19.654 grand challenges

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 654.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Erik Hatcher <esh6h_at_virginia.edu> (22)
         Subject: Re: 19.652 a "grand challenge"

   [2] From: Geoffrey Rockwell <georock_at_mcmaster.ca> (81)
         Subject: Re: 19.652 a "grand challenge"

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 06:40:36 +0000
         From: Erik Hatcher <esh6h_at_virginia.edu>
         Subject: Re: 19.652 a "grand challenge"

On Mar 14, 2006, at 2:24 AM, Humanist Discussion Group (by way of
Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:
>So, please look around for the phrase "grand challenge" and similar
>such newcomers and report back, if you will, in what prose they have
>bedded down, what work they seem to be up to.
>
>Comments about this sort of thing?

My only, modern, reference to the phrase comes from the US DARPA
"Grand Challenge":

          <http://www.darpa.mil/GRANDCHALLENGE/>

Defined as such:

"DARPA Grand Challenge
Created in response to a Congressional and DoD mandate, DARPA Grand
Challenge is a field test intended to accelerate research and
development in autonomous ground vehicles that will help save
American lives on the battlefield. The Grand Challenge brings
together individuals and organizations from industry, the R&D
community, government, the armed services, academia, students,
backyard inventors, and automotive enthusiasts in the pursuit of a
technological challenge."

We've had a top notch local contender to the Grand Challenge:

          <http://www.teamjefferson.com/>

Erik

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 06:43:26 +0000
         From: Geoffrey Rockwell <georock_at_mcmaster.ca>
         Subject: Re: 19.652 a "grand challenge"

Dear Willard,

In a birthday post to Humanist in 2001 (May 10) you called for us to
"send Humanist a birthday present in the form of a question or
statement concerning humanities computing..." I picked up on this in
an article that can be found in preprint form on the web at (http://
www.geoffreyrockwell.com/publications/Mimes.Mermaids.pdf) to suggest
the following sequence of questions:

Question 1: What are the great questions in humanities computing. (We
should start with reflection.)

Question 2.1 Can machines generate interpretations of texts?

Question 2.2: Can machines generate aides to interpretation?

At the inaugural meeting of the Text Analysis Developers Alliance
(http://tada.mcmaster.ca or http://tada.mcmaster.ca/blog/) you will
see discussion of challenges. I'm not sure who voiced it, but a
paradigmatic challenge that wove itself into our conversations was
whether a computer could detect irony in literature.

At the Digital Tools Summit held at the University of Virginia we
identified a set of tool-related challenges including:

- Time, Space and Uncertainty (http://echo.gmu.edu/toolcenter-wiki/
index.php?title=Time%2C_Space%2C_Uncertainty)
- Interpretation (http://echo.gmu.edu/toolcenter-wiki/index.php?
title=Digital_Tools_Summit_-_Interpretation)
- Collaboration (http://echo.gmu.edu/toolcenter-wiki/index.php?
title=Collaboration)
- Exploration of Resources (http://echo.gmu.edu/toolcenter-wiki/
index.php?title=Digital_Tools_Summit_-_Exploration_of_Resources)

All these suggestions have to do with tools and text analysis. I look
forward to reading of other challenges.

Yours,

Geoffrey Rockwell

On 14-Mar-06, at 2:24 AM, Humanist Discussion Group (by way of
Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:

> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 652.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 07:19:23 +0000
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
> >
>This begins as an enquiry about the proper home, and so baggage, of
>the phrase "grand challenge", which I have now twice encountered in
>writings connected with humanities computing. As far as I can
>determine, its proper home, i.e. where its implications are not so
>strange, is either automobile racing or computer science, i.e. fields
>in which winning or solving is how success gets measured. It's one of
>those things we could call a shibboleth -- not by the pronunciation
>but by the mere uttering thereof a foreigner betrays him- or herself.
>Or more accurately, what may be betrayed is insensitivity to a
>phenomenon of language by which borrowed words and expressions bring
>with them, like a lingering smell (as of smoke from a pub), something
>of what they meant in their former environment. J.R. Firth famously
>declared that, "you shall know a word by the company it keeps" (A
>Synopsis of Linguistic Theory, 1930-55, ed. Palmer 1968, p. 179) --
>or in this case, kept but a short time ago. Adopt a new word or
>phrase at your peril?
>
>It's not that verbal borrowing is wrong or necessarily perilous. What
>else is a new field like ours to do? We need ways of talking about
>our experience, which in part is experience with computing, an
>experimental instrument &c. New fields, it seems, have always reached
>for terminology from elsewhere. Rather the caution is against opening
>the gates to an apparently beneficial object without seeing what it's
>about, and then, as in the story, going to sleep.
>
>So, please look around for the phrase "grand challenge" and similar
>such newcomers and report back, if you will, in what prose they have
>bedded down, what work they seem to be up to.
>
>Comments about this sort of thing?
>
>Yours,
>WM
>
>
>Dr Willard McCarty | Reader in Humanities Computing | Centre for
>Computing in the Humanities | King's College London | Kay House, 7
>Arundel Street | London WC2R 3DX | U.K. | +44 (0)20 7848-2784 fax:
>-2980 || willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
Received on Wed Mar 15 2006 - 02:10:57 EST