[1] From: Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu> (52)
Subject: technical vs. philosophical
[2] From: Michael Guest <guest@ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp> (31)
Subject: Re: 11.0138 discussion on Humanist
[3] From: Mick Doherty <doherm@rpi.edu> (45)
Subject: Re: 11.0138 discussion on Humanist
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 11:07:59 -0400
From: Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>
Subject: technical vs. philosophical
In his report of a discussion concerning the focusing of the Humanist
list on more technical aspects of humanities computing, Willard McCarty
states:
> Wisdom, to my mind, prevailed: one acute participant observed
> that humanities computing lies precisely in the intersection of technical
> and non-technical, that to separate these would be to violate the spirit
> if not the body of what we do.
With deference to his concern for the spirit of humanities computing, I
am more concerned such a separation would result in tools or techniques
that do not address the concerns of humanities scholars. Most Humanist
readers will be familiar with the now common "glyph" versus "character"
distinction embodied in Unicode as well as other standards (see Working
Draft of ISO/IEC TR 15285 Information technology - An operational model
for characters and glyphs, MS Word format:
ftp://ftp.jhuapl.edu/pub/cgmodel/cgm9608.doc and PostScript format:
ftp://ftp.jhuapl.edu/pub/cgmodel/cgm9608.ps). The draft summarizes the
relationship of glyphs and characters as follows:
- A character conveys distinctions in meaning or sounds. A character
has no intrinsic appearance.
- A glyph conveys distinctions in form or appearance. A glyph has no
intrinsic meaning.
- One or more characters may be depicted by no, one, or multiple glyph
representations (instances of an abstract glyph) in a way that may
depend on the context.
(Working Draft of ISO/IEC TR 15285, page 3)
If "glyphs" have no meaning in information technology, is there any
reason to develop tools to preserve the glyphs used information in
pre-Gutenberg texts? I suspect a majority of humanities scholars would
immediately protest that there are many situations where the actual
"glyphs" used to record a text are relevant. For example, in the Hebrew
text of Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6 begins with lemarbeh, with the m
written as final form mem. If one reads the small masora (margin note),
there is a reference that leads to other cases where the final form of a
letter appears at other locations. A tool that does not allow for the
placement of the final form of a letter at some location other than the
end of a word would lose this information. In this case, preservation of
the "glyph" information gives meaning to the marginal note, as well as
being important for efforts to determine textual transmission and
possible issues concerning scribal practices in the transmission of such
texts. (Loss of this type of information is not an abstract fear, before
the advent of Unicode the CCAT project elected to ignore final character
forms in the Hebrew Bible as entirely predictable.)
The intersection of the technical and non-technical sides of humanities
computing is necessary for the development of tools and techniques that
address meaningful questions for humanities scholarship. I was glad to
learn that such interaction will continue on the Humanist list.
Patrick
Patrick Durusau
Information Technology
Scholars Press
pdurusau@emory.edu
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 17:10:35 +0900 (JST)
From: Michael Guest <guest@ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: 11.0138 discussion on Humanist
> In a recent offline discussion involving Humanist, one person asserted
> rather strongly that our field needs a new discussion group devoted to the
> technical aspects of humanities computing.
Then perhaps they should start one. This dividing and sub-dividing of
'disciplines' according to one's specific research interests can only be
counter-productive to our emerging quest to locate humanities studies
within technology. It's Foucault's dream after a heavy night.
I sometimes regret the dross and drivel that I spasmodically contribute,
but does it really matter much? Someone somewhere might get an inkling from
it, if only confirmation of their own antipathetical stance. If you bozo
me, it hurts no-one; it's an entirely ethically justifiable action.
I wonder about the 'hard' versus 'soft' definitions as well. Computer
scientists of the highest order should require imaginative imput from all
disciplines, to develop their discipline. The lesser order ought to too.
Imagine how tedious would be this proposed list. I love Francisco Tarrega's
statement, "to play guitar one must bathe in the fountain of culture." C.f.
"How I can I get my Mac to make umlauts?" (not omelettes).
I've been out of touch with Humanist for a couple of weeks, I'm sorry. Were
there any 'hard' or other responses to the notion of episteme that I tried
to sketch by way of a Beckett quote from _How it is_?
Thanks as always to Dr McCarty for performing the work that he does to
produce this progressive, indeed groundbreaking activity of
inter-disciplinary discourse with this discussion list. I'll go with his
intuitions any day, rather than submit to such retro suggestions as I've
quoted above.
Dr MIchael Guest
Assoc/prof. Faculty of Information
Shizuoka University, Japan
guest@ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 16:47:08 -0400
From: Mick Doherty <doherm@rpi.edu>
Subject: Re: 11.0138 discussion on Humanist
I have to admit, the quasi-standard bifurcation between
"technical" (or "technological") and "philosophical" would
be amusing if it weren't so painful.
Sharing discussion about breakthroughs in code, interface,
software, hardware, etc. -- we bring to that discussion
assumptions, sometimes hidden, sometimes subconscious, sometimes
overt and blatant, about what we expect/hope/want those
"technical" things to do. And even if we somehow have
miraculously freed ourselves from those assumptions, the
interface (et al) has politics in its design and philosophical
implications for the users, buyers, nstudents, teachers, educators,
and techies who will use a^C& r
To: humanist@kcl.ac.uk
I have to admit, the quasi-standard bifurcation between
"technical" (or "technological") and "philosophical" would
be amusing if it weren't so painful.
Sharing discussion about breakthroughs in code, interface,
software, hardware, etc. -- we bring to that discussion
assumptions, sometimes hidden, sometimes subconscious, sometimes
overt and blatant, about what we expect/hope/want those
"technical" things to do. And even if we somehow have
miraculously freed ourselves from those assumptions, the
interface (et al) has politics in its design and philosophical
implications for the users, buyers, students, teachers, educators,
and techies who will use and build upon these technological
advances. (If they are indeed advances -- but that would be
a philosophical question!)
Langdon Winner's "The Whale and the Reactor" and Selfe & Selfe's
"Politics of the Interface" (in _College Composition and Communication
in early 1996) are two excellent examples (of a possible hundred/s)
of forefronting (looking at) the fact that the technical and the
philosophical can never be separated, and to do so would be, at
best, naive. To my reading over the last year -- as long as I've
been subscribed -- Humanist has been one of the few electronic
resources to fill this role well without making it a badge of honor.
Doing it without preaching it.
Willard -- one vote from Dallas, Texas to keep this list as-is.
Mick Doherty
Internet Editor
Dallas Convention & Visitor's Bureau
***
Editor
_Kairos: A Journal For Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments_
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/
***
mick@rpi.edu