From: CBS%UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.MAIL::CA.UTORONTO.UTCS.VM::POSTMSTR 14-JAN-1989 09:40:12.61 To: archive CC: Subj: Via: UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.MAIL; Sat, 14 Jan 89 9:38 GMT Received: from UKACRL by UK.AC.RL.IB (Mailer X1.25) with BSMTP id 9317; Sat, 14 Jan 89 09:37:36 GM Received: from vm.utcs.utoronto.ca by UKACRL.BITNET (Mailer X1.25) with BSMTP id 1907; Sat, 14 Jan 89 09:37:30 G Received: by UTORONTO (Mailer X1.25) id 0382; Fri, 13 Jan 89 14:44:35 EST Date: Fri, 13 Jan 89 14:44:07 EST From: "Steve Younker (Postmaster)" To: archive@UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX ========================================================================= Date: 4-AUG-1987 10:53:22 Reply-To: SUSAN%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX2@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: SUSAN%UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX2@AC.UK Oxford University Computing Service is looking at typesetters (again!), particularly PostScript typesetters such as the Linotronic. The high resolution machines are said to be slow. Does anybody have any detailed information about timings on these machines? Any other experiences would also be welcome. Please - typesetters only, not Laserwriter or other PostScript laserprinters. Susan Hockey, Oxford University Computing Service 13 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN England SUSAN % VAX2.OXFORD.AC.UK @ AC.UK Telephone: +44 865 273226 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 05 Aug 87 08:30:51 EDT Reply-To: "Timothy W. Seid" Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: "Timothy W. Seid" Subject: BRIDGING THE GAP FROM BOTH SIDES I wrote recently describing what I considered a gap between the humanities and Computer "Science." Nancy Ide wrote me an encouraging note in which she subtlely put "Science" in all caps when referring to my message. When I wrote it, I cringed before I put it down, but went ahead because I wanted to draw a strong distinction. Would it be fair to put this in terms of a gap between the humanities and technology? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology seems to agree. Recently, the Providence Journal told of MIT's decision to begin a broader liberal arts program for their students in order to prepare them to more adequately work in contemporary society. This is illustrative of the way we can meet each other halfway. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Aug 87 10:36 EDT Reply-To: GUEST4@YUSOL Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GUEST4@YUSOL Subject: BRIDGING THE GAP FROM TIMOTHY'S SEID: a mini-quibble I object to "meet each other halfway". It's too easy to be trapped by language into thinking of Science and Humanities each as some distinct entity other than, and comparable to, its opposite. All MIT is saying is that there is other stuff out there (and on its payroll!) which techies-in-train ing ought to spend more time with to come out looking smoother and fitting into corporate hierarchies better. Nobody (including Nancy Ide) has yet addressed my not-so-subtle insistence that there IS no single Humanities "type", "student", "method", "course", or "discipline", and so it becomes siller and sillier to argue about how best to feed its initiates' presumedly distinct, unique, and identifiable needs for computer knowhow. Humanities is EVERYBODY, including scientists, computerists and techies, whenever they wish to think about what they are doing as "the proper study of mankind". Nobody owns it, least of all, I'm afraid, the ever-more-self-assured ACH types. Or so I firmly believe. -Sterling Beckwith Humanities and Music York University ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 05 Aug 87 12:36:18 EDT Reply-To: "Timothy W. Seid" Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: "Timothy W. Seid" Subject: GAP I appreciate Sterling Beckwith's criticism and would like to hear from others too. First of all, I changed my description from SCIENCE to TECHNOLOGY. My guess is that there was a similar problem with the typewriter. How many of us know of older (I'm only 29) scholars who never learned how to type and even resisted using one? My professor does not know how to type on his outdated electric and has an IBM RT PC on his desk which is connected to a CD player with the TLG texts and indices on it, yet writes out by hand his manuscripts and has a secretary type it. I think what Sterling describes is the ideal we are working for but not the reality of the case. I want to refine my analysis further by putting it in terms of SPECIALISTS. Take my earlier example: There is a special discipline of social or cultural anthropology. Yet it has become necessary in my field (history of early Christianity) to be able to describe history in these terms. Some within my field have specialized in this area but all of us, I think, need to be familiar with it. This is the kind of GAP that I'm talking about. It just so happens that with computers, it has been the sciences ("hard sciences") which have mainly had the specialists. Persuading others to become computer capable has its drawbacks. Now I have to share our departments two Mac's with three others instead of having them both to myself like I did last year at this time. I can adjust. ========================================================================= Date: 06 Aug 87 10:51:46 bst Reply-To: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: R.J.HARE%UK.AC.EDINBURGH@AC.UK Subject: Science & Technology vs Humanism I've read the contributions to this debate with some interest, and a lot of interesting things have been said. I must say though that I regard being moulded to 'fit into a corporate heirarchy' as being probably one of the worst punishments meted out in the hot place down below - worse even than shovelling the entropy into sacks (I mean, it's got to go somewhere hasn't it?). If such is a major (or even a minor) goal of the sort of training people receive in our universities, then God help us all!: That is of course a personal point of view and may be impractical in a world where falling employment is a 'norm'. On the more relevant matter of the 'conflict' between the Arts and the Sciences, can I recommend two books by C P Snow on this subject - they are quite well-known, and I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned them before (maybe they are so well-known as to be not worth mentioning?). Anyway, the two books are 'The Two Cultures' and (I think) 'The Two Cultures Revisited' which was published some years after the first. I read them about fifteen years ago and found them extremely interesting and relevant to this debate which has been going on since long before computers were invented. Roger Hare. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6-AUG-1987 09:01 EST Reply-To: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Subject: computers vs. humanity 1 Problem--two cultures? I am glad that Roger Hare mentioned Snow's two cultures problem as the background for the current discussion here in these electronic pages about technology ("science") vs. the humanities (should this be in quotes too?). However, the problem that has arisen with the advent of computers into the humanities and other settings of traditionally non-computer users is different, but not new. Someone mentioned his "old professor" still struggling with his typewriter. Here is a problem akin to the advent of the microwave oven as opposed to the older technology of radiant heat ovens, or the gas-barbecue as opposed to the older technology of charcoal barbecues. Some people just have difficulty adapting to new tools; but the new tools just "cook"--they produce the same products. Word processors are just better typewriters when they are used to produce paper and even electronic essays. In the end, we are consuming what we consumed prior to the new technology, but we are producing it quicker--and perhaps with less resources ('person-years') required. Is there another and also a new problem? I believe so--and this problem has been the one that lurks in the shadows. Computers not only replace certain methods of production, but also can be used to produce new entities (products, goods, services, creatures). 2 The problem of how to adjust to the new world of computer creations: This problem cuts across disciplines and professions. Corporate workers in government and industrial bureaucracies, teachers in educational organizations, artists, homemakers, private entrepreneurs... have this problem of how to cope with the new products, new world, created by computers. This new world is the world of software processing that functions quasi-intelligently. For instance: software accounting models that predict and analyze cost-benefit; computer instructional systems that teach; computer graphic systems that generate animations. The difference here is that when the computer "cooks" we get a different type of product. The product is the process--and the process is semi-autonomous. Once set going, it has requirements which the user must satisfy if the user wants to receive the goods. In every technology, there is a process and product. However, there is an aspect of some computer systems where the products, or results, are in a sense by-products, and where the process is the real product. This is akin to our interaction with people, where the mode of interaction is itself the product, and the supposed goals of interaction are in a sense by-products. My point is that we are quite familiar with this situation in our daily lives when interacting with people and other species. We are quite familiar with processes such as teaching, discussing, playing...when in the company of organisms such as people and pets. However, undertaking these similar forms of interaction with semi-autonomous non-organic entities is somewhat disconcerting. In teaching the student can switch classes or the worker can quit, however, the law and morality prohibits the student and worker from killing the teacher or manager he dislikes. However, the user can "kill" the instructional system, or the accounting system--he can even, if he is the programmer--change the "soul" of the system. So it seems. Unfortunately, there is a new ethic, with enforcement by law in some cases, killing or tampering with the software when one is not "licenced" to do so is forbidden. It is not merely a matter of copywrite protection, but of maintaining software integrity. 3 The new problem: The new problem is: how should we interact with semi-autonomous computer systems that perform like people? Some computer developers and critics, such as Winograd and the Dreyfuss's in their recent books, do not want the problem to even get off the ground because they want to shelve machines that perform like people. But part of their hesitation has to do with the realization that the more we allow semi-autonomous systems to perform people-functions, such as teaching, game-playing, art-making...the more responsibility and skills we give to and give up to these systems. For instance, calculators, some teachers fear, take away elementary arithmetic skills from children (and adults). But why worry? Will we give up more serious thinking skills to computer systems--such as helping students to diagnose their intellectual problems--once we allow computer systems to perform more of the functions that we have done solely with human resources? Recently, someone told me of an incident with one of the pioneers of logic teaching computer systems. He introduced computer assisted logic teaching systems into his intro logic courses. The final step was that he allowed the computer system to teach the entire course. Students only came to see him either if they were to advanced or to behind the computer system--which was only a small number. The majority were satisfied to work solely with the computer. However, the administration soon caught on to this situation and wondered why he needed graduate assistants for his course. So, the teacher in order to save his requirements for assistants retreated and returned to only allowing the computer logic teaching system to function as a supplementary system. Of course, what he really wanted was to have more interaction with the majority of students. ========================================================================= Date: 6 August 1987, 09:02:03 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Scientists and Humanists The mention of C. P. Snow's famous "Two Cultures" has blown the dust off a paperback volume I still have from the days of teaching composition to students of engineering: "The Scientist vs. the Humanist," ed. Geo. Levine and Owen Thomas, published by W. W. Norton in the U.S. in 1963. (I bought it for $2.75!) It contains pieces from the 18th century (Swift and Johnson) to recent times (Oppenheimer and Rabi). The bibliography begins with Aristophanes, runs through Bacon to Brecht, and includes an article by Kenney, "Dead Horse Flogged Again." It's not a bad collection, on not an unsuitable topic, for the kind of course one could imagine being taught to undergraduates who find themselves in the cross-disciplinary soup we are cooking. The horse is old, to be sure, but unless a person kills it for himself I don't see how it could ever be dead. The impact of computing on humanists, many of whom have never had direct exposure to the sciences, involves both dangers and considerable opportunities for renewal. I think the dangers have mostly to do with what might be called a Freudian envy of the sciences (and, more recently, of commerce), which has possessed many an unwary soul. The interesting thing is that this object of envy is so often a projection, compounded of fear and desire, which has little resemblance to what actually goes on in the sciences -- when they are intelligently practised -- and in commerce. I found Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions very stimulating in this regard; his description of how science is done seemed to me not unlike how I conduct myself as a literary critic. The opportunities for renewal seem to me mostly to stem from the understanding we can gain of how humanists have always done their work, which may indeed turn out to be how thoughtful human beings have always thought. I doubt there is much really new in this, but to "renew it daily" (supposedly the motto on Confucius' bathtub) is simply intellectual survival. I've attended conferences where people have said that the humanities are moribund, and I've talked to others who say that the kind of intramural world that has allowed the humanities to exist is no longer possible. These people tend to look to computing as a saviour from extinction and ticket to full participation in the modern world, with all the rewards it offers. We seal our own doom, however, if we cannot restate from within our own group of disciplines the unchanging value of the humanistic scholarly life to ourselves and to our society, even if most of its members won't understand. As one of my teachers was fond of saying, there's no such thing as dead literature, only dead readers. It seems to me that computing in the humanities furnishes a very good interdisciplinary framework within which to restate what has never ceased