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? Universities: Wet, Hard, Soft, and Harder Friedrich Kittler
"Uni," das ist wie "Kino. "
--Martin Heidegger, Was heisst Denken?
In this paper (whose central European bias is unfortunate, but unavoid- able) I try to draw some diagnostic and even prognostic consequences from the eight hundred years of the university educational system. I rely on a simplified version of Heidegger's Seingeschichte for my analysis. I can think of no other means than historical inquiry to prepare us for the future.
1. Anamnesis
European universities were, as Ernst Robert Curtius put it, "original cre- ations of the Middle Ages. "1 They differed from previous organized studies of classical antiquity by virtue of both their wetware, the so-called univer- sitas magistrorum et studentium, and their hardware: lecterns, libraries, and mail systems. To be sure, the arrangement whereby a single master teaches more than one listener was invented by Pythagoras of Samos (around 530 BCE, in southern Italy). And, of course, Plato's Academy closely followed this pattern,2 except for the fact that it almost totally excluded women,3 and established a long-lasting model up to the nineteenth century, when Oberlin College and Zurich University both rediscovered coeducation. Precisely because, however, Platonism would have been unthinkable without the presence of beautiful, naked, young, free men in Athens,4 students--the wetware of knowledge--could in no way be compelled to write down what the masters had just said. The Greek concept of schol ? e meant leisure, which
? 1. Ernst Robert Curtius, Europa ? ische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern, 1948), p. 62. 2. See Plato, Republic, 10. 600a.
3. See for example Plato, Phaedrus, 60a, 116 a-b.
4. Compare Friedrich Nietzsche, "Go ? tzen-Da ? mmerung oder Wie man mit dem Hammer
philosophirt," Go ? tzen-Da ? mmerung, in Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 9 vols. in 30 (Berlin, 1967), 6. 3. 120, ? 23:
? Critical Inquiry 31 (Autumn 2004)
? 2004 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/04/3101-0008$10. 00. All rights reserved.
244
Critical Inquiry / Autumn 2004 245
? ? is not the same as the medieval concept of schola, let alone the modern concept of compulsory school attendance, gymnastics, and school uni- forms.
Thus, it was only after the fall of the Roman Empire that writing fell as an obligation to monks, nuns, and finally male students. Of all forms of manual labor, mechanical copying, as with present-day computers, closely corresponded to Saint Benedict's dictum Ora et labora. Even if the writer, simply because his tongue knew only some vernacular dialect, did not un- derstand at all the Latin or even Greek words he was supposed to preserve, his work augmented the monastery library and, as Cassiodorus observed, inflicted a further wound to Satan's parchment or skin. 5 Except for some slips, the only data losses that thereby occurred were the goddesses and gods.
Most European universities came into being as extensions of former monasteries or cathedral schools. Therefore, they always possessed from the outset a library full of Latin manuscripts. This very wealth not only guar- anteed the famous translatio studiorum, transporting classical antiquity to the High Middle Ages, but also constituted a kind of hardware, a storage device just as precious as our hard drives. This stored data had to be further transmitted, processed, and recorded; that is, the three necessary and suf- ficient elements of a complete media system were all implemented by me- dieval universities, such as the Sorbonne, Oxford, or Prague. Masters and later doctors or professors proceeded to explain ancient manuscripts; stu- dents, by writing these oral commentaries between the lines of their text- book, did the interpretatio; and after a student had been promoted to doctor he enjoyed the libertas utrique docendi, that is, he was free to offer his teach- ing to universities throughout Europe. In many cases, universities even en- tertained, as did medieval guilds (most prominently that of butchers), a postal system of their own. Because students came from different countries and different language regions, they collectively formed distinct nations connected only by such mail systems and an all too basic Latin.
