When asked if his undeniably useful and creative work is really science, Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor Luis von Ahn answers, “Who cares?” Something for digital humanists to remember next time they’re asked, “But is it scholarship?”
But is it scholarship?
April 6th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Tags: Digital Humanities
4 responses ↓
1 Sterling Fluharty // Apr 6, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Great point. But I think digital humanists will have to own up to the scientific nature of their work if they move into text mining.
2 Jmcclurken // Apr 6, 2009 at 8:06 pm
I’m all for it, but faculty are asked to compartmentalize all of what we do into a few reductionist categories.
“Who cares?” — Sadly, deans, faculty colleagues, and tenure and promotion committees…..
3 Tom Scheinfeldt // Apr 6, 2009 at 9:24 pm
@jmcclurken No doubt deans, promotion committees, etc. care. And of course we need to pay attention to that fact. Just not too much attention…
4 Jeff // Apr 6, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Actually, answering the “who cares” question is what makes digital humanities more interesting than, say, science. (Ohhh! Burn! I’m taking the scientists *down*!)
Though I’m just dipping my toe into the DH waters, it seems that contextualizing — that is in this case, answering the question of value — is the ‘humanities’ part of DH. Otherwise, it’s just information technology, applied to one area of knowledge. Doing digital humanities means you *get to* answer the “why” while doing fun tech stuff.
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