How I Think About How We Think

As I was reading N. Katherine Hayles’ book How We Think, I noticed that it not only aims to emphasize the collaborative nature of DH, but also that the book itself is structured to recreate that collaboration. The book is dotted with interviews and multiple perspectives; what this tells me, as a reader, is that Hayles herself sees the value in a crowded academic conversation. If we are truly to embrace the ways in which DH asks us to change our scholarly approaches, then we should also think about how those changes might manifest in even our traditional print scholarship.

I found a lot to reflect on and appreciate in How We Think, but I was most struck by a passage in Chapter 2 about the theoretical implications of coding:

On the human side, the requirement to write executable code means that every command must be explicitly stated in the proper form. One must therefore be very clear about what one wants the machine to do. For Tanya Clement…this amounts in her evocative phrase to an “exteriorization of desire.” Needing to translate desire into the explicitness of unforgiving code allows implications to be brought to light, examined, and modified in ways that may not happen with print. At the same time, the nebulous nature of desire also points to the differences between an abstract computational model and the noise of a world too full of ambiguities and complexities to be captured fully in a model. (42)

Hayles is right; exteriorization of desire is an evocative phrase, and a wonderfully challenging one. What does it mean to really lay your scholarly cards on the table? How does research change when it must be recorded step-by-step? What might we do differently when we channel our searches and queries through a computer that needs to be guided to results?

Though I would never have though to articulate it this way, I think I have encountered this need to question the implications or functions of my research as I’ve dipped my toes into the water of digital projects. One example that immediately comes to light is mark-up: what aspects of a text do you as a scholar choose to mark, and therefore emphasize, when you digitize? What do those focuses allow you to study? Mark-up, too, is often the first step. Therefore, there are decisions that must be made before certain types of analysis or exploration can even begin. Mark-up can also impact a wide audience of readers and researchers, in terms of what can be searched and returned about a certain text or collection of texts. Encoding standards have all kinds of political weight—in some ways, it is the same type of weight that has always come with editorial decisions, but I think there are also some differences. As our possible scope widens—more texts, more search power, more computing force—the decisions that guide the possibilities become exponentially more important.

But, on the other hand…

Does the act of coding fundamentally change the type of research question we can (or should) ask? Previous readings in our seminar have touched on the concept of meaningful failure in DH work, and I think it’s relevant in this context as well. If each step of our research must be explicitly coded, we are crafting for ourselves a specific path. Eventually, that path will either lead to fruitful results, or it will lead to a dead end that will, itself, tell us something about what we asked. Either way, though, the code has been written. It is a more solid-seeming process than perhaps some traditional avenues of research—perhaps it is that there is more evidence left of our various attempts to find patterns or meaning?

Hayles is right, I think, that the world of the humanities is one full of noise; I also think that the conflict between that noise and the need to explicitly state our research desires will continue to be an important point of tension, and I don’t think that we should strive to completely erase that tension. Like following the upward arc of a bell curve, tension up to a certain threshold can push us to be better, and to inquire more not only about the information in front of us, but also about our own motivations for asking the questions we ask. 

In Which a Theme is Revealed

Reading Graphs, Maps, Trees at this particular time was a strange and wonderful experience. This was, first and foremost, because it’s a provocative and earnest book, and there’s nothing I love more than scholars who respond earnestly to their chosen fields. I’ve never been one for sustaining a hip, detached façade. Also, though, there were strange overlaps between the examples used in the three sections and work I’ve done in the last year. In a class on Digital Archiving and Editions here at the University of Nebraska, I worked with a partner on mapping several of Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes adventures. The project was a joy because I was working with texts that I have loved reading and rereading, but also because of what it taught me about the power of visualization.

Doyle’s stories are full of places—readers are taken both in and out of buildings in greater London, but also in and out of neighborhoods, suburbs…they are, like most adventure stories, meant to be seen by readers. However, one cannot just look at a map of modern London and understand Doyle’s London. Where do these characters live? Where do they live in relation to one another? To landmarks? What types of places does Doyle take us to? Being able to represent the answers to these questions is not only a helpful aid to the casual reader, but also can open up new lines of scholarly inquiry. There are details that cannot be gleaned from texts without some added manipulation. As Moretti says:

…you reduce the text to a few elements, and abstract them from the narrative flow, and construct a new, artificial object like the maps….And with a little luck, these maps will be more than the sum of their parts: they will possess ‘emerging’ qualities, which were not visible at the lower level. (53)

