drjwbaker/Future Digital (July 2013)

## Future Digital (July 2013)
Future Digital

Notes from Going Digital closing conference 'Future Digital', held on 31 July 2013 at The Open University, Camden Town campus, London.

Roundtable discussion

Questions to consider
In the course of this programme what resources or techniques have you found interesting and helpful?
In terms of the design of the programme for next year, what would have like to have had this year?

Positives
Get to the right level to ask the right questions and understand the answers.
Learn what is available, and what we are moving towards.
They like Mia Ridge!
Interdisciplinarity.
Desire to continue to be involved.

Problems
Finding common ground between the training and your research challenging.
Difficult to choose what session to go to, information on what each session is about and what is expected needs more detail.

Desires
More technical skills taught, but with a balance struck between technical aspects and theoretical possibilities.
Longer time for workshops so knowledge can be built upon.
Colour coding of the workshops so everyone knows the level at which the session will be taught.
More information in advance so there is clearer way of ascertaining if something is appropriate for you.
Resources, follow up, next steps not provided.
Perhaps there could be a hook that binds all of the courses together.
Podcasts.
Some sort of fair (freshers style fair) rather than an opening conference: with stalls for each session, sign up sheets, chance to talk to trainers.
Preparatory exercises: people are happy to do homework before the event!


Julianne Nyhan, Text, Image and Sound: where we are and where we are not in Digital Humanities

(Digital) Humanities?
More to it than turning humanities data into digital humanities.
What is it not? Unsworth 2002, humanities computing lies in the intelligent representation of digital humanities data.
Is DH a big tent? See Pannapacker. Terras concerned – if we are everything then what are we not?
Is DH revolutionary? Nyhan, Flinn, Welsh 2013.
Is it about reforming the academy and scholarly communication? For example work of Dan Cohen.
Is is about building? Steven Ramsay (originally) said you are in DH if you can code, though he's revised this since...
Postcolonial Digital Humanities? Alan Lui, arguing there needs to be critical thinking within DH.
Is it about infrastructure? Not research questions at all...
What is the teaching agenda and where should it be located?

- Text analysis
Ian Lancashire's work on Agatha Christie (radiolab.org/people/ian-lancashire): see change in a writers textual style over time.
- Imaging projects
To project old objects from damaging reuse
- Oral histories of DH
dhq 2013: history of humanities computing part of DH.

Encoding machine readable texts central to DH
TEI markup is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of DH.
TEI embeds interpretation into text.
Connects other data to a text.
Interoperability.
Textgrid: TEI empowers the searching across the data.
Criticism... not all texts hierarchical, some texts hard to encode, how to encode performative aspects of the texts … but the act of encoding text little criticised [what about scaling up?]

History of ordering of text.
Alphabetic ordering used in Ancient Greece but not Ancient Rome.
But up to 1700 absolute alphabetisation still not being achieved.
Thematic ordering of texts much more common.
John Withals 1556 Short Dictionary of English and Latin still using thematic ordering. Navigation of text challenging.
Thematic ordering considered natural as it was seen to reflect the natural order of the world (eg followed the bible).
Our ordering of things say a lot about us, Foucault Order of Things (1970), Peter Burke (2000)

So when we look at modern day electronic dictionaries, to a large extent the successor of alphabetic ordering is markup: see for example how the OED uses markup to improve discoverability.

We are not exploring the longer term intellectual traditions within DH enough.
New questions: more exploration of the act of encoding and the actors who devise and apply it; the fact that digitised objects are interpretations and how do we understand that? (eg, we attach textual interpretations/markup to audio to make them computer readable)

Open research directions
We need to look beyond XML.
We need to look beyond the idea of DH as revolutionary from humanities, LIS et al.
Understand subjectivity and objectivity within digital objects.

Core Tension
Complete clarity and explicability of XML vs Interpretive subjectivity of Humanities
	Future Digital

	Notes from Going Digital closing conference 'Future Digital', held on 31 July 2013 at The Open University, Camden Town campus, London.

