- tools: new perspectives on different disciplines & on objects of study (texts), but also self-reflection on what tools do, what it means to use that tool
eg surveillance for collective data: privacy concerns? Text mining: added efficiency; but is that enough? Will we be replace by machines? Text encoding (TEI, DTDs, OHCO) What can we study? What is the "proper" object of scholarly inquiry? Is it still Shakespeare, or must we add Twitter? Multimodal platform for knowledge exchange: audio-visual, haptic: a means of reviving the past - Missionary zeal to introduce others to DH
- Building stuff: learning to code??? Less yak, more hack
- More yak about theoretical issues from the (non-digital) humanities
- Efficiency is really about openness and accessibility, which creates collaboration and community; reading collaboratively, sharing, open access
Eg. Day of DH Non-hierarchical relations between disciplines - Huge implications for pedagogy: delivery, assignments, exchange and therefore evaluation
- Giving credit where due: Eg. CCA
- Praising failure: failure is good, and leads to new experiments: today's failure is tomorrow's success, comrades! Projects that fail in interesting ways are cool. What are the reasons for failure? Eg. hacking; broken code; difficult interface; eg. Lost Ottawa vs Heritage Crowd
- Conventional vs digital humanities: hiring; tenure; funding; publishing;
Will DH change the tradition of H, or not? Do DHers have an ethical responsibility to change humanities: copyright, etc. ? Or are we just an effect of cultural and social changes? To whom or what are we responsible? Information should be shared, not commodified - But what about social control? Who decides what will be remembered? And can we use social media to write history more accurately and fairly?
In our class discussion the topic of collaboration was mentioned several times as a main definition of DH. Lisa Sporo among many other digital humanists have labelled collaboration as a core value of DH. Although, collaboration is imperative for DH work Patrick Svensson's discussion of whether DH should adopt a "big tent" or "no tent" approach complicates the notion that all DH work is inclusive and collaborative. In particular, I find his discussion of the resistance of digital humanists towards the participation of Ivy League schools into digital humanities particularly interesting to this debate. Svensson refers to the Humanist post to refer to University of Nebraska professor Amanda Gailey's response to Yale's inclusion in DH as "…a worrisome indicator that DH will be locked down by the same tired socioeconomic gatekeeping mechanisms that prevent many people with talent from succeeding in so many other academic disciplines," (Svensson). Do you agree with Gailey's assumptions? Or do you think that the entrance of Ivy League schools into DH demonstrates another theme mentioned in this week's readings that the expansion of DH requires change in the traditional humanities? I think a part of this tension is due to the fact that other schools such the University of Nebraska have been involved in digital projects before the entrance of DH. Since the movement started outside of Ivy League schools there is a hesitance for some older digital humanists to fit Ivy League schools under the "big tent." A part of the solution is to consider what Dave Perry describes as a third definition to DH which is that "…the digital humanities is an understanding of new modes of scholarship, as a change not only in tools and objects but in scholarship itself," (Perry in Gold 436). This is relevant in the consideration of whether the inclusion of schools like Yale who recently started to offer DH programs compromise the DH open access ethos. If institutions are willing to be members of an already established digital community they must shift their former scholarship practices to adopt a new way of learning and doing the humanities. This means making their research and work available to a wider community.
I wonder if one of the central preoccupations with having an Ivy league school such as Yale announcing its entrance (which others might describe as a foray) into DH concerns the collaboratively antithetic reality of patents. This is something not mentioned by Svensson, who is addressing more the failure to acknowledge the origins and traditions of the field, yet might prove problematic. Obviously a school such as Yale has the financial might to bridge into the creation of DH tools if they so desired. Would they be willing to share the technology with other organizations, especially those institutions who laid the groundwork in establishing DH long before? How strict or lenient would they be in their sharing? Patent wars have the potential to be driven by excessively punctilious claims. I'm thinking of the continual lawsuits between Apple and Samsung, wherein Apples has sued Samsung for copying the rounded corners on its phones, a design which Apple has since copyrighted. I am unaware of companies/institutions suing one another over the design of software or tools, but I'm sure it happens all the time. Thus, it's not much of stretch to see the contentious issues that might arise in DH, especially as the idea of patenting technology stands in contrast to notions of collaboration. Perhaps some kind of unified pool of resources could be created which other institutions could access via membership, and in turn, pick from and alter for their own purposes. Perhaps something of this kind already exits?