This threefold hardware--the data-processing lecture, the data-storing university library, and the data-transmitting mail--enabled a cumulative and recursive production of knowledge for almost three centuries before
? ? ? ? ? Plato geht weiter. Er sagt mit einer Unschuld, zu der man Grieche sein muss und nicht "Christ", dass es gar keine platonische Philosophie geben wu ? rde, wenn es nicht so scho ? ne Ju ? nglinge in Athen ga ? be: deren Anblick sei es erst, was die Seele des Philosophen in einen erotischen Taumel versetze und ihr keine Ruhe lasse, bis sie den Samen aller hohen Dinge in ein so scho ? nes Erdreich hinabgesenkt habe.
5. Compare Cassiodorus, De institutione christina, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1937).
? ? Friedrich Kittler is professor of aesthetics and media studies at the Institute for Aesthetics and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin.
246 Friedrich Kittler / Universities
two highly correlated events changed the whole infrastructure of academia: first, Gutenberg's invention of the printing press; second, the emergence of national, that is to say territorial, states.
ContrarytoMcLuhan'sassertionsinUnderstandingMedia,HenryFord, not Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg, created the first assembly line. The movable and (at least for Europe) new letters were meant to enhance both the calligraphic beauty and the literal correctness obtainable by medieval and mostly academic scriptoria, where up to fifty copyists simultaneously had to write text books from oral dictation and, in doing so, unintentionally but unavoidably multiplied the number of errata. 6 Mortals are error prone, as every programmer knows. That is why Rabelais praised the infallible printing press as a divine gift, whereas the equally infallible artillery figured as Satan's invention. 7 Thus, humanism, in its double dependency on uni- versities and printers "thought" somewhat naively it could "tell heaven from hell. "8
In fact things were more complex. Gutenberg's invention posed a rather unheard-of problem. Printing could only come into being and continue to proceed if and when the notoriously underfinanced inventor got back the money he had invested. The circular economy of academic manuscript production and, more important, the universities' monopoly on scientific data storage were dependant on early capitalism. Only inside academic circles did books continue to be mutually exchanged and dedicated;9 out- side, powerful new players--the emerging national states--took over the rights to them.
Nationes no longer designated only French, English, German, and Ro- manic students living in their own vernacular fraternities near the Rive Gauche; whole European peoples followed the pattern of their universities and spoke one out of many printed languages. In Rabelais's France, Charles IX had already been eager to import a printer and his tools from German
? ? ? 6. Compare Michael Giesecke, Der Buchdruck der fru ? hen Neuzeit: Eine historische Fallstudie u ? ber dieDurchsetzungneuerInformations-undKommunikations-technologien(FrankfurtamMain, 1991).
7. See Franc ? ois Rabelais, Pantagruel (1532), OEuvres compl`etes de Rabelais, ed. Jacques Boulenger (Paris, 1955), p. 204:
Maintenant toutes disciplines sont restitue ? es, les langues instaure ? es: grecque, sans laquelle c'est honte que une personne se die sc ? avant [! ], he ? bra ? ? cque, calda ? ? cque, latine; les impressions tant e ? le ? gantes et correctes en usance, qui ont este ? invente ? es de mon [Gargantua's] eage par inspiration divine, comme a` contrefil l'artillerie par suggestion diabolicque.
For wider contexts, see Paolo Rossi, La nascita` della scienca moderna in Europa (Rome, 1997).
8. Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here (1974), Capitol 29750. 9. SeeHeinrichBosse,AutorschaftistWerkherrschaft:U ? berdieEntstehungdesUrheberrechtsaus
dem Geist der Goethezeit (Paderborn, 1981), pp. 25-36.