being true. The financial pressures on our universities make this restatement absolutely vital. What can't be used gets sold. ========================================================================= Date: 7 August 1987, 13:40:36 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: HUMANIST BIOGRAFY in print? Nancy Ide of the ACH has proposed that the whole of HUMANIST BIOGRAFY be published in the ACH Newsletter. Please reread what you contributed; let me know if you object (a) in principle to your biographical statement being set down in the cool and authoritative print of the Newsletter, or (b) to the current version being printed. If you object to the latter, you will need to supply me with a replacement, let us say before the end of this month. If you have no objections please say nothing -- I get sufficient electronic mail as it is. Thanks for your continuing participation. ========================================================================= Date: 9 August 1987, 11:24:21 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Autobiographies, First Supplement ========================================================================= Autobiographies of HUMANISTs First Supplement Following are 20 additional entries to the collection of autobiographical statements by members of the HUMANIST discussion group and 1 update to an existing entry. Further additions, corrections, and updates are welcome, to MCCARTY at UTOREPAS.BITNET. W.M. 10 August 1987 ========================================================================= *Beckwith, Sterling 248 Winters College, York University, 4700 Keele St., North York, Ontario (416) 736-5142 or 5186. I teach at York University, have created and taught the only Humanities course dealing with computers, in the context of Technology, Culture and the Arts, and serve as director of computer music in the Faculty of Fine Arts, at York. ========================================================================= *Boddington, Andy Bitnet: a_boddington at vax.acs.open.ac.uk Academic Computing Service, Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA I am a Research Adviser at The OU responsible for advising a broad range of disciplines but specialising in the arts and social sciences. My particular interests professionally at the OU are in encouraging conferencing and developing data handling and data analysis packages for the non-scientist and the 'computer timid'. I also specialise in statistical analysis. I am an archaeologist by training and inclination I am particularly active in propagating computing as an analytical tool within archaeology; as well as the benefits of desk top publishing to a discipline which produces large volumes of printed emphemera. ========================================================================= *Brown, Malcolm gx.mbb@stanford.bitnet ACIS/IRIS Sweet Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-3091 Humanities background. Undergraduate: UC Santa Cruz, BAs in Philosophy, German Literature Graduate: Universitaet Freiburg (two years); Stanford University (German Studies). Dissertation: "Nietzsche und sein Verleger Ernst Schmeitzner: eine Darstellung ihrer Beziehungen" Primary interests: European intellectual history from the Enlightenment to the present Computer background. Systems experience: IBM MVS, IBM VM/CMS; DEC TOPS-20; Berkeley 4.3 UNIX; PC- DOS and MS-DOS; Apple Macintosh. Current responsibilities. I support the Stanford Humanities faculty in all aspects of computer usage. We are currently looking at ways in which more powerful microcomputers (PS/2, Mac II) might assist humanist scholars in their research. Additional interests. all aspects of text processing, from data entry (such as scanning) to printing, which might loosely be called digital typography. Especially: page description (e.g. PostScript), typesetting (e.g. TeX, Interleaf, PageMaker etc), typeface design. ===================================================================== *Brunner, Theodore F. Theodore F. Brunner, Director, Thesaurus Linguae, Graecae, University of California Irvine, Irvine CA 92717. My telephone number is (714) 856-6404. Short description of the TLG: A computer-based data bank of ancient Greek literature extant from the period between Homer and A.D. 600 (we are now beginning to expand the data bank through 1453). ========================================================================= *Choueka, Yaacov Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel, 52100. Interests: full-text retrieval systems, computerized corpora, mechanized dictionaries, grammars and lexicons, ambiguity. ========================================================================= *Corns, Thomas N. Bitnet: v002 at vaxa.bangor.ac.uk I am the Secretary of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing and a member of the editorial committee of Literary and Linguistic Computing, and co-author (with B. H. Rudall) of Computers and Literature: a Practical Guide, recently published by Abacus Press, along with a number of articles and papers on humanities computing. I look forward to hearing from you. ========================================================================= *Cover, Robin C. Assistant Professor of Semitics and Old Testament 3909 Swiss Avenue; Dallas, TX 75204 USA; I am the faculty coordinator of the (current) "Committee for the Academic Computerization of Campus"; we are just beginning to face up to the need for a distinct entity which will be responsible for academic applications of computers: software development for textual analysis; multi-lingual word processing; supervision of the student computer lab (with CAI for Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew); purchase of workstation equipment dedicated to textual analysis (micro-IBYCUS, etc); faculty education in humanistic computing; etc. My specific role now is to represent to the administration the need for this new entity, the precedent for it (at other universities); definition of the role of the entity within institutional purpose; proposal for staffing, funding and organizational structure; etc. My special interests are in MRT archives and text retrieval programs to study encoded texts. ========================================================================= *Curtis, Jared Curtis Department of English, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 (604) 291-3130 I conduct research in textual criticism, including the use of computers, teach "Humanities research and computers" to graduate students, and give advice to colleagues and students. ========================================================================= *Erdt, Terry Graduate Dept. of Library Science, Villanova University, Villanova PA 19085 (215) 645-4688 My interests, at this point in time, can be said to be optical character recognition, scholar's workstation, and the computer as medium from the perspective of the field of popular culture. ========================================================================= *Goldfield, Joel Bitnet: jdg at psc90.uucp Assistant Professor of French, Dept. of Foreign Languages, Plymouth State College, Plymouth, NH 03264; Tel. 603-536-5000, ext. 2277 My work focuses on stylostatistical and content analysis, especially in the field of 19th-century French literature. I am currently developing a sub-field called "computational thematics" wherein a selective database based on conceptually organized words and including frequency norms for appropriately lemmatized entries can be applied to thematic and content analysis. My current application is to the 19th-century diplomat and author, Arthur de Gobineau, his use of "tic words" and other stylistic traits disputed by Michael Riffaterre and Leo Spitzer. I attempt to resolve this controversy through this conceptual, thematic, and stylostatistical approach. See the project description listed by Klaus Schmidt in the latest newsletter/booklet from the Society for Conceptual and Content Analysis (SCCAC). I would welcome comments on database structures, stylostatistical applications and programming from other UNIX users, who may want to compare their experiences with those I described in my article for the ACTES of the ALLC meeting in Nice (1985), a 1986 publication by Slatkine, vol. 1. I am hoping to prepare a manuscript on humanities computing on the UNIX system for publication within the next 3 years and would welcome all suggestions for contributions. The scope may be restricted later to literary and linguistic applications, depending on contributions and an eventual publisher's preferences, but, for the moment, everything is wide open. The only real computer connection with what I teach here in the University System of New Hampshire (Plymouth State College) is computer-assisted instruction/interactive videotape & videodisk. My 4-course/sem. teaching load typically includes 2 beginning French course sections, 1 intermediate course, and an advanced one (translation, culture & conversation, 19th-cen. Fr. lit., or history & civ.). I also conduct innovative FL teaching methodology workshops and consult with various public school and college foreign language departments on evaluating, using and authoring CALI/interactive video. ========================================================================= *Hare, Roger Bitnet: r.j.hare at edinburgh.ac.uk Training Group, Computing Service, University of Edinburgh, 59 George Square, Edinburgh, Scotland. Graduated in Applied Physics from Lanchester Polytechnic (Coventry) in 1972. First exposure to computing in second year course (algol on an Elliot 803), and third year training period (Fortran on IBM and Honewell machines at UKAEA Harwell). Thereafter spent several years working in the hospital service in Manchester and Edinburgh, mostly in the area of respiratory physiology and nuclear medicine. Computing interests re-awakened on moving to Edinburgh in 1974. After a couple of years away from computing, followed by a couple of years working as an 'advisor/programmer/trouble-shooter' for a bureau, re-joined Edinburgh University in 1980 as an 'adviser/programmer/trouble-shooter' on the SERC DECSystem-10 in 1980. After three years or so in this job, joined the Training Unit of the Computer Centre (now the Computing Service) where I have remained. We teach various aspects of computing, but my own interests are in the Humanities area (amongst others), literary analysis, languages suitable for teaching computing to non-numerate non-scientists, computerised document preparation (I don't like the terms word-processing and text-processing) and puncturing the arrogant idea held by many scientists that computers are solely for use by scientists, etc. I am currently looking (or trying to find the time to look) at Icon, Prolog, Lisp, Simula, Pop (?), etc. (I gave up on C!), with a view to using one of these as a language to teach programming to humanists. The first thing I have noted is that my head is starting to hurt! The second is that Icon seems to be a good idea for this sort of thing, though I am not deep enough into the language yet to be sure. If anyone out there has any ideas/experience on this one, I'll be happy to pick their brains... ========================================================================= *Holmes, Glyn <42104_263@uwovax.UWO.CDN> Department of French, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7. Phone: (519) 679-2111 ext. 5713/5700. Main area of research is computer-assisted language learning, with emphasis on input analysis and instructional design. Most of my publications have been in these areas. I have also taught a course on French and the Computer, which covered CALL, literary and linguistic computing, use of databases, etc. I am the editor of Computers and the Humanities. ========================================================================= *Hulver, Barron Houck Computing Center, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074 My position is technical support analyst. Basically I assist students and faculty in trying to use our computers and networks. ========================================================================= *Kashiyama, Paul I AM A PHILOSOPHY PH.D. CANDIDATE AT YORK UNIVERSITY CONCENTRATING IN THE AREA OF ETHIC AND JURISPRUDENCE. I AM PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN THE POTENTIAL ROLES COMPUTERS/AI WOULD PLAY IN FORMULATIONS OF ETHICAL/LEGAL JUDGMENTS; AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION OF WHETHER SUCH JUDGMENTS ARE ADEQUATE REPLACEMENTS FOR HUMAN DECISIONS OR AT LEAST ADEQUATE MODELS OF ETHICAL AND LEGAL DECISION MAKING PROCEDURES. MY BACKGROUND IN COMPUTING INCLUDES PROGRAMMING IN BASIC,PASCAL, PROLOG, SOME C, APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMING IN FRED,DBASEIII+, TRAINING AND TEACHING EXPERIENCES IN DATABASE MANAGEMENT, SPREDSHEET ORGANIZATION, WORD PROCESSING AND INTRODUCTION TO PROGRAMMING FOR CHILDREN AND BUSINESS PERSONS USING PERSONAL / MICRO COMPUTERS. ======================================================================== *Matheson, Philippa MW Athenians Project, Dept. of Classics, Victoria College, Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, Canada M5S 1A1 (416) 585-4469 My university affiliation is the ATHENIANS project, Victoria College, University of Toronto, and my humanist computing activities are varied: programs for the Canadian classics journal, Phoenix; all forms of computer and scholarly aid for the ATHENIANS (Prosopography of ancient Athens) project; an attempt to establish a bibliography of articles in Russian (translated) on the subject of amphoras (ancient wine jars) on the EPAS machine; as well as trying to exchange amphora data for a database project on the stamps on ancient wine jars (called, imaginatively, AMPHORAS). I call myself a computer consultant, and am mostly consulted about how to make PCs deal with Greek... ========================================================================= *McCarthy, William J. Dept. of Greek and Latin, Catholic University of America, Wash., D.C. 20064 (202) 635-5216/7 Although untrained in computer science - and doubtless possessing little aptitude for it -, I have plunged considerable time into an effort to harness for myself and my colleagues the powerful tools of study and "productivity" which the computer offers to accommodating scholars. My hope is that groups such as HUMANIST will be able, in some way, to guide the development of a fruitful conjunction of technology and humanism. ========================================================================= *McGregor, John Bitnet: thl4 at mts.durham.ac.uk University of Durham, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham DH1 3RS, UK Areas of interest: Septuagint/ Greek/ CALL/ Bible Present status: Developing CALL software for NT/Biblical Greek ========================================================================= *Roosen-Runge, Peter H. Dept. of Computer Science, York University, 4700 Keele St., North York (416) 736-5053 I have been involved with supporting and extending computing in the humanities for many years (I think I taught the first course at the UofT on computing for humanists in 1968!) Current projects include melody generation based on a model of a "listener" expressed in Prolog, and a music database system under Unix. I am also very