INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM
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couldn't have had a spoken language.
If
that claim turns out to be true,
it would follow that language is not even required for the kind of human
inner life that is the wellspring of art, in view of the recent discovery in
Neanderthal burial sites in Slavonia of what appear to be authentic
flutes fashioned from hollow animal bones. So it would turn out that
the development of instrumental music (not merely song) preceded that
of human speech.
Mark Mirsky:
One of the problems with consciousness, and this is my
experience both as an actor and just in general as a learner, is that there
seems to be a disjunction between what you have identified as con–
sciousness in the sense of this room of virtual reality in the brain where
we assemble an awareness of our consciousness, and consciousness that
somehow comes almost without our knowing how it comes. Anybody
who has ever driven a car knows what I am talking about. The transi–
tion hour of learning how to drive a car without being really aware of
how you drive it is a very dangerous period. We all have this double
consciousness of learning through a direct pathway, but we don't pay
full attention until we have formally learned or "assembled" what we
know. When I was in high school, I felt I had a very poor memory. But
when acting, I could master my lines very quickly, and as long as I was
performing nightly, I could return them-but not in the way that one
holds on to the text when paying attention.
Gunther Stent:
As defined by Damasio, the concept of the autobio–
graphical self seems to imply that one cannot be anybody but oneself.
This rule can't be universal, however, because on stage great actors have
to become someone other than themselves, i.e., manage to escape from
their autobiographical selves. That's why Clark Gable or John Wayne or
Charles Boyer weren't great actors. Maybe they weren't even actors at
all, since they seemed to be unable to dissociate themselves from their
autobiographical selves. No matter in what role they were cast, they
were always the self-same Clark, John, or Charles.
Mark Mirsky:
A question to Guy Burgess. I think one of the problems
with the Web is the organization of material. One of my friends, a math–
ematician, had me sign up for several sites so that I would filter all this
information and tell him what was worth paying attention to. There is
an enormous amount of information on the Web, but you waste time
wading through unnecessary and trivial information. So it is important
that you figure out ahead of time what you have to read. I believe you
