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Informatica per le Digital Humanities 2.03. It’s important to understand the basis of how digital humanities works. It is based on simple principles. In the last few years when there was the explosion of AI many people thought that there was the revolution; there were many expectations about this subject. The digital is oriented toward culture. Digital derives from the word digit, and digit means those signs that we use to express numbers (digit: cifre). It is an indicator that deals with quantitative. Digit means science expressing quantitative, in Latin digitus meant finger; there is a link between these two concepts (number and finger) even though they belong to two different categories (fingers are part of our body. It is a physical experience) we cannot work with numbers the same way we deal with fingers (we cannot touch the number, but we can use our fingers to show the numbers). The most natural gesture by children is to count using their fingers. When we show numbers with fingers, what we really see are fingers, the numbers are a more abstract concept than fingers. Digital is already giving us an intersection between the abstract concept and the physical concept. Digital is not a very confined and circumscribed domain of the technology. The transition from humanities to digital is not that revolutionary; the way in which we are using the digital is not that different. Counting objects with fingers: many people, also scholars, put this in contrast with digital technology; counting objects with fingers is based on an analogy: the configuration of the objects is reproduced by the fingers. The three fingers are three different items, there is a similarity between the gesture of the fingers and the disposition of the objects (left right and centre) each finger is a cat. The problem is that many scholars put digital and the analogue (based on the analogies) in contrast. Digital technology works with numbers (cifre) the gap between counting cats and fingers and writing those on paper is that we use a sign (symbol). It is in a way an evolution. With the simple gesture if writing I create a sign that expresses a quantity. Those signs aren’t sign because they exist but because people agreed on it (it’s part of the culture of a society). There is an agreement behind it, digital technology is based on that agreement as well. Sometimes when we don’t understand something, we ask it to internet. Digital technology itself is based on human’s agreement on giving meaning to sign it is strong related to humans. Humanities were there way before digital technology. Text will never trick us the way imagines could do. In digital humanities we cannot take anything for granted. In digital humanities we need to be precise because we are studying how digital technology apply to informatic. I can’t tough a digital cat, so that is not a cat; but I can still read digital text, this is what makes text important in digital humanities. Text can be digitized and still be text because we can still read it. Text could be physicalized as well (through sculptures for example). Although, I don’t need a sculpture in order to read a text. Text is the most explicit concept in expressing also the basis of digital humanities. Digital humanities elaborate numbers through dealing with culture. The expression of quantity related to digit comes from society.
Encoding is a fundamental function that doesn’t deserve to be list in alphabetical order with other functions of the digital technology. Without the concept of encoding, we wouldn’t be able to use the digital technology. Encoding is everything in digital technology, it is a biunivocal correspondence (correspondence is a fundamental concept: we have two sets and you create a mapping between the elements of the two sets; biunivocal means that for each element in blue set there is a correspondence onto one element into the green set) between a set of entities of any kind and a set of natural numbers. In digital humanities we work with computers; computer only works with numbers, for this reason input needs to be ENCODED (it needs to be transformed into numbers); instead, output needs to be DECODED and transformed into something else. It is really necessary to do computation? What if we did computation on abacuses? Is encoding still there as a fundamental feature? NO, because the definition of encoding includes having numbers as one set of entities, with abacus we don’t have digit. (Abacus is the other analogue computer (the originals are fingers) the abacus is an evolution to fingers; the abacus is an artificial tool that people built.) We have encoding because computers HAPPEN TO BE digital; the digitality is not an inevitable characteristic of the computer, however digital technology evolved by giving us computer built by means of digital technology. In digital elements such as an iPhone or digital watches, the electricity flows (we say goodbye to mechanics, welcoming the electronics) but the computers do not need to be electronic, but they are because everybody loves transistors. [electricity operated by electricity] Digits are in the eye of the beholder it is a matter of interpretation. 16.03. code chart: if we want to work with letters, we have to covert those into numbers and we can do it through these kinds of charts. The name of the chart is US-ASCII (American standard code for international interchange) this is the American standard; it is a very US centred initiative. Scientific magazines (such as IEE COMPUTER, 1975) from the time used to make a lot of references to printers, particularly to TemiNet300 printer; it used to print on means of dot-matrix. Dot-matrix is a mathematic object with columns and each element have a precise position based on its function. Dot-matrix is a sequence of dots that touch the paper and create a letter it reminds us the abacus (it has rows and columns as well even though we cannot see the rows; the abacus is a computer machine. We can encode the configuration of the wars of the abacus through numbers) However, if I try to associate numbers with the spheres in the letter e (slide 23 DH7) it doesn’t work. So, there is no a strict encoding.
