This article was much more realistic than the others we have read and asks similar questions to those that have cropped up in class.  Obviously the field of history, humanities, and academia are changing as a result of the digital era.  This may not always be for the better, but historians, and humanities professionals in general, have an opportunity and a responsibility to preserve what is traditionally important while taking on digital tools.

The term “hegefox” was discussed and I think it perfectly describes the conundrum and perhaps the solution.  Levis in the 60s and the author speculated on how we, the professional, could deliberate over new technologies and evaluate them properly.  How the humanities could thrive in a new environment without both losing the precious pillars of our profession and/or becoming obsolete.  The idea of the hegefox was his suggestion, we must preserve traditional methodology and also incorporate new digital tools.

The author presents the same question I have been asking myself,   “…to what extent will those of us who care about the humanities be allowed to fret about the present state and future of our disciplines in the same way that Leavis wondered about what can and should be done, without being considered “highbrow,” elitist snobs?”  It is just as important, I would argue, for the hedgehog to respect the fox as it is for the fox to respect the hedgehog during this debate.  Those who want to dive head first into quantitative research and digital analysis without considering the importance of traditional methodology do not allow for the evaluation necessary for viable and long lasting solutions.

I wonder if the digital age, because of the fast pace in which it evolves, produces a moment in which we must chose.  Instead of being able to evaluate and progress, will the humanities have to let go of the past and embrace a future that steps further and further away from the “human” element?  Social media, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, has driven people both closer and further from one another–we may be losing part of our human connection.  Is this what will happen to the humanities?

This article made me look closely at the database work that we have been doing.  How did people feel about the primary sources after working with them in a database?  I saw that it would be possible to come to new conclusions, draw correlations I may not have seen before, and work with large loads of data; but I also felt distant from the subject matter, the period of time, and my own connection with the material.  Maybe because this method is new to me? Maybe not.

Porsdam’s article raised an interesting point, one that I have not considered much. How do we balance the need for more scientific methods and the values of the humanities? I had only briefly heard of Snow and Leavis before this article and I don’t think I really appreciated at the time the importance of their debate. Obviously, the bridging of the gap between the ‘two cultures’ is crucial to the development of digital history.

Again, a new example of one recurring theme of the class is present in the readings. In this gap-bridging, there is a focus on the “process rather than the finished product” in history. This methodological transparency was mentioned in the Gibbs and Owens reading as well, but the risk of wide engagement of the general untrained public in history needs to be tempered with the training of traditional historical academia. The problem with this is that, as Porsdam states, “the humanities have come to be seen today as out of touch with life outside the walls of the university. This has in turn led to an attempt to move more students into vocational training in order that higher education may be reserved for more elitist-minded students.”

A bridging of this gap may involve redefining the humanities through a vocational filter. As humanistic research becomes more digitized, there may be a more blue-collar (or maybe ‘less-elitist’ is a good enough way to say it) association with the humanites. The trick then, I think, is the balancing of elitist-associated academic methods and training with the less-elitist and more general-interest public’s engagement. Stated differently, the problem, perhaps, is less about balancing the current methods of the humanities and the sciences and more about altering how we view these two cultures.

The Gibbs and Owens article raised a couple of interesting points to consider. First is the use of data to help determine historical inquiries. This is an obvious benefit of data, even quick glimpses at tables or Ngrams, as Gibbs and Owens state, can help a historian to ask questions that will eventually lead to the doing of history.

However, as the preponderance of data becomes more and more significant and as that data continues to change, it is important to note the importance of “methodological transparency”. Historical work must include the process by which conclusions were reached based on the evidence, the data. This is important going forward; technology will be ever-evolving and so “we must continue to teach each other how we are using and making sense of data.” I think this will also become relevant more and more for past work. As history is published outside the traditional monographic form, that work will remain as is. A website will function as it was meant to at the time it was created, but over time, websites will come to function differently. The methods and forms must remain transparent, so that our future historians will fully appreciate today’s work about the past. Otherwise, today’s work may come to be judged different hegemonic lenses which could confuse a work’s conclusions.

This is closely related to the second point, which is indicative of a recurring theme discussed in the semester’s readings: that of the need for understanding historical context. Gibbs and Owens discuss the term ‘user’ and it’s usage over time. When eliminating certain associated words, it was clear that the word ‘user’ came up much more than in the context of technological advances. Someone without the professional historical training might have fallen into a trap. Thus, once again, it is important to maintain the standards and training that guide a professional historian through research.

The readings this week were thought-provoking. What happens to the humanities now that they are digital, and what if we could have a richer querying system that let us search across different kinds of sources and databases to make more connections to the past?

