.
.
DIGITAL ANALYSIS :
DIGITAL HUMANITIES :
DIGITAL INITIATIVES :
DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP :
LITERATURE :
ARTICLE :
REFERENCE: ENCYCLOPEDIAS :
WRITING AND WRITERS: HISTORY :
EDUCATION: COLLEGE: COURSES:
Hacking the Humanities
.
.
Hacking the Humanities
JULY 7, 2015
BY ELIAS MUHANNA
The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/hacking-the-humanities
.
.
Last spring, I taught a literature seminar called Before Wikipedia. The
subject was the history of encyclopedic writing, from ancient times to the
present day. We read excerpts of Isidore of Sevilles Etymologies and
Diderots Encyclopie alongside works by Calvino, Sebald, and Flaubert.
.
The word Wikipedia in the course title seemed to attract an unusual
preponderance of science majors for a seminar in comparative literature.
There were physicists and mathematicians, a cluster of coders, an
engineer, a neuroscience major. I teach at Brown, which has an open
curriculum that encourages diverse course enrollments, but Id never found
myself in a room with so many young scientists patiently waiting for me to
begin a lecture that I wasnt planning to give.
.
In my experience, a successful seminar usually involves a mutiny quite
early in the semester, when the students take over and my own voice is
drowned out by the din of a crowded wheelhouse. This particular seminars
discussions, however, began awkwardly. The silences Ive learned to let
hang in a classroom seemed unreasonably long. In the first week, I was
further unnerved by an odd sound each time Id turn to write something on
the blackboardthe fluent skittering of fingers across twenty laptop
keyboards, transcribing my scrawled words as though theyd be on an exam
later in the week.
.
Our first writing assignment was on the Roman encyclopedist Pliny the
Elder, whose Natural History is a font of Late Antique information on a
stupefying range of subjects: the history of paper, portents provided by
bees, the manufacture of purple dye, Alexander the Greats famous dog. I
asked the students to study Plinys writing style and try to mimic it in
their own entry about a topic not treated in The Natural History. A week
later, I had a stack of finely rendered facsimiles of Plinys clipped
prose, on such topics as coffee and coffee shops, the usual and unusual
attributes of the hype man, Chick-fil-A, and Kanye West. As I read through
pages of perfect mimicry and snarky pastiche, I felt relief. The two
cultures of the sciences and humanities were not so far apart, after all,
or at least could be bridged by the lingua franca of pop culture.
.
One student, Henry, a double major in computer science and mathematics,
approached the assignment differently. Rather than trying to imitate Pliny
himself, he found a text version of The Natural History on the Internet,
analyzed its thirty-seven books using a natural-language processing
toolkit, and then wrote a computer algorithm that generated English
sentences using the discovered features of Plinys style. Heres a sample
from the passage that he submitted:
.
The Pharusi, originally a Persian people, are said to be very greatly
infested by pirates. And it will not be doubted that one or other of two
things, full moon or the moons conjunction in summer she must retire a
long way off, and is gathered by the daughters of Hesperus. Ctesias states
that in India there is a fish called the platanista with a dolphins beak
and tail, but 24 ft. long. Also great creatures resembling sheep come out
on to the land for an unascertained reason, and they bud best under those
circumstances, as otherwise it would make only leaves. Even so it is
dragged ashore by more men hauling from the beach.
.
Henry turned in the assignment even though the algorithm had failed to
produce any sophisticated themes or totally coherent sentences, as he put
it.
.
.
The complete article may be read at the URL above.
.
.
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
[log in to unmask]
http://workface.com/e/daviddillard
Net-Gold
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/net-gold.html
https://groups.io/org/groupsio/Net-Gold/archives
http://net-gold.3172864.n2.nabble.com/
Research Guides
http://tinyurl.com/qy3gq6g
AND
https://sites.google.com/site/researchguidesonsites/
RESEARCH PAPER WRITING
http://guides.temple.edu/research-papers
EMPLOYMENT
http://guides.temple.edu/employment-guide
INTERNSHIPS
http://guides.temple.edu/employment-internships
HOSPITALITY
http://guides.temple.edu/hospitality-guide
DISABILITIES AND EMPLOYMENT
http://guides.temple.edu/c.php?g=134557
INDOOR GARDENING
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/IndoorGardeningUrban/info
Educator-Gold
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Educator-Gold/
K12ADMINLIFE
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K12AdminLIFE/
PUBLIC HEALTH RESOURCES INCLUDING EBOLA
http://guides.temple.edu/public-health-guide
Blog
https://educatorgold.wordpress.com/
Articles by David Dillard
https://sites.google.com/site/daviddillardsarticles/
Information Literacy (Russell Conwell Center Guide)
http://tinyurl.com/78a4shn
Nina Dillard's Photographs on Net-Gold
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neemers/
Twitter: davidpdillard
Temple University Site Map
https://sites.google.com/site/templeunivsitemap/home
Bushell, R. & Sheldon, P. (eds),
Wellness and Tourism: Mind, Body, Spirit,
Place, New York: Cognizant Communication Books.
Wellness Tourism: Bibliographic and Webliographic Essay
David P. Dillard
http://tinyurl.com/p63whl
RailTram Discussion Group
From the Union Pacific to BritRail and Beyond
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/railtram/info
INDOOR GARDENING
Improve Your Chances for Indoor Gardening Success
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndoorGardeningUrban/
SPORT-MED
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/sport-med.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sports-med/
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/sport-med.html
HEALTH DIET FITNESS RECREATION SPORTS TOURISM
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/healthrecsport/info
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/health-recreation-sports-tourism.html
.
.
Please Ignore All Links to JIGLU
in search results for Net-Gold and related lists.
The Net-Gold relationship with JIGLU has
been terminated by JIGLU and these are dead links.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/message/30664
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/healthrecsport/message/145
Temple University Listserv Alert :
Years 2009 and 2010 Eliminated from Archives
https://sites.google.com/site/templeuniversitylistservalert/
.
.
|
