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Decoding Digital Humanities #3

By Claire S Ross, on 19 April 2010

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meetup will be held on 10th May.

As before, we would like to continue with assigning some reading to provide a focus for our discussions.

Salina Christmas has suggested the idea of technoromanticism

Coyne, R., “Introduction” pp. 2-15 and “Ch. 1 Digital Utopias” pp. 19-45 in Technoromanticis: digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real by Coyne, Richard, MIT Press, 1999 [Held by Library] it is also available on google books

If you have access to the Digital Anthropology Moodle you can access the paper here http://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/file.php/7255/readings/theories-of-digitisation/Coyne-2001.pdf

Or there is the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technoromanticism

Date: Monday, 10 May 2010

Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm

Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map)

This event is open to UCL staff and students, and their guests. RSVP is appreciated but not required. If you cannot make this date but are interested in future events, send us a quick email to register your interest and we’ll add you to the DDH e-list!

Decoding digital humanities #2 London

By Claire S Ross, on 13 April 2010

Wow, what a night that was. Discussions centred around the paper by Michael Mateas’ ‘Procedural Literacy – Educating the New Media Practitioner’ which suggests that procedural literacy is necessary for new media researchers, because without understanding the behind the scenes of the screen or programme, researchers will never be able to deeply read new media work.
This idea provoked some very interesting and lively discussion focusing around;

Is programming a language? Or is this a misleading term?

  • If you can’t learn the language should you learn the processes behind the language?
  • How can academia combat the science/humanities divide? And should it?
  • Is online publishing a red herring?
  • How do you manage or balance traditional methods with digital methods? Should you?
  • Can you ever be procedural literate if you don’t have any training in computer science?

And the most relevant question: do you need to understand programming to work in new media and digital humanities? what benefit could being procedural literate have? This was difficult to answer and I don’t think we reached a consensus around the table.
I for one (clairey_ross) would be really interested to know anyone’s thoughts on whether you think digital humanities scholars being able to programme or at least being taught to understand the historiography and theory behind programming would make researchers in a digital age?
We also came on to the idea of what Digital Humanities actually is; a definition which appears to remain illusive. We discussed the idea of online publishing; what do people mean when they talk about humanities; is the move to digital a superficial change? Ruth has posted her review of the DDH evening on her blog finds and features, she raises some interesting points following on from the excellent question raised during the evening ‘how much impact is the Digital Humanities really having‘, ‘how fast is the world really changing‘ and ‘is the current digital revolution really all that?‘, its well worth a read.

Decoding Digital Humanities #2 London

By Claire S Ross, on 30 March 2010

The next Decoding Digital Humanities meetup will be held on Monday 12 April. We had an excellent crowd of about 20 people come along to the first event (DDH # 1) on 16 March with loads of thought provoking discussion. But of course, there are many issues yet to consider and explore and what could be more fun than doing so with others over a pint or two? As before, we would like to continue with assigning some reading(s) to provide a focus for our discussions.

Richard Lewis, did an excellent write up which can be found on his blog here , and he suggested this reading:

Mateas, Michael (2005). “Procedural Literacy: Educating the New Media
Practitioner”. On the Horizon 13:2 (2005): 101-111.

http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~michaelm/publications/mateas-oth-2005.pdf

We would really like you to suggest ideas on what you would like to discuss or articles you reccomend for future meet ups. Email you suggestion to Kathryn or Claire or leave a comment on the blog. The assigned reading will be posted on here andon the DDH webpage . Again the purpose of these events is to discuss the nature, purpose and potential of DH in order to learn about and make the most of current developments.
Date: Monday, 12 April 2010

Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm

Location: Jeremy Bentham pub, 31 University Street, London, WC1E 6JL (map )

This event is open to UCL staff and students, and their guests. RSVP is appreciated but not required. If you cannot make this date but are interested in future events, send us a quick email to register your interest and we’ll add you to the DDH e-list!

For other UCL Centre for Digital Humanities events visit the UCLDH events page .