Porsdam

There are a lot of things going on in Digital Humanities.  Quantitative vs qualitative concerns, computational humanities, humanistic technology, losing humanistic core competencies, the cross-over with public interests, perhaps a utopian “digital enfranchisement of the public.”  It’s all a bit much for a digital historian newly under development, to take in. However, I have always been concerned about the divide between history (humanities) and science.  I believe the state of our education system derives from this divide. I have read C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), and found that my concerns lived a long life before I came to know them.

I agree that we “should work toward developing a humanistic understanding of technology.” It isn’t up to historians alone, it’s also up to scientists.  I fully believe we need each other, because we are all having the human experience.  So, I am all for using digital tools to “bridge the gap…between the quantitative orientation of the natural sciences and critical cultural discourses in the humanities.”  Bridging that gap may be part of the whole digital age paradigm shift, but I am not sure we will know it has worked until it has passed. That’s history.

Ciravegna et al.

The Semantic Web.  This is different than the plethora of “application-specific interfaces” that humanities database designers have created along the way.  The semantic web would be an attempt to go beyond internet keyword searching, to mine information in web pages, not just perform data retrieval (66).  It would be able to draw data from a variety of differently structured sources and render it intelligible, with a single, unified matrix which defines the relations of the parts to one another and to the whole (69).  The issue of how historians deal with primary and secondary sources came up.  There’s the evidence, and then there’s the historiography.  Which should be included?  At stake is an oncology of history, but the ambiguity and complexity of history makes it difficult to to model history this way.  Anyway, there are strides being made in the techniques of Semantic Web technology, if not the thing being made, itself.  I am excited about this technology.

The readings this week discuss the issues surrounding historical writing and data usage, and how to represent data from sources.  The second reading seems more technical and advanced, because I haven’t learned any of the coding language(s) yet.

Reading Highlights

Gibbs/Owens

This article points out that even though historians are using digitized and born-digital sources in their research, they are still writing in traditional forms.  They call for a “new level of methodological transparency in history writing” and say it may be time to de-emphasize “narrative in favor of illustrating the rich complexities between an argument and the data that supports it.”  I think the sentiment behind the last statement is controversial.  I am not sure I would be comfortable explaining my use of digital methods, as part of my historical writing.

At present, I wouldn’t write about my experience in the archive, or my failures at finding sources, or how I came up with an insight – in a scholarly article about a historical topic.   I am not sure what that kind of transparency has to do with a scholarly argument or why they should be woven together, necessarily.  I do believe it is essential to combine digital methodologies with traditional history writing methodologies to get a more complex and rich understanding of our sources. Yes, the argument is affected by this mixture of richness and complexity.  The historical argument isn’t about mechanics, it’s more about contextualization.  Anyway, this idea is a source of professional tension that I can relate to.

Now, if this point is more about teaching other historians by example, then I understand it. Blogging, workshops, conferences, classes like this one are definitely about digital methodology and are by nature transparent.   These are part of the individual historian’s experience and should be shared, as we are doing in this blog.

Spaeth

In the Lab readings we have been learning about the differences between source-oriented and data-oriented approaches to database design.  Spaeth seems to be advocating a source-oriented database approach that is more flexible because it addresses all the various kinds of information a textual source, such as an inventory list, contains.  In this discussion Spaeth tries to provide a solution to the ordered hierarchy of content overlaps that occur when you have “fragmented texts, implied and ambiguous data, and cross-references” that violate hierarchical assumptions. I have to admit that all of this is difficult for me to understand.  I realize he decides to ‘encode multiple hierarchies’ to  try to represent how items and rooms relate to each other,  in the inventory list.  I know XML is involved because it is more flexible and allows for consistent analysis (61).  Exactly how XML technically does that is what I still have to learn.

The readings for week 3 I think contribute to our previous discussion about who has the authority to do history.

While reading I paid particular attention to a quote from the Erickson reading, saying that among the challenges of research and writing over a period of years is keeping information in context of originating sources and distinguishing between the information of different sources. In keeping with our previous discussion over the role of professional historians, I think this is one aspect of the training that helps keep the practice of history safe from the dangers we previously discussed.

Hitchcock’s article discusses the potential devaluing of a professional historian’s authority as archives become more accessible digitally. He raises some valid points, such as questioning the opinions and views of those who established archives in the past, but ultimately discusses the changes in the practice of researching and writing history.

Hitchcock sees new digital modes of access to information as potential challenges to authority presently enjoyed by professional historians; Erickson presents new digital methods of organizing research as an incredible potential benefit to the historian in researching and presenting authoritative work. Of course, these are both true; there is always a chance that paradigms will change and new methods can increase accuracy and efficiency. However, new doesn’t mean flawless. Amateur historians need to be careful to remember the importance of context and professional historians could do well to remember that amateur historians could provide many useful contexts to consider as well.