences).

Inscribe Philosophy into the Heart of Computer Science
Our project is to inscribe post-17th century philosophy into the very  
heart and foundations of computer science, and to do this practically.  
We use the term “philosophy” in a very broad sense that includes all  
of the history of ideas, from mathematics and quantum physics to  
linguistics, poetry, and painting. The primary basis of the New  
Computer Science in its pragmatic dimension of the writing of software  
code that does powerful new things that no other software can do is  
the original works of two thinkers: P.D. Ouspensky and Alexis Clancy.

Revolutionary Code
The writing of code is crucial for two reasons. First, we must prove  
to the intellectual, academic, technological, cyberspace, business,  
and journalistic communities that we have established a New Computer  
Science. This cannot be achieved through words. It must entail  
demonstrations of working code and working software. Second, the New  
Computer Science is coupled and entangled with a utopian social/ 
cultural/political/economic project to change the world. So it must be  
independent of all existing institutions and by necessity self- 
financing.

Alan N. Shapiro is a trans-disciplinary thinker who studied science- 
technology at MIT and philosophy-history-literature at Cornell  
University. He is the author of "Star Trek: Technologies of  
Disappearance" (Berlin: AVINUS Verlag, 2004) and many published  
essays. He is a practicing software developer, and a translator of  
works in new philosophy and new critical theory from German and  
Italian into English. He loves baseball and casino gambling.

Alexis Clancy is a young Irish artist, computer scientist, and  
mathematician with university degrees in mathematics and physics. He  
has a special genius here, and his breakthroughs stem in part from his  
having undertaken studies of comparative historical mathematical  
systems, such as Hebrew and Mayan mathematics, and Bushido dynamics.  
He is the author of the books "Coda" and "Epic."

supported by Institute of Algorhythmics, Berlin.
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