Digitizing
is
questioning,
or else
Professor Willard McCarty
King’s College London
staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/
Long Room Hub
Lecture Series,
Trinity College
Dublin, 16/4/08
2
1. The problem
2. Lessons of history, 1957-1989
3. The matchmaker’s tasks
4. What the tools say
5. Turning to confront the context
6. Bridging discourse
7. An improvisational companion to
criticism?
3
Herbert Simon, untitled lecture notes, Operations Research
Society of America meeting, 14 November 1957
4
Not a
“menial tool”
but a
telescope of
the mind that
may change
our outlook.
Times Literary Supplement, 27 April 1962
5
Globe and Mail,
16 November 1965
Scientific American,
May 2001
6
7
www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3244/
www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9547
8
Next step is to
be “truly
imaginative”
Scholars’
primary
involvement is
with the
creative act
Reorganization
of thinking for
the new age
Computers and the Humanities 1 (1966: 3-6)
9
the
problem is
our limited
conceptual
framework
and the
unexamined
concept of
text
Our
range of
vision
has not
been
enlarged
Computers and the Humanities 11 (1978): 211-15
10
11
1. The problem
2. Lessons of history, 1957-1989
3. The matchmaker’s tasks
4. What the tools say
5. Turning to confront the context
6. Bridging discourse
7. An improvisational companion to
criticism?
12
Computers and the Humanities 11 (1978): 211-15
In Companion to Digital Humanities, ed.
Schreibman, Siemens and Unsworth
(Blackwell’s, 2004)
13
1. The problem
2. Lessons of history, 1957-1989
3. The matchmaker’s tasks
4. What the tools say
5. Turning to confront the context
6. Bridging discourse
7. An improvisational companion to
criticism?
14
Keyword-in-context concordancer
15
Relational
database
diagram
A typical
ontology
diagram
Literary concepts
& their
interrelations
expressed in
software
16
Commentary in an annotation tool
17
Traces of stylistic features
from a statistical analyzer
18
On-screen
output from a
keyword-incontext
concordancer
Phrasal concordance
to the Bible, 16C
19
9C glossed ms of
Martianus Capella, De
nuptiis Philologiae et
Mercurii (Leiden 48)
Annotated scholarly article
using Pliny
20
Relational database diagram
of entites, attributes and
relationships
Cosmological diagram showing
the “Great Chain of Being”
21
1. The problem
2. Lessons of history, 1957-1989
3. The matchmaker’s tasks
4. What the tools say
5. Turning to confront the context
6. Bridging discourse
7. An improvisational companion to
criticism?
22
Modelling
relations
internal
logic
Formal/
abstract
system
Based on Rosen 2000:
159 and Geertz
1993/1973: 93.
modelling of
Natural
system/
artefact
internal
logic
modelling for
23
Improvisational
modelling
internal
logic
Formal/
abstract
system
Various
temporary
construals
?
24
1. The problem
2. Lessons of history, 1957-1989
3. The matchmaker’s tasks
4. What the tools say
5. Turning to confront the context
6. Bridging discourse
7. An improvisational companion to
criticism?
25
Computational
analogy of mind:
human brain
cells grown in
tissue culture on
a Motorola
68000 chip
Judy Trogadis,
Toronto Western
Hospital, 1985
26
1. The problem
2. Lessons of history, 1957-1989
3. The matchmaker’s tasks
4. What the tools say
5. Turning to confront the context
6. Bridging discourse
7. An improvisational companion to
criticism?
27
IVANHOE
Scott’s original text
Possible
Ivanhoes
Various players
28
Odo Cluniacensis, Dialogus de musica (late 10C), Synopsis 4 (Migne, 133, 759Dsq)
Vere, inquam, magistrum
mirabilem mihi dedisti, qui a
me factus me doceat, meque
docens ipse nihil sapiat. Imo
propter patientiam et
obedientiam sui eum maxime
amplector; cantabit enim mihi
quando voluero, et numquam
de mei sensus tarditate
commotus verberibus vel
iniuriis cruciabit.
Indeed, I say, you gave me a wonderful
master, who made by me teaches me,
and teaching me himself knows
nothing. Rather I embrace him in
submission and obedience; truly he
will play to me when I wish, and never
will he torment, with floggings or
blows, the thoughts that move slowly
from me.
?
29