To further unpack this debate, a short note on the concept of 'community' might be relevant. There is a practical, working definition around the concept of community. Without needing to ask, everyone appears to be familiar with its meaning. The concept of community has presented itself in a growing body of scholarly literature that has problematized it within context of neo-liberalism. Generally, those who conceptualize or articulate notions of community pay attention to its social or technical structure. Politicians tend to focus on economic processes and security, sociologists on the social interaction between individuals, and anthropologists on culture and human development. However, there is no general agreed upon definition of what 'community' actually is.
Unfortunately, digital humanities (DH) has not escaped from this recurring conceptual and rhetorical debate as each article this week consistently invoked the concept of 'community' within its 'discourse' (for a lack of better words). According to Matthew Kirschenbaum (2012), DH is a "culture that values collaboration, openness, nonhierarchical relations, and agility" (n.p.). Lisa Spiro (2012) reiterates this notion as she describes DH as a collaborative approach, which aims to foster innovation, serve the public, and advance knowledge (n.p.). Equally, Patrik Svensson (2012) argues that "we should think of [DH] not as a tent but rather a trading zone and meeting place" (n.p.).
As it relates to the discussion on patents, perhaps Yale's entrance into the DH 'world' would only be antithetical if such patents were proprietary. In the case where patents embraced open-source culture and were protected under creative commons agreements, this would not be problematic to the general ethos of DH. However, if DH is conceptualized as a 'community' we must be aware of the fact that communities are inherently exclusive in theory and praxis. For individuals the concept of community might create "fuzzy, warm, reassuring feelings; for others it conjures up concerns about people operating at the margins of society to create networks of hatred or support for deviant behavior" (Preece 2001:348). It is also arguably "both something nostalgically remembered and magically created" (Blackshaw 2008:342). For that reason, perhaps we (collectively) should avoid the use of conceptualizing DH as a 'community' as this rhetoric cannot avoid notions of exclusion, which run contrary to the (proposed) values of collaboration and openness in the digital humanities as outlined by this week's readings.
Works Cited:
Blackshaw, Tony. "Contemporary community theory and football." Soccer & Society 9, no. 3 (2008): 325-345.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew. "What Is Digital Humanities and What's It Doing in English Departments?" in Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold (2012).
Preece, Jenny. "Sociability and usability in online communities: determining and measuring success." Behaviour & Information Technology 20, no. 5 (2001): 347-356.
Spiro, Lisa. "This is Why We Fight" in Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold (2012).
Svensson, Patrik. "Beyond the Big Tent" in Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold (2012).
The idea of 'patents which embrace the open-source culture' mentioned in the above post seems to be in keeping with the ethos of DH. The DH Manifesto explains that DH'ers defend the right of content makers to exert control over their creations & avoid exploitation, but not in the sort of way that would exclude the freedom to rework, critique, and use these creations for the purposes of research and education.
I'm reminded here of the story of ecommerce software company Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke (full disclosure - my employer) addressing the problem of copycat SaaS products. In a sort of tongue in cheek attempt to mitigate one copy of his product that had been made available on GitHub, he simply copied the copycat code, deleted it all, & sent back a pull request saying he had 'improved' the code by deleting it, because it was such a blatant copy (http://www.obj.ca/Technology/2012-10-09/article-3086063/Keeping-cool-with-copycats/1). A tool like Shopify, although for-profit SaaS, is open source & accessible, and what makes the 'real' version superior is that it is constantly being worked on & improved to meet the needs of users. When people in the community have created pull requests or contributed to the 'community' in a way that present valid criticisms & improvements, they're often offered positions within the company. I wonder if tools of DH, even if they end up being developed & controlled in a proprietary way, say, by Ivy League schools, would stand up if they're inferior...
