Abstract: “Computational Dialectics of Art and Economics: Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, and the History of the Media Concept”
One of the more popular passages from Ada Lovelace’s Notes to Luigi Menabrea’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine” is her meditation on the computational possibilities of electronic music: “Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”(Menabrea 694) Lovelace’s speculation not only underscores her interest in music, but it also distinguishes her understanding of the potential of the Analytical Engine from those of its designer Charles Babbage.
Lovelace was well-versed in musical composition from a young age. Early records of her schedule by her mother Lady Byron include at least a half-an-hour of musical instruction a day. When she started corresponding with Mary Somerville in 1837, she told Somerville “I play four or five hours generally, and never less than three.” Further, she was known to sing arias from Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Norma. For me, these early experiences along with the references to electronic music in her notes point to a musical expertise that shapes her approach to computer programming.
Babbage designed the analytical engine as a device that operationalized time to extract surplus value from labor. Much of Babbage’s computing work was built upon his early visits to industrial mills to make them more efficient. On the Economies of Machinery and Manufacture describes the use of a tell-tale clock to test against “the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents” (111). Likewise, he built the difference engine to find the most direct shipping routes to navigate commercial vessels. In one account from Passages from the Life of a Philosopher Babbage recalls a conversation with the astronomer John Herschel where, in exasperation at the lack of precision in the maritime astronomical tables both are referencing, he exclaims “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!” (46).
Babbage’s focus on sums and precision acts with the mechanical processes of his device to homogenize the diverse temporal experiences into a logic that sees all time as labor time. By contrast, Lovelace focuses on process and change highlights the electronic mediation of music as an aesthetic approach to computing that mirrors the temporal and technological insights found in the field of media archaeology. This presentation will show how these contrasts contribute to a dialectical history of what John Guillory calls “the media concept,” including how the development of that concept contributed to the opposition between aesthetic and economic value.
Works Cited
Babbage, Charles. On the Economies of Machinery and Manufactures. London: John Murray, 1846.
—. Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864.
Guillory, John. “Genesis of the Media Concept.” Critical Inquiry 36 (Winter 2010), 321-62.
Menabrea, Luigi. “Sketch of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.” Scientific Memoirs.
Trans. Ada Lovelace. 3 (1842). 663–731.
Bio: Washington State University, USA
Roger Whitson is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University. He is author of William Blake and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration, Participation and Social Media and Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities: Literary Retrofuturisms, Media Archaeologies, Alternate Histories — along with a number of articles on media archaeology, Charles Babbage, William Blake, and science fiction. Most recently, he is co-editor (with Alison Dushane) of the 31.1 issue of Essays in Romanticism on “Bruno Latour and Romanticism.