Mícheál Mac an Airchinnigh
Department of Computer Science,
Trinity College Dublin
THE PRACTICAL SENSE OF PHILOSOPHIZING: WHY PRESERVE ANYTHING AT ALL, EVEN DIGITALLY?
Abstract: Confronted with the apparent need to preserve cultural heritage it seems appropriate that we ought to ask fundamental questions. Living in a world at a time of great devastation and destruction, both “natural” [sic], such as the flooding of Prague and Dresden, and man-made, such as the warring on Kabul and Baghdad, brought home to us by satellite and internet, we are anguished at the loss of and damage to the cultural artefacts of the other, artefacts that belong in a real sense to everyman. In this paper the digital technology of the age is taken as given. We know what it is and how it can be used to preserve. But for whom do we preserve ? Trivially, the answer is for the individual human being. The answer is not for humanity. And who chooses what is to be preserved ? The chooser will be like the author of a book, driven by inspiration. The paper is constructed using different styles to forge a way of presenting the questioning, an examining of the raison d’être, that brings history to the foreground, on centre stage if you will, that grants technology its natural embedded scene-setting and that ultimately aims to prepare each of us for the walk-on part that each must play.
Key words: artefact, destruction, digital, everyman, questioning, humanism, philosophizing, practical, preservation, sense, technology, theatre, war.