Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 600.
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: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 06:51:10 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: a socio-intellectual problem
Recently, at a learned gathering of senior European scholars, I made a
statement about the centrality of hypertext to our thinking about how to
build scholarly resources and forms. The reaction to the word "hypertext"
was startlingly negative. There were various other cultural and linguistic
differences that impeded communication, but this negative reaction to the
idea by people well aware of the importance of computing to their
traditional studies is what seems to me worth contemplating -- by those of
us who care about communicating beyond our native (and so intellectually
provincial) circumstances.
Perhaps it is the case that among those for whom apocalyptic rhetoric is
uncommon, reception of an idea so often clothed in it naturally provokes
suspicion and distrust. I was reminded that newness traditionally is not
always, perhaps even seldom, a good thing. (Humanists familiar with
classical Gk and Latin literature, for example, will think of many examples
where that which is "made or brought into existence for the first time" is
not just "strange" or "uncommon" but viewed as quite threatening.) We all
get set in our ways, some more than others, and so can understand the
annoyance of being disturbed by something new. We can understand how
newness might appear in a deeply conservative tradition, which given the
speed of apparent change in most of the industrialised world is apt to view
the new with bewilderment. So much of unarguable value appears to be
passing away to be replaced by a noisy, disposable lifestyle. Be that as it
may, for those of us in the lands of the constantly new does it not become
quite difficult to see change as change and not necessarily as improvement?
In otherwords, is it not easy for us to lose our critical abilities when
thinking about possible environments and means of scholarly work that
networked computing appears to promise?
What do we lose, for example, if we toss out the old-fashioned edition or
commentary? Please, let's not admit to our discussion the smell of leather
or feel of turning pages, or the impossibility of taking the valuable
volume into the bath or to the beach. How in the current circumstance can
we know responsibly what we're doing unless we make conscious and explicit
exactly what it is that the old-fashioned form actually does? So much of
this is buried as tacit knowledge. In reviewing hypertext scholarship I've
been looking especially for analyses of inherited forms and found precious
few. Clearly we don't want to waste our time trying to imitate inherited
forms, but neither can we afford mentally to bin them. If we can succeed in
awakening to them, so that they become NEW in our sight, then perhaps we
have a chance of constructing something that our more conservative
colleagues (and we as conservators of the past) will recognise as worthy.
I'd be most grateful for notice of any analyses of existing scholarly forms
as "machines to think with", as I.A. Richards said (approximately) about
the book.
Yours,
WM
-----
Dr Willard McCarty / Senior Lecturer /
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/
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