Prep for week 03: inquiry + iteration

[benmiller314]

Thanks to everyone who posted an introduction to yourself in the other forum! I think I might start a playlist. ;¬)

By the time we meet again as a class, we'll have been apart for two full weeks – a long time to hold onto your thoughts about all that you're taking in. By then, you'll have watched and read Posner's examples of how various DH projects were made; considered Risam & Gil's proposals about "minimal computing" and how it might apply to your work or matters of public interest; received Birnbaum & Langmead's advice on situating digital learning in the context of your existing humanities training; and contended with Stolley's manifesto about what kinds of learning (through openness, flexibility, and iteration) he thinks will stand the test of time. We have much we could discuss!

Please use this forum to propose (and cite) a passage you'd like to unpack, interrogate, or otherwise spend more time with. In addition to the quoted passage, please ask (or respond to) a question: What does your chosen passage make you wonder, or think of?

Bonus: This week, we'll also have one of the authors with us (Alison Langmead), so you can also ask questions about the process or motivation that led to the article or whether/how her ideas have changed since publication in 2017.

[TashDorje]

I guess being the first will provide criticism that the rest of you can use to make a better post. I could write a paper on each of the articles, but I shall focus on just a few observations on a couple articles.

Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing
I come from a technical background, entering the humanities, but stopped programming decades ago and switched to management. When I saw the title "Minimal Computing", article I thought of my first programming job where I had to get a payroll system to run in 64K Random Access Memory. As computing power increased, programmers no longer had to be efficient with loads of RAM and enormous processing power.

The paper forced me to think of how my Artificial Intelligence-powered thesis can be put online for low-bandwidth access. I can have all the "heavy lifting" done on the server, and the output be in lightweight HTML. The latter may be challenging as code generators and modern HTML put out dozens of lines of code that HTML 3.2 could do with a fraction of the size.

Minimal computing also encompasses available research materials. I rely on original source documents in Tibetan and Chinese published at the convenience of the People's Republic of China — an organization not known for openness and transparency. I am not sure how common this problem is in other areas, but in Tibetan Studies, it is to the point where scholars research ethnically Tibetan areas outside of the PRC.

Task-Driven Programming Pedagogy in the Digital Humanities
Having learned a number of programming languages (the rough equivalent of ancient Greek — JCL PL1 Fortran Focus APL Basic DOS commands Dbase Filemaker Cobol Assembler SAS...), the author enunciated the learning process that produces a good programmer. The paper describes a more formalized curriculum than what I experienced, but much the same approach philosophy. One simply must do programming to learn programming. My training was similar to being thrown off a pier after two swimming lessons.

After learning the basics of what a computer is, how it works, and the types of instructions one uses, it is figuring out the vocabulary. One learns that one must repeat a process through the loop command. The syntax for a loop command is different in each language, but it performs the same function.

Having said all the above, I am not anxious to write code again.

In the Minimal Computing paper, “What do we have?” has meaning for my thesis. What do academics do when they know there are original contemporaneous documents in existence, but they cannot be accessed?

[GreatHeist]

Your comment about source documents related to your work being made available at the convenience of the not-always-transparent PRC seems to me to contain a small warning for us who work, and may continue to work, in the US. As quoted in Stolley's piece, "We do not have an interoperable Web. What we have is a glut of proprietary, closed, and protected stuff." Given who is mediating nearly all of this "stuff" in the US and their now apparent political loyalties, I feel like a similar situation may be looming...

[TashDorje]

The PRC has copyrighted old Tibetan texts, making access to those documents quite limited. This is in addition to the archived materials turned into books published in the PRC, unavailable outside of academic circles. There are many texts that have not seen the light of day since 1959.

[chaikovstea]

Love the suite of readings this week! This is more surface-level and curiosity-based (and could be a fun way to get to know each other?), but something that keeps poking out at me is in the opening of the Birnbaum and Langmead chapter:

Our training in how to use this tool begins as soon as we learn to read and write, that is to say, in elementary school. Slowly but surely, throughout K-12 education, we learn the principles of writing grammatically correct sentences that can be put in a particular order so that they might best convey to others the ideas that we have in our heads. Before students reach college, they will have been exposed to—if not mastered—the principles of effective analytic writing. They will then be expected to practice this tool throughout college in different subject areas. Indeed, students will take their ability to produce essays from their Japanese history classes to their Russian fairy tales classes to their Renaissance art history classes, applying this tool to each successive domain and using it to demonstrate and communicate what they have learned of the subject.

