Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 56.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: "Fotis Jannidis" <fotis.jannidis@lrz.uni- (54)
muenchen.de>
Subject: Re: 15.055 obstacles, apprenticeship, service and fun
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (43)
Subject: service
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 06:59:14 +0100
From: "Fotis Jannidis" <fotis.jannidis@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
Subject: Re: 15.055 obstacles, apprenticeship, service and fun
> From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com>
> I'm always amused and sometimes a bit angry at the same time whenever I
> see lists of "what a Humanities Computing Person should know". They are
> so time-bound and changeable
that applies to all scientific knowledge, but is no reason not to have
standards for a particular point in time
> There is no standard curriculum or agreed upon set of information (or
> even worse "behaviors") for a Ph.D. in English, and if we're lucky,
> there never will be.
Is this really true? I believe the test is not, what should the person
know, but rather: Imagine talking to somebody having a Ph.D. in
English. What kind of ignorance would surprise you? p.e.
"Shakespeare who?" or: "I collect the relevant literature for my
topic by asking my bookseller" or: "I wrote down what I felt when I
read this poem and believe this to be a valuable contribution to
literary criticism"
> I hope the same is true for "humanities
> computing"....do what you need to do, or what you're curious about, and
> ignore the folks who are trying to tell you what's important.
If we want to change the status of humanities computing from an
ad hoc tool to something like a subject by its own, it is necessary
to think about what should be included.
here is my wish list:
1. Be able to use electronic text,
that implies a thorough understanding of:
a) character encodings and the basic principles of markup
languages
b) xml as the most important m.l.
c) different search techniques (String, boolean, tree context, ..)
d) the basic notions of statistic
2. Be able to manipulate electronic texts
a) some scripting language which supports regular expressions
b) Regular expressions
c) a transformation language like xslt
3. Be able to create electronic text
they should have a good knowledge of
a) the actual standards of electronic editions; what has been
released in the last 2-3 years, how does it work and what does it
look like
b) some authoring tool for xml
c) standards like unicode and tiff, especially where are the limits
and problems
d) basic design principles for human computer interfaces,
especially of the problems how to create useful links
e) the digitization process at least for text and images
4. Be able to understand the main changes of the new media as
part of the history of media
a) some hypertext theory
b) some media theory and history
c) knowledge of new forms of art in the new media like hyperfiction
and computergames
Fotis Jannidis
________________________________________
Forum Computerphilologie
http://computerphilologie.uni-muenchen.de
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 07:09:57 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: service
Charles Faulhaber's nth stab (at "the question of whether humanities
scholars who want to use computers in their research must become computing
humanists") comes very close to my own idea of scholarship. My Ovid project
really began when I realised that the best response I could give to the
poet was to produce something that by making certain kinds of work easier
would help others respond. I chose to do this rather than write THE (I am
now convinced) unwriteable book on the Metamorphoses when I saw how
intellectually challenging my service-work would be. There's much to be
said, I suppose, about exactly how we define "easier"; I think what it
means is that we construe certain problems as trivial to get them out of
the way so that the ones we think important get the attention. In this case
"easier" is relative: the work a conventional literary critic would likely
not want to do and so would wish could be treated as if it were trivial,
this work I found more to my liking than the conventional essay. In any
case, PhiloBiblion, the Onomasticon and other things like it are acts of
service to the scholarly community -- not abusing that last word, rather
giving it meaning through those acts.
I think we have a still serious social problem with our notion of service:
it's one thing (a) to serve the community and one's field through work one
has chosen to do and has the direction of, quite another thing (b) to be
called preemptorily to fix someone's printer or install the latest version
of whatever. The problem, I know, doesn't inhere in either of those kinds
of service, rather it occurs when someone who should be and wants to be
doing (a) has to be doing (b). Such mis-employment is something with which
many computing humanists are intimately familiar; the passion to fix this
problem fueled the creation of Humanist, some of you will recall. One
response, to which I would guess Charles is reacting as I react, is to put
walls up around humanities computing, raise the disciplinary flag and start
military training. And, more to the point, make sure that anyone who wants
to get through the gate knows how to solve the puzzle of the month. Big
mistake. At the same time, I hear others say, how do we get enough land to
raise the crops that we KNOW will benefit everyone in this fertile valley?
How do we persuade the older inhabitants that if they give up small bits of
their own resources the return will be all out of proportion to the loss?
We continue to do what we are doing, I suppose, but extend the work, focus
it better by figuring out exactly what it is we want to make easier, what
in fact more problematic.
Yours,
WM
-----
Dr Willard McCarty / Senior Lecturer /
Centre for Computing in the Humanities / King's College London /
Strand / London WC2R 2LS / U.K. /
+44 (0)20 7848-2784 / ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/
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