NOTED :: thought police bust googling spouse of a dead man
Thursday, March 15th, 2007 | Posted in noted-
A woman’s web history used against her in a murder case. Does this sign the increasing calculability of history?
5 Responses to “NOTED :: thought police bust googling spouse of a dead man”
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March 15th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
No.
Because these signs still need to be interpreted. In this case the association between the sign and the signifier (woman on trial) was pretty close; however, the case could also be made that she was looking for a book or a movie under that same title. The search record still needs to be interpreted.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:55 am
How are signs interpreted? What are the measures by which the signs are made into the words: “You’re guilty.”?
March 21st, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Speaking really broadly, signs are interpreted in contexts. The same phrase may take on various modes of significance, depending upon the context it is placed within. The “verifiability” and “searchability” of the interne and technology at large does not do away with the need for interpretation.
However, I’m not going “Rorty” enough to say that there is not a baseline of “reality”–interpretation does not exclude epistomology. So, like any investigation of yore, unaided by technology–the signs are transmuted into “guilty” by probablity, additional circumstances, and quantity (e.g. if this was the only “sign” that would link this woman to a murder–then perhaps one needs to reinterpret; however, if there were many signs linking this woman with the murder, then this should probably be included along with the others).
March 24th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Relevant to this discussion, what is interpretation? I am thinking that it is a mental representation for the purpose of naming an individual – guilty, not guilty. As an act of representation, it is a mental re-enactment of events taking its cues from the clues – the evidence, the evident, the “revealed to all.” The revealed to all is the uncovered. It is the “search results”. The dated impressions that the woman left in time. Renacting in our mind the sequence of these impressions, creations, we come to know who she is, to a name for her. Her name is guilty! What are these impressions left in time? What are these artefacts? Why are they intelligible and why from them can we deduce anything? These are some of the questions I’m working on.
March 24th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Any reading suggestions on this topic?