Even if the pixel isn’t there, the 5 numbers that describe its position within the image and its colour are enough to recreate the pixel whenever needed. Applying the same technique to all the pixels of a digital image, we can describe a whole image with quintuplets of numbers, and we can use those quintuplets to rebuild the image whenever needed. The special characteristics of digital images derive from the fact that we can work with numbers in many different ways. The need for hardware: First of all, numbers alone cannot create anything. We need apt machinery that is commanded by these numbers and creates physical objects accordingly. In the case of digital images, we need monitors and screens (matrices of triplets of LEDs) that convert the RBG numbers into actual coloured light. The need for standard: moreover, for Society to be able to work with numbers and use them to build images on different devices around the world. Everybody must agree on the correspondence between numbers and pixels position and colour. A standard is a universal agreement between hardware builders and content producers on how the numbers will be used to describe images. Famous standards are: RGB, JPG, BMP.TIF. US-ASCII is a table about characters, it shows the same principle that regulate digital images ( so as we see that on our devices, it is a digital image). The physical universe and more: isn’t everything that exists in the universe made of atoms? No: an agreement between people is not made of atoms. The hardware that allows for the creation of digital images is indeed comprised of physical objects. However, the standards that make the exchange of digital images among people and devices are not physical. Being digital means that it is possible to describe an entity in terms of numbers. These numbers can be exchanged among people, possibly with the support of computers and telecommunication networks. The format of these numbers must be established by universally shared standards. Special devices are needed to create physical objects from their numerical description. Technology is a fundamental component of digital life, but it exists thanks to an agreement in society. This is why we call it socio-technological. 24.03. Music is nothing else but a well-organized sound. Sounds are made of vibrations; vibration is a repetitive movement that is typically an oscillation. We need an environment that receives the vibration and then transmit it to our ear. In space no one can hear you screaming, because there, there is no air. Ears are essential, in fact a sound is a vibration hitting our ear. Frequency/pitch: pitch is what make us understand the low or high note; frequency is the speed in which the vibration happens (the oscillations). Sounds low when the frequency is slow (low note); sounds high when the frequency is fast.
Amplitude/volume: volume is connected to amplitude; when the oscillations is ample the volume is low, when the amplitude is small the volume is high (actually when the amplitude is ample the oscillations move slower) Waveform/timbre: timbre is something qualitative; it’s the characteristics of the pound that enable us to understand which type of sound we are hearing. Digital sound we have an encoding system: we put a line inside a system of coordination in order to map the vibrations onto numbers. But geometry teaches us that there are infinitive points in a line, we do not have the time to deal with an infinite pair of coordinate numbers; that’s why digital sounds are based on the concept of sampling. Sampling: we pick a point on the wave to compute coordinates for only every interval of time; each picked point is called a sample; the number of samples per unit of time is called SAMPLING RATE; the higher the sampling rate, the more samples we have; the more samples we have, the better the numerical description of the wave is. We need something that converts those numbers into sounds; there is a need for hardware that converts numbers into physical phenomena. Loudspeakers are fundamental for us to hear the sound, and those are based on magnetism (they became an electrical phenomena). Magnets makes metallic component move and those create a vibration. Music is a proof that there is no real divide between analogue and digital technology. The basic principle is the same. 30.03. The word computer comes from computing, the action of counting things. Computing and calculating are synonyms. All kind of texts are turned into numbers; even a symbol will be turned into a number. John Von Neumann : one of the most prominent mathematicians of the 20th^ century. Verdicchio don’t like this person. He is a very divisive person. His real name was Janos Lajos Neumann (a Hungarian name), but he changed the name; he left Europe when he was young, because of Nazism but he added “von” a German preposition that characterizes a noble family in Germany. Von Neumann actively pushed for the nuclear bomb test in the US, he was part of many nuclear texts in the Pacific Ocean. He really wanted to drop those bombs; he used his skills to calculate the shape of the bomb in the way in which the nuclear would have worked in order to make it as mortal as possible. Particularly, he wanted to bomb Kyoto, in Japan. Henry L. Stimson US secretary of war, he went to Kyoto in honeymoon and he convinced not to bomb Kyoto because he liked it; that’s why the bomb didn’t hit Kyoto. Somehow the culture and the humanity that a city like Kyoto had on him have some connection with technology. Von Neumann is considered one of the main inventors, together with Alan Turning, John M Maulchy and John P Eckert, of the stored program, at the foundation of computer devices. The basic idea behind the stored program is that both operations and operands can be stored in the same place (we are talking about saving data).
