I enjoyed reading these brief articles, they raise interesting points and call to attention important issues in this field.

First, the natural debate between the “I code, you code, we code…Why Code?” and the “Learn to Code; Learn Code Culture” articles. The idea that coding is a skill that must be learned for the legitimacy of the work has apparently inspired some debate. Personally, I believe that the Luddite view, to use the author’s words, that not knowing everything about coding is ok, is the minimum involvement necessary. For a digital humanist, at the very least, one needs to understand the concept, and at least enough of the technical aspect to facilitate being properly informed about new practices and developments in the field. And, not that everyone always has to learn everything there will ever be to know, but I also believe that learning as much of the technical skill and culture as possible can only be beneficial. The technical part of digital projects could only be limited, their effectiveness stunted by limited understanding. Collaboration is and will remain to be an important aspect of the digital humanities, but expanding the knowledge and skill base of each individual can only help the field, not hurt it.

Now, concerning the “Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code” article, this proves exactly why learning the culture of coding is important. Based on my very limited involvement with CIS people, I had no reason to believe that there was such a large gender gap in the world of coding. In conversations and discussions since reading this article, I’ve learned that my experience is atypical. As strange as it sounds, I wouldn’t have known that, it was necessary to avoid sticking solely to the technical readings so that I may understand the world those technical skills are used in. And, it presents a possible future study: women’s digital history, an examination of the gender gap in the world of coding in general or the digital humanities specifically.

These readings constituted a  peek into coding culture as experienced by digital humanists.

Ghajar

It seems Ghajar’s main point is that historians are always going to want context in relation to their digital projects. Just learning to code isn’t a destination in itself, but the historian who wants to be involved in the digital humanities will need to know the why of the tools, not just the how. Why should we be able to design a database, or write code for a project? What are the possibilities in collaboration with web developers, and why would we collaborate in the first place? Why does learning to code affect our methodologies, or become a new methodology to use?  I always say, if I understand why, it helps me understand how.

Wildner

I think Wildner wants people to understand there is a culture which goes along with coding.  Coding is a language, there are ideals, and a lifestyle  just like any foreign culture.  It’s not just syntax, grammar and vocabulary.  There are also shortcuts and best practices that help digital humanists use their time productively if they are involved in coding, so it pays to understand the culture.  In our class discussion we agreed that it made sense for liberal arts people to be familiar with technology and digital culture, because everyone else must be familiar with humanities as a core part of education.  So, coding literacy would be one way to have liberal arts/humanists get familiar with digital technology and culture.  I think that is a great idea and would go a long way towards bringing together science and liberal arts, which we have blogged about before.

Posner

Posner addressed the issue of exhorting women to code.  She agreed that coding is a good skill to have, but she also talked about the reality of the coding culture which is made up of “middle-class white men” who have had greater access to technology, for far longer than women, in the first place. I don’t know what else to say about it, but gender struggles in technology fields are a problem throughout society.  Posner really wants that part of technology culture to change, to be more welcoming to diversity.  Of course I agree.

Coding is a topic which I have mixed emotions about.  This set of articles explain the difficulty of coding as a historian and highlight the importance of embracing the “culture of coding” with a humanist stance in mind.  In terms of “learning code for the sake of coding, Cafferata suggests that “As decontextualized rote response mechanisms, they are retrograde pedagogical steps in an era when critical thinking ought to be a hallmark of educational effectiveness.”  This seems to be important not just to coding, but to understanding the role that we, as budding digital historians, should play in developing our profession.

I have been guilty of the attitude expressed by Widner; I have considered digital history, and coding in particular, a “necessary means to an end”, and this has left me feeling a dislike and even a philosophical push against the digital humanities.  We have been told we must code in order to save our profession.  What if we opened ourselves to using code to our own ends and not the pragmatic ends of the academy (that needs to increase their revenue and student body)?  What if we looked at it as fun and exploratory?

Kramer

This week’s readings were interesting as they explored the implications of digital history on the way we view our profession.  Kramer suggests that perhaps “all” that historians do is add meta to metadata.  While at first I found this insulting, eventually I saw the value of this label.  History adds information to/about the primary source documents.  What we do is analysis and by placing the historian and the archivist together in this way the act of “doing” history becomes more clearly defined and accessible.

The historiography is where Kramer runs into trouble.  I do not believe that the entire historiography of a source can be placed into a primary source and be understood.  Perhaps arguments and counter arguments could be layered into the system; for instance, full access for people who would find that meta useful and common access for the average person who can not, without training ,understand the implications of what he/she is looking at.

Olsen and Argamon

Text mining is an interesting concept which seems filled with both problems and solutions.  When a historian works with primary sources they are limited in the number of texts they can use for any given project.  A computer is not human, therefore it can sort through many documents much more quickly which means faster work with a more complete body of sources.  This sounds like it would be extremely helpful in the humanities, but a computer is not human.

A computer can not understand the text it reads, it can not place value in circumstances and it can not feel the era it “reads”; a computer only recognizes symbols and their recurrence in a particular set of data. As Dr. Church said, it is difficult for the computer to mine symbols and metaphors in primary source documents.  This is a red flag on the use of text mining, because it is limited in scope;  the historian can view patterns through it, but computers have a limited capacity–perhaps this is comforting.

The article suggests that one goal of text mining is to make very large data sets “manageable and meaningful”.  In this pursuit, I believe that text mining provides the ability to organize and work with a large set of primary source documents, however, it does not provide meaning.  Meaning comes from human ability to grapple with data.  Meaning comes from the interpretation of the historian.  Text mining can lead the professional to explore different research questions and broaden his/her ability to work with sources, but can not be relied upon to give meaning to sources.