Unintended Consequences: Using digital sources to situate changes in culture



Benjamin MacDonald Schmidt

Fellow, Cultural Observatory @ Harvard

Ph.D. Candidate in History, Princeton University

How should historians approach digitization

  • 1. Improve our digital copies

  • 2. Treat them as new sources altogether, and see what they're good for.

    • What do we need to describe large data sets?

  • Basic Technical Skills

  • Understanding of biases (Source Criticism)

  • Way of reading (Hermeneutics)

  • Argument

    • "Big data" needs humanists

    Texts without Authors

    Whatever vision of the digital humanities is proclaimed, it will have little place for the likes of me and for the kind of criticism I practice: a criticism that narrows meaning to the significances designed by an author, a criticism that generalizes from a text as small as half a line, a criticism that insists on the distinction between the true and the false, between what is relevant and what is noise, between what is serious and what is mere play.

    Stanley Fish

    What writers don't mean to say:
    or, 'Tis 60 (± 10) Years Since

    Google Ngrams

    books.google.com/ngrams

    The History of Non-Occurrences

    books.google.com/ngrams

    The Historical Novel

    Ordinary Individuals experiencing historical change

    Anachronisms Reflect What Change is Considered "Historical"

    Mad Men with Computers.
    "We begin to feel, Monsieur L'Abbe," answered the vicar, with some asperity, "that a Continental war entered into for the defence of an ally who was unwilling to defend himself, and for the restoration of a royal family, nobility, and priesthood who tamely abandoned their own rights, is a burden too much even for the resources of this country."

    Walter Scott, Waverley

    Focusing Attention

    The History of Attention

    Attention as self-evident

    Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.

    William James, Principles of Psychology

    The History of Attention

    Bookworm: Exploring Texts through Metadata

    (http://bookworm.culturomics.org)

    c. 1 million books, 80 billion words

    Library metadata via Open Library

    Digital Public Library of America funding
    Team: Harvard Cultural Observatory, Rice Cultural Observatory, Northeastern University
    Martin Camacho * Neva Cherniavsky * Erez Lieberman-Aiden * JB Michel * Billy Janitsch
    Concentrate Attention
    Focus Attention

    Focusing Attention: a psychological metaphor

    Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence.

    William James, Principles of Psychology

    Mind as Camera

    Those who lay stress on the unity of mind regard it as almost evident a priori, that but one concept can occupy the focus of attention at a time... Attention, like the lens of the eye, is now [ie, first] accommodated to act as an instrument of near focus, high magnification, but limited aperture, and again [then] as one of distant focus, small magnifying-power, but wide range

    Can the Mind attend to two things at once? Science: July 18, 1887

    Focus Attention




    Bookworm: Exploring Texts with Metadata

    Bookworm: Exploring Texts with Metadata

    Whaling Voyages

    Whaling Voyages

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