Digitizing is

questioning,or else

Professor Willard McCartyKing’s College Londonstaff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/

Long Room Hub Lecture Series, Trinity College Dublin, 16/4/08

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3

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?

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Herbert Simon, untitled lecture notes, Operations Research Society of America meeting, 14 November 1957

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Times Literary Supplement, 27 April 1962

Not a “menial tool” but a telescope of the mind that may change our outlook.

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Globe and Mail, 16 November 1965

Scientific American, May 2001

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www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3244/

www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9547

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Computers and the Humanities 1 (1966: 3-6)

Next step is to be “truly imaginative”

Scholars’ primary involvement is with the creative act

Reorganization of thinking for the new age

10Computers and the Humanities 11 (1978): 211-15

the problem is our limited conceptual framework and the unexamined concept of text

Our range of vision has not been enlarged

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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?

13

Computers and the Humanities 11 (1978): 211-15

In Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Schreibman, Siemens and Unsworth (Blackwell’s, 2004)

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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?

15

Keyword-in-context concordancer

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Literary concepts & their interrelations expressed in software

Relational database diagram

A typical ontology diagram

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Commentary in an annotation tool

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Traces of stylistic features from a statistical analyzer

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On-screen output from a keyword-in-context concordancer

Phrasal concordance to the Bible, 16C

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9C glossed ms of Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Leiden 48)

Annotated scholarly article using Pliny

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Relational database diagram of entites, attributes and relationships

Cosmological diagram showing the “Great Chain of Being”

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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?

23

modelling of

modelling for

Modelling relations

Natural system/ artefact

Formal/ abstract system

internal logic

Based on Rosen 2000: 159 and Geertz 1993/1973: 93.

internal logic

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Improvisational

modelling

Formal/ abstract system

internal logic ?Various

temporary construals

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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?

26

Computational analogy of mind:

human brain cells grown in tissue culture on a Motorola 68000 chip

Judy Trogadis, Toronto Western Hospital, 1985

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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?

28

IVANHOEPossible Ivanhoes

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Various players

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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.

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