Argamon & Olsen

This article does an excellent job highlighting the potential for computers as tools in the humanities. Similar to the Gibbs and Owens article, it shows the use of computers to help brainstorm and articulate research questions. One particular example of this from the article is the new connections discovered between Diderot and d’Alambert’s Encyclpédie and the Journal de Trévoux. With the discover of new connections and historical questions to be asked, who’s to say that we won’t discover new connections in centuries old texts, or even millennia-old texts?

It also seems to me that there may be potential in using machine learning to examine content or stylistic differences and similarities in unattributed historical writings. There are numerous texts written by that pesky anonymous person. Without machine learning, these writings may remain unattributed to any particular author and instead continue to be wondered about. Such tools may not be able to definitively tell us who wrote what, but they may be able to provide insight and provide us with new potential authors to theorize about. In large enough bodies of work from a similar time period, could such a tool help us discover if not one author, perhaps a style linked to an institution or an organization? Could such a discovery help to discuss and/or further develop certain hegemonic theories?

One other brief (instead or risking beating a dead horse…with an already-dead horse) point that Argamon & Olsen are careful to make: new technology can lead to new interpretations of the past, however, any new interpretations must still be researched and developed by professional historians, as context must be acknowledged, especially in new historical connections.

Kramer

I agree with Kramer’s argument that now, during the emergence of the digitization of the humanities, is the time to reconsider how we think about and approach the interpretation of history. Not that we have to completely change and revolutionize the practice of history, but an incorporation of a new way of thinking could definitely freshen up the field and the methods used to define the field. Regarding the increasing significance of the digital archive, thinking of digital and physical archives as a historiography in and of themselves is an important step to building a dynamic fluidity between not only primary and secondary sources, as Kramer asserts, but also between scholarly works of history and public history as well.