ENGL 668k: Digital Studies (Spring 2004)

Unsworth at Georgetown

John Unsworth gave a lecture yesterday at Georgetown entitled "Do the Humanities need a Cyberinfrastructure: A Conversation with John Unsworth." He kicked off the lecture by explaining the function of the new Comission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is an arm of The American Council of Learned Societies. Unsworth is the chair of the comission and Jerry McGann is a member, as well as 8 others. The comission has been charged to describe and analyze the current state of humanities and social science infrastructure; articulate the roles of humanities and social sciences in developing a cyberinfrastructure for information, teaching,and research; and to make recommendations regarding areas of coordination for agencies that contribute to the development of the interdisciplinary infrastructure.
Unsworth specifically discussed the challenges presented in developing and funding these infrastructures. Here are some highlights in somewhat random order and by no means comprehensive of the lecture...just stuff I thought was notable--
Funding: Governmental funding for humanities is much lower than for math and science b/c society is more willing to spend $ on knowledge w/practical consequences. While science and math provide solutions, the humanities are perceived as asking questions but not necessarily solving problems. B/c of lack of funding, prior investments in humanities cyberinfrastructures have not provided a solid foundation.
The two biggest challenges facing humanties computing are intellectual property rights and privacy issues. We are in dire need of a technical solution for distinguishing between originals and reproductions. In addition, genres of the digital object have not been identified or are even identifiable, which presents a hurdle in establishing consistency.
Along those same lines, one significant problem with the cyberinfrasructure today is that there is no single digital resource, created by one person, published by one publisher, and archived by one service. Consistency in "publishing" standards/procedures is practically nonexistent.
He also made the point that the Humanities require multidisciplinary expertise and that mathematics needs to be reasserted in humanities education.
The URL for the web site is http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm . Once there, you can get on a mailing list and receive minutes of their meetings. If anyone is interested in the handout from yesterday, I can make copies--just let me know in class.