In the proto-history of digital humanities, as explained in depth by Susan Hockey in her article “The History of Humanities Computing,” I was curious about the storage and possible distortion of datasets in the early days of the field, especially through the lens of historians and her own meta-history that she establishes here.
Storing data serially, or in order, from start to finish, seems to suggest an even, straightforward temporality – a more direct approach to data storage than today's “cloud,” etc.
However, I was interested in how she claims historians, who are in the field of interpreting past events in diverse temporal directions (historiography, image analysis, mapping, etc.), within a history of humanities computing itself, struggled to orient themselves in the early days of DH without the core, pre-digital multidimensionality. Hockey also specifies how seriality shows “several aspects of one object” as a “single linear stream,” while leaving how this limitation occurs – “forming several tables in relational database technology” – as a parenthetical. I think she deliberately uses this diversion to represent the space needed in the future to ensure a sufficiently complete, possibly (but only possibly perhaps in the world of minimal computing) high-fidelity rendering of an historical object, artifact, or manuscript to enhance an investigation by way of digital tools, or make them strictly necessary.
Hockey is also creating a strong contrast here. Humanities computing developed after World War II in the age of punch cards between the initiatives of individual humanities researchers and the capital of corporate enterprise. However, this linear, material, one-dimensional method of storing and representing data seems to be the opposite of the multi-directional, instant make-up of today’s internet. It seems that Hockey is claiming there was not only a distortion of historical fullness by the tape machine but an intrinsic “simplification” of historical, and possibly humanistic (outside of simple processing of words and number sets) study by way of the early computer. I wonder if the investigators of this time, generally speaking, saw serial data storage as a stepping stone into the future, or a diversion to serious historical and humanistic inquiry.
Despite this plethora of technological advancements in the space between the 1960s and Hockey’s or our present, doesn’t the modern field of digital humanities struggle with a similar paradox of advancements in computing leading to an itemization of data that could potentially reduce its fullness and complexity? I want to investigate the legacy of seriality more in this field, and consider the ways in which it could be a metaphor for, or foil with which to consider the limitations of modern methods and functions of data storage and presentation.
“Minimal computing is the answer. Minimal computing is easy. Minimal computing consists of multiple methods, some as yet to be imagined. Minimal computing will end pandemics/thwart Putin/stop climate change. Minimal computing will save the humanities. Minimal computing is a false prophet. Minimal computing distracts from the pressing issues of the day. Minimal computing is static site generation. Minimal computing is hard. Minimal computing is not the answer” (Risam and Gil, “Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing,” paragraph 1).
I was absolutely fascinated by the text-mined poetry of this opening paragraph of Roopika Risam and Alex Gil’s 2022 article “The Questions of Minimal Computing.”
In putting together key phrases from the below issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly, Risam and Gil begin and end the paragraph by creating a contradictory, yet entirely logical paradox: “Minimal computing is the answer… Minimal computing is not the answer.” Within those simple, somewhat empty phrases, Risam and Gil begin to create a dialectic which runs through the entirety of their text, yet possibly most of all within the introduction to their introduction itself, how digital humanities research is inherently indefinable and accessible at the same time. Practitioners of this multi-disciplinary concentration can be in spaces of repression and limited internet access or highly-privileged universities with corporate connections, yet be contributors all the same to a sustainable ecosystem of intellectual exchange.
Furthermore, the text-mined creation of anaphora within the passage brings up unique questions of form and content within the field. As a result, “minimal computing” becomes a vessel of multi-definitional truth. These truths assert a wide range of hopes and fears, representing the two temporal reference points of present and future (“is” and “will”). In simply identifying key words of the text, these non-linear inflections of time are highlighted and moved between within no predictable pattern. However, this hybrid temporality also opens the clearing of DH creation “yet to be imagined,” or the future-facing, unrealized dimension of the field. This element of the mined text speaks directly to the creation of a possible digital “third space,” mentioned alongside Silvia Fernández’s project on histories of the U.S./Mexico borderlands, or a vital branch of future humanities computing to facilitate connection, historical memory, and an expanded definition of what the humanities could be as an integral science, a societal need, as mentioned by several colleagues in our class discussion on the importance of the field.
Furthermore, there is an interesting dissonance towards the middle of this passage, as Risam and Gil’s DH composition begins to tilt more negative, about minimal computing being a driver of left-wing progress while also possibly being a hollow container of distraction and some brand of broken promise. I firmly believe this shift towards a digital humanities writ large that is based on need instead of a never-satisfied want for progress (or the complete disruption of large-scale “progress”) has more potential to bring about political change, and a digital space that is genuinely more inclusive, and leaves room for genuine vision. In any case, this first paragraph, much like the entirety of Risam and Gil’s nuanced introduction, brought up as many wonderful points of clarity as it did questions and interruptions. Do you believe digital tools, used correctly, can bring about deeper, more original humanistic inquiry? I am a growing believer that they are, especially Risam and Gil’s framework of minimalism.
When I go to a museum or public library, I am often taken by how close I can get to historical objects and texts in particular. This closeness is imagined on some level: if I look at a historical text through glass, say a Gutenberg Bible or papyrus manuscript from ancient Egypt, I imagine what context this existed in originally, or what the room, library or abbey it lived in for time immemorial. I imagine what hands touched the book and how limited access must have been.
I had this store of experiences in mind as I read through Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner’s 2004 article “Conversion of Primary Sources” from A Companion to Digital Humanities. I was particularly taken by their inclusion of the British Library project on the digital recreation of the fifteenth-century Sherborne Missal – a digital humanities project that began with a decontextualization of the original through high-quality images – in order to make an entirely recontextualized version to share as a hands-on exhibit in that same museum space.
I wonder what happens to a reader's first-hand experience of a previously-inaccessible text when they encounter it in this way. I was taken and possibly even seduced by the way in which Deegan and Tanner describe the exhibit as a living history project that is user-driven, entirely accessible and enhanced by sound and crystal-clear images that emerge almost magically off the page. This creates a new dimension to experience this work, one that is borne from a modern, secular combination of digitization, performance and historical recovery that re-presents this work in a fuller, immediately multidisciplinary context.
Choosing to elevate this work from a physical text to an experiential public history project that would have only been accessible to certain scholars who had a particular reason to see it is a generous, unifying act. It also echoes the goals and scope of Fr. Busa’s original IBM collaboration and the rigor he took to bring Aquinas’s Latin into an undeniably modern space.
However, I am also considering how this act of humanistic stewardship could put the experience of encounter with primary sources into jeopardy. By translating the inventive authorship and artistry of the missal to the space of the “touch screen,” an entirely different set of textual and non-textual associations occur. I again wonder how this pursuit of measurable accuracy might lessen the coherence of the unmeasurability of humanistic creation, especially if viewed outside of the library, on a less-high resolution computer screen, tablet, or even phone, watch or smart glasses.