Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 391.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Tanner Durant <kekpenyo@syr.edu>
Subject: Re : [Humanist] 37.390: removing Safelinks' links (212)
[2] From: Dr. Herbert Wender <drwender@aol.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.390: removing Safelinks' links (10)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-01-14 15:48:12+00:00
From: Tanner Durant <kekpenyo@syr.edu>
Subject: Re : [Humanist] 37.390: removing Safelinks' links
Responding to this part of Mr. McCarty's write-up:
"The reason is simply this: that Humanist is meant to be READ. Remember reading?
Not nervously, twitchingly leaping from a spot in a
character-string to some other place without taking in and inwardly
digesting what someone has written in continuous prose meant to be
enjoyed as such. I find it remarkable--and here remark on--that so many
seem to have lost (I hope temporarily) essential skills of communication
in written language."
I find these thoughts interesting for several reasons.
First, traditionally whenever I try to read a book on Kindle, I get so
distracted by the availability of the internet that it takes a lot of focus for
me to stay within the book itself. I get distracted by either: (1) checking
social media, (2) going to social media and the broader Internet to either post
about or read about what others have written about cool excerpts from what I'm
reading, or (3) savoring a cool thought or idea from a book and putting it down
while I digest it, consuming music or other media. I have more self-control in
my 30s now than I did in my 20s, to be able to read a book efficiently on
Kindle, although my reading style on Kindle now basically involves serious speed
reading, taking advantage of some of the UX/UI attributes of the efficiencies of
time and scale of clicking a button or swiping right to turn a page, vs actually
turning an actual page. Technology in this way has definitely basically changed
the way I read compared to the 1990s or 2000s.
Second, in a 2006 peer-reviewed article that has influenced me a lot, "Sorting
Things In: Feminist Knowledge Repesentation and Changing Modes of Scholarly
Production" by Brown, Clements, and Grundy of Canada, the writers actually
embrace the internet for its non-linear capacities of reading, arguing that
these non-linear reading structures and habits actually better reflect the kind
of liberatory writing and reading they feel like the 21st century deserves. They
received an academic grant to write a book (monograph) and decided to produce a
prototype DH website/ database instead.
They write of “the advantages of moveable text that permitted dynamic ordering
of materials according to reader's priorities; the dialogism or multi-voicedness
that seemed particularly suited to collaboration; the ability to combine the
processing power of electronic markup with nuanced prose; the ability to
produced a dispersed, non-linear text rather than a narrative or linear one; the
opportunity to map the intellectual principles explicitly in the conceptual
markup which organizes the text. This last point — that SGML markup would
provide a way of making our intellectual principles and priorities clear — was
from the outset the most intellectually stimulating, and also both practically
and intellectually the most daunting.“
For the last 4 years or so, during masters level graduate school for me, this
excerpt and the rest of the article have been the foundation for me of my
digital humanities journey, where I privileged the advent of the internet, AI,
and everything like it as a good thing and sought out to, as best as possible,
become an expert on futuristic knowledge production and langage representation.
I like how Mr. McCarty’s assumptions challenge the presumed rightness of leaving
traditional linear textuality behind. It’s something worth considering for
everyone in DH. Ten-fifteen years or so into the advent of DH hype (DH became a
trending topic at the MLA conference around 2009-2011, I believe), is the
outcome living up to the hype? Can any of us point to an actual DH repository or
novel/monograph-qua-repository that actually influences us to be memorable at
the level of one of our favorite novels?
I’m a big fan of Julio Cortázar’s novel Hopscotch/ Rayuela which tries to create
the hyperlink effect within a novel format. I like one of my professional
colleagues’ attempts to create a hyperlink-heavy DH version of a Southern
novelist’s writings. The LGBTQ encyclopedia influenced me a lot in the 2000s, as
does I suppose Wikipedia too. Traditional linear writing and reading have merit
too.
This 2017 New Yorker article comments on the demise of the longreads/longform
essay format which captured so many minds’ attention on Buzzfeed and elsewhere
during the Obama era.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-personal-essay-boom-is-over
If we argue that TikTok, perhaps, has replaced the level of prominence that
Buzzfeed used to enjoy, has the switch from longform to short form knowledge
presentation diminished the quality of intellectual engagement? Depends who you
ask.
