Humanities Computing

Consider a rough intellectual map of humanities computing (Fig. 1). At the center of this map is a large ‘‘methodological commons’’ of computational techniques shared among the disciplines of the humanities and closely related social sciences, e.g., database design, text analysis, numerical analysis, imaging, music information retrieval, communications. Picture the disciplines ranged above the commons in groups, such as literary and linguistic studies, historical studies, material culture, musicology, performance studies, and so on. Connecting each disciplinary group to the relevant techniques are doubleheaded arrows indicating that these techniques are variously exported from individual fields of study into the commons and from the commons into others. The agency that sees to this import/export trade is humanities computing in its dual role as collegial service to the disciplines and as research enterprise directed to investigate their evolving methodologies, devise new computational approaches, study the effects, and tease out the implications. Below the commons are broad areas of learning that such interdisciplinary work calls on: philosophy (especially epistemology, ontology, and the philosophy of mind), historiography and ethnography, science studies, sociology of knowledge, media studies, literary criticism, linguistics, and aspects of computer science, including markup technologies, digital library research, and the language industries. Such is one version of the picture that has emerged from half a century of work in the field. During this halfcentury, if the publication record is any guide, scholarship in the field has grown exponentially. A recent survey of institutional models shows that the activity has spread around the world, diversified, and at key places moved into the academic core. As in other domains to which computing has been applied, numerous claims have been made for its transformative effects. The following gives strong reasons to think the effects are indeed profound. As Cherry said in reference to the telephone, however, ‘‘Inventions themselves are not revolutions; neither are they the cause of revolutions. Their powers for change lie in the hands of those who have the imagination and insight to see that the new invention has offered them new liberties of action, that old constraints have been removed, that their political will, or their sheer greed, are no longer frustrated, and that they can act in new ways.’’ The primary question here is how our insight is sharpened and imaginations empowered to gain genuinely ‘‘new liberties of action’’ from computing, and how these liberties may be used in refurbishing the humanities for an electronic age.