11.0095 ruminations on the field

Humanist Discussion Group (humanist@kcl.ac.uk)
Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:15:51 +0100 (BST)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 95.
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: "Espen S. Ore" <Espen.Ore@hd.uib.no> (24)
Subject: Re: 11.0091 ruminations

[2] From: Dan Price <dprice@union1.tui.edu> (23)
Subject: Thanks for Ruminating

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 17:03:15 +0200
From: "Espen S. Ore" <Espen.Ore@hd.uib.no>
Subject: Re: 11.0091 ruminations

At 15:57 +0100 08-06-97, Humanist Discussion Group wrote:
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
>
>Two broad developments seem now to be affecting our work. The first is
>institutional investment in the field. Within the last few years a small
>but significant number of institutions in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.
>have established posts in humanities computing itself or expanded their
>academic staff in the field.

This is also true in other parts of the world, although in some places
where humanities computing institutions were established early there may
not have been that much recent developement. Still I am happy to inform
Humanist readers who did not hear this in Kingston that at the University
of Bergen a larger humanities computing programme is now being establish.
This is done by joining the Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities,
the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, and the Norwegian
Terminology Bank, but there will also be some fresh money put into this.

As for some of your other ruminations, I have always regarded
interdisciplinarity not only as an extremely important ingredient of
"humanities computing" but also as a result of using computers in the
humanities. And here I think the WWW has appeared at the right time. Now it
is possible to disseminate data in a more holistic way which comes closer
to the complex culture which is the object of study for the humanities as a
whole. (Of course, when we have managed to link all our data into complete
Memex or Xanadu, people will start branching off in new specialities.)

espen

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 17:36:26 -0400
From: Dan Price <dprice@union1.tui.edu>
Subject: Thanks for Ruminating

Thanks for Rumiating on the state of affairs of the field. As usual there
is much to ponder and the invitation is well put.

In a recent posting, I asked about degree programs on this field
specifically on the bachelors level, and was surprsied by the absence of
response. Evidently we (the academic community) are not at that stage yet;
probably more important is that there is not yet a perceived market for such
a degree. While one can revel in the cross-disciplines, one must still eat!

So thanks again and surely it will be a wonder to see where we are in 5, 10,
and 20 years from now.

OR do you think that the revolution is waning? No, even if computer sales
are not matching expectations and the web is perhaps sending more away after
a few hours of wandering here, the web is still too vital for education and
research to be just a blip on the screen. This is the revolution, as far as
I can tell and invest .

Thanks again for reading of the above.

Sincerely,

Dan Price, Ph.D.
Professor,
The Center for Distance Learning
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