Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 122.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2023-06-23 05:39:28+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: the problem of abundance

Much missed historian Roy Rosenzweig, reflecting on the digital present
in 2003,* referred to "the problem of abundance", by which any clever
scholar can quickly become overwhelmed--and went on to warn of the
opposite if we pay insufficient attention to preserving the deluge of
the digital. What I want to raise here is the question he quickly turns to,
namely the methodological change required by the need to sort
through "this overwhelming record in creative, but systematic,
ways" (p. 23) so that one can arrive at a reference point from which to
make (provisional) sense of the abundance. Consider the difficulty that
an interdisciplinary scholar faces in finding a way to an argument
across disciplines that does not immediately elicit the derision of the
specialists.

Your thoughts on this?

Yours,
WM
---
*“Scarcity or Abundance: Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,” rpt. in
Clio Wired: The Future of the Past in the Digital Age (Columbia
University Press), from American Historical Review 108.3 (June 2003).

--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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