Unsworth: What is Humanities Computing and What is not?

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Abstract:

I'll give the short answer to the question »what is humanities computing?« up front: it is foreshadowed by my two epigraphs. Humanities computing is a practice of representation, a form of modeling or, as Wallace Stevens has it, mimicry. It is also (as Davis and his co-authors put it) a way of reasoning and a set of ontological commitments, and its representational practice is shaped by the need for efficient computation on the one hand, and for human communication on the other. We'll come back to these ideas, but before we do, let's stop for a moment to consider why one would ask a question such as »what is humanities computing?«

Notes:

John Unsworth. 2002. What is Humanities Computing and what is not?
- CMoerth