18.174 history of tools

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 174.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
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         Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 06:41:38 +0100
         From: Geoffrey Rockwell <georock_at_MCMASTER.CA>
         Subject: History of Tools

On the subject of the history of text analysis tools, I have a short
history in a paper that appeared in _Literary and Linguistic Computing_.
The reference is, Rockwell, Geoffrey, "What is Text Analysis, Really?",
Literary and Linguistic Computing, vol. 18, no. 2, 2003, p. 209-219.

   I have put up a preprint of the article at:

http://www.geoffreyrockwell.com/publications.html

The discussion in this paper is aimed at making a hermeneutical point.
Rereading it, I support the call for more work on our history and
techniques. I would go further and say that we need to look at our
instruments as Ian Hacking would - and do what he calls historical ontology
- asking about the concepts embodied in the instruments and the history of
these concepts.

If there is general support for the idea of a wiki on text tool history we
have a wiki running for TAPoR and would be happy to set up an open web on
this subject. The problem with wikis is that you need to have a group of
dedicated authors who write to them, otherwise they end up abandoned
construction sites in plain view of the information highway.

yours,

Geoffrey Rockwell
McMaster University
Received on Fri Aug 27 2004 - 02:15:56 EDT