The Digital Humanities and the Digital Modern

268 Pages·2017·3.449 MB·English

by  James Smithies (auth.)

JAMES SMITHIES
THE
DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
AND THE DIGITAL
MODERN
The Digital Humanities and the Digital Modern
James Smithies
The Digital
Humanities
and the Digital
Modern
James Smithies
King’s Digital Lab
King’s CollegeLondon
London, UK
ISBN978-1-137-49943-1 ISBN978-1-137-49944-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49944-8
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A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has its origins in conversations with Kath Bode and Arianna
Ciula,whoencouragedmetoputmyideasintoamonograph.PaulArthur
convinced me that it was worth pursuing. My thoughts have been influ-
enced by conversations with Tim Sherratt and Deb Verhoeven, but espe-
ciallybymyworkwithPaulMillar,ChrisThomson,andtheUCCEISMIC
Digital Archive team at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Conversations with IT colleagues at the New Zealand Ministry of Health,
Learning Media, and Catalyst IT have also influenced my approach.
I moved to the United Kingdom in 2015, with the bulk of the manu-
script complete but with significant work still to be done. The team at
King’s Digital Lab provided an excellent work environment and showed
mewhatitmeanstoundertakedigitalhumanitiesatscale.Thebookwould
not have been completed without their support and encouragement.
Colleagues in the Department of Digital Humanities offered a
much-needed introduction to the UK higher education system. I am
particularly grateful to Sheila Anderson, Simon Tanner, and Paul Spence
fortheiradvice.PaulReadmanandtheFacultyResearchandImpactTeam
(FRIT)helpedmesettleintomyroleasdirectorofKing’sDigitalLaband
providedessentialmanagerialandcollegialsupport.Ioweasignificantdebt
to Alan Liu for reading drafts and providing deeply informed criticism.
Dave Berry provided feedback on Chaps. 1 and 2, and Jack Copeland,
Michael-John Turp, Patrick Evans, and Deb Verhoeven read and com-
mented on other chapters in the book. I am grateful for their insights and
suggestions for further reading. Needless to say all errors and failures of
interpretationrestwithme.Thebookwascompletedduringresearchleave
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
at the Oxford Internet Institute. I am grateful to Eric Meyer for hosting
me. Finally, thanks to Nicola McKinney, my primary motivation and
influence, and my wider family for their support and understanding.
C
ONTENTS
1 The Challenge of the Digital Humanities 1
2 The Digital Modern 17
3 Computation and the Discourse of Crisis 47
4 Artificial Intelligence, Digital Humanities,
and the Automation of Labour 79
5 Towards a Systems Analysis of the Humanities 113
6 Software Intensive Humanities 153
7 The Ethics of Production 203
8 The Culture of the (Digital) Humanities 237
Bibliography 249
Index 253
vii
L F
IST OF IGURES
Fig. 3.1 Logicgates 68
Fig. 5.1 The foundationsofglobalhumanities
cyberinfrastructure 125
Fig. 5.2 Networktypologies 129
Fig. 5.3 Layer4global humanities cyberinfrastructure,
‘Integrated InformationInfrastructure
Reference Model’,TOGAF8.1.1. (December2011)
©The OpenGroup 132
Fig. 6.1 The FactoidModel ofProsopography
used inthe Paradox ofMedievalScotland Project 176
ix
CHAPTER 1
The Challenge of the Digital Humanities
This book is about the digital humanities and their relationship to the
contemporary world. Myprimarycontentionisthat the digitalhumanities
are historically significant, regardless of their perceived intellectual worth,
andhavetobeexplored—anddeveloped—inseriousways.Thisextendsto
takingcriticismofthemseriouslyandacknowledgingcommentators’deep
concerns regarding their effect on humanities research.
Theintriguingthingis,ofcourse,thathumanistshaveusedcomputers,
toagreaterorlesserdegree,forseveraldecadesnow:ithardlyseemslikea
subject that would warrant another extensive monograph. Novelists and
researchers started using word processors in the late 1960s,1 the first
electronic library catalogue systems were installed in university libraries in
the late 1970s,2 and the first major intellectual furore about the use of
computationalmethodssurfacedinthe1970s.3Regardlessoftheirattitude
towards it, older researchers will recognise ‘digital’ as an important theme
in their careers, whether it be the transition from hand-written essays to a
QWERTYkeyboard,thetransitionfromcardcataloguesandmicroficheto
OPAC and web browser, corridor conversations about the evils of
Wikipedia and Twitter, or disaster stories about dropped stacks of main-
frame punch cards.
Future historians will beintrigued by how difficult ithas been for some
humanists to reconcile themselves to this reality. Accepting that the
humanities are deeply entangled with digital technology represents an
important moment of recognition. It renders the adjective ‘digital’ redun-
dant and freezes us in time, a generation confronted with new tools that
neither we, nor the wider culture, fully understand. It is not a matter of
whetherwewantdigitaltoolsinthehumanities,buthowweusethetools
©The Author(s)2017 1
J.Smithies, TheDigital Humanities andthe Digital Modern,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49944-8_1
2 J.SMITHIES
thatwehave,howwecreatemoreeffectiveones,andwhatperspectivesare
mostconducivetograduallyincreasingourunderstandingovertime.Thisis
thekindofcuriositythatdrawspeopletothedigitalhumanities,ratherthan
arepressedurgetoshareinthefinancialrewardsandideologicaldominance
ofSiliconValley,oreventheneedtojoinacommunity.
This is reflected in the myriad different instantiations of the digital
humanitiesaround theworld,thewiderangeofpractices andcriticalposi-
tionsofpeopleinterestedinthesubject,andtheconsternationofcriticswho
would like to undermine it. After multiple interviews with leading practi-
tionersforanarticleintheLAReviewofBooks,MelissaDinsmannotedthat
thedigitalhumanitiesare‘largeandincreasinglyindefinableevenbythosein
itsmidst’,encompassing‘computationalresearch,digitalreadingandwrit-
ing platforms, digital pedagogy, open-access publishing, augmented texts,
and literary databases … media archaeology and theories of networks,
gaming,andwaresbothhardandsoft’.4
Itisindefinablebecausethedigitalhumanitieshave,inafascinatingand
revealing way, become a floating signifier for the conditions of contem-
porary scholarship.5 Digital humanities departments, laboratories, and
centres exist to focus local efforts on that signifier, to understand its
capacity to create and obscure meaning, to produce new scholarly prod-
ucts, and in doing so to contribute to the future health of the tradition.
Theyarenotsomethingthathastobedecidedon(fororagainst)asifthey
can be grasped whole and either accepted or rejected. They emerge from
theconditionsofearlytwenty-firstcenturycultureandsocietyandcanonly
be approached on those terms. As Alan Liu suggests, ‘the digital human-
ities serveas ashadow playforafutureformofthehumanitiesthat wishes
to include what contemporary society values about the digital without
losing its soul to other domains of knowledge work that have gone digital
to stake their claim to that society’.6 This is a nuanced reading, and
important. Conversations about the digital humanities that attempt to
anesthetise and dissect them reflect a misunderstanding of their nature.
Resistance to the tired discourse of technological innovation is important,
but the assumption that it is even possible to be a humanities researcher
without being in some way ‘digital’ suggests a failure of interpretation of
paradigmaticscale.Itissofarremovedfromcommonsensethatitprovides
evidence of a distorting mentalité.
Exploring digital aspects of the humanities is important work, precisely
becauseitgeneratessuchopposition.However,myguidingassumptionin
the present book is somewhat radical. Partly out of practical necessity and