I would love to expand on this, and see how this extends to the digital space for others. What is the backdrop of digital tools that we've all been exposed to throughout our lived experiences and our schooling? How does that shape what tools we reach for when planning a digital humanities (DH) project? What can be learned about those contrasting experiences? I agree with the point made after this paragraph in the chapter that it's tumultuous to find a good place in higher education to introduce digital tools and concepts, but maybe figuring out the playing field for everyone and seeking common connectors is a potential antidote.

[rose0930]

I really liked the readings this week as our first step into Digital Humanities. A passage from the Birnbaum and Langmead reading that particularly stuck out for me:

"Our argument is not that every humanist needs to learn to code, but that humanities scholars whose research would benefit from the use of digital methods ought to be given access to more focused, domain-specific opportunities to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to conduct that research. And if the research agenda cannot be seen to completion entirely with existing software tools, humanities scholars should be encouraged to build their own."

I liked this passage because it is a very pragmatic and realistic approach to integrating DH into existing work. Digital methods are not a requirement, but a useful tool to have in the event it would benefit the research process in a particular project. Perhaps some humanities questions just cannot be answered with digital methods?

But it made me wonder how this could be a two-way interaction. On the one hand, digital methods can help approaching and answering existing research questions in the humanities. But on the other hand, would having a working knowledge of digital methods change the way I ask/formulate the research question itself? So far my questions are confined to those answerable in the academic essay mentioned by Birnbaum and Langmead. But equipped with new tools, maybe the scope or approach of these questions could change? I think this could be an interesting way of looking at learning digital skills - it's not just that you have a new way to answer questions, but the questions can take a different form or direction in the first place.

[Tangomango16]

Hi everyone. Things I did not expect to find in Week 2 and Week 3 readings but was delighted to discover:

1. Cute horse picture!
2. The approach to learning a programming language being not too different from learning any other foreign language (Birnbaum and Langmead) if one recognizes it for the powerful research method and tool it can be.
3. The necessary reminder that "Digital humanists perform humanities research, not computer science research and not, except as a means to an end, software development. From this vantage point, the introduction of the Digital Humanities only at the university level seems greatly disadvantageous." (Birnbaum and Langmead 64) The above quoted essay, in conjunction with Stolley's point about the glamourization of "hi-fi" at the cost of alienating and obfuscating digital studies made me wonder: how artificial is the divide between "Digital" and "Humanities"? Whom does this division serve and have we bridged this divide yet?

The other comments raise interesting questions about the learning, use and applicability of digital tools and I am eager to hear more on these on Monday. Chaikovstea picked up a passage that I found really relevant, especially because this essay possibly talks exclusively about the US or at least Western education methods. Is it even possible to find a common point of digital humanities education universally unless we treat it unanimously as a foreign language. That might be easier said than done in "third world" nations.
Finally, the passage that I found most riveting was from Risal and Gil's Introduction: "The question of “What do we have?” is equally as critical because it encourages practitioners to focus on the assets available to them and thus resists a deficit mindset for those of us who are working under constraints. Quite often, the lauded models of digital humanities scholarship are projects developed with significant institutional resources and grant funding. It’s easy to look at those examples and focus on what we don’t have. Shifting the frame of our thinking towards what we do have is critical to identifying the resources we have at our disposal. Minimal computing draws the inspiration for this question from asset-based approaches that exist in multiple forms around the world, such as jugaad in India, gambiarra in Brazil, rebusque in Colombia, jua kali in Kenya, and zizhu chuangxin in China. These practices privilege making do with available materials for creative problem-solving and innovation." (Paragraph 7)
I know "jugaad" translates to something like "making do with what you have however you can" so it struck me as significant to acknowledge that grit and creativity really are the driving force behind making digital projects work. It is my understanding that this is the connecting thread for the readings this week and maybe best expanded in Stolley's Manifesto. What do you all think about this passage? Did it strike some aspirational note for you too?

[zhuohenl-bit]

This week's reading continues to introduce the importance of digital studies. In Task-Driven Programming Pedagogy in the Digital Humanities, the authors address the importance of teaching coding under different disciplines.

Indeed, like the authors pointed out, the challenges are very real for a new starter like myself as "[I] will have much to learn that might seem entirely alien and alienating". (p. 66) The solutions proposed by the authors were inspiring.
The proposed route of:
Question-->Identify evidence (resources)--> acquire [digital] methods--> Learn the methods
is basically what I am trying to do right now.

