I worked in the computer science department at the University of Texas as an admin while the legendary Edsger Dijkstra was still there. I still think about him from time to time.
Though a computer scientist, he famously eschewed computers, because he felt that the physical thing limited his ability to dream of new capacities for computing. As an admin this was less to keep track of but a bit annoying–he actually loved faxes which even then were being phased out.
Now as a lecturer who thinks about digital things, I have leaned heavily into practice. Working with technology helps me think critically about that technology. As a PhD student I’d be annoyed at the “pure theorists” who had never made the thing they are critiquing.
I think that’s very much our “brand” at York: critical, applied, political, digital archaeology. I encourage students to follow our lead and experiment with things, see what works, what breaks, and the “ah-hah” moments that come when they understand the affordances of tech are great.
But I do wonder if I’ll face my “Dijkstra moment” when the tech is no longer inspiring, but limiting in what I think a better digital archaeology could be. Or, as is often the case, my experiments with digital just point at something we don’t understand about “analog” archaeology.
We’ll see. I still like nerd stuff so the day may never come.
*None of this btw is to lionise the old heads of computer science. I have equal amounts of fairly problematic stories about the scions of CS that sort of just washed over me in that 90s pre-me-too era.
Colleen Morgan 