When I used Google Maps to scale the distance of my destination, I felt assured that I will arrive as scheduled. I had read from “Science and Sanity”, a book by Alfred Korzybski, that “the map is not the territory”. I knew that the printed map did not correspond with real time, unlike how Google Maps can calculate the traffic condition and the different paths as I traveled. However, I kept in mind, even as omnipresent as technology is and no matter how careful we are with planning, that unpredicted events can still arise and be overlooked. Johanna Drucker, in “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display”, explains the concepts of “data” and “capta”. Drucker explains that “Capta is ‘taken’ actively while data is assumed to be a ‘given’ able to be recorded and observed”. The time that I will reach my destination is calculated by the data that can be given to Google Maps. However, certain circumstances, such as an accident and constructions on the road, can not be taken into account by Google Maps. It had been reliable for my part, until I used it in the unpredictable roads of Los Angeles. Google Maps will insist that I will get to my destination at a certain time, but I have to give it the benefit of my own calculations to arrive on time. Human beings, not machines (at least not yet), are capable of seizing information. Truth is moving and alive. Drucker further explains that “Humanistic inquiry acknowledges the situated, partial, and constitutive character of knowledge production, the recognition that knowledge is constructed, taken, not simply given as a natural representation of pre-existing fact.” We seize knowledge through comprehension, interpretation, and the application of an idea that is the product of this process. “Data” and “Capta” are the participles of Latin verbs that can be literally translated as “having been given” and “having been seized”. The use of “Capta” by Drucker reminds me of “Carpe Diem” by Horace, where we try to seize a day as unpredictable and transient as tomorrow itself. Google Maps, although useful, is an “abstraction” of the territory, as Korzybski would have it. It really just tells me where to turn and what streets to look for, and I hardly look at the screen. When I reached my destination, I realized that even Google Maps “is not the territory”. The following video shows Korzbski talk about “illusions” and “distractions”, reality as we perceive it.
Work Cited:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-7zYBKgzfs. Alfred Korzybski – The World is NOT an Illusion. Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, Sep 27, 2012. Web. 2 November 2015
Drucker, Johanna. http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html. Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display. Digital Humanities Quarterly5, no. 1 (2011). Web. 2 November 2015.