20.033 possibly irrelevant conferences &c

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 20, No. 33.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Maurizio Lana (38)
         Subject: Re: 20.030 possibly irrelevant conferences &c

   [2] From: Patricia J. Moran (42)
         Subject: possibly irrelevant conferences &c

   [3] From: Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (7)
         Subject: RE: 20.030 possibly irrelevant conferences &c

   [4] From: Francois Lachance (37)
         Subject: irreverant relevancy Re: 20.030 possibly irrelevant
                 conferences &c

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 10:10:20 +0100
         From: Maurizio Lana
         Subject: Re: 20.030 possibly irrelevant conferences &c

At 09.05 24/05/2006, you wrote:
>It occurs to me that some Humanists may be
>puzzled if not annoyed at the number of
>conference announcements which have little to do
>with humanities computing, or at least little directly.
>[...]
>In my own work, esp in the last few years, I've
>discovered that much is happening, esp in
>computer science and in its nearest neighbours,
>which is either helpful to us or which deserves
>our critical commentary. I like to have
>information about the currently hot topics
>running by me so that I can have a sense of what
>our colleagues are up to, even if I sometimes
>regard their attention as misplaced.

i like to get many conferences announcements, as
long they are currently hot topics giving me the
sense of what's happening in the humanities
computing field and in the other nearest fields.
once we could be happy to limit ourselves to the
very subject of humanities computing but now this
same subject has grown in dimensions and wisdom
and so it is essential to know what's happening nearby.

this said, when i'm in a hurry i read only few
humanist messages, which i select by subject.
this is obvious, but it is a consequence of the
wealth of content of humanist: what i cannot read
can be read and become useful for another fellow humanist.

maurizio

Maurizio Lana - ricercatore
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici - Universit=E0 del Piemonte Orientale a
  Vercelli
via Manzoni 8, I-13100 Vercelli
+39 347 7370925

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 10:14:22 +0100
         From: Patricia J. Moran
         Subject: possibly irrelevant conferences &c

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 20, No. 30.

". . . I like to have information about the currently hot topics
running by me so that I can have a sense of what our colleagues are
up to, even if I sometimes regard their attention as misplaced. I may
of course be proved wrong, but for me the primary value of this
background chatter is to sharpen or direct my critical focus. I take
my own need for this chatter to be widely shared by our loose
community. . .I would also point to the fact that the community is indeed very
loosely bounded. All sorts inhabit this metaphorical space, and that
makes it what it is. . ." (WM, UK, 5/24/06)

I agree with WM. I not only like to have, but need, a sense of what
the world is up to.
I seek it in physical public places, such as conferences, as well as
in virtual ones.
I find background chatter stimulating, though others find it bothersome.
Some of my most productive editing and writing has been done in
mundane food courts.
I can never predict when some linguistic variant, some technological
snippet, or
some odd behavior exhibited by passing shoppers will trigger an epiphany.
These people enter my space (the mall) briefly, cause a kind of splitting
off (akin toVirginia Woolf's theoretical feminist double
vision), and disappear.
Their presence teases me to create new fictions (new metaphorical spaces),
as Woolf's train-riding protagonist did in An Unwritten Novel.
[Woolf's character manufactured an entire imaginary life for a fellow
passenger.]

Humanities involves the arts--philosophy, music. . .subjectivity!
Computing involves the sciences--numbers, machines. . .objectivity.
   Humanities Computing is where they overlap.
Glory in it and its many conferences, or allow yourself the
thrill of taming the virtual frontier by using the delete button.

Patricia J. Moran, MS
Ph.D. Candidate, FSU
114 STB, College of Education
Tallahassee, FL 32306 USA
Cell: 850-240-2460
Messages in COE: (850) 644-1598

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 10:15:02 +0100
         From: Gray Kochhar-Lindgren
         Subject: RE: 20.030 possibly irrelevant conferences &c

All:
I love background noise; the chaos from which a few points of foci emerge.
Cloud-points and black-holes; mixed and missed metaphors; other people
talking about "ontology" and "objects" in ways I'm unfamiliar with.
So, my vote is to keep the edges turning outward.
Cheers,
Gray

--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 10:16:55 +0100
         From: Francois Lachance
         Subject: irreverant relevancy Re: 20.030 possibly irrelevant
conferences &c

Willard

I was intrigued by the use of "metaphorical" in your characterization of a
diecticly-indicated space.

> I would also point to the fact that the community is indeed very
> loosely bounded. All sorts inhabit this metaphorical space, and that
> makes it what it is. No need, I say, for us to be singing from the
> same hymn-sheet. Quite the opposite.

So I went to a "hymn book" online and lo found missing sheets. By "hymn
book" I mean an online dictionary. The interface was splendid in picking
up the single word to search and returning an entry from a now public
domain dictionary. However the interface didn't allow a nice quick link to
the material that would explain the abbreviations used in the entry
returned. The was not even a link to the prefatory material of the
edition. And yes I tried Project Gutenberg but the edition there
transcribed from print omits the material. One could of course, as a
traverser of metamorphizing space, send out a call and receive perhaps a
scan of the key to unlocking the mystery of the abbreviations.

I relate this episode in living via the screen not just to sound a
discordant note but also to suggest that an echo-gatherer might be a
suitable function to add to the repetoire of Humanist postings. By this I
mean a posting that picks up relevant (or related) threads from the
archive. Yes, the archive is available to all. However there is value in
watching someone comb the archive esp. in observing the play of shifting
terminology. [e.g. onomastics, names, monikers, epithets, handles]

And so "relevance" returns some 260 hits from the Humanist archives.
"Relevance" plus" list returns 107 or so.
The WWW interface doesn't entertain the possibility of "relevance NEAR
list". If I recall correctly there was a popluar search engine by the name
of Altavista that was capable of such feats ["Altavista" mentioned in some
22 postings to Humanist; "google", 151].

I don't want to rehash search engine shortcomings. New topic: Tag clouds.

"Tag clouds" prior to 2006 no mention on Humanist. "Clouds" some 22
mentions. "Tag" I leave the gentle reader to count.

Francois Lachance
Received on Thu May 25 2006 - 05:50:35 EDT