Workflows as Structured Surfaces

This paper describes the intense software filtering that has allowed the arXiv e-print repository to sort and process large numbers of submissions with minimal human intervention, making it one of the most important and influential cases of open access repositories to date. The paper narrates arXiv's transformation, using sophisticated sorting/filtering algorithms to decrease human workload, from a small mailing list used by a few hundred researchers to a site that processes thousands of papers per month. However there are significant negative consequences for authors who have been filtered out of arXiv's main categories. There is thus a continued need to check and balance arXiv's boundaries, based in the essential tension between stability and innovation.

This research paper aims to reflect on the meaning of computation in architecture. We approach the subject by comparing key discussions related to the theme of cyberspace during the middle and end of the 20th century, and significant theoretical discussions during the “new computer age” of the nineties. The discursive atmosphere of the epoch was highly influenced by philosophical thinkers like Gillez Deleuze and Felix Guattari and their reflexions on materiality, complexity and topology. Deleuze`s work on Leibniz in 1988, introduced a new idea of the object and formal continuity in architecture, which has also played a significant role in the use of computers. This was particularly important in regard to the appropriation of simulation and animation techniques available in 3D software packages, where it was the main medium to choreograph kinematics and forces for conceiving forms In contrast, the introduction of the computer also triggered more sophisticated discussions in relation to machines and society and how computers influence the way we understand our world. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was an important research environment and pioneer in computational systems. In 1960 JCR Lickleder was proposing a man machine symbiosis in which both of their cognitive processes would be tightly coupled together. Nicholas Negroponte founder of the Architecture Machine group at MIT (1968-1972), was examining CAD as an intelligent system that augments the object and the process and speculates of an architecture without architects. In 1976, Cedric Price through his “Generator Project” were proposing an architecture with agency, that could learn to perceive human senses and even get bored. If earlier discussions in computing where focused on the relationships between machine-machine, machine-human and machine- environment interactions, why did the nineties adopt digital tools with such vigour, as passive design agents of formal expressionism?

This is the report of a panel discussion held in connection with the special session on computational methods in dialectology at Methods XIII: Methods in Dialectology on 5 August, 2008 at the University of Leeds. We scheduled this panel discussion in order to reflect on what the introduction of computational methods has meant to our subfield of linguistics, dialectology (in alternative divisions of linguistic subfields also known as variationist linguistics), and whether the dialectologists' experience is typical of such introductions in other humanities studies. Let's emphasize that we approach the question as working scientists and scholars in the humanities rather than as methodology experts or as historians or philosophers of science, i.e. we wished to reflect on how the introduction of computational methods has gone in our own field in order to conduct our own future research more effectively, or alternatively, to suggest to colleagues in neighbouring disciplines which aspects of computational studies have been successful, which have not been, and which might have been introduced more effectively. Since we explicitly wished to reflect not only on how things have gone in dialectology, but also to compare our experiences to others, we invited panellists with broad experience in linguistics and other fields. We introduce the chair and panellists briefly. John Nerbonne chaired the panel discussion. He works on dialectology, but also on grammar, and on applications such as language learning and information extraction and information access. He works in Groningen, and is past president of the Association for Computational Linguistics (2002). David Robey is an expert on medieval Italian literature, professor at Reading, and Programme Director of the ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme of the (British) Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is also president of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing. Paul Heggarty is an expert on the Quechua language family, and also works on Romance and Germanic, studying both synchronic variation and diachronic developments, where he' s one of a growing number of researchers applying phylogenetic inference (and software developed in biology for this purpose) to historical linguistics. He' s at Cambridge. Roeland van Hout is an expert on sociolinguistics, phonetics and second language acquisition. He is co-author (with Toni Rietveld) of the world' s best book on applying statistics to linguistics, (Harald Baayen has just come out (2008) with a contender, but 15 years at #1 is impressive). He' s at Nijmegen, and he's served on the Dutch research council's Humanities board for the last five years. We suggested in inviting the panellists that they deliver some introductory remarks structured in a way that responds inter alia to two questions: Are there elements of the computational work in language variation that should be made known to other scholars in the humanities? Are there other computational lines of work in the humanities that are not used in studying language variation but which should be of interest? Is the primary common interest the computational tools or are there research issues which might benefit from a plurality of perspectives? We emphasized, however, that the panel speakers should feel free to respond to the question of how the disciplines might interact in more creative ways, especially if they feel that the questions above are put too narrowly. Each panellist presented some ideas before the discussion started. Paul Heggarty summarised some basic methodological issues in applying computational techniques to language data, reviewing typical criticisms-and how best to answer them.

Literary and Linguistic Computing, 2005

Dued to the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Department for Literary and Documentary Data Processing in Tuebingen this article is written. It gives an overview of humanities computing developments since the formation of this Research-Department. The paper is devided into three parts. First, the experiences in humanities computing are reviewed. For these purposes the author points out various aspects of the development and exploitation of scholarly materials using computers, considering some of the current work to create new tools for research. This chapter is followed by the discussion of some of the key challenges of this century, by that humanities computing and the scholarship, of which it is a part, are faced with. Finally, the author gives a summary of what in his opinion would be the key roles of humanities computing in the future. * Aus dem Protokoll des 80. Kolloquiums über die Anwendung der Elektronischen Datenverarbeitung in den Geisteswissenschaften an der Universität Tübingen vom 18.

2017

This panel reports on the open, shareable, and reproducible workflow methodology for digital humanities research developed by the 4Humanities.org "WhatEvery1Says" (WE1S) project. WE1S is topic modeling a large corpus of articles related to the humanities in newspapers, magazines, and other media sources in the U.S., U.K., and Canada from 1981 on. While the panel presents WE1S's conceptual goals and prototype experiments in using outcomes in humanities advocacy, its focus is on the technical and interpretive workflow developed by the project for humanities-oriented data work. WE1S's manifest system for data provenance and workflow management, its virtual workspace manager for integrated, containerized data manipulation and processing, and its interpretation protocol for how humans read topic models suggest a generalizable open approach based not on particular technologies and methods but on annotated methods. Moreover, there is a philosophical fit between such an ap...