Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 653.
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, 09 Feb 2001 06:51:16 +0000
From: "David L. Hoover" <david.hoover@nyu.edu>
Subject: Black-box vs glass-box methods
Several responses to Willard's interesting black-box question have been
enlightening. I'd like to respond to Willards scenario of the two
musicologists.
A uses a transformation without being interested in or understanding its inner
workings, and B goes to a computer scientist, learns about the transformation
and creates a new one. I guess I'd be inclined to agree that the first is at
best only marginally humanities computing, and is not very interesting from the
point of view of computing. The second seems more interesting from a computing
point of view.
Let's look at a couple of other scenarios.
1. Suppose researcher A gets access to an important medieval literary
manuscript, digitizes it, creates a web site at which a searchable PDF version
of the document resides, along with links to related materials, and creates and
moderates a listserve devoted to discussion of the manuscript's importance and
implications. There is nothing particularly revolutionary here, and the
researcher is not writing primarily about the computer techniques or software,
but rather using them to create a significant scholarly literary resource that
would be impossible without the technology. Is the project valuable? To
whom? Is it humanities computing? If not, what is it?
2. Suppose researcher B selects a cutting-edge computer technique normally used
in the business world and applies it to a set of well-known texts.
Collaborating with one of the programmers who wrote the software, B writes
an article in
which he explains how the technique works and the modifications that were
required to
apply it to literary texts. By using the new techniques, B also is able to show
that Faulkner couldn't have written _The Sun Also Rises_. Here B is writing
about the technology primarily, and even making a contribution that might be of
interest in other fields that use the technique, but the results might not be
very interesting to literary scholars. Is this project valuable? To whom? Is it
humanities computing? If not, what is it?
Willard seems to be suggesting that achieving disciplinarity for Humanities
Computing may require that work recognized as belonging to the discipline be
focused on the implications or theory behind the computer application. I'm not
sure what I think about this, but I do wonder whether it doesn't create a
precariously narrow definition for a discipline. If the work moves too far
toward the computer techniques, it risks becoming marginal computer science. If
it moves too far toward one of the established humanities disciplines, it risks
becoming marginal history, musicology, literary study, or whatever.
--
David L. Hoover, Associate Chair & Webmaster, NYU Eng. Dept. 212-998-8832
david.hoover@nyu.edu http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/english/
"Adolph slid back into the thicket and lay down behind a fallen log to see
what would happen. Not much ever happened to him but weather." Willa Cather
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