heart. We need time for memories. Sometimes, memory fades. Is a person still able to access the description of an event if the element gets damage and the memory fades? Memories are not only about a single person. Memories can be about a family, a nation, a culture, the human race. There are a lot of digital memory devices such as USB key, CD/DVD etc. What is stored inside digital memory devices? Digits numbers. 20.04. Memory is something that is vital for our future descendants. In memory we have bits that works as operants, bits as operators, and then bits that work as addresses. Through operators, computer “remembers” what to do with the data, and through addresses it “remembers” where everything is. When we start reading about digital humanities, Microsoft word or any sort of software can support our works in many ways, “finding a word and replace it EVERYWHERE with another word” the computer can easily find and substitute all those cases in which the word appears. Repeat: very important action. We need to repeat the operation through out the file we are examining. Re -peat: something goes back to something that we have already done. In order to repeat something means to remember it. Repetition requires memory, the computer can repeat only what it “remembers”. Another verb that has the root re- that indicates a necessary functionality: retrieve. Remembering is based on being able to retrieve those data retrieve in the memory. A working memory requires an addressing system to support retrieval. Reference is another operation very important. Reference is everywhere and supports us many times. Iteration is a concept that came inside the culture of human race already before pre-electronic era, in the agricultural field. Then it acquires a fundamental role within the industrialized society. What if the file is big? The computer “knows” everything and we can leave him to do what he has to. Iteration enables automation. Even if the task is very long, if the computer has everything it needs it will accomplish the work. We can have automation only if the computer has iteration, we can have iteration only if the computer has a memory. Where are the humans? Everywhere. For the result of a computation, we need human to be there in order to enjoy the results. 27.04. What do the results mean if a person is not there? Mean: what does mean mean? It is an issue that we need to deal with. In a human conversation there is a message that needs to be understood by both sender and receiver. There is a lot of problematics that we have to deal with when having a conversation. Communication is tricky, however within humans meaning is something that involves our brain. If meaning involves a mental process that recalls previous experiences, what do the result of a computer mean? Meaning is something that goes on in the mind of a person interacting with the computer. There has been lots of debate through out the years, some researches would like to expand the concept of meaning to the computer as well: if people in front of a computer are able to interpret those results, well maybe
there is already a meaning in the result of the computer itself. Indeed, computers could be bridges in transmitting a message. Can a computer entertain meaning? John Searle answer to the question with NO. He says that meaning is inaccessible to computers, meaning is something that human beings deal with in conversations. He explicates it with the so called The Chinese Room: a thought experiment (not a scientific experiment) in which devices has been used in a lab to test a theory. This experiment is a way to illustrate an imaginary but theoretical feasible situation to prove a thesis.in thought experiments all the scenarios imagined need to be realistic in order to be used. Searle proposed the Chinese room experiment in 1980 in the article “minds, brains and programs” published in the journal “Behavioural and Brain Sciences”.
- SLIDE sulla Chinese room The room is equipped with what a person needs; there is an opening called output where the person is able to put some messages and send those outside; the person has in his hand a book of rule: rules of conversations where the input message is paired with an output message. There is a fundamental data: the input received by the person are in Chinese (through the television). Unless you know Chinese, this message has no meaning for us, however Searle has the capability of comparing the sign he sees on tv and the signs on the book of rules: he can look for those meaningless signs within the book; once he finds the right input message inside the book, he would copy the paired output message within the book and then write it and send outside. It shows that computer may be able to deal with conversations however there is no meaning in the computer. Searle wants to prove that is possible to create an automatic system that works in a certain language without understanding the words of that language. Searle wants to suggest that computers are machines built to work with signs without any understanding of their meaning. Signs we need to have signs linked to a meaning. Signs are independent from meaning only human beings are able to cover the gap between the two entities. Hubert Dreyfus said that common sense is inaccessible to computers, not only computers are not able to entertain the meaning of words but they cannot understand the common sense that is persistent in our daily life. However, common sense is not accessible to us (humans) as well. We can’t use computer to convey common sense. 29.04. There are signs that we use as references to a specific meaning. There are also signs with a meaning themselves. So signs and meaning are common word but we should use refer to the term sign as syntax of the language and when we talk of the meaning we should use the word semantics. The most common way to work with computer and signs is to visit the web and make some explorations though the research. Google is the most popular search engine. We have one sign for example the word chip, but we have lots of different meanings. The meaning of meaning when dealing with the result of computer? By using a computer with English syntax, we reach different semantics; there is a huge gap between syntax and semantics. It
Resource description framework: it is a STANDARD that prescribes the way in which data we work with must be described, that is, it provides information on metadata: data about data. Obviously like all agreements that aim ay becoming a standard, RDF must be accepted and followed by all Web content creators in order to function.
