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Argument and data
An epistemic system organizes and conveys knowledge, along two major directives:
- it develops an argument, which flows dynamically from stated premises and hypotheses, through a line of reasoning, to a logical conclusion;
- it musters data, which support the argument at various points of its development.
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The digital turn
The interaction of argument and data serves as the foundation of inquiry and communication in general, but especially in the scholarly domain. With the advent of the digital medium, a breakdown has occurred in how this interaction may in fact work.
On the one hand, and on the positive side, the handling of data has grown into dimensions that were wholly unimaginable. Both the quantity of the information, and the complexity of the classification systems that are applied to it, provide an ease of access and a measure of control that seems to have no limits.
On the other hand, and on the negative side, the nature of the argument has become atrophied. Instead of growing apace with the ever more sophisticated treatment of data, the articulation of the argument has frozen to where it has been since the beginning of writing: it has remained essentially static, with none of the dynamics that characterizes the digital databases. We may say that argument is but the electronic counterpart of its printed analog, without ever having become properly digital.
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Websites
Websites give the illusion of presenting a digital argument. There is, indeed, a narrative which was not created from the start as a printed page, with hyperlinks that extend the reach of the presentation, and a fluidity that projects a dynamism all its own. But, conceptually, each website “page” remains tied to the printed model – as implied by the very use of the word “page,” one of the very few that has been carried over from the world of printing.
We will, in what follows, look at two aspects that define an argument, sequentiality and linearity, in order to show how this atrophization process has taken shape, and thus see where the solution rests.
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A properly “digital” discourse
I have discussed the notion of digital discourse in a number of publications and presentations, and in the Cybernetica Mesopotamica website dedicated to the wider project within which the UGR fits. A full discussion is reserved for a separate website, digital discourse, in preparation.
The concept of “discourse” refers to the interaction among argument and data,and thus it serves as the foundation for any epistemic system.
The concept of “digital discourse” refers to the interaction among multiple planes, each of which carries out its own discourse but in a tight connection with the others. It is discussed below under the heading of “interplanarity,” whiile the next section, about Uses, shows how this applies especially to gthe UGR.
It is the age old interaction between analysis and synthesis, but heightened by the immensely greater power of the electronic tool now at our disposal. More than in most cases, the technique truly impacts on method by eliciting new habits and, indeed, new mental templates, beyond pre-digital limits.
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