Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 72.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 09:11:38 +0100
From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: Vitruvius & Social Reproduction
Willard,
I've been bemused by the my-list-your-list (word-image debate) turn in
the discussion about mounting graduate programs in humanities computing.
Most human resource management plans now look towards assessing
competencies when organisations are defining recruitment strategies. Few,
if any, of the gradutes of current or proposed programs in humanities
computing will be offered academic positions. It might be worth a peek
at what management thinking is coming out of business schools. For a two
reasons:
1) to prepare students for life long learning
2) to understand that life long learning opens up institutions and
programs to students who may not choose full time attendence or a
one-window source to meet their interests and needs
Comptencies are exercised. It may well be worth thinking about students
coming into programs, be they full time students or students taking
courses are part of professional development, as bringing skills and
knowledge to exchange with other students and with faculty. It is a
pedagogical view that does not easily lend itself to the
take-student-fill-'em-up school of pedagogy or the gene-pool image of
knowledge transfers. It is a bit more humbling to think of the academic
role as that of an enabler rather than that of the voice that always
speaks ex cathedra. What to do with students who have their own shopping &
laundry lists? Their own ways of further developing their competencies?
I am reminded that humanist culture is not immured. Yuri Rubinsky and
Murray Maloney in the preface to _SGML on the Web: Small Steps Beyond
HTML_ (1997) wonderfully evoke the Vitruvian values of Firmness, Commodity
and Delight in such a way that one could move the metaphor from
architecture through document representation to the character of a
humanist scolar. Firmness: the ability to resist inclemency; Commodity:
the ability to move with ease; Delight: the ability to provide and take
joy. Whether it is coding, scripting, digitalizing, programing, do we not
scolars to be aware of the issues of longivity when they build
environments and projects? Do we not want them to be able to have the time
to master the offerings of existing envirnoments and projects to be become
adept navigators (does it really matter if it's the Telnet interface to
the Dartmouth Dante Database or the VRML worlds of an archeological
reconstruction, words or pictures?) I know, that I always like the company
of scholars who can provide delight. It is worth quoting Rubinsky and
Maloney(**) quoting Douglas MacLeod, architect, addressing the 1989 North
American SGML conference:
<cite>
Delight is what makes the building more than just a shelter. It may be an
intellectual delight, a visual delight or even a delight to be in to
listen to music, but it brings something more to the building than just
functionality.
</cite>
I would suggest that one way of building delight into humanities
computing programs is to enhance the opportunities for exchange between
programs, projects and pockets at various institutions, take advantage of
a wired world to find peers and to find translators.
**
Yuri Rubinsky was instrumental in developing SGML markup for the visually
disabled.
**
Murray Maloney is a member of the International Committee for Accessible
Document Design.
-- Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance 20th : Machine Age :: 21st : Era of Reparation
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