I've been thinking about how the idea of failure being useful - leading to new experiments, jettisoning inferior iterations in favour of superior ones, and so on is rather in keeping with the values listed by Lisa Spiro & others regarding DH - openness collaboration, collegiality & connectedness, diversity, and experimentation. But I wonder, as I asked above, if the development of tools in DH will really work this way. Trevor Pinch and Weibe Bijker, who founded the SCOT movement within the sociology of science and technology, describe a multidirectional view of the development of a technological artifact, famously using the development of the bicycle in The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts (1987). Amongst other things, Pinch and Bijker describe the way the bicycle comes to be known as a bicycle, with all its characteristics and constituent parts; along the way, they illustrate that by no means is the end point a necessary one - variations in the technology along the way could have resulted in a very different artifact - but for a variety of reasons, the modern iteration is the one that came out on top. The reason I bring Pinch & Bijker into the discussion is as a counter to my assertion above - that the best tools may win out by merit alone. Do factors like power (think Ivy League here perhaps?), economy, gender, and so on mentioned by Pinch, Bijker, and other folks in STS remain relevant in an age of open-source & collaborative creation?
I have read the postings of Christina, Alessandro, Jordon and most recently Matt with immense interest and I thought their blogs have set a favourable stage for this reflection. I have deduced three emerging topics: DH ethos, collaboration and community for the sake of space I will combine the last two . (1) Ethos: Svensson addressed more the failure to acknowledge the origins and traditions of the DH, in other words, as voiced out by bloggers in this group, the notion of 'patents' in the open-source culture is of a concern to DH. Based on our class discussion, I guess the new humanists may want to start thinking outside the box of their traditional predecessors. Humanities have evolved and embraced technological innovations. DH, therefore, is now overtly exposed to all humans regardless of temporal and spatial boundaries. It is high time to redefine the concept of ethics and moral theory in the new era of DH for the sake of inclusiveness and to "use these creations for the purposes of research and education" (Matt, Jan18) and not to exclude "the freedom to rework and critique" (Matt, Jan18). Once, a contribution appears in the digital format, it becomes part of the collective memory of humanity and should not remain the property and associated to a single individual or a community of individuals. I am positive that there will be a tool or ways to observe ethics and values in a redefined dimension which is distinct and distant from the monopoly and overprotection aspects of past practices of humanities. Please refer to this depicted excerpt "If moral philosophy is to properly function as a field that contributes to the improvement of aspects of human society and living, it must adapt and appreciate new challenges while looking forward and anticipating emerging issues. These new challenges emerge from changes in policy, the activities of private entities, technological and economic development, developments in moral theory, conflicts in culture, etc." ( COVE conference)For more on this conference: Carleton University Centre on Values and Ethics 6th Annual Graduate Ethics Conference : Emerging Issues in Contemporary Ethics and Moral Theory Date: March 29-30, 2014 Location: Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
(2) Collaboration and Community: My rationale behind redefining ethos is to boost the spirit of collaboration among members of DH community . ' Community' in the broader sense of the term, not specifically restricted to specific individuals or discourse community . Thus, inclusive rather than exclusive to DH stakeholders, this is in line with Jordon (Jan 16) comments. The term 'community' should be redefined to convey inclusiveness of the entirety of humanity, regardless of space and time. Only then , collaboration as outlined by Spiro can still play a significant role so that precedent DHers inform future DHers ,hence, extensive exchange of knowledge and practices in line with the claim "both something nostalgically remembered and magically created" (Blackshaw, 2008, 342 as cited in Jordon, Jan 16) . In a nutshell, our concepts about ethos should be redefined in the new era of DH to comply with the concept of DH as a community of collective collaboration in the entire humanity heritage.
I really like the notion of collective memory that comes up in DH, because DH is such an interdisciplinary, collaborative and community driven field. In a couple of the posts above, there has been some questioning of the word 'community' and its use in relation to DH.
