Techno Determinism

The destination is just as important as the journey though the opposite is emphasized because it is rarely the destination that is taken for granted. You see, most forfeit their appreciation of the journey because it is the destination that is most gratifying. Lately though, there is much emphasis in many arenas placed on the destination or put another way: the process. One of these is technology. The vast matrix of digital representations is an unstructured territory that remains productive as long as the digital texts involved never cease to play (Derrida's "jeu"). When the process is interrupted the play stops. One must always keep the end goal in mind--no matter what: keep producing and keep moving. If you stop, you fall back into totality. The following passage is part of a larger argument that momentarily emphasizes the process in contrast to the final product: 

Process is the new god; not product. Anything that stands in the way of the perpetual mash-up and remix stands in the way of the digital revolution. Digital Humanities means iterative scholarship, mobilized collaborations, and networks of research. It honors the quality or results; but it also honors the steps by means of which results are obtained as a form of publication of comparable value. Untapped gold mines of knowledge are to be found in the realm of process.

-Excerpt from “The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0” 

In AntiOedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari make crystal clear the dangers that arise with the pursuit of process oriented knowledge production in terms of mental illness. They write of process,

…it must not be viewed as a goal or an end in itself, nor must it be confused with an infinite perpetuation of itself. Putting an end to the process or prolonging it indefinitely—which strictly speaking, is tantamount to ending it abruptly or prematurely—is what creates the artificial schizophrenic found in mental institutions: a limp rag forced into autistic behavior, produced as an entirely separate entity. (5)

Then Deleuze and Guattari proceed to quote a passage from Aaron’s Rod by D.H. Lawrence. In this passage, Lawrence discusses the process of love,

We have pushed a process into a goal. The aim of any process is not the perpetuation of that process, but the completion thereof…The process should work to a completion, not to some horror of intensification and extremity wherein the soul and body ultimately perish. (5) 

Though "The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0" discusses ideas of scholarship that are particularly timely in lieu of the technological advances of the digital age, the notion of process is a concept that is already very familiar to philosophers, writers, and thinkers. Though the concept is not new, the inclusion of process as a central tenet for this manifesto is revolutionary nonetheless. The humanities is already open to the process of refining information in a shared community of experts however academic institutions are notorious for pursuing a stagnant kind of credentialed knowledge. This is where the manifesto is meant to revolutionize—not merely to open up the possibilities of contributors and contributions that are “qualitative, interpretive, experiential, emotive, generative in character” (2) but to keep those who are already acting as Professor a.k.a. “professional learner” honest. The pursuit of knowledge ought to be process oriented and the goal is always truth and quality knowledge production. The art and practice of technology is the means (not the god) that make this goal more efficient.