Critical Inquiry / Autumn 2004 247
Mayence; Franc ? ois I took two more steps by prescribing French as the lan- guage of the legal code and by ordering two copies of each book to be stored in his royal d ? epo^t l ? egal. Thus the nation-state's legal deposit, the forerunner of the French Bibliothe`que Nationale, obviously, shamelessly devalued the wealth and subverted the monopoly of medieval university libraries. The same devaluation happened to the postal systems maintained by butchers, scholars, or cities. The production of modern subjects (in the Cartesian sense) required their extrication from the older guilds. All their mail systems were either bluntly forbidden or smoothly integrated into a national com- munication system, a so-called privilege, which in Western Europe went on to devour the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and finally television. 10
For universities now bereft of their privilege to stand, next to imperium and sacerdotium, as the third column of medieval power,11 there remained just one possible path to adaptation, even to innovation. They had to be- come a res publica litteraria. This, however, in no way implied, despite its republican Roman disguise, a republic of free, let alone bourgeois, citizens. Because every nation-state needed to be represented in each single town and province, the three higher faculties--theology, jurisprudence, and medicine--had to supply each town not simply with doctors but with civil servants. 12 Only the most vulgar materialism of the past could and did con- fuse such academic public servants with the so-called bourgeois. Indeed, a doctor's hat still privileged its bearer to a noble's sword--certainly not, how- ever, the old medieval noblesse d' ? ep ? ee, but rather--it goes without saying-- the noblesse de robe.
When, during the first third of the eighteenth century, the swords be- latedly realized how far the robes had outdone them as ministers of the state, high nobility modernized the curricula of its knights' schools. From circa 1750, then, the noblesse d' ? ep ? ee alone surrounded the thrones. Alberto Mar- tino even goes so far as to suspect that the whole of the Enlightenment was a cover name for much more earthly goals. French academics and intellec- tuals, newly unemployed, wanted back their power and therefore pro- claimed a revolution. 13
This revolution, sadly, was mistaken. Those who came to power were not priests or physicians, but engineers, teachers, and, admittedly, lawyers.
? ? ? 10. FortheU. S. partofthestory,seeThomasPynchon,TheCryingofLot49(NewYork,1966). 11. SeeHerbertGrundmann,VomUrsprungderUniversita ? timMittelalter(Darmstadt,1964). 12. See Thomas Ellwein, Die deutsche Universita ? t: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart
(Wiesbaden, 1997), pp. 47-52.
13. See the first volume of Alberto Martino, Daniel Casper von Lohenstein: Geschichte seiner
Rezeption, 5 vols. (Tu ? bingen, 1978). This fits well with the self-fulfilling prophecies of a better enlightenedfutureanalyzedbyReinhartKoselleck,KritikundKrise:EinBeitragzurPathogenese der bu ? rgerlichen Welt (Freiburg, 1969).
248 Friedrich Kittler / Universities
On the one hand, the early modern university had relied so heavily on printed books in all their multilingual interrelations that the rather simul- taneous emergence of technical, equally infallible construction drawings escaped its notice. Letters, ciphers, and diagrams in their threefold com- bination proved too alien for humanists. The combination, however, of type and woodcut or copperplate enabled scientific visualization at a level of pre- cision unheard of by Greeks and monks. Technology as a science was just the ever-expanding output of this alliance,14 and Carnot's and Monge's E ? cole Polytechnique, founded in 1794, was its earliest institutional instan- tiation. And a brilliant young student of all these technically applied math- ematics, a certain Bonaparte, overran, equipped with Satan's heavy artillery, old Europe. Since that time universities on both sides of the Atlantic have had to cope with engineers.
To make a long story short: European emigrants to America's shores settled all these issues and two world wars. 15
On the other hand, an ancient initiation rite came to an abrupt end. The former first faculty, despite its name, was in no way philosophical. The cur- riculum ranged from trivia--the grammatical, rhetorical, and dialectical aspects of language--to the higher quadrivia of Pythagorean mathemat- ics--music and arithmetic, astronomy and geometry in their Greek inter- connection. 16 As such, this faculty had to remain a mere propaedeutic to the other politically relevant faculties and couldn't award doctoral degrees in its own right. The bloody Revolution and its dreamy German counterpart changed all this. In France, the medieval universities remained as unre- formable as ever, but new E ? coles Normales, by teaching future teachers, enabled Napoleon to procure a new elite of bureaucrats. In Prussia, the king made academic professors and high school teachers civil servants so that a dramatically modernized philosophical faculty could invent--by dialogic seminarsandhermeneuticlectures--theso-calledunityofForschungund Lehre (teaching and research) that then fed back from universities to the gymnasia, from philosophy to literary studies. 17 Interpretation was no longer interlinear, but its contrary, as Gadamer, despite the evidence of pro- gramming languages, persuaded Habermas.