interested in the impact of large comprehensive text databases on teaching, and the role of universities in creating and publishing such databases; but I am only in the early stages of formulating a research project in this area. ========================================================================= *Seid, Timothy W. 74 Clyde St., W. Warwick, RI 02983 Box 1927, Religious Studies Dept., Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 (401) 828-5485; (401) 863-3401 My interest in computers began when I first entered the doctoral program in History of Religions: Early Christianity two years ago soon grew to the point of being the department's Distributed Computer Support Person. During last year, when TA positions were scarce, I was able to get a Computer Proctorship. Again, for this next year, I will hold such a position. The main project, for which we have an Educational Computing Grant from the university, will be to develop a CAI which will teach students about textual criticism--in simulation for the under- graduate course in Earliest Christianity and using the ancient languages for the graduate seminar. Two personal projects have to do with word- division of ancient Greek manuscripts and scanned images of the same. I'm also a member of Brown University's Computing in the Humanities User's Group (CHUG) and co-leader of the Manuscript Criticism Working group of CHUG. As a service to the department and the University at- large, I maintain RELISTU, a Religious Studies Common Segment on the mainframe on which I archive the ONLINE NOTES and the BIBLICAL SCHOLARS ON BITNET ADDRESS BOOK and have the first version of the CAI I've called TEXT EDIT. ========================================================================= *Sitman, David Computation Centre, Tel Aviv University I teach courses in the use of computers in language study and I am an advisor on computer use in the humanities. ========================================================================= *Zayac, Sue I work for the Columbia University "Scholarly Information Center". This is an experimental union of the Libraries and the Computer Center designed to "stimulate and support the productive and creative use of information technology by our faculty and students" - Pat Battin, Vice President and University Librarian "Information technology" includes everything from parchment to CD-ROM, and from thumbing through a 3x5 card catalog to searching a database on a new supercomputer from the Vax workstation on your desk. My title is Senior User Services Consultant, Academic Information Services Group. My areas of responsibility are statistical programs, particularly SPSSX and SAS, word-processing, particular the mainframe text-formatting product, SCRIBE, and a smattering of anything and everything that anybody might ask me. I have a BA in Geology from Barnard College and a Masters from the Columbia University School of Public Health (major area was Population and Family Health). I'm one of the few people at the Computer Center who didn't major in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering. One of my great uses here is to play the part of "everyuser". Interests are classical archaeology (I almost majored in Greek and Latin, but realized in time I had no talent for languages), history of science, history in general, ballet, arm chair astronomy (I don't like the cold), gardening, and nature watching. I once did rock climbing but, like many of us in the computer field, I've gotten out of shape sitting in front of a monitor all day long. Mail is welcome, on any topic. ============================================================================ ========================================================================= Date: 11-AUG-1987 14:34:26 Reply-To: ARCHIVE@VAX3.OXFORD.AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: ARCHIVE@VAX3.OXFORD.AC.UK OXFORD TEXT ARCHIVE RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIP The British Library has recently approved a grant to fund a one- year research assistantship in the Oxford Text Archive at Oxford University Computing Service (OUCS). The person appointed will be required to investigate current and potential applications of machine readable texts in a scholarly context. A survey will be made of current usage, and recommendations produced about ways of integrating existing machine readable texts (e.g. typesetting tapes) into a text database. Applicants should have some experience of academic research, enthusiasm for text processing in the humanities and preferably some background knowledge of database or electronic publishing. It is hoped to appoint to the post with effect from January 1988, on the Research Scale 1A (#8,185-#14,825, under review). For more information, e-mail LOU@UK.AC.OX.VAX1, or write to Mrs D. Clarke, Oxford University Computing Service, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN  ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Aug 87 13:39:46 PDT Reply-To: sano%VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV@Hamlet Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: sano%VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV@Hamlet Subject: RE: HUMANIST BIOGRAFY in print? Willard, If the biografy is going to print, I'd like to change mine. Unfortunatel y, my vlsi machine is going down tomorrow for a facility move which is only supposed to take a week. I'll try to get on and send you a new biografy, but if I don't, please don't print it. Thanks. Haj ========================================================================= Date: 12 August 1987, 14:54:10 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Review of Discussions The following is a draft for an article that will appear in the forthcoming Newsletter of the ACH. The first part describes HUMANIST, the second part summarizes the discussions that have taken place here in the last two months. The plan is to create a summary of discussions every three months for the ACH Newsletter and for the Journal of the ALLC and to publish these summaries here as well. It seems to me that we need periodic reminding of what has happened on HUMANIST to give this rapidly flowing medium some continuity. Comments on this summary, either about its form or its content, are welcome. Please send them to me directly. W.M. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- HUMANIST So Far: A Review of the First Two Months One of the first activities of the new Special Interest Group for Humanities Computing Resources has been to establish an international electronic discussion group, HUMANIST, on the Bitnet/NetNorth/EARN node in Toronto, Canada. The purpose of HUMANIST is to link together those who in any way support computing in the humanities in the terms defined by the new SIG. Initially HUMANIST was focused on discovering a common professional identity among its members; although this remains a strong interest, its horizons have expanded considerably. HUMANIST's first message was sent out on 13 May to approximately two dozen people in three countries. As of the end of July, HUMANIST has grown to nearly 100 people in 9 countries around the world, and membership continues to grow. To be included an individual must only be involved in some way with the support of humanities computing; he or she need not be a member of the ACH or ALLC, although membership in these organizations is actively encouraged. Because we do not really know what it means, this "support" is in practice very loosely defined. Technically speaking, HUMANIST is a list of names and addresses kept by ListServ software on the IBM 4381 known as UTORONTO. When ListServ receives an ordinary e-mail message addressed to HUMANIST@UTORONTO by anyone on the list, it automatically mails a copy to every other person on the list. The sender need not be on Bitnet/NetNorth/EARN but can communicate to HUMANIST from any network with a gateway to Bitnet. Unlike conferencing systems, ListServ does not permit subdivision of a discussion group into subtopics. It is thus like a large seminar on a very general topic, in which everyone is privy to everything everyone else says. De facto subdivision can be achieved by direct e-mail conversations among members, but ListServ does nothing to assist this. Every list has one or more "owners," who have supervisory rights that may be varied in their degree of control. HUMANIST has two: Steve Younker, the "postmaster" of the UTORONTO node, who helps with problems related to the network itself, and Willard McCarty, the editor. HUMANIST has been set up such that an individual must ask the editor to be given membership, but once he or she is a member mailing privileges are unrestricted. The lack of control in this regard inevitably leads to some unpleasant floods of junk-mail, but it also permits free-ranging discussion and frees everyone from the inhibiting burden of dictatorial powers and duties. The membership has indeed been patient and forgiving as well as very lively during the initial period. A few mutually respected rules of etiquette have evolved. Direct conversations among members interested in highly specialized topics are encouraged, with the understanding that the originator of the special discussion will summarize the results for everyone else. Direct conversions are especially recommended when a HUMANIST asks for specific information, e.g., "Where can I find worthwhile reviews of Nota Bene?" Members are also encouraged to identify the subjects of contributions and themselves by name. Because someone applying for membership in HUMANIST must say what he or she does to support computing in the humanities, the owner has accumulated many interesting biographical statements. These were recently gathered together, cursorily edited, and sent out to all HUMANISTs in order to introduce everyone to everyone else and thus to help define a professional identity. Supplements are planned as new members' statements accumulate. Tim Maher (Computing Services, Berkeley) is meanwhile working on a more detailed and systematic questionnaire. In many respects HUMANIST fulfills the late Marshall McLuhan's vision of the "global village," in which the great physical distances that separate its members almost cease to matter. It is for that reason a fascinating sociological experiment. Of course HUMANIST is used to disseminate information, but the interaction of personalities, perspectives, and ideas bulks much larger in my growing file of contributions than exchanges of facts. The Discussions Since the first contribution on 19 May, several types of discussions have occurred. I count 7 concerned with the etiquette of contributing to HUMANIST, 8 requests for specific information, and one advertisement of a job. On 5 occasions it has been used to announce publication of or offer subscription to both printed and electronic sources of information, and 6 conferences and calls for papers have been published this way. Interestingly, one HUMANIST's objections to the program for the forthcoming conference at Oberlin -- he pointed to the repetition of issues raised earlier at the Vassar conference -- resulted in a thorough exploration and defense of the rationale for the conference. As one defender put it, the later conference returns to the issues of the first because both are dealing with difficult and important questions: "what it is we want our students to learn, the nature of the world into which we are sending them, and the relationship both of technology and (more fundamentally) the algorithmic approach to problem-solving." 1. Programming in the curriculum. The unresolved nature of these questions is demonstrated by the prior and independent discussion on HUMANIST about the teaching of programming to students in the humanities. Some comments addressed the virtues and limitations of specific languages, such as Prolog or Icon, or of languages of a specific generation. The more interesting contributions, however, circled around the question, "Why should arts students learn programming at all?" One HUMANIST concluded that "the more basic task is to teach undergraduates, and people in general, how to recognize problems, identify and characterize them, understand their nature, and then to determine which tool may be appropriate for the problem." Another noted the analogy with learning classical languages (formerly the usual means of acquiring intellectual discipline) and concluded by saying that teaching students a computational language will show them "how to approach and analyze a problem from a computational point of view. And that will help them both in the Big Bad World... and in the academic world... where humanists need more than ever to understand how to express a problem clearly in computational terms in order to get not just a correct answer but the correct answer to the question they want to ask. It will also help them, if they remain in the academic world, to view with proper skepticism both those humanists who deny that the computer can be a valuable tool... and those who think the computer can solve any question it is worthwhile asking better than a human being can." 2. Professional recognition and electronic publishing Another substantive discussion began with the vexing problem of professional academic recognition for work in humanities computing and with the desire to exploit the electronic medium for publication. The latter issue is related to the former, since electronic publication carries with it no professional kudos and may preempt the conventional kind. The latter, however, is in some cases too slow to keep pace with developments in the field, so that, for example, reviews of software may be obsolete by the time they see print. The formality of print may also inhibit as well as encourage higher standards of work. Some HUMANISTs commented that they would always opt for publication in print unless journal editors were agreeable to pre-publication in electronic form. Unrestricted redistribution would be a problem, as would the availability and reliability of electronic networks around the world. The lack of typographic sophistication as well as diacritical marks makes imitation of printed journals impossible. "The technology isn't up to it," one person said. Another remarked, however, that since HUMANIST is non-refereed, publication there would be in a different category from the conventional kind, somewhat like the circulation of a technical report in computer science. The trick is to exploit rather than be thwarted by the characteristics of the medium. A change in how research in the humanities is done could result. The appearance of this column in the ACH Newsletter represents a link with conventional publication and an attempt to exploit the new medium, but it does not do much about the problem of professional credit. There was little disagreement about the lack of professional RECOGNITION. ONE HUMANIST REMARKED, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT IN HIS department "writing software ranked dead last in a list of 35 activities considered worthy for English faculty." He went on to note, however, that "I was not hired to work with computers.... So, it is to some degree my own doing." He advised younger, untenured members "to be sure that their computer activity officially be made part of their job description," but he concluded by noting that most of the work in humanities computing does not itself constitute research, at least not in the humanities. This is, of course, a serious issue, since it raises the question of our scholarly and academic legitimacy. It may be significant that there have been no replies to a direct question posed on HUMANIST about our scholarly contribution to humanistic scholarship. One contributor had suggested earlier that work in humanities computing might be considered on a par with the editing of texts or assembling of bibliographies, for example. The most vexing problems with making use of this analogy seem to point to the juvenality of an emerging discipline: the lack of peer-review, hence of quality-control; the confusion over aims and possibilities; and indeed, the fluid nature of terms and definitions. The exchanges over these issues on HUMANIST have been desultory, but the existence of an electronic forum promises to accelerate the shaping of this new discipline. 