Version: 7.6.2024
Deutsch
The transdisciplinary Internet journal TRANS has been published by INST since 1997. In the beginning, a digital publication of scientific articles was still a new format for scientific publications. The INST has introduced work with the Internet into cultural studies work in a variety of ways in Central Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America (including Internet seminars). The development, in which thousands from over 120 countries were or are involved, has been documented several times.
In the past, the INST had already used a variety of formats for public relations: not only magazines, newspapers, brochures, books, but also, for example, text exhibitions (a precursor to today’s digital installations), films, digitality as a technology of museum presentations.
The new challenge for TRANS 28 was also to bring content-related suggestions, contributions from around 10,000 participants from over 120 countries into a new format that is emerging in the context of a radical change in the media world, but also in the world of education. It will not only be about Matura theses – as in Austria – but about a completely new approach to „sources“, methodologies, forms of writing. The responsible ministry already lacks the conceptual approach to this, as it adopts the advertising language of marketing.
TRANS 28 is now being created in the context of a new world of communication. The marketing hype around Large Languages Models (LLM) such as ChatGPT is already ebbing away. Not only for reasons of principle, but also because of technical failures. In the meantime, a variety of examples show what cannot work even after „training“ the software, because artistic, cultural, innovative action of a machine is not possible. Communication is by no means linear, as Jura Soyfer already showed in his play Astoria. The achievement of the LLM, however, consists in its special form of reproduction. It is limited by the amount of data and by the type of software in which the data is processed. Innovations and intelligence are excluded. The term „artificial intelligence“ is therefore not factual, but stands in a long tradition of making something appear that it is not.
But on 14.5.2024, for example, the APA presented a new form of multimediality that also corresponds to the reality of today’s artistic productions, but is by no means identical with it. The APA-NewsDesk succeeds the APA-OnlineManager (AOM) and offers content planning, monitoring and comprehensive research in a variety of sources – all with the latest AI technologies from APA. A key term for the APA in this context is „human control“. The machine is understood as the tool that it is (see Jura Soyfer: Lechner Edi). And insofar as it is perceived that it is machine communication, the interest in what is presented by the general public also wanes. More bots does not automatically mean more influence in public areas.
The APA model also has a fundamental limitation. This is already evident in the use of the marketing term „artificial intelligence“ (AI). The Future of Fact Checking (eventmaker.at) is understood as the future of a business model for news and democracy. Of course, it is currently becoming apparent that the ÖVP model of the Austrian company with politics as marketing has failed. A central deficit of the APA-NewsDesk is also the lack of cultural-historical awareness. The questionable nature of a timeline results from the overcoming of medieval chronology as a form of representation in its limitations around 200 years ago. In the 19th century, a new approach to sources also emerged. Again, the APA tries to set themes (the note box had already reached its limits in the 19th century / at the beginning of the 20th century this was prominently reflected in the novel „The Man Without Qualities“ by Robert Musil).
However, the APA does not claim to be truthful like historical science, but offers news on the market. Their sources can be helpful, as Rudolf Muhr’s research on Austrian German shows. Of course, the understanding that news is offered also gives rise to methodological problems in connection with fake news and the identification of sources, the questionable aestheticization in connection with a key concept such as narrative and focal points, which correspond more to marketing than to reality.
The INST goes one step further and speaks of „cultural control“. This means that control should not be fragmented any more than the development of the technology, the software, the technology. Like the APA, the INST is interested in overarching cooperation. The necessity of transdisciplinary cooperation was a basic idea when INST was founded. It has proven its worth especially in large-scale projects, as is also documented in TRANS 28: with the Jura Soyfer World Project, the relationship between languages, literatures, the arts and digitality, the World Project of the Mountains.
It is important to note that the communication situation has changed completely since the 1990s. It is no longer a matter of journalists teaching marketing to scientists and, for example, paying the Ministry of Science for marketing. Without a new role for science and research in cultural control, mistakes are inevitable and often evident. This also applies to the condition of the business model of LLM by universities, academies, ministries, etc. This is not only about wasting taxpayers‘ money for profit, but also about the lack or absence of perception of the social task of science and research, which is accompanied by structural anti-pluralism.
Of course, the real problem with digitality begins with programming. There is a lack of basic understanding of what can be done with 0 and 1, which is only possible as a simulation with 0 and 1. Furthermore, the programming is often too individualized, which results in a lack of accessibility and traceability, and (great) annoyance. Large Language Models (LLM) could be helpful here if the legal issues (the questions of compensation for work services) have been clarified. The APA has examples to suggest here. She developed open models and knows how quickly changes can be necessary. It is therefore by no means about technical standards, as they are now being placed at the center of museums‘ digital activities. To see new art only as a new technical form does not recognize the relationship between technology/machine and man.
Such non-recognition then gives rise to nonsensical terms such as „digital humanism“ (translated: 0 and 1 humanism, machine humanism).
As always, no final version of a TRANS number was presented on 7.6.2024. As with the APA models, it is about an intermediate result, which can and must then be expanded for years – as in the case of other TRANS numbers. Again and again there will be presentations via media agencies, which is new. These presentations will be part of a communication process that is essentially about a new UN. Further proposals will also be made in the context of Special Lectures, symposia and conferences. The focus will be on the G20 summits in Brazil (November 2024) and South Africa (2025) as well as the Conference on the Future of UN.
Much already existed before the LLM in word processing, search and language translation engines, and utilities for Internet publications. What is new for INST is therefore not LLM, but a new public relations strategy that can be implemented in a new way. In contrast to the marketing introduction of digitality into the financial world, however, a misunderstanding of LLM will not remain a global financial crisis, in the context of which millions died and trillions were destroyed. The experiments that began with the founding of the INST in 1994 are being continued in a new way, also in relation to the new technologies. The future, of course, is not a future shaped by numerics, a future dominated by machines. The future of human beings is cultural control as the future of human beings always was based on culture.
Herbert Arlt
Scientific Director