Modern mathematics (from Fourier to Hilbert) as well as modern phi-
? ? ? 14. See Johann Beckmann, Entwurf einer allgemeinen Technologie (Leipzig, 1767).
15. See John Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany (Stanford, Calif. , 1990).
16. See Archytas of Taranto, B1, Diels-Kranz. Here is one of those Greek light(ning)s that Curtius's imperial Latinism choose to ignore.
17. See the references given in Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, trans. Michael Metteer and Chris Cullens (Stanford, Calif. , 1990), pp. 148-64. Also see Michel Foucault, "Qu'est- ce qu'un philosophe? " Dits et ? ecrits, ed. Daniel Defert and Franc ? ois Ewald, 4 vols. (Paris, 1994), 1:552.
Critical Inquiry / Autumn 2004 249
losophy (from Hegel to Heidegger) originated from the French and German programs, the two most successful and often copied models of higher stud- ies. 18 Once technological hardware completed a triumvirate with ontology and mathematics, our present-day system was in place. It began with Felix Klein, Hilbert's colleague in Go ? ttingen, and the "wizard" Steinmetz at MIT. They built experimental labs inside their universities19 and, in the first case, with a little help from the kaiser, imposed a doctor title for engineers on reluctant German universities. Otherwise Alan Turing could never have de- vised his famous mathematical machine, which, on the one hand, disproved Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem but, on the other hand, proved that a small, although practically speaking powerful subset of the real numbers is nev- ertheless computable. 20 The Turing machine, then, was, is, and will be the condition of possibility of all computers. Just as in ancient Greece where one and the same alphabet stood at once for speech elements, natural num- bers, and musical pitches,21 our binary system encompasses everything known about culture and nature, which was formerly encoded in letters, images, and sounds.
2. Diagnosis
Universities, however, and to say the least, have utterly forgotten that glorious history. Especially in those parts of Europe where states still feed, control, and starve them, universities do not think of themselves as more venerable than the nation-states, their short-term partners. Instead of seeking a sudden divorce, both universities and nation-states still keep praying for the former's survival. On the other hand--and this is the good news--universities have finally succeeded in forming once again a com- plete media system. Turing's universal machine--vulgo the computer-- processes, stores, and transmits whatever data it receives, whether textbooks, measurements, or algebras. Computers, therefore, have come full circle; from the mathematics departments where they once began, making their way through physics, chemistry, and medicine, they have finally arrived in the humanities. For the second time in its eight centuries, the university is tech-
? ? ? 18. For Heidegger's relation to Hilbert and the mathematical Grundlagenkrise, see Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Halle, 1931), ? 3, p. 9.
19. For MIT, see Steve Heims, The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, Mass. , 1991); for Klein and Wilhelm II, see Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universita ? t, Technische Hochschule, und Industrie: Ein BeitragzurEmanzipationderTechnikim19. JahrhundertunterbesondererBeru ? cksichtigungder Bestrebungen Felix Kleins (Berlin, 1970).
20. See Alan M. Turing, "On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem," Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 2 (1937): 42.
21. See Johannes Lohmann, Musike ? und Logos, ed. Anastasios Giannara ? s (Stuttgart, 1971), p. 10.
250 Friedrich Kittler / Universities
nically uniform simply because all departments share one and the same hardware.
