Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 391.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 09:13:41 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: sociological reflections and studies
Humanists with a sociological bent (or should I say rectitude?) to their
interests, as will have been discovered by the recent all-too-brief
discussion of the impact of the new media on social life, will enjoy and
profit from reading the publications of the sociologist Barry Wellman
(Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Toronto), many of which are
available from his website at <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/>.
Those whose interests are not sociological but include nicely designed
websites should take a look too.
It might prove interesting to have a discussion on the role(s) we would
like to see the social sciences play in humanities computing. Not that we
would presume to dabble in those fields, for which not a small amount of
training is required. But it does seem to me that in the proper education
of a computing humanist a strong social science component would be
essential. I don't see how it could be avoided. When, for example, we think
about the design of software to implement research methods of the
humanities, this can hardly be done in a social vacuum. Even if we leave
the study of how humanists do research to the social scientists, we
certainly need the results of such research -- and the intellectual means
to understand them.
Comments?
Yours,
WM
-----
Dr Willard McCarty / Centre for Computing in the Humanities /
King's College London / Strand / London WC2R 2LS / U.K. /
+44 (0)20 7848-2784 / ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 10/20/00 EDT