Computational Arabic - Coffee Reading as Medium


Formulate Questions to think about during workshop 
   What sort of technology does Coffee Reading Enact?
     
   Not trying to preserve it as an artifact, but how to resignify it, and to which purpose?
   Are biases negative or not, what is informing the coffee reader? 
   How can the coffee reader be attentive to the potential biases that might emerge during the encounter? 
   
   
 
 Potentialities of Coffee Reading. 
 1- Premises of coffee reading: 
 2- Field of Problematisation. Tension?
 3- Why? -?? ????
    Rethink this practice. Re-invent it. 


   Premises
'A knowledge held in common by a community, often portrayed as useless, ridiculous or out of date.'Technological Sovreignty, Margarita Padilla

In which knowledge system or epistemological horizon is this practice inscribed and finds its condition of possibility? What are traditionally the hierarchies and social relations embedded in this pracrice? In other words who is allowed to possess this knowledge? Who is the subject guarding this knowledge? 

   Field of problematisation / Tension: Starting from the premise that such practices cannot be made intelligible through our modern regimes of veridiction, representing at best an outdated piece of folkoristic storytelling. 

 The potential of such practices is not to be assessed in the 'truth' they speak, but on the generative potential induced by the relationality that encounter produces. 

How can we resignify coffee reading as a technological medium? 
As noted by Margarita Padilla, 'While from a modernist understanding of technology, the subject of technology presupposed is the individual, (the intelligent, successful, rational white man who is the user of technology),the epistemological horizon this exploration is pointing at is one where all technology is developed in commons.


 question that should be posed in regards to technologies, is "who has the power to make decisions about them? About their development, about their use, about access and about distribution, about supply and consumption, about the prestige they have and their power to fascinate? While technology is increasingly related to consumerism, elitism, luxury goods and isolated individualism, as the mian the vision presented by the industry and the market, a market that seeks to isolate and bewilder consumers', what this workshop will contend is that all knowledge grows through cooperation.
 

  What Technology does Coffee Reading Enact? 
. Modes of thinking it can induce ? 
. Values imagination as integral to common thinking.
. Ontological ? 

highlights a form of cognitive thinking such as imagination which are seen as subservient. 
Understanding coffee reading as a form of alter technology, arguably bears the potential to break away from the linearity of algorithmic rationbality for a mode of thinking that values imagination and relationality as integral to our ability to make sense of our experience, find it meaningful.
Hence the potential of coffee reading as a collective tool to liberate the possibilities of our imagination as part of a wider struggle on the decolonisation of knowledge. <3 


Fragments of Text:  

    ' Possibility that a person's bodily skills and imagination are a necessary condition for acquiring common sense even from books.
    Mark Johnson gives a good argument for the importance of imagination even in conscious problem solving: 
        'Imagination is a pervasive structuring activity by means of which we achieve coherent, patterned, unified representations. It is indispensable for our ability to make sense of our experience, to find it meaningful. The conclusion ought to be, therefore, that imagination is absolutely central to human rationalitty, that is, to our rational capacity to find connections, to draw inferences, and to solve problems.' 
        
        
https://sobtec.gitbooks.io/sobtec2/content/en/content/01preface.html 




Discussion note-taking : 
xperiences with coffee reading 
An: with turkish friend who saw something bad in her brother's cup; her brother got sick indeed; they never wanted to do it again

Questions of Rita; where does the readings come from, the skills/knowledge/hyper capacities of the reader or...? 

Rita: Casuality of the practice is important; tho differences within the practice among the arab world; embodied knowledge and what kind of prejudice or biases a reader could have towards the person they're reading. 

Example of  not wanting to have their cards being read; avoiding a feeling of not being in control, it could be a way of being resilient and not fatalist to what the cards would say. 

it's a practice that is quite gendered, mostly women do it, as it was mostly women spending time in the kitchen, etc
There is also a part of reject from men, who think it's not a muslim practice; the 'magic' side of certain practices is rejected, or they're afraid of it. There's an element there of seeing women not being controlled by certain orders, which is scary 

// with christians doing readings and trying to find an appearance of the sainte marie which could save someone 
for the muslim it's more like apparition of the moon or so 

Q of rita: what is the technology enacted by the coffee reading 

thinking of social relations within (or not) technology with the book What computers still can not do? by Dreyfus
[intro to the book]

-> imagination part/ what computers will never do ppxxi

the compters are asking the same questions that we are; they're not more intelligent 
Q: how do you situate animals' intelligence in between the dualism of animal-human intelligence
intelligence is relational so it's not possible to qualify the different intelligences across people but also across beings. 

back to coffee reading; imagination is a big part of what is happening
how could it help in the midst of a crisis?; such as the financial/political crisis in Lebanon? 
the bodily experience, the sociality of it, the exercise of the imagination 

body minds; because you have a particular body you'll have a particular mind

we don't trust how own trust, the reading allow you to be more imaginative but also to look honestly at your own patterns and thoughts 

the receiving of the thoughts just happens without much control, so there's no self-judging 

how it could help with a crisis? a friend who started to learn tarot reading; the tarot has been helping him to understand himself, to understand his reactions, to find his place in particular situations 

R: maybe that's why my mother drinks coffee every day 

a crisis that can be traumatizing, isolating but such practice could make you feel that you're part of something bigger, that what is happening 

it's important to be attentive to how you feel when you look at your cup; that's informative 

Q: is it because you studied in computer science that you got interested in such practices; like is it because the computer is capable of doing so many things now that we can take the time of learning practices which the computer will never do 

algorithms look at western philosopher; why not other philosophers
coffee readings comes from a situation of living in uncertainty; trying to understand what to do thanks to the reading 

potential to see people more than a category; there's so much to us that can"t be entirely taken by algorithms; the reading gives the possibility to considerate much more than an algorithm can 

do you have a set of certain ways to do it? (the reading) the protocols 
don't filter the coffee (espresso, french press etc dont work)
some people have rules (many different) some dont' :) 

valuing the practice of coffee reading is a way of highlighting the ways of coping with states of crisis; this is a particular cultural practice which reveals ways of feeling, socializing, coping etc

family history of reject towards the practice; trying to change it but not easy
the reject can be religious because "reading the futur" is acting like you're god

how did you start being intrested in the reading; is it the situation in Lebanon? why did you come to brussels and share this? 
the lira in coffee, desintegrating, the lira's meaning is changing in a way that is uncontrollable 
the lebanese gov is subsiding coffee because too important; it's the only thing left 

computational arabic is drawing from different cultural practice; it's not only coffee reading 

*reading technological sovereignty*
- social truth 
- T.S is not individual it's made in communities
- relevant the tension and premises of thinking about technological sovereignty

interest of AI and how it develops; how to think of gpt3, model of ML; it's also perceived as magic; it also centralizes knowledge at all new scale; developed by Open AI (Tesla); it came in the news because if you give it a few sentences it can write a few sentences to you in the similar styles. 
What is interesting is the contesting practices of human towards language or whatever; the computer can copy as much as they want but they cannot inhabit a space of contestation  

What is computational arabic? ; it's trying to create a different foundation for thinking computation