Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 393.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2024-01-15 13:18:24+00:00
From: Bill Pascoe <bill.pascoe@unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.391: removing Safelinks' links & linear reading/writing
Hi,
In answer to the question, "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?"
- Icelandic Saga Map
I was reading a saga when I came across this. This sticks with me as much as the
saga, because it transformed my experience of the saga. This was a starting
point for much of my work afterwards.
- Trove
https://trove.nla.gov.au/
The vast amount of newspapers throughout Australia's history can make for great
reading. This completely changed my understanding of our history, and my sense
of what it means to be here now on this land. The availability of these articles
has exposed truths that have been forgotten and covered up for a hundred years.
The juxtaposition of some articles in the same paper is incredible, and also
with the advertisements - such as ads for guns near reports of 'outrages' on the
frontier, or a front page reporting foreboding articles about Mussolini, and
various bits of trouble throughout the world, from Russia to Fiji, knowing it's
all about to become WWII. I've spent longer in Trove than any novel.
Not to mention the maps in Trove that I've spent months working with.
- Historical and Indigenous Maps Of Brisbane
https://mappingbrisbanehistory.com.au/brisbane-history-map/
I grew up thinking everything around me was an endless, soulless urban sprawl
devoid of meaning. But it turns out there were so many important sites near
where I lived and grew up. A bora ring down the road from where I lived. Not 50
metres from my student house is a traffic island that was a healing spring used
by warriors at tournaments fought in the gully. I could go on and on. It changed
my life and changed the way I look at everything.
- FAMSI archive of Mesoamerican codexes
https://trove.nla.gov.au/
Here is an artform that is not even possible with our writing and pictorial
systems. Here are the very few incredibly beautiful remaining books from once
vast libraries of such vividly rendered text. I spent more time trying to learn
to read these than with any book. Not for work - I wish it was - but because I
wanted to, as someone might want to read a book.
- Colonial Frontier Massacres
https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/
I'm biased because I worked on this, but this has made the consistent massacre
of more than 10,000 people over 140 years common knowledge when before they were
little known. We get many comments from the public indicating it has been as
memorable for them as anything else they might have read.
The reading process of these is very different to a longform web page or
analogue book. In reading and creating these, I also embrance the non-linear,
self directed form. I do wish I could find enough idle time to read a book
though.
Bill Pascoe
####
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Sent: Monday, 15 January 2024 5:18 PM
To: Bill Pascoe <bill.pascoe@unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: [Humanist] 37.391: removing Safelinks' links & linear reading/writing
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 391.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
http://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.
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