11.0036 CS, the humanities and AI

Humanist Discussion Group (humanist@kcl.ac.uk)
Fri, 16 May 1997 19:44:02 +0100 (BST)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 36.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

[1] From: Mary Dee Harris <mdharris@acm.org> (24)
Subject: Re: 11.0031 editing, the humanities, and CS

[2] From: Larry Taylor <ltaylor@stsci.edu> (5)
Subject: Re: 11.0030 Deep Blue, human intelligence, and AI

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 19:51:23 -0700
From: Mary Dee Harris <mdharris@acm.org>
Subject: Re: 11.0031 editing, the humanities, and CS

I would like to believe that the reasons behind CS and the humanities not
communicating well over the years has many grand and noble reasons but
some of it just plain shortsightedness -- largely on the part of the CS
folks, I'm afraid. As a humanist turned computer scientist but
maintaining a foot in each camp, I think both sides are a bit
responsible. We as humanists do not always express our problems in the
sort of rational, logical, and formalistic manner that the CS community
is used to. But the CS folks often are not looking for problems to solve
outside their labs, as well.

I am reminded of an amazing comment that I heard from the then President
of the Association for Computational Linguists (one would assume an
organization that lay somewhere between CS and HC) -- and Nancy Ide was
there at the time and can vouch for my memory. While trying to discuss
cooperation between ACH and ACL, Nancy and I mentioned that the two
fields overlapped considerably. The reply from this (unnamed) ACL
official was "What do the humanities have to do with computational
linguistics?" I am happy to say that further effort on our part
convinced ACL that there was in fact a BIT of overlap, and cooperation
between the two organizations improved considerably.

Mary Dee

-- 
Mary Dee Harris, Ph.D.			512-477-7213
Language Technology, Inc.		512-477-7351 (fax)
2415 Griswold Lane			mdharris@acm.org
Austin, TX 78703			mdharris@aol.com

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 14:10:29 -0400 From: Larry Taylor <ltaylor@stsci.edu> Subject: Re: 11.0030 Deep Blue, human intelligence, and AI

On Deep Blue, there's been many words, And some of them have been for the birds. I'll agree with this switch: It's not a "who," but a "which;" And it's less, "Frankenstein," and more, "Revenge of the Nerds."

LAT