This logistical fact has yet to be taken into systemic account. It will not do to equip every office or desktop with Microsoft Office and Wintel ma- chines, but we can foresee happy consequences from the new uniformity of knowledges, disciplines, departments. As Heidegger said, early and hum- bly: precisely because the core of the Greek episteme, ontology or the logos of Being, has materialized in computing machines, European philosophy comes to its very end, and thinking may begin again. 22
Clearly, there remains a twofold task. First, we have to organize this end within each single university; second, we must pose a new question.
"La fin de la philosophie se dessine comme le triomphe de l'e ? quipement d'un monde en tant que soumis aux commandes d'une science technicise ? e. Fin de la philosophie signifie: de ? but de la civilisation mondiale en tant qu'elle prend base dans la pense ? e de l'occident europe ? en. "23 In this direc- tion, our universities are well under way. For the first time since Galileo's experiments, mathematicians and physicists work on the same worksta- tions. For the first time since Steinmetz's electrotechnical lab, engineers and scientists pose the same questions about a better hardware design that by itself will create still better questions. And for the first time since the inven- tion of alphabetic library catalogues24 and structured manuscript pages,25 every file in Dewey's sense turns into a file in our computerized sense. 26 Thus, even the humanities' knowledge volatilizes into software libraries. Furthermore, whereas the book-based humanities encountered difficult problems when trying to store or address images, animations, and sounds, computers do not simply record such data but address and process them. The methodical integration of studies in language and music, film and po- etry may begin.
3. Prognosis
And more is to be done. Humboldt's unity of teaching and research re- mains at stake as long as university systems do not overcome the unfortu-
? ? ? 22. "La philosophie prend fin a` l'e ? poque pre ? sente. Elle a trouve ? son lieu dans la prise en vue scientifique de l'humanite ? agissant en milieu social. Le trait fondamental de cette de ? termination scientifique est par ailleurs son caracte` re cyberne ? tique" (Heidegger, "La Fin de la philosophie et la ta^che de la pense ? e," trans. Jean Beaufret and Franc ? ois Fe ? dier, in Kierkegaard vivant [Paris, 1965], p. 178). In those bygone days, cybernetics or elsewhere logistics meant computer science and computer hardware indiscriminately. Many further references could be given.
23. Ibid. , p. 180.
24. See Lloyd W. Daly, Contributions to a History of Alphabetization in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Brussels, 1967).
25. SeeIvanIllich,ImWeinbergdesTextes:AlsdasSchriftbildderModerneentstand(Frankfurt am Main, 1991).
26. See Markus Krajewski, Zettelwirtschaft: Die Geburt der Kartei aus dem Geiste der Bibliothek (Berlin, 2002), pp. 99-121, 150-55.
Critical Inquiry / Autumn 2004 251
nate distinction between Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften (humanities and sciences). 27 When the human face dissolves "comme a` la limite de la mer un visage de sable,"28 the humanities would best be known as cultural studies. When, on the other hand, physics is no longer a tran- scendental apperception, informing Kantian scientists on data given in the twofold frame of space and time, but rather some computer-preprocessed data flow, a scientific visualization, or even sonification,29 the distinction maintained between science and engineering would be annulled. Cultural studies vis-a` -vis technical ones would form a smoother constellation of de- partments, offices, and faculties:
1. When the old humanities do not deal with man, their topics are cul- tural technologies such as writing, reading, counting, singing, dancing, drawing--30 surprisingly almost the same skills that every free young boy and girl in Lakedaimon or in Athens once displayed. 31 For the humanities, there is nothing nontechnical to teach and research; thus, we can throw Habermas's infamous opposition between communicative and instrumen- tal reason overboard.
2. The so-called sciences and technologies, far from dealing with ahis- torical truth, are involved in history simply by making it. Computer science, for example, as opposed to Greek or modern mathematics, has quite an- other impact. It follows that the cultural contexts of proofs, experiments, and hypotheses are in no way trivial and do require elucidation.