Similar to learning a new research language, suggested by the authors, coding can be learned as a new language which is "not computer science". (p.76) This inspires a lot. Any language can be learned from an elementary-intermediate-advanced trajectory, and coding is like this.
Furthermore, the emphasis on "the use of authentic texts even at a beginning level", an approach also similar to language studies also seems helpful. In fact, this class follows this approach as we navigate through the elementary level of digital humanities studies.

[Namrata994]

In my meeting with Ben I distinctly remember sharing my concern with him about how the readings in this class would be "different", "more scientific" and software based and how we were excepted to write a response to them. I was treating digital humanities as something alien to the field, as entirely different from the ways I've learnt to process and understand research. Probably because of my previous experience in learning about Digital Humanities, I had this notion that it was not a natural or organic part of the field of humanities research. The digital was something we were borrowing from the sciences. Therefore, it was refreshing to read this quotation from Birnbaurm and Langmead's article:

"We recognize that integrating digital tools into humanities training is not yet widespread practice, but we also believe that this might result from a misconception that digital tools are something foreign that we import from outside the humanities."

I think my greatest learning from this course would be to truly come to believe and understand this statement. However, I also realise that the process to do this would require some level of "unlearning" on my part. This makes me wonder as a researcher who is learning digital humanities as a new "innovative" methodology for research, how would I make the decision to use digital humanities to answer my research questions as opposed to using the methods I'm trained in? Would all research projects benefit from taking a digital humanities approach? Is a digital humanities project seen as more liberating as a methodology or can it be restrictive? Also, how do I prevent myself from employing digital methods _for the sake of _using digital methods? I think most of these questions arise from my lack of exposure to digital humanities but I'm hoping to become more comfortable with naturalising the use of digital methods as a research process over the course of the semester.

[GreatHeist]

Greatly enjoyed the tenor and content of the readings this week.

Birnbaum and Langmead made me consider how much of an insidious problem the lack of digital engagement within the humanities has been, but also how overstated that problem has been communicated to my own mind regarding the barriers to entry that exist. To refer to @Tangomango16 ’s question about “who do these divisions serve?” my thoughts are that initially these walls were benignly put up by the institutions themselves, who for a long time now have seen fit to further and further subdivide domains of knowledge creation and research into schools, departments, programs, etc. My more conspiratorial take is that (perhaps more recently) humanities have been proactively walled off from academic activity that was “digital” because of the incessantly critical nature of our inquiry, which did not pair well with the economically abundant output that developers of computing technology were perfectly happy to sustain without pesky questions of equity, public impact, or resource use. To read Birnbaum and Langmead’s piece was empowering, and like it has given a sort of permission for us (humanities students) to explore the possibilities.

Stolley’s Manifesto (love me a good manifesto) felt to me like an ethical forerunner to the principles of minimal computing that we read the previous week. These texts have been my first encounter with discourse that doesn’t seem to implicitly reify the big brand software we’re all accustomed to using and the highest-fi functionality that proposes to be a marker of upper-echelon digital products. There is a quote from his piece I found particularly thought-provoking; it came in a paragraph talking about the ubiquity of “hi-fi production techniques” and how well marketed they are with their brand-names and native software status on most consumer PCs –

“They’re also on the computers found in most office cubicles, which more than any other scene of computing seems to be the primary inspiration for both campus and personal computing.”

The implications of this really struck me as I thought about what it means that the “computing” we do at work involves many of the same things we use when we’re ostensibly not working (Microsoft suite of products, web browsers, now Zoom). Of course this will vary according to the kind of work one does, but the seamless-ness of it all is a bit chilling to me.

All of these readings interrogate the necessity of what we’re told our projects need to have in order to compete in the marketplace of ideas that the internet houses.

[amritav7]

Karl Stolley’s “The Lo-Fi Manifesto” and Birnbaum and Langmead’s article emphasize on simplicity and accessibility, task and purpose-driven learning, Iteration, and process. Stolley argues for a digital humanities approach rooted in simplicity, transparency, adaptability, and thoughtful controlled revision. Audience’s engagement-centric approach without deviating from framing questions from research, the digital method should be designed by moving away from a deficit mindset. Birnbaum and Langmead highlights task-driven approach with targeted mentorship and guided learning. The article reminds us that the goal is not the mastery of any programming language itself but the ability to perform meaningful, contextualized tasks that support humanities research. One question I had before reading these articles was related to my earlier presumption that better familiarising with digital tools can help me see more possibilities and improve my methods [ there is always a “new” digital tool available out there?]. There is a shift in this thinking, moving from a deficit mindset, reflecting on the already familiar tools, and seeking mentorship to have a targeted approach in my research.