There are potential restrictions to the idea of a "community"--which both Jordon and Ridha alluded to in their posts--but I'm not sure that I have a problem with using the word community to talk about the group of DHers as a whole. It is more of an umbrella term to refer to the individuals working within the field, and of course not everyone will work in this field and some people might not want to at all. To borrow what Benedict Anderson says in his book "Imagined Communities," the idea of the "community" is a socially constructed notion based on shared affinities that certain individuals possess. Of course this won't include everyone, because there will always be people who are interested in different things. No matter what kind of language we use in-lieu of the word 'community' we imply that there are others who are not participants or members. For example, 'group,' 'collective,' 'club,' 'discipline,' etc. So if not "community" what word can we use to describe DHers as a whole? Because-at least at this point-not everyone is doing DH research. As I see it, the DH community is incredibly inclusive, and anyone who is interested can learn about it and/or participate in DH projects. It only takes on that restrictive connotation if we think about in the setting of the academic institution and in disciplinary terms. For example, Carleton's DH program connotes a certain degree of restriction, because only so many people are allowed to take the specialization per academic year; however this is simply the way that academia works. (Perhaps we should also think about the individuals who practice DH research and where they are coming from in our effort to find a word to encompass the whole of DH research.)
To go back to the idea of collective memory in DH, Ridha's idea in his post regarding digitally published research: "Once, a contribution appears in the digital format, it becomes part of the collective memory of humanity and should not remain the property and associated to a single individual or a community of individuals." This seems to be a digital extension and an advancement of the ideas in Barthes essay, "The Death of the Author." Barthes posits that the key to a text is not to be found in its "origin" but in its "destination", and the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. DH takes this notion further by arguing for open access and sharing research publicly; it is not so much about who wrote an article, but what it says that is important and the reader can comment or suggest things at their leisure (crowdsourcing and open-access FTW).
Perhaps by sharing Digital Humanities research in ways that are openly accessible and we can avoid the restrictions that come from the notions of "community" and "academic research." Once it has been published digitally, our research does become a part of the collective memory of humanity--however, at this point, it is up to humanity to decide whether or not they will read it.
So I know I'm a little late to the party for the first blog post, but to be fair I was somewhat distracted by preparing for my presentation. Also I seem to have a hard enough time keeping up with my own personal blog, so I don't know why I thought this would be any different. I do, however, want to engage with the some of the points that others have brought up relating to the concept of community.
Obviously it is all well and good to aim for a broad, inclusive, interdisciplinary sense of community within Digital Humanities, but as Svensson points out in his piece, this idea is much easier said than done. I do, for the most part, agree with Danuta's use of Anderson as justification for using the term "community" rather than some of the alternatives, but I think that some of the reasoning people use for questioning it has less to do with DH's self-described inclusivity, and more to do with divisions already existing within the field. As Danuta pointed out community "is a socially constructed notion based on shared affinities that certain individuals possess" (Jan 19), but the issue, I think, stems from the fact that there are a number of different affinities at play in DH; namely, the debates surrounding the concept of making things or, as Brian put it in class, "less yak, more hack." Even the manifesto engages in this debate, when discussing the "diminshers" of DH and arguing that "[t]hey have rarely, if ever, built software, parsed code, created a database, or designed a user interface" (The Digital Humanities Manifesto v2.0, 10). While the manifesto is obviously referring to those in the academy who would argues that those "building" practices do not constitute legitimate scholarly pursuits, the language used implies that there is a division of priorities between making and everything else. I am not attempting to argue that the Digital Humanities can not, or should not, use the term community to describe themselves; however, it must be acknowledged that - as with many things - it seems that the term is much easier to use in theory than in practice.
I find the concept of community to be especially appealing given my own experiences in my discipline. Film Studies, despite its dependence on technology, has been surprisingly slow to embrace studies of digital films or the Digital Humanities. And many of those who do research that could be considered DH in nature do not tend to think of their work as such. This is especially true of the program here at Carleton, which no longer has a faculty member whose focus includes any form of digital technology. As well, even though they were hiring a new professor last year, they were looking for specialists in "American Cinema" and neither of the final candidates were researching films made after 1980. I love the program here at Carleton, and the people in it, but this near-sighted (maybe even backward) approach to the medium is rather concerning. As well, even though our program and faculty is very social (we spend a lot of time together outside of school) there is no collaboration to be found. At the end of the day, everyone returns to their own isolated research interests. I truly wish that the program will be more willing to embrace the Digital Humanities in the future, and perhaps this new Specialization will aid in speeding up this process.
started by Game Cat on 09 Jan 14
- tools: new perspectives on different disciplines & on objects of study (texts), but also self-reflection on what tools do, what it means to use that tool
eg surveillance for collective data: privacy concerns?
