The Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL) is the home of multiple projects, addressing different audiences, all attempting to fulfill CSDL's Mission of "understanding the effects of digital technologies." We began as a strategic advisory group based on work done for the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, when we focussed on introducing new "frameworks for asking new questions" with strategic leaders. Much of that work involved the notion that China had a distinct "operating system" and would not shift its direction to align with the West. In the intervening years, this assessment has proven to be correct. And, this structural analogy was the origin of our expanded theme of Three Spheres: East, West and Digital. As Dorothy said, "No Toto, I don't believe we are in Kansas anymore."
From the beginning, we have pursued the motto "Digital *retrieves* the SCRIBAL Medieval," as illustrating our view about the new sensibility developing under DIGITAL conditions (see Environments and Sensibility headings). In the West, clearly the most significant surviving "medieval" institution is the Roman Catholic Church. The so-called Latin Mass (officially, the "Extraordinary Form") is a remarkable window into the SCRIBAL world before the rise of PRINT – still widely practiced and open to anyone who cares to visit. While we plan future projects that investigate this retrieval for the East (The Way) and Digital Spheres (The Spark), CSDL is beginning its exploration of this theme by advising some in the Catholic Church (The Virtues) about the impact of DIGITAL. This is reflected in our Digital Eucharistic Symposium (DES), in conjunction with the Diocese of Bridgeport, CT.
In many ways CSDL is an "educational" enterprise, helping people to remember what has too-often been forgotten about the still-alive grounding of our multiple civilizations. The Center has held a "Summer School" since 2018, when we conducted a close-reading of Aristotle's "Peri Psyche," using the Joe Sachs translation, "On the Soul." The following summer we did the same with Eric McLuhan's essay "On Formal Cause" (as published in the 2011, "Media and Formal Cause") and in 2020 we hosted the "Digital Paradigm Institute" with a 13-week series of seminars on a wide arch of related materials. The educational role of CSDL is important for us to widen our appeture to make contact with an audience that includes graduate-level study as well as a broader strategic business focus.
In addition, the Center has organized "The School" as an online YouTube-based introduction to our approach (see The School heading). The first of these 8-week courses is on the topic of Three Spheres. The second is on "Catholic Social Teaching," an effort begun in the 19th-century as a retrieval of the Church's SCRIBAL understanding of "Natural Law" as applied to society. In addition, it's classic three components – Human Dignity, Subsidiarity and Solidarity – are the topics of the first three volumes of the Center's Dianoetikon journal.
It is also the Mission of the Center to contribute to the development of "New Sciences." We are convinced that the widespread failure to make significant progress in many disciplines (including the scandalous "reproducability crisis" &c) is a direct result of modern science becoming unmoored from its Natural Law foundations. Psychology has, according to the accounts of many involved, appears to have reached an impass. The Psyche cannot be understood by modeling it on computers, as has been the dominant approach for the past 50+ years. Humans are living creatures, not "information processors." In our view, without the "soul" (i.e. English for "psyche") humanity simply cannot be understood.
Likewise, many believe that Economics has hit the wall, as reflected in Center Fellow Ning Wang's HBR-published 2012 manifesto "Saving Economics from the Economists." Statistics can be valuable when testing hypotheses but it cannot replace causality when scientifically considering society. Subsidiarity expresses an organizing principle based on distributing responsibility to the "lowest" possible level. This is likely to apply strongly to what happens to "capitalism" under DIGITAL conditions. Likewise, "democracy" (in many ways an effect of TELEVISION) appears to be on its last legs, throwing much of what passes for Political Economy into a storm-tossed sea. CSDL will pursue the topic of Solidarity as the resulting political principle, overcoming the now-failed post-WW II efforts to generate a one-world "New Order." We really have no choice but to begin anew.
Consideration of what replaces "capitalism" (and "socialism") along with "democracy" (and "totalitarianism") – all now obsolete PRINT-then-ELECTRIC frameworks – is an important topic for the Center. Bold new initiatives will be needed. McLuhan's concerns that "deep-seated repugnance" keeps us from understanding the "processes in which are involved" will have to be overcome. In this process, what McLuhan thought blocked us from that understanding – taking responsibility for our actions – must become a social imperative. Responsibility is a fundmental human trait (as is its shirking, per our free wills) and under DIGITAL conditions, humanity will be challenged to take these qualities seriously.