Visualizations of literature—graphs, maps, trees, sine waves, word maps—all allow for a revision opportunity that other research tools cannot recreate. Simply put, visualizations show us a different version of the text in question than close reading, or deconstruction, or Marxist critiques, or any other interpretive lens. And why should we not think about space when we think about literature? I remember, for instance, realizing the crucial connection between the social class of Doyle’s minor characters and their relative distances from the epicenter of London—and how these distances were allowed by the rapid development of rail travel. Without going through the act of mapping out the stories, it’s a set of connections I would have missed. Perhaps those who possess not only a knowledge of late 19^th-century British literature but also social history and technology would not have needed an impetus for realization, but, for the rest of us…

            There’s something very tactile about the process of creating a visualization that seems not to occur in traditional literary scholarship. Perhaps this comes from the adaptation from one medium to another; whatever the cause, I appreciate the slowing down that it requires of me. The actions are less familiar; the “abstracting” that Moretti writes about seems to work, for me, like taking a familiar painting and holding it upside down before viewing it again—it beats my brain’s familiar routes for just long enough to make space for something new.

            One of the aspects of Moretti’s discussion I particularly appreciate is that of the interdependence of interpretive strategies and tools. Just as a text can perhaps become more than the sum of its parts with the addition of a visualization, a visualization without a text would lack—I think—a crucial foundational basis. Again—and, at this point, I’m willing to call this “the theme of the semester”—what it seems to come down to is the value of a combination of approaches. When we as scholars are willing to incorporate new strategies, our research will undoubtedly benefit, either because our new approach will reveal an undiscovered facet, or because attempting something new will reveal to us something unknown about our previous approach. 

Hybrid: More Than Just a Word for Fancy Cars

What I have always loved about embracing a new field of study is the moment when realizations start to multiply. It’s always a little bit magical; always a little bit like your brain has suddenly become more clever than it really is. Reading Lev Manovich’s Software Takes Command this week brought me some of these clarifying moments; hopefully I’ll be able to recreate some of the connections outside the insulation of my internal dialogue.

The place where Manovich starts his book—basically, with the omnipresence of software—is sound. Software is certainly an integral part of my day-in, day-out experience—I’m writing this blog post on Word, which I will then copy and paste…I could spend the whole post just proving his point that we are now in a “software society.” I’ve been teaching my students recently about how to introduce main ideas into writing, so I feel a bit guilty just jumping in, but—and this is so often the case—the interesting part starts when we take the given statement as truth and move forward. So, in that vein…

Just as adding a new dimension adds a new coordinate to every point in space, “adding” software to culture change the identity of everything that a culture is made from. (In this respect, software is a perfect example of what McLuhan meant when he wrote, the “message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”) (33)

I couldn’t help but think about this XKCD comic when I read Manovich’s introduction:

http://xkcd.com/1289/

It does seem to accurately represent the questions that we so often ask when “New Thing X or “Exciting Gadget Y” comes to the table; my favorite recent example is the conversation swirling around Google Glass. To hear people talk, it's either the making or the breaking of the world as we know it.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a conversation about technology, or a conversation about a conversation about technology, if we didn’t get to talk about alienation. This time, though, it’s different, because standing against the traditional “technology is a wedge that sits between the individual and others” argument is Manovich’s idea of hybridization. I’ll let him define it:

…in media hybrids, interfaces, techniques, and ultimately the most fundamental assumptions of different media forms and traditions, are brought together resulting in new media gestalts. That is, they merge together to offer a coherent new experience different from experiencing all the elements separately. (167)

So, rather than a divisiveness, we have cohesion and creation. What I love about this concept is that in it I also see reflected the academic values that resonate most with me. The difference between text and video existing side-by-side and text acting in the way that a video acts is the difference between static and dynamic education. Up until recently, I’ve led a very English Studies-centric life. But, no, that’s not quite true, either. Let me try again. Up until recently I’ve led a very Creative Writing-in-English Studies-centric life. And I couldn't be doing what I'm doing now without that history, and I do value the type of learning that a single-lens focus allows for. However...

 The very first thing I came to value about digital humanities, and all the many things that term might encompass, is that it seems to be much more about saying yes than other methodologies or mentalities. Interdisciplinary work? Yes. Working toward a mutually-informed print/digital dynamic? Yes. Real, intentional, thoughtful teamwork? Yes. Making meaning from unexpected or flawed results? Yes.

As always, for me, it comes down to language. As Manovich continues to explain hybridization, he says:

…in the process of hybridization…we end up with a new metalanguage that combines the techniques of all previously distinct languages… (170)

This is exciting for all kinds of reasons. The one that’s sitting in the front of my mind at present, though, is this: in an environment where new (media) experiences, to borrow Manovich’s phrase, are increasingly prevalent, I have to imagine that those experiences are going to come with a multiplicity of mores—more combinations, more conversations about those combinations and hybrids, more people contributing to the conversations. As a relatively young person looking into the complicated maze of academia, I can tell you that this matters--really matters. If it represents a shift in thinking, an increased openness and interest in collaboration, then let me own my idealism and tell you that all of this is very good news.