________________________________
De : Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Envoyé : dimanche 14 janvier 2024 00:29
À : Tanner Durant <kekpenyo@syr.edu>
Objet : [Humanist] 37.390: removing Safelinks' links
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 390.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.389: removing Safelinks' links (59)
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: reason for enmity against Safelinks et al (43)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-01-13 12:02:19+00:00
From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.389: removing Safelinks' links
Willard, hello.
Replying to myself...
On 13 Jan 2024, at 7:12, Humanist wrote:
> I saw the 'safelinks' version in both cases, though readers who don't have
> 'safelinks' would have seen the real URL in the second case. What _I_ see, in
> fact, includes my own email address in both links, because of the processing
> this goes through. It is claimed that this will be edited out when this email
> goes to you, so who knows what others will see.
If we look at issue 37.389 on the web [1], then we can see the view of this
exchange from the outside, and we can see that the links are as they should be,
which makes your remark, in 37.386 [2], that
rather than
FOO
Humanist gets
<FOO>.
puzzlingly opaque to readers in different ways (specifically, those whose
institutions use safelinks see both versions equally mangled, those whose
institutions don't, see neither mangled).
That is, the mangled version of the above remark that I saw, and that I included
in my reply was demangled when it left my institution.
What this means, Willard, is that there's probably nothing you need do, since
* there's probably nothing you _can_ do to change this,
* those whose institutions don't use safelinks see nothing amiss (and are
possibly rather perplexed by the conversation), and
* those whose institutions do, see things amiss in the way they have probably
now come to expect (if not tolerate).
That is, this system would be assessed as Working As Designed, and the fact that
it is hugely irritating for users is a mere technical detail.
Dragging this back to a Humanist topic, there might be something to be said here
about email diplomatics. Which, of the various versions in different people's
inboxes, is the real version of my email? The version of my email in [1] is, in
a sense, a 'better' version of my email than the one the system bcc-ed to me,
and even, in a sense, more authentic than the version that appeared in the
mailer when I was writing it.
Best wishes,
Norman
[1] https://dhhumanist.org/volume/37/389/
[2] https://dhhumanist.org/volume/37/386/
--
Norman Gray : https://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-01-13 08:23:23+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: reason for enmity against Safelinks et al
Thanks to those who have replied regarding my query about how to remove
Safelinks and its thoughtless brethren and sistern (whether from ME "or
alternatively modelled after brethren", as the Wikipedia entry would
have it). This is to give reason to the enmity I share with Normal Gray
and doubtless a host of others.
The reason is simply this: that Humanist is meant to be READ. Remember
reading? Not nervously, twitchingly leaping from a spot in a
character-string to some other place without taking in and inwardly
digesting what someone has written in continuous prose meant to be
enjoyed as such. I find it remarkable--and here remark on--that so many
seem to have lost (I hope temporarily) essential skills of communication
in written language.
It is true that plain-text Humanist is in some respects, because of that
plainness, deprived, but for intelligent people is this not a small
challenge? Some here will remember the apocalyptic hypertext fever that
gripped so many of us. I now wonder if some part of the hunt for
literary allusions that gripped me as a doctoral student of Milton's
Paradise Lost wasn't related to that very fever. At one point, impressed
by the density of that literary work, I set myself a challenge to pin
down ALL the biblical and classical allusions in some 20 lines of
Paradise Lost. It took me a while before I realised that my attempt to
decode these lines was NOT the reverse of what the poet had done, not
the point at all. Those lines, the whole of the poem, was the result of
Milton having (to put the matter crudely) assimilated the Bible,
Greco-Roman literature and a great deal, if not all, of what was
available to him, then manifesting the lot, becoming the poet he was.
Take Raymond Carver's prose or Alice Munro's. Plain-text Humanist is not
at that level, of course, but when we settle down and engage in
'rational discourse' (let us call it), are we not going as best we can
in that direction?
Comments?
Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk<http://www.mccarty.org.uk>
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-01-14 18:39:05+00:00
From: Dr. Herbert Wender <drwender@aol.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.390: removing Safelinks' links
Am Sonntag, 14. Januar 2024 um 08:29:22 MEZ hat Humanist
<humanist@dhhumanist.org> Folgendes geschrieben:
[...]
Take Raymond Carver's prose [...]
Willard,
it's true that Carver-style wasn't Raymond Carver's style ?
Herbert
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