3. Desktop publishing. HUMANISTs also discussed the impact and potential of desktop publishing. The originator noted the many problems with formal electronic publication but remarked that "using electronic means to improve the quality of conventional scholarly publishing really seems to me an exciting possibility." To the dire predictions of decline in quality she opposed the great advantage for the academic editor or scholarly research project of being able to control book production as well as to reduce its cost greatly. A respondent noted two reasons for decline in quality: (1) the typographical superiority of traditional methods; and (2) the lack of required skills characteristic of most desktop publishers. Since improvements in technology will likely soon close the gap between new and old methods, the second item is really the central problem. As he remarked, "Really good work in this area cannot be done by amateurs," who are mostly unable to judge the quality of what they are producing. Another HUMANIST, who works at a major academic publishing house, described a "do-it-yourself" (rather than desktop) facility that to date has produced over 200 scholarly volumes. She stressed the role of the typographic department of the press in helping an author design a volume; or, when the author does not yet have a press, of other books in providing models for him to follow. She remarked that "On the whole... our users have been quite conscientious and have made considerable efforts to produce texts which have a pleasing appearance." Ironically, she noted that the generally high quality of these texts may be in part attributable to the fact that this system is considerably less "friendly" than the usual desktop publishing software. The user is forced to learn several unfamiliar typographical terms, "all of which remind him that he is dabbling in an area of considerable tradition and expertise and art, and encourage him to walk with caution, possibly even respect." Conclusion We plan to review the activities of HUMANIST in the ACH Newsletter on a regular basis. These reviews will also be published on HUMANIST itself in order to remind the members what has happened and thus to give them the opportunity to renew a lapsed discussion. Anyone wishing to join HUMANIST should send an e-mail note to MCCARTY@UTOREPAS.BITNET, giving a brief professional biography. As I have mentioned above, these biographies will later be circulated to all HUMANISTs. Willard McCarty Centre for Computing in the Humanities University of Toronto ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12-AUG-1987 16:13 EST Reply-To: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Subject: COMPUTERS VS. HUMANITY 1 To Lou Burnard: Thanks for your comments. 2 I agree that there is insecurity about computers. Some of it is warranted --as far as job security goes. For instance, in Canada there are currently 19,000 draftsmen. In two years from now, it is predicted that there will be 900--due to the coming of CAD (computer-aided drafting). 3 As far as Snow and the two-cultures problem goes; this problem transcends its parochial background. It is a fact that people in the humanities and arts are ignorant, by and large, of current science, and scientific methodology. Scientists, by and large, are ignorant of the humanities. So what? That's the problem--what is the significance of the gap? 4 About word processors. I started using word processors about six years ago. What made me excited about using this technology was that it allowed me to combine two or three processes: 1. First hand written draft. 2. 'N' typed draft. 3. Cut and past. 4. Step 2 to produce N+1 typed draft and 3 and 4. ('4' is a recursive function.) I also use step 1 when I find myself too far from my key board; and then replace the typewriter with the word processor. Now I am even more excited about word processors than when I first started using them. For instance, the one I am using now to compose this reply, allows one to automate foot-noting, structuring (in terms of sections, and sub-sections), and automate a table of contents and index. Of course, it comes with a spelling-checker with a facility for making several custom dictionaries. However, by and large, I expect to produce the same old product--paper essays. Also, the cognitive functions supported by this process--in so far as word-processing expedites cut-and-paste--are no different than the hardware cut-and-paste. (Scrolling a typed text merely expedites cut-and-paste.) 5 Is there anything qualitatively new introduced by word processors? Yes--only in so far as they are used in conjunction with electronic journals/mail/bulletin boards to produce electronically stored essays, etc., that can be accessed quickly and virtually universally. In effect, we will open up the exclusive world of intellectual products to a wide audience of non-professional scholars who will be able to join in this world without requiring the luxury of an academic position. This widening of the academic world, or access to intellectual products without requiring an academic position, will not only widen the arena of discussion, but will (or could) open up new intellectual problems for discussion, and create new jargons and methodologies as required for the discussion of these problems. 5.1 But once these electronic journals replace paper-media, an unfortunate loss will be the art of typography. Furthermore, once people cotton to the idea that physical libraries, and full time attendance in university courses, could be replaced by electronic libraries and computer-assisted instruction, libraries and librarians, and universities and professors may become redundant or surplus. Instead of spending years in university and then taking on a job; people could join companies with their own educational institutes, computer-assisted job-training and skill-enhancing courses. I'm not sure where liberal arts courses would fit into this world--perhaps they will be treated as leisure time, continuing education courses, to be taken after work hours along with cooking, sailing, photography, creative writing, etc. But again, perhaps people will work 9 hours a week from home-offices at their computer terminals, and be capable of pursuing full-time research, if they wish, from their computer terminals, and attendance at traditional universities--where they could have face-to-face contact with professional teachers. 6 To conclude: I disagree with you about the qualitatively new features introduced by word processors. However, when they are used in conjunction with electronic mail/journals/bulletin boards, they do permit rapid access and participation in a world of thought, that could open up this world to a larger audience of non-dedicated scholars, or non-professional scholars. This could both universalize thinking, and produce new sub-groups with new jargons and new intellectual problems, heretofore uninvented due to the limited resources available for pursuing intellectual past-times. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12-AUG-1987 16:14 EST Reply-To: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Subject: WORD PROCESSORS AND THINKING An afterthought to my previous response: Do word processors add anything qualitatively new to the function of writing and thinking-writing? I welcome your comment that scrolling through finished looking texts is a new function of computer word processors. Automated spelling checks and grammar checks are also new functions. However, the automated spelling checker I have doesn't check for context. It only checks the spelling of the word, and ignores whether the word is the wrong word for a given context. To check for context requires natual language understanding, which still is at the rudimentary stage in A.I. research and development. My point is that not all new technological functions do anything that is qualitatively new for a process to which they provide support, or for the products which they help make. Still do word processors enhance thinking, or in your words, the marshalling of ideas? Cognitive psychological studies of expert writers reveal that these writers use their writing as a means for revising their understanding of problems, and for improving their solutions of these problems. In physical terms, this involves, cut and paste, deletion, addition, modification, and rewrite of entire text. It is true that when one does this on a computer, it is neeter in looking like a finished product, and one can do this quicker without having to use tape or glue, and also less paper ends up in the waste bucket. So, the speed of this process on computer, though no different in function or type when done manually with scissors, glue, paper, typewriter, waste bucket... because it is so much greater, permits a greater number of revisions that each look finished, but are not really--as far as the intellectual process of clarifying and improving one's ideas goes. In that respect, word processing could enhance thinking by allowing for more revisions in less time with less physical effort. But, I don't think word processing adds a new dimension to thinking, or adds new features to our thought processsing. ========================================================================= Date: 12 August 1987, 16:22:47 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: The scholarly contribution of humanities computing I received the following comment from Abigail Young that is thoughtful and lengthy enough to be passed on immediately to everyone else rather than saved for a later summary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have been mulling over your words about computing and a scholarly contribution to humanistic research at the end of #2 in the summary of discussion. I think a lot of the problem is one of definition. For example, REED makes, as a scholarly project engaged in documentary editing and publishing, a solid contribution to two areas of the humanities at least, history and literature. But our computing here is pretty pedestrian: it's central to the project, but what we are doing is to use the computer to do now things that humanists have been doing since at least the Renaissance. I wouldn't feel that computing was making a truly new contribution to the humanities unless it were possible to make a qualitative rather than a quantitative advance in humanistic studies by means of computing, that is, not doing something more accurately or more quickly, but doing something which could not have been done at all, was not even thought of, before. That doesn't mean I don't think that the contributions that computers make in assisting research and writing are impor- tant, especially databases for historical and certain kinds of literary research. I think they are very important. But they are merely providing better tools to do tasks we have always wanted to do. I'm not sure that there are truly new contributions to humanities to be made by computing, but if there are, I think the novelty will have to wear off before we can recognize them. This is, I suspect, a reactionary and heterodox view; and it may be all wrong: I may only think it because of my lack of familiarity with the cutting edge of humainites computing. And I emphasize that I don't at all mean that computing isn't a valuable and in many ways essential tool for humanists. But in my mind this is the reason why there has been no direct response to the question to which you alluded in your report. ========================================================================= Date: 12 August 1987, 19:09:23 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty The following contribution was send with an incorrect node ID. It is a missing piece of a discussion to which everyone received a two-part reply earlier today. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Date: 12-AUG-1987 10:21:54 > From: LOU@VAX1.OXFORD.AC.UK > To: humanist@UTOREPAS <---NOTE BAD NODENAME! > Subject: two kulchurs > > Subj: msg=> S_RICHMOND%UTOROISE@RL.EARN: Re: computers vs. humanity > > I'm not sure I like the cooking analogy, so I'm going to pursue the > typewriter/word processor one. It seems to me that a wordprocessor is not > just a better sort of typewriter; or rather that the difference is more > qualitatative than quantitative. Both engines enable one to produce a written > document; which is a complex operation involving the disposition of symbols on > a piece of paper, but also the marshalling of ideas in the mind. It seems to > me, after many years experience of both, that the wordprocessor actually > helps as much with the latter as it does with the former. Drafting things > out on paper is, by comparison, clumsy, where anything more than very prelimin ar > concept maps or headings etc is concerned. The wp, by making it easy to scroll > back and forth thro a text which always looks as if it has just been typed > even tho it may have been changed over and over again, changes the way > i compose texts, and i think for the better. There isn't any analogy for > this process, because it's a new function that simply wasn't > there in the old technology. Why then do people persistently want to find > analogies for what computers can do, and say "aaargh they are usurping the > human role" when they fail to find one? Insecurity perhaps? I think being > human is also about being a tool-user, homo faber; I have no patience with > the attitude that despises that part of the human spirit. As for > C.P. Snow, his novels are rooted in a deep insecurity occasioned by attitudes > (prevalent in Whitehall in the 50s, but now rather reversed) of a > classically-educated establishment to the arriving technocracy; as such > they are polemic, partisan and almost totally unreadable, because of Snow's > total lack of understanding of human nature. > > Lou Burnard > > ========================================================================= Date: 13 Aug 87 10:03:42 bst Reply-To: R.J.HARE@EDINBURGH.AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: R.J.HARE@EDINBURGH.AC.UK Subject: C P Snow etc. Picking up the points made by Lou Burnard and S.Richmond about C P Snow etc. , I certainly agree that C P Snow's novels are 'almost unreadable' for just the reason.s that are given by LB - indeed one major example in 'The Two Cultures' relates to the attitudes of the arts-biased establishment towards the slightly naff science and engineering educated portion of the human race; and to Snow's attempts to influence that attitude at dinner parties with reference (I think) to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I think that the problem these days is probably a little less one-sidedthan either Snow or SR seem to imply - unfortunately scientists look down on artists *and* artists look down on scientists. I certainly regard it as part of my job to try and break down these artificial barriers, and would also regard it as being essential for *anyone* whatever their background, who is involved in Humanities Computing to have something approaching the same outlook. There is no room for the "what on earth would an arts student want to learn programming for?" syndrome. This is not a hypothetical question, but a verbatim rendering of a question asked me by one of my colleagues some time ago. Roger Hare. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13-AUG-1987 09:10 EST Reply-To: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Subject: word processing and the two cultures 1 Response to Susan Zayac: Studies of expert writers by cognitive psychologists have revealed that what distinguishes the 'novice' from the 'expert' is that novices use the strategy of writing down their thoughts in a free-association, first in the mind, first out on paper strategy. Thus, word processors--if used only in a linear manner to get out ideas onto paper--could reinforce novice thinking-writing habits. However, because of the ease of the cut-and-paste function of word processors, when used in the looping manner of enter-revise-re-enter, word processing could encourage the acquisition of expert-strategies of thinking-writing. Admittedly, and happily, dyslexics report that word processing has allowed them to produce comprehensible texts because they do not have to worry about spelling, and orthography. That is, the problem that dyslexics face, unlike novice writers--in getting down their thoughts before they run out--is in writing something remotely legible. A sharper way of putting the question I previously asked about whether word processing enhances thinking-- Does word processing create any new and powerful cognitive strategies? 2 Response to Roger Hare: C.P. Snow I suppose wouldn't be ranked with Joyce; but Joyce couldn't be credited with contributing to science merely because he coined the word "quark". Was G.B. Shaw's preface on evolution in "Back to Methusaleh" a contribution to the evolution of the theory of evolution? Are they any cases of literary people making direct contributions to science? Einstein played the violin--was this a contribution to music? B. Russell wrote a novel, which I haven't found yet--would that count as a bridging of the two cultures? Or, was Russell a worker in both cultures because he (and Whitehead) virtually created symbolic logic and Russell wrote 'traditional' philosophy. These are some of the questions that comprise the two cultures problem, first pinpointed by Snow. Because computers find their main application and market in business does not mean that those who use computers are thereby in the business world. Scientists and engineers use computers, for the most part, as a device for processing complex formulae requiring lots of repetitive calculations of very large fields of data. Though, a recent breakthrough in the field of computera applications is the arrival of computer-aided engineering. CAE systems test and improve electronic circuit designs. Also, sub-nuclear physicists are now using computers to record and decode 'events' that were formerly recorded by photography and decoded by teams of graduate assistants. Moreover, the advent of these systems raises the same problem as does the advent of computer aided teaching systems for professors and students: How do and should we interact with computers that perform intelligent functions, such as designing electronic circuits, and describing physical processes? This problem cuts across cultures, domains, and socio-economic sub-groups. In sum: though people in business, science, and engineering were the first to exploit computers, there is nothing inherently scientific about using computers. Moreover, it is said that computer scientists don't know any programming languages, and if they do they do not program in any case. What they know is the theory of computation and finite mathematics. Would study about these revolutionary topics in the field of mathematics be more relevant to those interested in learning about the evolution or history of human thinking than learning how to code in a particular computer language? ========================================================================= Date: 13-AUG-1987 16:30:13 Reply-To: LOU@VAX1.OXFORD.AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: LOU@VAX1.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: quality or quantity? Let me pick up 2 points from S. Richmond: >>>(1) Also, the cognitive functions supported by this process--in so far as word-processing expedites cut-and-paste--are no different than the hardware cut-and-paste. (Scrolling a typed text merely expedites cut-and-paste.) >>>>(2) Is there anything qualitatively new introduced by word processors? Yes- in so far as they are used in conjunction with electronic journals/mail/bulletin boards to produce electronically stored essays, etc., that can be accessed quickly and virtually universally. I think that "merely expediting cut and paste" is a bit of an underselling of what's going on here (both in this document and in general where wp takes root). Without electronic media 'cut-and-paste' is just impractical. And it is also far from invisible. Look at it the other way round: what we lose with wp is all that gorgeous polysemy and confusion that the practice of palimpsest gave us; as I sd, the wp text is always new, always being re-made, as it were re-read. But just supposing you agree that wp is just what we've always done, only a bit better, then proposition (2) above is surely inconsistent? What's the difference between electronic mail and a runner with a cleft stick? just a bit faster and more reliable (well, usually) isn't it? and whoever says e-mail is accessible "universally" really has been blinded by technophoria! let's not kid ourselves: this unique experiment/pastime/time-waster is just one very expensive toy which we happen (by virtue of our unique cultural/ geographic/political privilege) to be able to benefit from. what reason is there for imagining it would ever become as democratic, as universal, a form of communication as the written word? there are quite a few places in europe where the use of xerox copiers is illegal, never mind computer networks, funded by IBM on a temporary basis. I see no evidence at all of "access to intellectual products" ceasing to be contingent on "the luxury of an academic position". Maybe it's different over there. L ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Aug 87 10:15 PDT Reply-To: TLG@UCIVMSA Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: TLG@UCIVMSA The TLG has been awarded a (modest) grant to support the convening of a panel at the December 5-8 Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) meeting in Boston. In accordance with the granting agency's wishes, the panel will discuss ways to make the TLG's facilities and resources (and partcularly the TLG's biblical and theological texts) more readily accessible to theological institutions and scholars. HUMANIST members with pertinent interests who might wish to participate in the conference at issue should contact me directly. Theodore F. Brunner Director Thesaurus Linguae Graecae University of California Irvine Irvine, CA 92717 Area Code 714 856-6404 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13-AUG-1987 16:19 EST Reply-To: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Subject: quality/quantity Reply to Lou Burnard's second reply: I don't see any inconsistency between holding that the word processor alone adds nothing new in terms of intellectual power and holding that the word processor in conjunction with telecommunication does add something qualitatively new to intellectual power--at least at the cultural and social level as opposed to the individual level. I am optimistic about the potentiality of electronic media to cross cultural and political boudaries. Thank you for reminding me about the political control over access to even the printed world, not only in Europe, but also in this continent. Do you think those in our paradise of access to this plaything, at the mercy of IBM, can and should take action to open this up to our friends outside these groves? ========================================================================= Date: 13 August 1987, 17:05:51 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty The following is from Nancy Ide. Some error in software caused it to go astray rather than to HUMANIST. ======================================================================= Date: 13 AUG 87 12:50-EST From: IDE@VASSAR To: humanist @ utoronto Cc: IDE@VASSAR.BITNET Subject: > I would like to add a word to the discussion about what computers may have lent to humanities studies, on a point that has become somewhat tangential in recent discussion but which deserves its moment of attention, I think. > I believe that the "discussants" are correct in saying that computers basically enable us to do what we already could do without them, although the recent discussion concerning the benefits of word processing for writing are bringing up some very interesting ways in which the existence of the computer is enhancing the writing process. In a similar vein, I feel that computers and computing have contributed something of their own to literary research--more than to provide us with the means to do what only time and patience may have prevented. In particular, I am thinking about formal models of text and meaning---for instance, (proposed) models of text-reader-context-culture that are formally and specfically defined in order to enable at least consideration of computational implementation. (See P. Galloway in CHum, 17, no. 4 for an article on this topic.) Now, I am the first to say that computers did not enable thinking of texts or meaning so formally and in the terms that such models necessarily use, but I do believe that the possibility for computational models of meaning and texts has directly fostered such views. That is, if computers weren't around, I doubt very much if many of the ways we think about texts (in humanities computing circles especially, but also to small degree in all current criticism) would have come to be. As Artificial Intelligence, cognitive science, and literary critical theory develop, I see some very important and exciting convergences that are a direct product of the availability of powerful computing tools. > Nancy Ide ide@vassar.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: Thursday, 13 August 1987 2050-EST Reply-To: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Subject: Response to NEH Funding Request In Autumn of 1986, Penn's CCAT (Center for Computer Analysis of Texts) sought funding from NEH to support its "external services" activity and to move in the direction of creating a consortium of cooperating humanities centers. The proposal was not funded, and the detailed discussion and anonymous referee reports have just reached me from the NEH offices. The issues raised are often predictable -- is it wise to invest in CD-ROM technology, isn't Penn overly bound to the TLG coding and IBYCUS influence, why isn't the proposal more specific about what texts will be put on future CD-ROMs -- but one very important issue is especially worth placing before the HUMANIST audience, and that is Do the Centers Really Want to have a Consortium Arrangement? Clearly, some of the reviewers thought not, or at least not on the terms described in the CCAT proposal. If any HUMANISTS would like copies of the relevant materials, or wish to discuss them, I am at your service. This may help strengthen future proposals, from whatever source. I still think we would profit from more formal "consortial" ties, if someone has the courage to try to coordinate us! Bob Kraft, CCAT, University of Pennsylvania (KRAFT@PENNDRLN) ========================================================================= Date: 14 Aug 87 09:27:08 bst Reply-To: R.J.HARE@EDINBURGH.AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: R.J.HARE@EDINBURGH.AC.UK Subject: Two cultures I suppose that strictly speaking, the discussion about 'two cultures' is nothing to do with computing and the humanities, but it's intrinsically interesting and I suppose that the attitudes we have towards the 'two cultures' give a guide to our attitudes towards other matters. If only because of that last fact, the discussion is valuable, so, a couple of observations on the last few exchanges on this topic: I think that the idea of separating direct contributions to the arts|sciences|arts|sciences by scientists|artists|artists|scientists is a mildly dangerous idea in the first place, if only because it tends to reinforce the barriers between scientists and artists. The whole point about the 'two cultures' as far as I am concerned is that it is a myth. There is only one culture. If one accepts that basic thesis, then yes, GBS's introduction to Back to Methusaleh (which I haven't read) *is* an indirect contribution to the evolution of the theory of evolution (or to 'science' or to 'culture'), even if only a tiny one. Whether it's a contribution to Science (with a 'S') is a different matter. Similarly, Einstein's music-making *is* an indirect contribution to music (or the 'arts' or 'culture'), though again, it might not be considered as being a contribution to Music (with a 'M'). Either of these examples might also be considered as having made a direct contribution to our culture if for example, Shaw's introduction sparked off some new ideas in the mind of an evolutionary biologist, or a sequence of notes played by Einstein gave a composer the inspiration for a new work. Both pretty unlikely I admit, but not as far-fetched as one might suppose - I beleive for example that it's common for those 'good' at mathematics to be 'good' at music. Perhaps any psychologists out there could confirm that (slightly hazy) recollection and bring to our attention other correlations between 'artistic' and 'scientific' abilities. Roger Hare. ========================================================================= Date: 14-AUG-1987 10:29:33 Reply-To: LOU@VAX1.OXFORD.AC.UK Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: LOU@VAX1.OXFORD.AC.UK I am currently revising and updating the Text Archive Shortlist/Snapshot in preparation for an exciting new academic year... One of the pages I am overhauling is the one which lists "Other Archives". The purpose of this is simply to list major institutions believed to be sitting on (or know of the whereabouts of) large quantities of machine readable texts. It's obviously not possible to list every place where such things might be found (and will, in any case, when/if the Rutgers MRTH project reaches fruition, be unnecessary) so I've tried to