Category: Humanities Computing

Harpham: Science and the Theft of Humanity

American Scientist Online has a provocative essay by Geoffrey Harpham on Science and the Theft of Humanity. In it he argues that the humanities that take “human beings and their thoughts, imaginings, capacities and works as its subject” (Page 2) are experiencing a poaching from certain sciences and that this is a good thing. This poaching is “the most exciting and unpredictable unintended consequence of disciplinarity” as new disciplines that don’t fit with the old “gentleman’s agreement” as to who studies what begin to cross boundaries. (Page 3)

They–we–must understand that while scientists are indeed poaching our concepts, poaching in general is one of the ways in which disciplines are reinvigorated, and this particular act of thievery is nothing less than the primary driver of the transformation of knowledge today. (Page 4)

This poaching is not just a counterattack from the sciences threatened by the “debunking attention” of humanities disciplines. It is a symptom of how the disciplinary divisions encoded in the post WW II university don’t fit fabric of current research. Humanities computing is but one case of an emerging discipline that doesn’t fit the humanities, science division. (For that matter I don’t think computer science does either.)

One of the most striking features of contemporary intellectual life is the fact that questions formerly reserved for the humanities are today being approached by scientists in various disciplines such as cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, robotics, artificial life, behavioral genetics and evolutionary biology. (Page 3)

I found this looking at the ASC (Autonomy | Singularity | Creativity) site of the National Humanities Center.

Web Mining for Research

Web Mining for Research is a white paper I’ve just written to get my ideas down about how we should be using the Web as evidence not just for social science research, but in the humanities. Digital humanities is more than studying old wine in new digital bottles – the challenge is to do humanities research using the digital as evidence. For me the challenge is how to rethink philosophy now that we can mine concepts in their sites, to paraphrase Ian Hacking.

Svensson Talk

Patrick Svensson gave a talk on Friday, December 1st, about visualization and space in humanities computing. (He blogged the visit here.) At the end he showed 3D reconstructions and fly-throughs of the current HUMlab space and the new extended space. The space is optimized for visualization with screens of different sorts around the walls. It is less of a one-person-one-computer lab and more of a collaborative space for encounters.

I blogged this under Research Notes: Patrik Svensson.

Patrik Svensson

Image of HUMlab logoPatrik Svensson Director of HUMlab, Ume?• University, is giving a talk tomorrow here at McMaster.

In this seminar I will start out from a general discussion of the visual in the humanities and in the digital humanities, and a critique of traditional ‘humanities computing’ which tends to be predominantely textual. I will base my further investigation on several projects from different areas including art history, history, antrophology and linguistics. Key points of discussion include the materiality of interfaces, added values, innovation strategies, and the role of the visualization. Among relevant technologies are geographical information systems, multi-spectral analysis and virtual worlds. Digital culture also gives us highly visual study objects such as computer games, social software and electronic literature, and these will be considered. The final part of the talk deals with physical lab and studio spaces for the digital humanities. How is the visual articulated in such collaborative work spaces? It will be suggested that the humanities may benefit from working with many, individual screens in collaborative settings rather than immersive environments such as CAVEs. HUMlab at Ume?• University will be used a case study and I will describe a planned (and funded!) expansion of the lab which will add thirteen new screens to the studio space.

From the descriptions of the HUMlab it sounds like a creative space – they have paid attention to creating a space where people can meet across the humanities and IT disciplines.

Forking the Wikipedia

Larry Sanger forks the Wikipedia reports on an initiative by one of the founders of the Wikipedia to create an alternative by taking the content and setting up an editorial system with more control by expert editors. The alternative would be called the called the Citizendium.

The Wikipedia is an important example of a social knowledge network that has stirred up a lot of controversy this year. There is a literature now about the Wikipedia and its discontents. See, for example the Request for Comments (RFC) by Alan Liu about student use of the Wikipedia. He sees 2006 as a threshold year when students started using the Wikipedia like never before.

Is it a sign of maturity when web phenomena like the Wikipedia don’t just get reported with that “gee whiz, isn’t this neat” tone, but are being really debated?

Unicode 5.0.0 is almost out

Unicode 5 CoverUnicode 5.0.0 is about to be released by the Unicode Consortium.

For those of you who don’t know about Unicode, it “provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no mater what the language.” (My emphasis) In other words it replaces ASCII as the standard for character encoding to support multilingual computing across platforms.

For more information see What is Unicode? or Useful Resources.

I also note that the Unicode site has a Chronology Of Unicode Version 1.0 along with information about contributors/members over time. Xerox, for example, seems to have been a major player in the early years, but is no longer a member. I also note that there are two governments that are institutional members, India and Pakistan (they joined a year apart) and one university, Berkeley. What a strange trio of institutional members.

MITH – Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities

MITH (Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities) is one of the leading digital humanities centres in the USA. They have a new Director, Neil Fraistat, and a new look to their web site.

From the Flick photos it looks like they have a agreat speakers series and a new paint job in their CoffeeHouse.