	Roundtable discussion

	Questions to consider
	In the course of this programme what resources or techniques have you found interesting and helpful?
	In terms of the design of the programme for next year, what would have like to have had this year?

	Positives
	Get to the right level to ask the right questions and understand the answers.
	Learn what is available, and what we are moving towards.
	They like Mia Ridge!
	Interdisciplinarity.
	Desire to continue to be involved.

	Problems
	Finding common ground between the training and your research challenging.
	Difficult to choose what session to go to, information on what each session is about and what is expected needs more detail.

	Desires
	More technical skills taught, but with a balance struck between technical aspects and theoretical possibilities.
	Longer time for workshops so knowledge can be built upon.
	Colour coding of the workshops so everyone knows the level at which the session will be taught.
	More information in advance so there is clearer way of ascertaining if something is appropriate for you.
	Resources, follow up, next steps not provided.
	Perhaps there could be a hook that binds all of the courses together.
	Podcasts.
	Some sort of fair (freshers style fair) rather than an opening conference: with stalls for each session, sign up sheets, chance to talk to trainers.
	Preparatory exercises: people are happy to do homework before the event!


	Julianne Nyhan, Text, Image and Sound: where we are and where we are not in Digital Humanities

	(Digital) Humanities?
	More to it than turning humanities data into digital humanities.
	What is it not? Unsworth 2002, humanities computing lies in the intelligent representation of digital humanities data.
	Is DH a big tent? See Pannapacker. Terras concerned – if we are everything then what are we not?
	Is DH revolutionary? Nyhan, Flinn, Welsh 2013.
	Is it about reforming the academy and scholarly communication? For example work of Dan Cohen.
	Is is about building? Steven Ramsay (originally) said you are in DH if you can code, though he's revised this since...
	Postcolonial Digital Humanities? Alan Lui, arguing there needs to be critical thinking within DH.
	Is it about infrastructure? Not research questions at all...
	What is the teaching agenda and where should it be located?

	- Text analysis
	Ian Lancashire's work on Agatha Christie (radiolab.org/people/ian-lancashire): see change in a writers textual style over time.
	- Imaging projects
	To project old objects from damaging reuse
	- Oral histories of DH
	dhq 2013: history of humanities computing part of DH.

	Encoding machine readable texts central to DH
	TEI markup is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of DH.
	TEI embeds interpretation into text.
	Connects other data to a text.
	Interoperability.
	Textgrid: TEI empowers the searching across the data.
	Criticism... not all texts hierarchical, some texts hard to encode, how to encode performative aspects of the texts … but the act of encoding text little criticised [what about scaling up?]

	History of ordering of text.
	Alphabetic ordering used in Ancient Greece but not Ancient Rome.
	But up to 1700 absolute alphabetisation still not being achieved.
	Thematic ordering of texts much more common.
	John Withals 1556 Short Dictionary of English and Latin still using thematic ordering. Navigation of text challenging.
	Thematic ordering considered natural as it was seen to reflect the natural order of the world (eg followed the bible).
	Our ordering of things say a lot about us, Foucault Order of Things (1970), Peter Burke (2000)

	So when we look at modern day electronic dictionaries, to a large extent the successor of alphabetic ordering is markup: see for example how the OED uses markup to improve discoverability.

	We are not exploring the longer term intellectual traditions within DH enough.
	New questions: more exploration of the act of encoding and the actors who devise and apply it; the fact that digitised objects are interpretations and how do we understand that? (eg, we attach textual interpretations/markup to audio to make them computer readable)

	Open research directions
	We need to look beyond XML.
	We need to look beyond the idea of DH as revolutionary from humanities, LIS et al.
	Understand subjectivity and objectivity within digital objects.

	Core Tension
	Complete clarity and explicability of XML vs Interpretive subjectivity of Humanities