limit it to major, centrally-funded institutions, and (after some thought) have excluded centres which are PRIMARILY 'centres for computing in the humanities' (excepting those whose texts we have in the archive in category X, because this list is a subset of the depositor address list in the archive database). The current count is a paltry 17; I'm sure I must have forgotten some, and there are errors in those I've remembered, so please help if you can. P.S. Maybe this list might be a starting point towards the sort of 'consortion' that Bob Kraft seems to be proposing P.P.S Any responses received after the end of the month will be TOO LATE; any received by the end of next week (20th) will be ON TIME. Lou Burnard OXFORD TEXT ARCHIVE 14 Aug 1987 Other Archives Biblical texts Pe Center for Computer Analysis of Texts D Religion U Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pa 19143 USA E-mail: KRAFT at PENNDRLN on BITNET Dutch Le I.N.L. Postbus 132 Leiden 2300 AC Netherlands English Be International Computer Archive of Modern English EDB-Senter for Humanistisk Forskning U Bergen Boks 53 Bergen-Universitet 5014 Norway E-mail: fafkh at nobergen on EARN French Na Institut Nationale de la Langue Francaise Universite* de Nancy 44 ave de la Libe*ration CO 3310 Nancy-Ce*de*x F 54014 France General Ca Literary & Linguistic Computing Centre U Cambridge Sidgwick Avenue Cambridge CB3 9DA E-mail: jld1 at cam.phx on JANET Ox Oxford Text Archive U Oxford Computing Service 13 Banbury Rd Oxford OX2 6NN E-mail: archive at ox.vax3 on JANET Ut Humanities Research Center Brigham Young University Provo, Ut. USA E-mail: JONES at BYUHRC on BITNET German Bo Inst. fur Kommunikationsforschung und Phonetik I.K.P. Poppelsdorfer Allee 47 Bonn I D-5300 W. Germany Ma Institut fur Deutsche Sprache Inst. fur Deutsche Sprache Friedrich-Karl Str. 12 Mannheim 1 D-6800 Germany Greek Ir Thesaurus Lingu^a Gr^ac^a U California at Irvine Irvine CA 92717 USA E-mail: tlg at ucicp6 on bitnet Hebrew BI Bar-Ilan Center for Computers and Jewish Heritage Aliza & Menachem Begin Building Bar-Ilan University Ramat Gan 52100 Israel Je Academy of the Hebrew Language Giv'at Ram P.O. Box 3449 Jerusalem, 91 034 Israel Icelandic Co Arnamagn^an Institute U Copenhagen Njalsgade 76 Copenhagen DK-2300 Denmark Italian Pi Ist. di Linguistica Computazionale U of Pisa via della faggiola Pisa I-56100 Italy E-mail: latino at icnucevm on earn Latin Lv Centre e*lectronique de traitement des documents Universite* Catholique de Louvain Louvain la Neuve B-1348 Belgium NH APA Repository of Greek and Latin texts LOGOI Systems 27 School Street Hanover NH 03755 USA Norwegian Bn Norsk Tekstarkiv Boks 53 Bergen-Universitet Bergen 5014 Norway Swedish Go Logotek U Goteborg Sprakdata 6 N. Allegatan Goteborg 41301 Sweden END OF LIST ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14-AUG-1987 08:37 EST Reply-To: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: S_RICHMOND@UTOROISE Subject: two cultures 1 How many cultures? R.Hare's solution or dissolution of the two cultures problem in saying that there is really one culture is one way out of Snow's problem. Nelson Goodman says that really the arts are cognitive in content, but only differ from the sciences in their notational systems. If this is the type of solution that Hare is proposing, there still remains a dimension of Snow's problem that is untouched. Very few scientists and humanists can talk about each other's work together--not only on a professional level, but also on an informal level. They have very little comprehension of the problems, methods, and mores of each other. This is akin to a problem posed earlier by the founder of 'Reconstructionism' in North American modern Judaism. M. Kaplan asked -- how can the contemporary Jew live as a Jew in modern western civilization? There are two 'civilizations' that the modern Jew inhabits: one is the traditional Jewish civilization steeped in the Bible, and Rabbinic interpretation and law; the other is modern western civilization steeped in an extended version of the Bible and in Greco-Roman mores and values. The literature, the mores, and the institutions of these two civilizations, not only are different but conflict in certain respects. Analogously, the modern humanist is educated in a distinctive tradition with distinctive mores and problems; however, the humanist lives in a world dominated by the scientific culture. How can the humanist live as a humanist in modern scientific civilization? 2 Are the two cultures becoming one? Perhaps N. Ide's obversation that textual analysis and literary criticism is converging with A.I. on the problem of understanding meaning--of how to decode texts and strings--indicates that the two cultures are converging. This reminds me of Karl Popper's remark that really there is only one problem that all thinkers, scientists, philosophers, historians... are interested in: namely, what is our place in this universe of random events?; and his remark that what really matters are pursuit of problems regardless of academic discipline. However, in spite of this, should we ignore the fact that the focus of the A.I. world and the literary criticism world on the problem of explaining how meaning occurs and how meaning can be obtained, differs? The A.I world is interested in simulating the process of meaning. The textual analysis world is interested in the meaning of particular texts, of decoding texts found in different periods of history. Isn't this one of the crucial differences in values between the sciences and humanities? The sciences are interested in process just as process; the humanities are interested in process in so far as it helps one to approach the understanding of unique products and unique events in human history. ========================================================================= Date: Friday, 14 August 1987 1020-EST Reply-To: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Subject: Archives Since this may be of more general interest, here are a couple of corrections and comments on Lou Burnard's list of Archives: 1. The address for "Pe" = CCAT needs to be corrected as follows: Religious Studies (this is optional; CCAT will do) Box 36 College Hall U Pennsylvania Philadelphia PA 19104-6303 USA 2. The Pe archive focuses on biblical materials, but includes much more since we have tried to gather a variety of texts from other sources (as the CD-ROM "text sampler" contents indicate). Probably the "General" category would be appropriate, perhaps with the comment "special focus on biblical and related materials." 3. The APA Archive has now moved with Stephen Waite to the new Packard Humanities Institute (which Waite now directs) 300 Second Street Los Altos, CA (I need to get the zipcode for Lou) USA 415 948-0150 (Bitnet account not yet established) This Institute (PHI) will have more than only Latin (and Greek) texts, although the initial concentration is on producing a Thesaurus Linguae Latinae parallel to TLG. Bob Kraft ========================================================================= Date: 16 August 1987, 14:00:09 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Scholarly computing in the humanities? My question about the scholarly nature of humanities computing, recently addressed by Abigail Young and Nancy Ide, leads almost immediately to the more general question of what humanistic scholarship is, or what we think it is. Popular culture is still permeated with the simplistic notion of progress, which in practice is much more congenial to the sciences than it is to the humanities. A scientist's career often hinges on whether he is the first to announce a new discovery, and if he does the rewards can be enormous. He is much more likely to capture the public imagination than the humanist. The humanist's discoveries, or rediscoveries, are both more remote and more immediate to daily life, therefore harder to see: either because cultural self-understanding is difficult to achieve and its effects profound and gradual, or because they touch intimately aspects of life that are routinely ignored though utterly inescapable. Fruit of the scientist's work is often marketable, at least in theory, whereas the humanist's work is not. In an age dominated by the "ethic" of the marketplace, it follows that the humanist is bound to do poorly. If forced to sell himself, he will be forced to sell himself. Now I'm not saying that scientists are crass and humanists noble (I'd be absolutely *overwhelmed* by evidence to the contrary!), but that the public perception of their roles creates a bad situation for the scholar of either kind. I've heard scientists, including our recent Nobel Prize winner John Polanyi, complain about how highly touted work has been conducted in spite of the demands of the marketplace and academic salesmen and about the ways in which directions of research have been disturbingly altered by the pressure of granting agencies. This is no new situation, but that doesn't make it any the less of a threat. As computing humanists we're caught in the middle, but in an important sense not between two opposed scholarly communities. Like the scientists we need money for equipment, but we are very new to the game of how to get it without becoming slavish creatures of the marketplace, thus of the lowest common denominator of public opinion. Our role is Socratic, but how do we avoid the hemlock? Watch out for those who would demolish tenure. Progress (which sells because it holds out a soporific hope) is not our most important product or aim. We don't so much go where no man has gone before but continually return to basic questions. So a humanities computing that furnishes us with tools to do what the best of us have always done, but do it more efficiently, indeed do it at all, is a discipline worth following. As Nancy Ide has said or implied, one important effect of humanities computing is to subject formerly intuitive methods to algorithmic scrutiny, so to make conscious some of what has been subconscious. I don't think that means our results will be either less tentative or less imaginative, but it does mean that we may know ourselves as scholars better. The danger from within is that as champions of the observable phenomena from which algorithms are constructed we will lose sight of the unobservable and so trivialize our disciplines. The danger from without is that like Esau we will sell our birthright for a bowl of yummy pottage. On the other hand, the potential of humanities computing both for the humanities *and* for computer science is very great and very exciting. I hope this is not too woolly for HUMANISTs at large. I do think we're in a good position to trouble ourselves and our colleagues with gritty questions about basic issues. Very few others seem to be doing it. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Aug 87 17:41 EDT Reply-To: GUEST4@YUSOL Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GUEST4@YUSOL Subject: McCarty on Scholarship, Pottage, etc. Bring on the grits! But first, perhaps, a little of the nitty. Does anyone remember an explanation of why the BIOGRAFY file is being spruced up for publication in the ACH journal? Does it make spicy reading? Is it representative of the latest algorithmic pulse of the high-tech humanists of our time? Does it help, or hinder, the free exchange so natural in this new medium to know that sooner or later, all our vital statistics and perhaps even some of our knottier comments will be grabbed off to fill the (otherwise uncrowded?) pages of some institutional organ or other? Will it help raise funds for this enterprise, or simply build an image, and distribute a useful free mailing list, for those otherwise not well enough occupied with (dare one utter the word?) their own (algorithmic or other) scholarly pursuits? Doubtless none of the above suspicions have any foundation in fact. Then why not a brief rationale for jumping into print so soon to advertise who the early joiners of HUMANIST happen to be? Behind all this flippancy lurks another question, really quite a sincere one, stemming from genuine ignorance and wishful optimism. THat is, does anyone feel able to outline some of the new wrinkles in textual studies or other branches of humanities research that but for ubiquitous computerization would not, could not, have existed, and why we would all have been the poorer for it? I don't really begrudge the premise, if indeed it's true. But the first few instances that did come to my mind turned out to be pretty quickly traceable to scholars or practices already known to be under way without computers. I for one would welcome some facts to bolster this argument for computers in the humanities, next time I too am tempted to advance it. --Sterling Beckwith ========================================================================= Date: 17 August 1987, 19:23:36 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Junk on the rebound from wiscvm A temporarily bad address on the ARPA network, in collusion with crude software on a VM-machine in Wisconsin, has resulted in a small flood of junk mail for HUMANISTs. Brute-force methods have been applied to stop additional junk from landing in your readers. Your friendly anthropomorphic peripheral interface extends the necessary apologies. ========================================================================= Date: 18 August 1987, 10:13:11 EDT Reply-To: Dr Abigail Ann Young 1-416-585-4504 Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Dr Abigail Ann Young 1-416-585-4504 Do any HUMANISTS know of a text archive with medieval Latin exegetical texts in machine readable form, eg, Alcuin, Bede, Rupert of Deutz, Thomas Aquinas, etc? Or even patristic exegetical texts? I have tried communicating with CETEDOC at Louvain and haven't had a reply on this point. I am interesting in analyzing one of the perennial problems in the history of western biblical commentaries, the so-called senses of Scripture, by using computer analysis but need texts! Any replies should, I think, be sent direct to me, rather than posted to HUMANIST generally. Thank you. Abigail Ann Young University of Toronto YOUNG at UTOREPAS ========================================================================= Date: Tuesday, 18 August 1987 1056-EST Reply-To: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Subject: textual studies No punches pulled. I was a bit put off by the tone of Sterling Beckwith's comments on the plan to publish the brief biographies. I, for one, find this sort of information very helpful for seeking advice, writing grant proposals (and suggesting possible referees), and referring information seekers, to mention only some obvious uses. Maybe it wouldn't need to be published, but there are many people out there who are not on e-mail and who might find it useful. So do it. As for the "new" advantages of computer assisted textual studies, we at CCAT (Center for Computer Analysis of Texts) have found many. The CATSS (Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Study) project out of which CCAT to some extent has emerged is able to do careful and complete study of "translation technique" (e.g. between the Hebrew and Greek biblical materials, or Greek and Latin, or Greek and Coptic) at a level that is theoretically possible without computer, but would