- 1 st^ problem with Web 2.0 is that we need that all Web users follow a single convention on how to describe data on the Web. RDF is a proposal not yet a standard. Ontology is meant to define all the concepts belonging to a particular domain, and to list all the possible relationships.
- 2 nd^ problem: for each existing concept, all Web users must agree on the ontology that describes it. DBpedia is a proposal, but it has not been universally accepted.
- 3 rd^ problem: the chicken or the egg problem refers to a stalemate. In the case of the hen and the egg, the question arises as follows: without the egg, the hen cannot be born, but withour a hen, an egg cannot be made. As far as the semantic web is concerned, the issue is about daunting work required to create ontologies for all the concepts and label all data in existing and future Web pages with semantic markups that refer to those ontologies. Computers could do the job, if the job is already done. To kickstart the job, we need an AGENT that KNOWS that “cat” means. Humans are the beginning and then computer comes later. No web content producer wants to start the titanic enterprise of marking web pages if he/she is not sure that the semantic web will really becoming a thing. However, for the Semantic Web to really happen, everyone has to markup the content they publish. Result: The Web 2.0 has been recycled to refer to the social web. The semantic web is now known as Web 3.0 and we don’t know whether it will ever happen. 06.05. What is distant reading? Article written by Kathryn Schulz discussing about the article written by Franco Moretti about distant reading. Moretti states that human beings approaching literature should not read thousands of books but just use technology applying a distant reading. Very contemporary article that points at the most important controversial between cultural tradition and digital humanities. According to Moretti you need technology because we cannot read thousands of books, technology can do the work for us. Digitizing humanities doesn’t mean substitute the whole physical activity but it could be a new tool to use. Moretti is a hard-core digitalized humanist and he wants to push for distant reading. He says you can read a book for entertainment but if you read a book for scientific reason, you should use distant reading. In many fields, computer technology is taking over. However, there is always something that computers cannot elaborate: semantics. Digital humanities is an interesting new area within human culture, however it inherits some troubles from technology. Our human experience has to be always there Scatturin No fixed definition for digital humanities. The majority of people tend to dissociate it to the humanities computing (not a mere digitalisation) DH allows people to study materials in a new
way: more flexible, practical, easier storage and transmission of data example of DH: Harvard wanted to create a philological version of the legend of Mary Magdalene but thanks to the computer they were able to upload all the versions of the legend without having to choose one (there were too many “witnesses”). In this way the website Digital Mary Magdalene was born. Example of DH: a group pf historians that reconstruct an event happened in the Middle Ages ( Piero Angela and his crew) SOME HISTORY OF DH:
- 1946: Father Roberto Busa proposes a project on Saint Thomas Aquinas to the IBM Corporation. In the 1980s they publish the first digital edition of the whole works made by St. Thomas Aquinas ( Index Thomisticus)
- 1982-88: project on Dante’s Divine Comedy (Dartmouth Dante Project)
- 2002: birth of Google Books
- L’archivio di nuova scrittura (ANS): associazione culturale fondata nel 1988 a Milano dal collezionista Paolo Della Grazia che conserva un vasto patrimonio artistico, librario e documentario su ogni forma di espressione artistica nella quale siano presenti l’uso della parola e dell’immagine. Example of DH: including new media in a museum exposition Harvard: more interaction by the visitors. Data: factual information used as measurements or statistics as a bases for reasoning, discussion, or calculation humanists use data to reason and discuss about information historically created and recorded (for a humanist to measure data for reasoning is to discuss about historically created and recorded information, not quite the same situation faced by physical scientists who derive their data from natural world and social scientists who derive it from human groupings).
