[-empyre-] Digital Objects // PROCESS : What is a digital process?

[Anaïs Nony]

Dear all,



I would like to address a special thanks to Alexander, Quinn, Dani, Ben,
and John for discussing together the notion of process. It was very
valuable and I hope to continue to exchange further with you on that topic.



I would like to briefly develop what I meant when I drop off the notion of
“timeware view of science” few days ago.



At the core of what is still an intuition concerning the time-specificity
of experience, reside both the notion of randomness and openness. By
randomness I mean a dynamic potential based on non-probability: what is not
systematic and yet can be part of a system. By openness I mean the greatest
possible freedom of knowledge access, or to put it with Simondon and from
the realm of his technical object, the greatest possible freedom of
functioning of an object that shapes experience. Here “knowledge access” is
not to be understood from an authoritative anthropological figure, but as a
categorical scheme that has both an agency of its own and effects on how
the world is experienced.



When talking about a “timeware view of science” I am refereeing to
Chaitin’s “software view of science”: a scientific theory that is like a
computer program, which predicts observations and conceives of a world
without emergence. Because of the fundamental diachronic dimension of
experience, I wonder if the digital realm (that which is about chronic
synchrony) allows precisely to conceiving of a timeware view of science,
that is a time where both scientific formulas and categorial objects (from
Husserl’s temporal/mental objects to Simondon’s technical object) meet. A
timeware view of science is directly tied to Bachelard’s phenomenotechnics
where process is understood as dynamic and productive discontinuities and
where time is a relational perspective that allows to thinking about
randomness and openness as condition of knowledge formation.



Given my pretty obscure explanation and the work that needs to happen
concerning the digital realm, I hope this small contribution opens
perspectives for further discussions.



Thanks to all,

Anaïs
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