hardly have been attempted. We are also engaged in encoding all available textual variants from the hundreds of ancient manuscripts for the Greek Bible to enable complete analysis and production of data in various forms to assist the creation of new critical editions. Again, theoretically possible otherwise, but not likely to be done at this level. We have done semi-automatic morphological analysis of some of these materials, and will coordinate the various elements (text, analysis, variants, translation alignment) in such a way as to afford gigantic leaps forward in philological, textcritical, cultural-linguistic, and (hopefully) historical research. Although we are just beginning to look ahead to next stages, with the growing availability of large bodies of such data on CD-ROM, it is clear to us that digitization combined with character oriented data will put such studies as paleography, papyrology and codicology on new bases that could hardly be accomplished more than sporadically with pre-computer technology (e.g. precise mapping of handwritten letterforms, and careful comparison of such; "fingerprinting" of papyri striations to help match fragments; shadowing and enhancement techniques to assist with reading palimpsests or badly damaged materials). Much of this can, of course, overflow into basic instructional approaches (especially when combined with sound and pictures/pictorial graphics) and/or general enhancement of the use of texts for whatever reasons -- e.g. being able to browse a text in a "foreign language" (or even in one's native tongue) and call into a window a lexical entry to assist with meaning, and (in another window) a grammatical analysis, or even translation equivalents in other languages (and, for that matter, variants). Sure, it could all be done without computer in some theoretical sense, but certainly not as quickly, conveniently, thoroughly, etc. Some would call all this "drugery." Perhaps so. But it is foundational to other applications, and I would certainly be "poorer" in my own work (on Jewish and Christian literature and history in the Greco-Roman period) without it! I suspect that similar things could be said about text dependent research in general. Bob Kraft (CCAT) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Aug 87 12:56 CDT Reply-To: CHURCHDM@VUCTRVAX Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: CHURCHDM@VUCTRVAX Subject: HUMANITIES BULLETIN BOARD Frank Borchardt at Duke told me I should get on your bulletin board. Please send me a message telling when the board is accessible and how I can get on it and use it through BITNET. Thanks, Dan M. Church, Dep't of French & Italian, Vanderbilt University ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Aug 87 14:49:10 EDT Reply-To: Steve Younker - Postmaster Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Steve Younker - Postmaster Subject: Humanist Test I trust all the people on the HUMANIST subscription will excuse this short test message. Steve Younker, Postmaster - University of Toronto Postmaster - HUMANIST ========================================================================= Date: 19 August 1987, 15:59:38 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: The biographies in print? Nancy Ide's proposal to print the biographies, recently endorsed by Bob Kraft, has created a minor flurry of comments and caused a fair number of revisions to be made. It's fascinating and significant that several HUMANISTs have felt compelled to take the expansive and playful elements out of their biographies, as it were to put them in their Sabbath best for presentation to company. I find in this ample justification for an electronic forum, where homo ludens is as much at home as homo sapiens (though those two are, of course, aspects of each other). The motivation for printing the biographies seems to me a good one. Ide and Kraft have both suggested that those of us who don't yet have access to e-mail might profit from reading them as much as we will. On the other hand, many of you wrote yours not suspecting that they would be published in any fashion. So, I leave the matter with you. If anyone wants to discuss this in public, please do so. If you merely want your biography deleted from the collection to be printed, please send me a note directly; if you want a revised version printed, send me the revision. I'm not yet certain of the Newsletter's deadline but will let you know. ========================================================================= Date: 19 August 1987, 20:55:32 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: An introductory guide to HUMANIST Following is a revised welcome message, expanded to such an extent that I'm now calling it *A Guide to HUMANIST*. I'd be grateful if you would send me any comments or suggestions for improvement. One shortcoming I'm especially conscious of is its "monolingual" preoccupation with Bitnet e-mail. Help from anyone familiar with the workings of other networks now used by HUMANISTs (e.g., JANET, uucp, ARPA) would be very welcome. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A Guide to HUMANIST +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ C O N T E N T S I. Nature and Aims II. How to use HUMANIST A. Sending and receiving messages B. Conventions and Etiquette C. Distributing files D. ListServ's commands and facilities E. Suggestions and Complaints ================================================================= I. Nature and aims ================================================================= Welcome to HUMANIST, a Bitnet/NetNorth/EARN discussion group for people who support computing in the humanities. Those who teach, review software, answer questions, give advice, program, write documentation, or otherwise support research and teaching in this area are included. Although HUMANIST is intended to help these people exchange all kinds of information, it is primarily meant for discussion rather than publication or advertisement. HUMANIST is an activity of the Special Interest Group for Humanities Computing Resources, which is in turn an affiliate of both the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC). Although participants in HUMANIST are not required to be members of either organization, membership in them is highly recommended. In general, HUMANISTs are encouraged to ask questions and offer answers, to begin and contribute to discussions, to suggest problems for research, and so forth. One of the specific motivations for establishing HUMANIST was to allow people involved in this area to form a common idea of the nature of their work, its requirements, and its standards. Institutional recognition is not infrequently inadequate, at least partly because computing in the humanities is an emerging and highly cross-disciplinary field. Its support is significantly different from the support of other kinds of computing, with which it may be confused. It does not fit easily into the established categories of academia and is not well understood by those from whom recognition is sought. Apart from the general discussion, HUMANIST encourages the formation of a professional identity by maintaining an informal biographical directory of its members. This directory is automatically sent to new members when they join. Supplements are issued whenever warranted by the number of new entries. Members are responsible for keeping their entries updated. The directory and its supplements may be printed in the Newsletter of the ACH unless individuals declare otherwise. Those from any discipline in or related to the humanities are welcome, provided that they fit the broad guidelines described above. Please tell anyone who might be interested to send a message to me, giving his or her name, address, telephone number, and a short biographical description of what he or she does to support computing in the humanities. This description should cover academic background and research interests, both in computing and otherwise; the nature of the job this person holds; and, if relevant, its place in the university. =================================================================== II. How to Use HUMANIST =================================================================== A. Sending and receiving messages ----------------------------------------------------------------- Currently anyone given access to HUMANIST can communicate with all other members without restriction. A member need not be on Bitnet but can use any comparable network with access to Bitnet. Thus, to send mail to everyone simultaneously, use whatever command your system provides (e.g., NOTE or MAIL) addressed to HUMANIST at UTORONTO. Your message is then sent by your local software to the UTORONTO node of Bitnet, where the "Revised List Processor" (or ListServ) automatically redirects it to everyone currently on the list of members. Because ListServ is automatic, HUMANIST is subject to inadvertent abuse, and a certain amount of "junk mail" is inevitable. With the number of members world-wide, using many different systems on several different networks, the possibilities for error are not inconsiderable. Membership in HUMANIST thus requires patience with fallible human artifacts and regular attention to one's incoming e-mail. Otherwise the accumulation can be burdensome. [Please note that in the following description, commands will be given in the form acceptable on an IBM VM/CMS system. If your system is different, you will have to make the appropriate translation.] ----------------------------------------------------------------- B. Conventions and Etiquette ----------------------------------------------------------------- Restricted conversations or asides can, of course, develop from the unrestricted discussions on HUMANIST by members communicating directly with each other. This is particularly recommended for replies to general queries, so that HUMANIST and its members are not burdened with messages of interest only to the person who asked the question and, perhaps, a few others. If, for example, one of us asks the rest about the availability of software for keeping notes in Devanagari, suggestions should be sent directly to the questioner's e-mail address, not to HUMANIST. A questioner who receives one or more generally interesting and useful replies should consider gathering them together with the original question and submitting the collection to HUMANIST. (Please note that the REPLY function of some electronic mailers will automatically direct a user's response to HUMANIST, not to the original sender. Thus REPLY should be avoided in many cases. This is particularly true for systems that allow automatic replies, for example, in cases in which the user is temporarily unable to attend to his account.) Use your judgment about what the whole group should receive. We could easily overwhelm each other and so defeat the purpose of HUMANIST. Strong methods are available for controlling a discussion group, but the lively, free-ranging discussions made possible by judicious self-control seem preferable. Controversy itself is welcome, but what others would regard as tiresome junk-mail is not. Courtesy is still a treasured virtue. Make it an invariable practice to help the recipients of your messages scan them by including a SUBJECT line in your message. Be aware, however, that some people will read no more than the SUBJECT line, so you should take care that it is accurate and comprehensive as well as brief. Use your judgment about the length of your messages as well. If you find yourself writing an essay or have a substantial amount of information to offer, it might be better to follow one of the two methods outlined in the next section. ----------------------------------------------------------------- C. Distributing files ----------------------------------------------------------------- HUMANIST offers us an excellent means of distributing written material of many kinds, e.g., reviews of software or hardware. (Work is now underway to provide this service for reviews.) Although conventional journals remain the means of professional recognition, they are often too slow to keep up with changes in computing. With some care, HUMANIST could provide a supplementary venue of immediate benefit to our colleagues. There are two possible methods of distributing such material. More specialized reports should probably be reduced to abstracts and posted in this form to HUMANISTs at large, then sent by the originators directly to those who request them. The more generally interesting material in bulk can be sent in an ordinary message to all HUMANISTs, but this could easily overburden the network so is not generally recommended. We are currently working on a means of centralized storage for relatively large files, such that they could be fetched by HUMANISTs at will, but this means is not yet fully operational. At present the only files we are able to keep centrally are the monthly logbooks of conversations on HUMANIST. See the next section for details. ----------------------------------------------------------------- D. ListServ's Commands and Facilities ----------------------------------------------------------------- As just mentioned, ListServ maintains monthly logbooks of discussions. Thus new members have the opportunity of reading contributions made prior to joining the group. To see a list of these logbooks, send the following command: TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO SENDME HUMANIST FILELIST (Note that in networks that do not allow interactive commands to be given to a Bitnet ListServ, the same thing can be accomplished be sending a message to HUMANIST with the command as the first and only line. This will result in junk-mail for everyone else, but so be it.) The logbooks are named HUMANIST LOGyymm, where "yy" represents the last two digits of the year and "mm" the number of the month. The log for July 1987 would, for example, be named HUMANIST LOG8707, and to get this log you would issue the following command: TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET HUMANIST LOG8705 ListServ accepts several other commands, for example to retrieve a list of the current members or to set various options. These are described in a document named LISTSERV MEMO. This and other documentation will normally be available to you from your nearest ListServ node and is best fetched from there, since in that way the network is least burdened. You should consult with your local experts to discover the nearest ListServ; they will also be able to help you with whatever problems in the use of ListServ you may encounter. Once you have found the nearest node XXXXXX, type the following: TELL LISTSERV AT XXXXXX INFO ? The various documents available to you will then be listed. ----------------------------------------------------------------- E. Suggestions and Complaints ----------------------------------------------------------------- Suggestions about the running of HUMANIST or its possible relation to other means of communication are very welcome. So are complaints, particularly if they are constructive. Experience has shown that an electronic discussion group can be either beneficial or burdensome to its members. Much depends on what the group as a whole wants and does not want. Please make your views known, to everyone or to me directly, as appropriate. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Willard McCarty, 20 August 1987 Editor of HUMANIST, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, University of Toronto (MCCARTY@UTOREPAS.BITNET) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Aug 87 23:26 EDT Reply-To: GUEST4@YUSOL Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GUEST4@YUSOL Subject: why not wait until the questionnaire? Good the motives may well be, but what are they? Does one join an electronic conference just to provide tantalizing tidbits for those who do NOT have access to e-mail? This is only one of many confusing and seemingly contradictory aspects of the proposal to put personal identifying information from the early stage of this particular new electronic conference into a print journal that serves a different membership and a different (albeit somewhat overlapping) function. The issues about the difference between print and electronic media raised so delicately by McCarty seem no less critical. Without much better explanations than have so far been supplied, would it not make sense to keep these issues going as proper food for our discussion, while awaiting some kind of standardized questionnaire, which I gather is already in the works, before going public with our personal data? Better yet, such a format might well produce just the sort of machine-readable material about ourselves that could (who knows?) one day power yet another "giant leap forward" for the computerized humanities! S. Beckwith (who would include a digitized passport photo with each bio) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Aug 87 23:41 EDT Reply-To: GUEST4@YUSOL Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: GUEST4@YUSOL Subject: Why not wait for the questionnaire? (REPLY to W. McCarty re printing bios) Good the motives may well be, but what are they? Does one join an electronic conference just to provide tantalizing tidbits for those who do NOT have access to e-mail? This is only one of many confusing and seemingly contradictory aspects of the proposal to put personal identifying information from the early stage of this particular new electronic conference into a print journal that serves a different membership and a different (albeit somewhat overlapping) function. The issues about the difference between print and electronic media raised so delicately by McCarty seem no less critical. Without much better reasons for haste than have so far been supplied, would it not make sense to kee p these issues going as proper food for our discussion, while awaiting some kind of standardized questionnaire, which I gather is already in the works, before going public with our personal data? Better yet, such a format might well produce just the sort of machine-readable material about ourselves that could (who knows?) one day power yet another "giant leap forward" for the computerized humanities! -- S. Beckwith (who would include a digitized passport photo with each bio...) ========================================================================= Date: Thursday, 20 August 1987 0952-EST Reply-To: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Subject: microform scanning Does anyone have information about scanners capable of converting microfilm and/or microfiche images directly into electronic form (without going through a hardcopy stage)? I have heard that such things exist, but have never found an address or telephone number to contact for details. Bob Kraft ========================================================================= Date: 22 August 1987, 17:03:01 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Joel Goldfield on new things under the sun ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Aug 87 17:01:54 EDT From: dartvax!psc90!jdg@ihnp4 (Dr. Joel Goldfield) Message-Id: <8708202101.AA08539@psc90.UUCP> To: utorepas.bitnet.UUCP!MCCARTY@Princeton.EDU Dear Colleagues, I appreciate Willard's having sent on Abigail Young's thoughtful comments on humanities computing. My apologies to Willard for his having to forward this comment since my gateway/node to BITNET is somewhat dyslexic. Abigail and others may find the upcoming book of essays edited by Rosanne Potter (probably to be published by U. of Pennsylvania Press) to be useful in determining whether the computer lets us do "something new." This volume will consist of approximately one dozen essays, scholarly "eggs" containing a variety of literary applications (English, French, German, etc.) of computer research. They are probably on that "cutting edge" which we should consider in our humanities computing repertoire before coming to an initial decision on whether of not this "newness" exists. Personally, I find that if the process is new and speeds up my research, thus the amount of information I can evaluate and incorporate in my literary analyses, it is a valuable addition to my work. Often, speed with accuracy in research allows us to discover and evaluate more efficiently. The results I obtain seem richer and more accurate in substantiating the "big picture" as well as "trees in the forest" conclusions for which I strive. Sincerely, Joel D. Goldfield Plymouth State College (NH, USA) ========================================================================= Date: 23 August 1987, 20:25:59 EDT Reply-To: ENGHUNT@UOGUELPH Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: ENGHUNT@UOGUELPH I have to second Joel's recent comment: the increase in speed and accuracy is a principle advantage of computer-assisted humanities research. Helping us to do faster and more accurately the things that we already do is a definite advantage of the new technology. The "cutting edge", however, is a different matter. I think of the renaissance astronomers with their "new technology" and look at the results. The ones who reshaped the world weren't those who simply used the technology to help them to do what they already did; the ones who reshaped the world were those who used the technology to do -- and to discover -- things that had not been done -- or discovered -- by doing things the way they had been done in the past. The real contributions of computer technology to humanities research are only going to appear when we begin to use the tool to do things we haven't been able to do before, either because they were too time-consuming or labour-intensive -- as someone already has suggested in these discussions -- or because we have not been able, until now, to conceive of them. ========================================================================= Date: 23 August 1987, 20:57:41 EDT Reply-To: Willard McCarty Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Willard McCarty Subject: Renaissance astronomers & Renaissance poets Stuart Hunter has replied to the continuing discussion on humanities computing by citing the example of Renaissance astronomers, who shook up the old world with new discoveries. The problem with this analogy to our use of computers lies mostly (here it is once more!) with the practical differences between the conduct of the sciences and of the humanities. Galileo and company were scientists, very much interested in going where no man had gone before. We, however, are much closer to Milton, who may have visited Galileo in his pontifical confinement and who wrote him into Paradise Lost. Milton apparently had read everything ancient and modern by the time of his blindness, was very much aware of contemporary discoveries of all sorts, yet he turned these discoveries to the eternal problems explored in his poetry. Critics have been puzzled by the odd mixture of Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy in PL, but the puzzle vanishes as soon as you realize that both were equally grist for his mill, that as a poet he wasn't espousing one astronomy or the other as the "truth" but using both as metaphors. With Joel Goldfield I'm also looking forward to the publication of Rosanne Potter's book with its several examples. Meanwhile, what seems to have come out in this discussion are two suggestions: (1) that it's too early to tell what the scholarly contribution of humanities computing may be; and (2) that h.c. has already established itself in the scholarly world by allowing us to do things that were theoretically possible before but would not have been done very thoroughly or at all because they were so laborious. Both seem true to me. In my own work (on the classical antecedents to Milton) it certainly seems that by using a computer to collect and arrange thousands of extracts from classical texts I've been able to do things otherwise beyond my powers. This brings up a corollary to the second point just mentioned. There are and have been classicists capable of recalling and arranging such extracts without a computer, but they were not Miltonists as well. So, by using a computer I've been able to wander far beyond the limits that would otherwise constrain me and thus to do (I flatter myself to think) exciting work. At least the work excites me, and some of it gets published. To generalize, then, computational methods favour cross-disciplinary research. For another, simpler example, take the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a great thesaurus indeed. Using it, say on an Ibycus microcomputer, someone with a rudimentary knowledge of Greek can do things utterly impractical if not unthinkable without it. Of course the thinking still has to be done, but the TLG gives us a wealth of material to think with. The same (and more) could be said of the Responsa database of rabbinic Hebrew, a 70-million word corpus covering a millenium, because of its wonderful tools for morphological analysis. Am I wrong to presume that the aim of philology and textual editing is to provide reliable texts on which we can base interpretations of the past and its culture? Could our parallel aim be to provide various reliable ways of manipulating these texts? Our case is somewhat different, since to a much greater extent we must also be interpreters. [65 lines] ========================================================================= Date: 24 August 1987, 10:29:26 EDT Reply-To: ENGHUNT@UOGUELPH Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: ENGHUNT@UOGUELPH Willard puts his finger on the nub of the problem when he asks, in his final comment: "Could our parallel aim be to provide various reliable ways of manipulating these texts? Our case is somewhat different, since to a much greater extent we must also be interpreters." To clarify the place of computing in the humanities we have to begin, I would argue, with a clear idea of what it is that we in the humanities are trying to do. If the aim of textual editing and of philology is "to provide reliable texts on which we can base interpretations of the past and its culture" then the place of computing can be viewed as that of a tool that aids one in the process of compiling the texts, comparing the variants, and, ultimately, producing the final product, the "reliable texts." In this it is clear that the philologist and editor are using the technology to do better and to do faster the things that they have always done -- or tried to do. What, though, is the broader aim of the literary scholar? To use Willard's description of his work on Milton as an example, exactly what is it that he is trying to do? If his task is simply "to collect and arrange thousands of extracts from classical texts," then again the computer becomes a tool that enables us to do things better and faster. Willard goes on, though, to point toward the more difficult problem when he says, at the end of his note, that "Our case is somewhat different, since to a much greater extent we must also be interpreters." The question that has to be addressed, it seems, is how, to what extent, in what ways, can the technology assist us in the task of interpretation? In order to answer that question, we need to begin from a clear idea of the process of interpretation. Exactly what do we do when we "interpret" a text? What kinds of questions do we ask? What kinds of mental processes are involved? How can those processes be duplicated by computer programmes? Hopefully Roxanne's collection of essays will include not only the "look at how I've been able to speed up my work" kind of paper but also the "this is the goal of my scholarship and this is the process used to reach that goal" kind of paper, the latter being clearly focussed on the process AS RELATED TO THE GOAL. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Aug 87 09:37:19 MST Reply-To: Mark Olsen Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Mark Olsen Subject: Vanilla SNOBOL4 Date: 24 August 1987, 08:38:59 MST From: ATMKO at ASUACAD Mark Olsen To: HUMANIST at UTORONTO Catspaw Inc. has recently released a public domain version of SNOBOL4+ called Vanilla SNOBOL4. It is a stripped down version of SNOBOL4+ that can address 30 kilobytes of program and data space, does not support extended features of the language, but conforms to the so-called "Green Book" SNOBOL4 standard. The package also has a 150 page manual on disk. Catspaw has attempted to provide a usable product while leaving enough out of the PD version to encourage users to purchase the full implementation. Vanilla SNOBOL4 may be very useful for teaching students SNOBOL programming on a micro without purchasing a site license or multiple copies of the program. You can order copies from Catspaw directly (I believe there is a $15.00 charge for shipping, copy and diskette) or send me a formatted 5.25 inch IBM-PC floppy diskette and a self-addressed, stamped diskette mailer, and I will send a copy to you. Catspaw can be contacted at: Catspaw, Inc. P.O. Box 1123 Salida, Colorado 81201 USA (303-539-3884) (emmer@arizona.edu) I can be contacted at: Humanities Computing Facility Department of English Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287 Mark Olsen *** end of message *** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Aug 87 12:10:19 MST Reply-To: Mark Olsen Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: Mark Olsen Subject: Do you have....? I have had several requests for the following texts from faculty at Arizona State University: Milton's Paradise Lost, Erasmus Praise of Follow and More's Utopia. We are prepared to scan these, but I certain like to avoid having to scan something that long. I would like to know if these texts are in computer readable format and, if so, what it would cost to obtain copies. Thanks, Mark Olsen ========================================================================= Date: Monday, 24 August 1987 1920-EST Reply-To: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Sender: HUMANIST Discussion From: KRAFT@PENNDRLN Subject: interpretation If, as I would argue, the PRIMARY task of interpretation is to try to understand the target text/author on its own terms (philologically, lexically, historically, etc.), then the use of computer as a fast and accurate tool to recover or uncover relevant data and its use as an aide to interpretation are two sides of the same coin -- or maybe two facets of the same gem -- not so? If it can take us farther (but in what directions, and why?), that would be a bonus. But just as before (or without) the machine, so with the machine, awareness of