the rise of cultural informatics gregory crane professor of classics winnick family chair of...
TRANSCRIPT
![Page 1: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The rise of Cultural Informatics
Gregory Crane
Professor of Classics
Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship
Perseus Project
Tufts University
![Page 2: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Perseus Project
• DL development 1987-– Ancient Greco-Roman Culture
• DLI-2: “A Digital Library for the Hum.”– Up through early 20th century– Calculatedly disparate collections
• Production: www.perseus.tufts.edu– 9million pages/month, 85% Greco-Roman
• Research: what characterizes cultural DLs?– Audience / Services / Content Model Triad– Cross-over: e.g. NSDL work
![Page 3: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Cultural Informatics
• Why not “Computational Humanities,” “Humanities Computing,” “Computing and the Humanities”?– Too confining
• Textual and fine arts
• Associations with canonical culture, esp. western
• Cultural Informatics -- very broad– Challenging but important perspective
![Page 4: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
Cultural Informatics
• Object of Study: – Geo-spatial open: All cultures of the world– Temporally open: cultures as evolving process
• Past, present and future
• Goals: – Analysis of cultures– Communication between cultures
• Fundamental to world peace and prosperity
![Page 5: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Does culture matter?
• Jerusalem
• Kosovo
• Baghdad
• Mecca
• Congo
• Rwanda
![Page 6: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Applications
• Visualization:– Tracking anger against the US
• (terrorism/national security)
– Identifying cultural trends• (Marketing/trade)
– Broad educational• Acquiring information, individual and comparative
![Page 7: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Mapping Trends
![Page 8: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Top Down 1: Time & Space
![Page 9: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Culture Matters!
• F-Measures for Place Name Identification– Includes semantic classification and
identification (Which Springfield)– Greco-Roman Sources: 95%– European Sources: 90%– US Sources: 80%!!!
![Page 10: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Top Down 2: Automatic Timeline
![Page 11: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Top Down 3: Mapping
![Page 12: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
Applications
• Customized knowledge support– What info do readers A vs. B need?
– Backgrounds, purposes etc.
• Documents: what am I reading?
• Objects: what is this thing?
• Spaces: where am I moving?
– Audiences• Tourists and visitors
• Peace-keepers and ground forces
• Business
![Page 13: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
What am I looking at?
• Cambridge Civil War Monument (1870)– Linking to other data
– City Directories
– Regimental Histories
– Period Maps
– Old Photographs
![Page 14: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
Library Becomes Infrastructure
• Moving through a neighborhood– When were these houses built? What is their
style? Who lived here?
• Moving thru an ecosystem– What are the plants/animals?– What systems are in play?
• Answers to every quantifiable question delivered in real time on the spot
![Page 15: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
Reading in a Democratic Society
• Continuation of reading revolution– 1760-1830, before and after
• Now requires a cultural informatics• Includes but transcends textual materials• What is the point of health and prosperity?
– Emerson’s American Scholar in the 21st century
![Page 16: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
System Input
• Quantitative data -- easiest– States self-organize into databases (“Seeing like
a state”)
• Linguistic data -- hard– Minimally dozens, if not hundreds – Varying level of documentation
• Cultural data -- hardest– Language/Culture clusters: thousands+
![Page 17: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
Cultural Informatics begin
• at the limits AND intersection of– manual analytic techniques– generic computational techniques
• Cross-trained experts– Serve as connectors between specialists– Have intuitive understanding of not-yet-
articulated possibilities from BOTH sides
![Page 18: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
Cultural Informatics
• Aggregation and Visualization– Extraction from many examples– Quantified, targetted generalizations
• Focus and customization– Start from a document/object/scene– Customized decision support
• Yes/No decisions (~search)
• Discursive analysis (~browsing)
![Page 19: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
How do we do it now? Or do we?
• Players -- no real specialists– Faculty in higher education– Librarians– Think tanks– Intelligence Community– Broadcast media– Journalists and professional authors
![Page 20: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
How do we do it now? Or do we?
Computing and the HumanitiesFocus on semi-passive analysisEmphasis on publication
Social science & empirical dataHow well do we work with heterogeneous data?How well do we work with multiple languages?
Computer and Information ScienceHow far have we gone in document understanding?Do we distinguish encyclopedic/semantic data?
![Page 21: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
How do we do it now? Or do we?
• Cultural Grant Agencies: IMLS, NEA, NEH
• Governmental libraries: LOC to public libs
• Governmental museum/sites: SI, NPS
• Intelligence agencies: CIA, NSA, etc.
• NSF: SBE, experiments with DLI, ITR
![Page 22: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
What do we need to do?
• Provide new kinds of training– Cultural Informatics
• As self-standing discipline?
• As new specialty in History/Anthro/classics etc.
• As new specialty within Computer Science
• As logical extension of Lib and Info Science
![Page 23: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
What do we need to do?
• Core cultural informatics experts– 50? Able to coordinate many different efforts
• History/Information Science
• Domain Specific experts– 100s/1000s of experts in Area Studies/Lang
Tech etc.
• Build up to 100? Grad students/postdocs– Research support: $50m/year?
![Page 24: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
What do we need to do?
• Create technological infrastructure– Broaden/expand the evaluation forums
• More TREC/ACE/DUC/CLEF/SENSEVAL etc.
– Build knowledge resources• Parallel corpora, lexica, portable heuristics
– Focus on broad semantic as well as encyclopedic analysis
• Homo ignavus (lat.) ~ “bad man” but …
![Page 25: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/25.jpg)
What do we need to do?
• First cut: 100 languages in five years– Allow $1,000,000/language $100m
• US Knowledge Sources --> 1922 (Pub Dom)– City directories, Census,
– Newspapers & Periodicals
– Encyclopedias, school texts, manuals
– Maps, gazetteers
– Allow avg $1,000,000/year @ 300 years: $300m
![Page 26: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/26.jpg)
What do we need to do?
• World peace and prosperity are the goal• What US agencies do what?
– IMLS, NEH, NEA, LOC, SI, NPS all have roles
– But much work must be situated in NSF• Cultural informatics includes scientific and
engineering research• NSF should, at the least, incubate these aspects of
cultural informatics
![Page 27: The rise of Cultural Informatics Gregory Crane Professor of Classics Winnick Family Chair of Technology and Entrepreneurship Perseus Project Tufts University](https://reader030.vdocuments.us/reader030/viewer/2022032414/56649eec5503460f94bfd5ac/html5/thumbnails/27.jpg)
How do we know we are there?
• Can dynamically plot cultural states across the globe from dozens of language/culture combinations
• Can support reading/spatial exploration/object analysis customized for many different categories of user