3. To accomplish these two operations, universities--like their base, phi- losophy--have to exorcise each last remnant of their monotheistic, that is, monkish, legacy,32 dating from the Middle Ages. The gods do play at dice, "and the gods made love. "33
? ? ? 27. It could be factually shown that Wilhelm Dilthey in drawing this distinction did little else than to prevent Helmholtz's growing influence on contemporary departments of philosophy and psychology.
28. Although it is deemed unfashionable now, I quote from the first edition: Foucault, Les Mots et les choses: Une Arch ? eologie des sciences humaines (Paris, 1966), p. 398.
29. See Peter Mittelsta ? dt, The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Measurement Process (Cambridge, 1998).
30. Berlin's three universities, for practical purposes, have recently allowed at Humboldt University such an interdiscplinary framework. The Helmholtz-Zentrum fu ? r Kulturtechniken includes, among others, mathematicians, computer scientists, literary critics, art historians, and Kulturwissenschaftler (untranslatable as "cultural studies," in the British sense are all-too-biased for popular culture).
31. I can live with the fact that drawing was facultative, but the other skills obligatory. See, for example, Aristotle, Politics, 8. 3. 1338a40-42.
32. See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, ? 44, p. 229: "Die Behauptung 'ewiger Wahrheiten' ebenso wie die Vermengung der pha ? nomenal gegru ? ndeten 'Idea-lita ? t' des Daseins mit einem idealisierten absoluten Subjekt geho ? ren zuden la ? ngst noch nicht radikal ausgetriebenen Resten von christlicher Theologie innerhalb der philosophischen Problematik. " Whoever cares, then, about deconstruction straddles Athens and Jerusalem.
33. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland (1968), MCA 11600.
252 Friedrich Kittler / Universities
? ? In order not to remain merely nominal, these reformulations must have institutional consequences. From now on the cultural sciences need com- puter specialists as well as mathematicians on their teaching staffs, and, in- versely, the technical ones need historians of science. Just as Hegel's Geist was only as deep as its explications,34 today's knowledge is only as powerful as its implementations. The future of the university depends on its faculty to unite separated notation systems of alphabets and mathematical symbols into a superset.
All the risks of this future, however, depend upon a correct diagnosis of our present. What has happened to high technology since the end of World War II must be conceptualized as a recursion of much older stories so that universities will be able to reform themselves. Computer technologies are as academically inflected as Europe's scholarly knowledge, but they are also just as commercialized. The universal discrete machine, still the most in- fluential hardware architecture, was the product of a Ph. D. thesis, the draft of a Princeton mathematician, whose elegance led to a brilliant career inside the Pentagon. UNIX, prototype of all modern operating systems and, there- fore, programming language styles, was developed, it is true, by Bell Labs. Its worldwide success, however, came about only after the University of California at Berkeley had heavily modified it,35 after Linus Torvalds, while a young student at Helsinki Technical University, wrote the free LINUX kernel from scratch in 1991, and, finally, after a whole bunch of hackers, internet-basedstudents,andfacultymembershadhelpedTorvaldsinhelp- ing thirty million people. 36 "When we speak of free software, we are refer- ring to freedom, not price. "37
This is no wonder. A Turing machine, just like the medieval student, is a nearly cost-free copying machine, and a perfect one. The internet is a point-to-point transmission system copying almost infallibly not from men to men but, quite to the contrary, from machine to machine. The liberty to connect whole computer farms throughout the world has strong affinities to the old libertas utrique docendi. Thus, the internet, originally a digital
? 34. See G. W. F. Hegel, Pha ? nomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Hamburg, 1952), p. 15: "Die Kraft des Geistes ist nur so gross als ihre A ? usserung, seine Tiefe nur so tief, als er in seiner Auslegung sich auszubreiten und sich zu verlieren getraut. " The key word, to my colleagues' knowledge, seems to be getrauen, "to dare. "
35. See Peter H.