Author: Harold

To follow the path:
look to the master,
follow the master,
walk with the master,
see through the master,
become the master.

This quotation from a zen poem was taken from a “how to become a hacker” website. In the “Introduction: Theory and the Virtues of Digital Humanities”, Natalia Cecire talks about how the Digital Humanities is “undertheorized” and “the role of theory” in the digital humanities. Cecire explains that the “debates about theory” are debates about the “role of words and deeds”. In the digital humanities, theories are humanistic inquiries about knowledge. The article also mentions hackers, which was interesting, because I often associate the word hacker with information breach. I googled the word and found this quote from a how to be a hacker website: “Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help.” That is, according to Cecire, a “hacker is a person who looks at systemic knowledge structures and learns about them from making or doing.” It is also interesting that Cicere would note that epistemology about doing include collaboration. In relation to daily life, we use words to make theories from our own experiences in order to navigate through life. The way we form our theories about the world and what we do should ideally be the same. However, theories, as it is suggested by Cecire, have been divided from actions and became mere “words”. Hacking is a good example of a practice that have theories with immediate effect. Also, it should be added that while theories can lead to praxis, praxis can be theorized. The development of new knowledge comes from theorizing praxis. As the quote from the zen poem suggests, hackers can improve their skill by solving and building. The master being both the problem and the theory. Therefore, hacking is the praxis and the database the theory. The concern for Humanistic inquiry is that when the way we make theories by words does not result into a praxis and becomes ineffective. Cicere suggests that “…in its best version, digital humanities is also the subdiscipline best positioned to critique and effect change in that social form—not merely to replicate it”. This means that new ways of making theories in digital humanities can bring the relationship between praxis and theory in unison. Furthermore, digital humanities, being “under theorized” according to Cecire, can create praxis. The digital humanities, therefore, creates new forms of inquiry and new exploration of knowledge that can change “social order”.

 

Work cited:

 

Natalia Cecire, “Introduction: Theory and the Virtues of Digital Humanities,” Journal of Digital Humanities, March 9, 2012. http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/introduction-theory-and-the-virtues-of-digital-humanities-by-natalia-cecire/

Steven Raymond, Eric http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html. 29 November 14

 

This is an example of a poorly designed user interface. A good interface is described “In the Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garret”, where an interface design is compared to the process of making a story and as a story itself. “Strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface” are all the layers of an interface. This is comparable to the fleshing out of a story. To take Garret’s comparison further, a book, the reader, and the writer are the three agents of engagement with a story. And the interactions of an interface’s design are among the product, the world, and the user. The design of an interface is shaped also by its technology. An example given by Garret is a magazine. The design of an interface for a magazine on a tablet will carry the same characteristics of an actual magazine. Therefore, the decision that the designer of an interface makes is based on the “objective of a product” and the “needs of an user”. Also, the content of the interface has requirements and “product specifications”. Like making a story, the author must decide the type of language suited for explaining information and foresee what the reader will already know. The structure of an interface tells how the user “makes sense” of the world. Therefore, a good interface is easy to use and understand.

The relationship between the user and how the user understands the world is mismatched in United’s user interface. According to rohitbhagarva.com, “the online Check-in for flights is increasingly one of the most common things that travelers are doing before heading to the airport”. However, the user interface of United only gives the user to print their boarding pass. This, according to rohitbhagarva.com, is confusing to people who might want to check-in, but not print their boarding pass. Also, there appears to be no structure to how the options are arranged. How the user makes sense of the world is again dismissed when the login is placed where it is hard to find, when it is usually the first option that a user would seek. The example of an interface for a magazine given by Garret follows what a person would expect of how a magazine would be read. United’s interface has a mismatch of how a traveler books a flight in person.  The actual concerns of a traveler are misrepresented by the interface. Information, therefore, is misrepresented in United’s user interface.

 

 

Work Cited:

http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2013/03/14-lessons-from-the-best-and-worst-websites-in-the-travel-industry.html. image

 

Jesse James Garrett, Elements of User Experience. http://www.slideshare.net/openjournalism/elements-of-user-experience-by-jesse-james-garrett

 

 

This is a video of how progress made in technology creates new ways of viewing the past and finding new discoveries. If we take the comparison of  a digital map to a body, as in “the Anatomy of a Web Map” by Alan McConchie and Beth Schechter, we can see how new findings are added to complete the digital map of Stonehenge. The authors further explain that both bodies and web maps have systems and components that interact and intertwine. And that instead of cells, maps use data, and that instead of circulatory and digestive systems, web maps have style, servers and tiles. To explain a web map, a comparison between a web map and a digital map is made. According to “the Anatomy of a Web Map”, web maps are accessible on the computer while digital maps are viewed on electronic devices and are exclusive from the internet. What was particularly interesting to me was that the first digital map that I used was map quest. Map quest, according to the presentation, is the first initiate for digital maps. In the slide show, little tiles of a map are loaded instead of one big map, because it is faster. One tile can show a map of the world and zoomed in images increases the amount of tiles used. It was also interesting to find out that maps are made in advance and stored in cache. These changes in how we present and view the world is similar to how archeology finds the past through new technologies. The limitations of the internet, such as how it was too long to upload an actual map as it is noted by Alan McConchie and Beth Schechter, is a subtle effect of how we present the world. From this it seems that the way we work around the limitations of technology affects the way we represent information. On the article “Digital mapping project reveals Stonehenge Secrets” by Michelle Starr, it is said that “All of this information has been placed within a single digital map, which will guide how Stonehenge and its landscape are studied in the future. Stonehenge may never be the same again.” We can now view the Stonehenge not only digitally, but also we can see how it is fleshed out as archeologist find new discoveries. It is interesting to see that the more technology advances, the more it affects the way we view the world. We do not only use technology to navigate the streets, but also to find and renew the past.

