Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 17.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org


    [1]    From: Michael Piotrowski <michael.piotrowski@unil.ch>
           Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.15: two questions (45)

    [2]    From: David Zeitlyn <david.zeitlyn@anthro.ox.ac.uk>
           Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.15: two questions (18)


--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2023-05-12 20:42:58+00:00
        From: Michael Piotrowski <michael.piotrowski@unil.ch>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.15: two questions

Dear Willard,

On 2023-05-12, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:

> [...] But still one of them asked me, "So... what IS digital
> humanities?" I was not lost for words, but evidently my answer was
> insufficiently simple to keep her attention before she wandered off and
> someone else started asking whether what he was involved with qualified.
> Ruminating on the incident this morning has led me to wonder how others
> answer that question in brief. So, in a nutshell, what is it? Does anyone
> have a good one or two-sentence response?

To quote from my 2018 paper “Digital humanities: an explication”
<https://doi.org/10.18420/infdh2018-07>:

  1. research on and development of means and methods for constructing formal
models in the humanities (*theoretical digital humanities*), and

  2. the application of these means and methods for the construction of
*concrete* formal models in the humanities disciplines (*applied digital
humanities*).

> In a subsequent conversation, AI came up, as might be expected. A
> student wanted to know whether AI posed a threat, and if so, what he
> might do about it. Given the number of well-funded 'bad actors' involved
> with AI, the answer to the first was not difficult to put into one word,
> then expand that into a range of examples. But what particularly
> interested me was the second question, how to intervene. One academic I
> know advises us to get involved in the work of AI labs, but that seems
> rather impractical for all but the very few. So, my question here: what
> can we do?

IMHO, as with all technology, the main problem is its *use* by *people*.  What
can we do?  Stop ascribing agency to “the AI” and demand responsibility from
humans (and corporations).

Best regards,
Michael

--
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Piotrowski <michael.piotrowski@unil.ch>
Professeur en humanités numériques · Université de Lausanne
Section des sciences du langage et de l’information · Faculté des lettres
☎ +41 21 692-3039 · Quartier Chamberonne, bâtiment Anthropole, bureau 3137
OpenPGP public key 0x926877BF1614A044

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2023-05-12 13:58:00+00:00
        From: David Zeitlyn <david.zeitlyn@anthro.ox.ac.uk>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.15: two questions

3 sentences on what is digital humanities.

Modeled on my stock answer to "what is digital anthropology?"

I'd say:

Digital Humanities has a fundamental ambiguity. It can mean either

the use of digital tools and approaches to help address long standing
humanities questions, or

the use of humanities approaches to study the use and development of
digital tools.


best wishes

davidz


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