- Row data: handwritten material (original format)
- Processed data: critical edition of a work (collected and organised)
- Network data: web version of a work (ex. Walt Whitman Archive). Text as independent respect to his author the work can be transferred to the digital environment as it is an independent agent. A document: an artefact/ object giving information of evidence, it’s a proof of pasts events, human agency or intent (charters, deeds, wills, leases, receipts). They are the base of the investigation process (no document no research). A document is not a text: it can be also natural objects, artefacts, objects bearing traces of human activity (such as archaeological finds). A document re- presents (presents again) something that once existed. A document is a physical evidence used for research and study purposes. A digital document has lost his physicality, but it still a document. Some forms that digital documents are presented on the net:
- Digitalisation of something analogic (analogical device: based on analogy ex. Finger: 1) ex. Digitalisation od D.G Rossetti’s paintings
- Recuperation of a part of document that was lost thanks to new technologies ex. Lazarus Project on ancient manuscripts, letters that can be read without being unfolded
- Archivio di nuova scrittura : art collection library dedicates to virtual poetry; it is a collection first assembled in the 1960s by Paolo Della Grazia. 1998 he began an intense program exhibition. There is a heterogeneity of the materials grouped into the archive. The aim is to promote the knowledge through this new electronic platform. 15.04. VVV (Progetto VerboVisualeVirtuale): collection top down In the VVV project, the “Archivio di Nuova Scrittura” (ANS), an archive of about 4000 verbo- visual artworks, was first digitized and enriched with documentary and bibliographic information, and then an online platform was implemented to search and display information on artworks and artists. The platform contains, among others, an interactive visualization that uses the "network" model to offer a new way for accessing the collection. Besides, the PAGANS game (Playful Art: a GAme oN Similarity) was developed for collecting similarity judgments about the ANS artworks, and won the "DH Award 2015" in the category "Best use of DH for fun". In order to give the praxis of our research of more than a decade ago a theoretical shape, that was not yet in vogue at that time, we use, as mentioned at the beginning, the fundamental steps for the construction of a digital humanities work indicated by the text Digital Humanities Curation, analysis, editing and modeling comprise fundamental activities at the core of Digital Humanities: CURATION is the selection and organization of materials in an interpretative framework ANALYSIS, and now I’m quite quoting, “refers to the processing of data: close reading of data - and distant reading of data, this kind of process is often conjugated with visualization in order to give graphical legibility to analytical results EDITING:the parsing of the cultural record in terms of question of authenticity, origin, transmission, relationship or production. It’s the means by which an argument takes shape and is given form. MODELING hightlights the shape of arguments expressed in information structures and their design: a model by means of which shape is conferred upon a given set of cultural contents (such as, in this case. INFRASTRUCTURE and NETWORKS “Each of these areas of activity - curation, analysis, editing and modeling - is supported by the basic building blocks of digital activity. But they also depend upon networks and infrastructure that are cultural and institutional as well as technical. Servers, software and system administration are key elements of any project design.” Schnapp Digital_Humanities p.31 The problem is simple and fundamental at the same time, and it’s technical and also administrative: on which server will the researchers upload the data during the research and in the future? Who takes care and will take care of its maintenance and control within a public institution that has to resort to external funding and technicians to carry out this kind of work? VERSIONING The nature of cultural projects carried out digitally is highly experimental, as are the IT techniques used, which must be as flexible, changeable and adaptable as possible over time for constant classificatory re-editions (not only cultural one, but technical too). FAILURE “Building on a key aspect of design innovation, Digital Humanities must have, and even encourages, failures”. The research can benefit from failure, because of the process it’s more interesting than the product
itself. Interpretation, that is in some way the versioning research aspect, it’ more intriguing than a definitive and stable edition. Institutions: mart; museion, FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kesio), caritro the first three are foundation based in Trentino. Foundations are intermediate bodies between humans and institutions, promoting the well-being of the community.
- FBK is a private foundation. The actors in this work have been many. Various personalities within the FBK department, officers and web-designers. The real ability is to find a common language within all those persons. The general public was given a first approach to the foundation in 2015 (VVV). On the site there is also a task with the goal to understand how people perceive art, and they were also concerned about the perception of those comments on the art-creator. Connection Manent (2020) project that has enabled a new level of implementation of the site. There is a simulation of two players playing with cards and at the same time there is a mathematician algorithm that calculates the degree of similarity between the players. Technology is conceived not only as a tool of reorganisation of the material present in ANS. The result is an online tool which is a virtual environment for exploring and navigating the archive. The concept on distant and close view is a centre topic within the project; it refers to Distant Reading (by Franco Moretti): method paradigm very interesting because a distant view change completely the results we could end up to. We try to have a distant and close view in relation to the collections that we see. The book is an important source for us. It brings history closer to the human side. - Mirella Bentivoglio artist; there is the catalogue of her works in ANS; we can see her works through a distant reading and also a close reading. This kind of nature could be applied to the intire collection. Principles that characterized digital archives: flexibility, connections (links between works but also authors) and simplicity. 22.04. Chromatic metaphor in order to define the digital humanities, there is not a clear cut between a colour and another. Network analysis (VVV) it is an open-source tool; it’s also relatively easy to use. All the data have to be kept in a data set. VVV is a platform based on a huge work of planning classification and entering of the data. The content must be normalized in order to be used. Behind the network analysis there is flexible