 

Work Cited:

 

Alan McConchie and Beth Schechter, “Anatomy of a Web Map”

http://www.cnet.com/news/digital-mapping-project-reveals-stonehenge-secrets/

“Demystifying Networks” was unusually interesting to me, since networks are indeed mysterious now that I realized that I have given little thought to what is a network. I have heard the term network many times, usually when the subject is about the internet, and always thought of it as how information or things are interrelated.
Scott Weingart explains in “Demystifying Networks” that nodes are the assortment of “stuff”. For instance, an assortment of different shoes are nodes. And each pair of shoe is a node. A pair of shoes has a brand, size, and color. Therefore a node may include these attributes. He further explains that nodes can have types; therefore we can include the brand of each pair of shoe as a node type. This will create a different set of nodes that has different attributes. This process of adding different node types from one node can extend, making the node multimodal. A pair of nodes is considered bimodal. We can make a bimodal node multimodal by adding another type of node from the second node. We can add products, and this will create a different node with particular attributes. Weingart addresses the pitfalls in Digital Humanities where the amount and types of nodes are too much and too complicated for the tools of network-science. Also, he furthers this argument by noting that the result of the network analysis from Digital Humanity nodes can mean something else. He explains that, “Humanistic data are almost by definition uncertain, open to interpretation, flexible, and not easily definable”.

 

 

These nodes are the characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This is an example of how data visualization can over simplify the meaning of the information. It is also an example of how the network can be open to interpretation. The network analysis of the characters does not explain their relationship to one another. The relationship of Hamlet with the Ghost is open to interpretation. The ghost, supposedly the ghost of Hamlet’s father, can be an impostor or a delusion and may be Hamlet himself. Because the data visualization is “open to interpretation” and is” not easily definable”, a good understanding of the text will be required for the data visualization to be useful. The idea that Hamlet is the center of this network is in itself debatable. A reading of the text can bring just a good an understanding of Hamlet without the network analysis. Multiple network analysis can be a way to address the complexity of the work.

 

Work Cited:

http://www.scottbot.net/HIAL/?p=6279

https://www.google.com/search?q=hamlet+network+analysis&espv=2&biw=1600&bih=799&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=eS1hVOrwEc2rogTozIDIDg&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=P0Yb1RqgHswh_M%253A%3BLRtXYYDmiRRyiM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.newleftreview.org%252Fassets%252Fimages%252F3020501large.gif%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fnewleftreview.org%252FII%252F68%252Ffranco-moretti-network-theory-plot-analysis%3B600%3B524

When I used Google Maps to scale the distance of my destination, I felt assured that I will arrive as scheduled. I had read from “Science and Sanity”, a book by Alfred Korzybski, that “the map is not the territory”. I knew that the printed map did not correspond with real time, unlike how Google Maps can calculate the traffic condition and the different paths as I traveled. However, I kept in mind, even as omnipresent as technology is and no matter how careful we are with planning, that unpredicted events can still arise and be overlooked. Johanna Drucker, in “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display”, explains the concepts of “data” and “capta”. Drucker explains that “Capta is ‘taken’ actively while data is assumed to be a ‘given’ able to be recorded and observed”. The time that I will reach my destination is calculated by the data that can be given to Google Maps. However, certain circumstances, such as an accident and constructions on the road, can not be taken into account by Google Maps. It had been reliable for my part, until I used it in the unpredictable roads of Los Angeles. Google Maps will insist that I will get to my destination at a certain time, but I have to give it the benefit of my own calculations to arrive on time. Human beings, not machines (at least not yet), are capable of seizing information. Truth is moving and alive. Drucker further explains that “Humanistic inquiry acknowledges the situated, partial, and constitutive character of knowledge production, the recognition that knowledge is constructed, taken, not simply given as a natural representation of pre-existing fact.” We seize knowledge through comprehension, interpretation, and the application of an idea that is the product of this process. “Data” and “Capta” are the participles of Latin verbs that can be literally translated as “having been given” and “having been seized”. The use of “Capta” by Drucker reminds me of “Carpe Diem” by Horace, where we try to seize a day as unpredictable and transient as tomorrow itself. Google Maps, although useful, is an “abstraction” of the territory, as Korzybski would have it. It really just tells me where to turn and what streets to look for, and I hardly look at the screen. When I reached my destination, I realized that even Google Maps “is not the territory”.  The following video shows Korzbski talk about “illusions” and “distractions”, reality as we perceive it.

