NINCH >> Computer Sciences and Humanities >> Working Group Two Ravens Institute Rice University Libraries   In association with: National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage The Center for Arts and Cultural Policy, The Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, University of Glasgow     Description The Two Ravens Project is structured by two interrelated goals. The first is to serve as a forum to explore the transformational changes of networked technology on the contemporary social fabric from the perspective of the humanities in order to better understand, integrate, and predict the effects of the digital revolution. The second is to allow current practitioners in the humanistic disciplines to manage the evolution of the humanities. Participants necessary to achieve both ends include scholars, teachers, and students from a variety of disciplines, including the social sciences, law, and science and engineering, as well as representatives of government, business, and industry. Fundamental assumptions of the project include the belief that digital networks, tools, and resources will best serve teaching and research only if they are susceptible to human choice, experimentation, and creative application. One of the prevalent causes of late twentieth century frustration with technology is that so many technological tools often allow for little human choice. Janus-like, digital technology can be programmed as a tightly controlled, closed environment, or one that is more expansive, flexible, and susceptible, and genuinely interactive. The Two Ravens Project will attempt to influence the evolving digital environement as a source for and means of imaginative invention. A second assumption follows upon the realization that any technology can either reflect the status quo or enhance the prevailing order, perhaps recast it into something new and more compelling. The degree of determinism of any technology rests not so much upon the complexity or mechanical intricacy of the technology, but the degree of sophistication with which we conceptualize and evaluate it. Technical wizardry is of little value if the evaluative tools are rudimentary or poorly articulated.   Primary Goals The Two Ravens Institute undertakes: to refocus currently polarized and simplistic discussions about technology as it relates to culture, education, and the individual in terms that recognize the complexity and ambiguity of these issues to invigorate these discussions with perspectives normally associated with the humanities--perspectives largely absent from current discourse and to foster an intellectual environment wherein individuals can assume greater responsibility for a strong and continuing democracy.   Structure The term 'institute' is used in more than one sense. It implies an ongoing series of short, intensive workshops devoted to one or more of the thematic issues noted below. Twice each year, the Institute will convene week-long retreats with approximately 10-12 people prominent in a variety of academic and creative fields. These small groups will discuss pertinent themes in seclusion, with a final report(s) published at the conclusion of the meeting. Those invited to the retreats will be purposefully selected to allow for a broad array of perspectives to be brought into focus around the general theme. 'Institute' also can be construed as a related set of themes that a number of existing institutes in the humanities and sciences would address over time, as well as referring to a virtual organization whose discussions, publications, recommendations, and projects are facilitated largely through digital networks.   Administration The Two Ravens Institute is jointly administered through the libraries at Rice University and the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. Project retreats will be held at facilities under the auspices of the University of California and Rice, as well as other venues, including the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and Glasgow University in Scotland, to encourage broad engagement with the project's themes.   Promulgation The promulgation of materials produced at Institute retreats and other sponsored meetings will be wide and routine. Institute related issues and recommendations will be sent to scholarly societies and journals, as well as newspapers, more popular weekly magazines, political agencies, and television and radio venues.   Benchmarks of Success This project will be judged successful upon evidence of the following: the promulgation of its proceedings cause wider dissemination of the themes and issues of the Institute in other media, including non-scholarly journals and broadcasting a larger public takes up the issues of the institute as an extended dialogue the ideas generated in the retreats become incorporated into scholarly writing and teaching a more sophisticated understanding of the implications of technology for society is evident in legislative bodies greater interdisciplinarity in research on and teaching about technology occurs networked technology becomes more of a utility for educational collaboration and community building greater accuracy of prediction, and more thoughtful applications, of technology as a tool of education   Themes The Institute will convene conferences, workshops, and occassions of public discourse on the following topics. 1. What is the preferred evolution of the humanities in the digital era? What strategies can be articulated to assist in the evolution of the humanities to accomplish the desired goals? Exploration of the changes in methodologies and new performance measures will be undertaken; new models of discourse and training discussed. Examples of current and suggested transformations to the canon and the appropriation of humanistic themes by scholars in the sciences and other disciplines will be studied and assessed.   2. Self-Governance in the Digital Age The role of technology--particularly networked technology--in fostering changing concepts of the individual and a democratic society. This includes examining historical evidence on the changing philosophies of citizenship in an increasingly technological state; the issue of sovereignty in the digital era; technology as an instrument of political and social reform.   3. Technology and National Security The investment in technology as a national good for education and improved communication in the United States; the consequences of a renewed educational infrastructure for future national security; the impetus of technology to thwart or enhance these goals; equity of access as an issue of security; the historical relationship of progress to technology as a guarantor of a secure state; nationalism in a global networked environment.   4. Historical/Cultural Research on the Relationship of Technology and the Imagination. There exists a long and rich tradition of myth, legend, fairy tale, and fabular poetry that describes technology as antithetical to human imagination. Technology is portrayed as hierarchical, rigidly structured, and predictable. Many fairy tales, such as Rumplestiltskin, portray technology as a disenfranchising force that overturns traditional roles, individual identity, and cultural continuity, with ambiguous results.   5. Contemporary Definitions and Descriptions of Technology. Focus on the terms, particularly the metaphors, similes, and analogies, used to describe current digital technology as a means to discover the cultural contextualization of new phenomena, as well as the prevailing constraints on applications and opportunities that such language might entail.   6. General Research on the Reception and Predictions of Technology Analysis of the initial and developing response to technologies, e.g. gunpowder, the steam engine, the laser, telephone, and television to discern the evolution of a technology's appropriation into a social construct. Further study of the relationship of the concepts of technology and history and their (deterministic) interrelationship.   7. Identity and Technology: Story Telling Until recently, cultural values and survival techniques were passed along in human societies largely through story telling. Story telling, or private myth making, is also a critically important means by which children define themselves and make sensible order of their world. Intensive exploration of the role of stories in the development of children, examples and analysis of their stories, and the effects of modern technologies, including digital networks, on the traditions of individual and familial story telling.   8. Oral and Literate Cultures Building upon scholarship that analyzes the distinctive characteristics of these cultural types, Institute members research the typology of selected late twentieth century societies, sources and patterns of information access and utilization, and the nature of popular and academic tropes,to determine what role networked technology might play as an agent of cultural change from literate to oral, and the consequences.   9. Technology and the Material Object Within the last two centuries, technology has transformed the production, distribution, availability, and cost of material objects. It has also changed the way objects, including art objects, are perceived, valued, and interpreted. The Institute explores the convergence of art and technology, and the influence of technology on perceptual response. In addition to the above categories for research and discussion, the Institute undertakes the following: 10. The Use of Technology to Foster the Imagination In contradistinction to many prevailing traditions, means and methods by which modern digital networks can enhance creativity and be used as a means to preserve, access, and foster responsibility for the cultural heritage are designed and implemented. 11. Redefining Technological Applications for the 21st Century Exploring alternate ways to use technology, as well as new metaphors and analogies with which to describe emerging technological phenomena.   The Two Ravens Institute takes its name from Old Norse mythology. Two ravens rested on the shoulders of the god Odin: Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. The ravens circled the sky, often during battle, and returned in the evening to Odin. It was considered apocalyptic if only one of the ravens should return, the consequences being a society governed by memory without thought, or thought without memory. The story was meant to represent the concepts of a world defined by the figurative absence of the living, with the past eternally unchanged, or the rule of the present without understanding of what has come before. As for ravens, with only one, there may as well be none.