philosophi.ca : Through A History Of Humanities Computing

Introduction

Willard McCarty, in a meeting in Toronto, asserted that we need a history of humanities computing before it can be. I believe he was drawing on Michael Mahoney, the Princeton historian of computing who said about the history of computer science something that applies equally to the history of humanities computing:

The multidisciplinary origins and applications of theoretical computer science provide a case study of how something essentially new acquires a history by entering into the histories of the activities with which it interacts. ("The Structures of Computation," p. 18)

The problem for Mahoney in telling a history of something multidiscplinary like humanities computing is that it is tempting to pick and choose the threads of histories to weave a story of inevitability. To get around the selective histories that move from Roberto Busa to whatever your favorite solution of the day is, Mahoney proposes looking at the agendas of the fields involved.

The agenda of a field consists of what its practitioners agree ought to be done, a consensus concerning the problems of the field, their order of importance or priority, the means of solving them, and perhaps most importantly, what constitutes a solution. (p. 20)

The history of a multidisciplinary field like humanities computing would therefore have to be written in light of:

The agenda of humanities computing and how it evolved. What did we say were about? Do we have an agenda?
The agenda of neighboring fields in the humanities like English and History. Did they identify computing in their agenda?
The agenda of computing. Did the agenda of computing intersect with that of fields in the humanities and humanities computing?

In other words, did what humanities computing say it was doing have any impact on what other humanities fields said they were doing?

The skeptic would say that we have had no impact on neighboring fields, either computing or humanities. The skeptic would point out that we don't really have an agenda in humanities computing at all, other than to get noticed and be appreciated by our big brothers. We are the wannaCompute left overs who fled to computing to avoid the serious engagement with theory of the 80s and 90s. While computing has had a profound effect on the humanities, it hasn't been thanks to humanities computing. Personal computing, Google, the move in libraries to digital resources, , and new media theory have each had more of an effect than all the projects in humanities computing. If anything, the history of humanities computing is the history of anxiety and oedipal inadequacy - a story of a son who wants to be noticed, or at least touch, his father but can't.

Be that as it may, it worth sketching out how we would try to tell the history of humanities computing, even if it were a dead end to be superseded by something like digital humanities. I propose to sketch out the problem in four steps.

First, I propose to describe the agenda of humanities computing. This will be a preliminary outline that aims for coherence more than narrative.
Second, I propose to look at how parts of the agenda have or have not intersected with the agenda of other disciplines. I believe there are actually cases where humanities computing as it defines itself, has been woven into the stories of other fields.
Third, I want to revisit the anxieties of humanities computing and its perception of itself as an underdog.
Finally, I want to return to the agenda of humanities computing and discuss where it should go.

The difficult part is the second part. We can all come up with a list of favorite moments when humanities computing had an impact on another field, but can we do it in terms of the agendas of both? Can we show that the histories of the two fields became intertwined in a recognized way rather than show a random and unacknowledged effect.

Bibliography

Mahoney, Michael. "The Structures of Computation," in Eds. R. Rojas and U. Hashagen. The First Computers � History and Architectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.