 

 

 

Work Cited:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-7zYBKgzfs. Alfred Korzybski – The World is NOT an Illusion. Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, Sep 27, 2012. Web. 2 November 2015

Drucker, Johanna. http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html. Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display. Digital Humanities Quarterly5, no. 1 (2011). Web. 2 November 2015.

 

 

 

These images are examples of a roll and a codex. The ancients transcribed their written works in scrolls made out of papyrus. Eventually, codices made out of parchment were used to transcribe classical texts. Writing on scrolls were difficult in terms of space. They were also inconvenient as references, since they had to be completely rolled open. They were subject to fast deterioration as well. Therefore, authorships were lost through literary corruptions, deterioration, and misplacement of scrolls. When codices were developed, perhaps to address these problems, it introduced new ways of organizing written work and new ways of reading. The transition from books to codices, like tapes to CDs, introduced a much efficient way to circulate knowledge. Greg Crane notes in “a Companion to Digital Humanities” that “The adoption of electronic methods thus reflects a very old impulse within the field of classics.” Classicists have an obsession for truth prompted no less by the loss of great works through deterioration and manuscript corruptions. The transition from scrolls were not without consequences. Certain authors and works were not transcribed into codices and were lost. Crane also notes, “Many non-classicists from academia and beyond still express surprise that classicists have been aggressively integrating computerized tools into their field for a generation.” Perhaps this is to address that the transition to a digital media is complete and that no work is lost? Computers spurred a new way of circulating knowledge reminiscent to codices. My Classics professors, for instance, use digital dictionaries and grammar books for reference. In some ways, how we read now are much authoritative in comparison to the ancient Romans themselves. A number of reasons, such as education being limited only to the upper class and the limitations of the papyrus, have limited the understanding of certain works to only a few readers. Classicists now use digital tools to easily navigate through these works, to learn ancient languages, and to inspire new questions by looking at these texts from a different perspective in a way allowed by computers.

 

This is a lemmatization of a Latin piece. Such visualization allows readers to gain not only a better understanding of the piece, but also to gain new insights and questions. Crane ends with this note: “Our history now lies with the larger story of computing and academia in the twenty-first century.” Perhaps Classicists today are not just learning digital tools to simply increase the chances of their employability, but are simply part of a new transition.

 

Citations:

A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/

From Scroll to Codex. http://courses.educ.ubc.ca/etec540/July03/batchelorj/researchtopic/. Image. Web. 25 October 14

Disambiguation and Lemmatisation of Automatically Computed Texts. http://wiki.hudesktop.hucompute.org/index.php/Lemmatisation/Disambiguation. 14 October 2014. Image. Web. 25 October 14

The first time I heard the term metadata was on the news about Edward Snowden. After hearing the news about the NSA and their machines collecting metadata, I started hearing the word everywhere. But I still did not know what it meant and why data about data was so important. And if you knew me, you will find that I am not a very tech savvy person. I, therefore, sought out the introduction to metadata by Anne J. Gilliland and an article about Edward Snowden entitled, “Can Snowden finally kill the ‘harmless metadata’ myth?” by Stilgherrian to see if we really need to be concerned about metadata. I found out from the introduction to metadata that it is used “to arrange, describe, track, and otherwise enhance access to information objects and the physical collections related to those objects.”  And, according to Gililand, that it is a term used by “cultural heritage information professionals such as museum registrars, library catalogers, and archival processors”. I supposed that the catalog number on books in the library would be considered metadata. Another example I could find in my everyday life was the terminology for rules in my Latin textbook. We use these terminologies to quickly identify a word and see its grammatical function. It seems that it was no incident that one of the first works of Digital Humanities was on Thomas Aquinas.  Now that I have some idea about metadata, I still did not know why people should really be concerned that their metadata is exploited online. After all, the purpose of the internet is to share information.

I then found  an article about Edward Snowden where he is quoted as saying that “Metadata is extraordinarily intrusive. As an analyst, I would prefer to be looking at metadata than looking at content, because it’s quicker and easier, and it doesn’t lie.”  This quote means that the metadata on the internet is more valuable than its content. Metadata can be “traced” from the content put on the internet. This is why Snowden calls it “intrusive.” I assume that the system that the government use to track metadata is sophisticated enough to trace metadata from all sorts of contents. From Gililand’s article we can understand the practical application of metadata and, it seems, the same application is being applied to people. Should we then care that our metadata is being collected by the government?

 

Work Cited:

Stilgherrian. “Can Snowden Finally Kill the Harmless Metadata Myth?” ZDNET. 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 13 Oct. 14.                http://www.zdnet.com/can-snowden-finally-kill-the-harmless-metadata-myth-7000033717/

Gilliland, Anne J.  “Setting the Stage”. The Getty Research Institute. Introduction to Metadata. Web. 13 Oct. 14                                                             http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intrometadata/setting.html