Text mining: added efficiency; but is that enough? Will we be replace by machines?
Text encoding (TEI, DTDs, OHCO)
What can we study? What is the "proper" object of scholarly inquiry? Is it still Shakespeare, or must we add Twitter?
Multimodal platform for knowledge exchange: audio-visual, haptic: a means of reviving the past
- Missionary zeal to introduce others to DH
- Building stuff: learning to code??? Less yak, more hack
- More yak about theoretical issues from the (non-digital) humanities
- Efficiency is really about openness and accessibility, which creates collaboration and community; reading collaboratively, sharing, open access
Eg. Day of DH
Non-hierarchical relations between disciplines
- Huge implications for pedagogy: delivery, assignments, exchange and therefore evaluation
- Giving credit where due: Eg. CCA
- Praising failure: failure is good, and leads to new experiments: today's failure is tomorrow's success, comrades! Projects that fail in interesting ways are cool. What are the reasons for failure? Eg. hacking; broken code; difficult interface; eg. Lost Ottawa vs Heritage Crowd
- Conventional vs digital humanities: hiring; tenure; funding; publishing;
Will DH change the tradition of H, or not?
Do DHers have an ethical responsibility to change humanities: copyright, etc. ? Or are we just an effect of cultural and social changes?
To whom or what are we responsible?
Information should be shared, not commodified
- But what about social control? Who decides what will be remembered? And can we use social media to write history more accurately and fairly?
Drucker: capta vs data
I think a part of this tension is due to the fact that other schools such the University of Nebraska have been involved in digital projects before the entrance of DH. Since the movement started outside of Ivy League schools there is a hesitance for some older digital humanists to fit Ivy League schools under the "big tent." A part of the solution is to consider what Dave Perry describes as a third definition to DH which is that "…the digital humanities is an understanding of new modes of scholarship, as a change not only in tools and objects but in scholarship itself," (Perry in Gold 436). This is relevant in the consideration of whether the inclusion of schools like Yale who recently started to offer DH programs compromise the DH open access ethos. If institutions are willing to be members of an already established digital community they must shift their former scholarship practices to adopt a new way of learning and doing the humanities. This means making their research and work available to a wider community.
Unfortunately, digital humanities (DH) has not escaped from this recurring conceptual and rhetorical debate as each article this week consistently invoked the concept of 'community' within its 'discourse' (for a lack of better words). According to Matthew Kirschenbaum (2012), DH is a "culture that values collaboration, openness, nonhierarchical relations, and agility" (n.p.). Lisa Spiro (2012) reiterates this notion as she describes DH as a collaborative approach, which aims to foster innovation, serve the public, and advance knowledge (n.p.). Equally, Patrik Svensson (2012) argues that "we should think of [DH] not as a tent but rather a trading zone and meeting place" (n.p.).
As it relates to the discussion on patents, perhaps Yale's entrance into the DH 'world' would only be antithetical if such patents were proprietary. In the case where patents embraced open-source culture and were protected under creative commons agreements, this would not be problematic to the general ethos of DH. However, if DH is conceptualized as a 'community' we must be aware of the fact that communities are inherently exclusive in theory and praxis. For individuals the concept of community might create "fuzzy, warm, reassuring feelings; for others it conjures up concerns about people operating at the margins of society to create networks of hatred or support for deviant behavior" (Preece 2001:348). It is also arguably "both something nostalgically remembered and magically created" (Blackshaw 2008:342). For that reason, perhaps we (collectively) should avoid the use of conceptualizing DH as a 'community' as this rhetoric cannot avoid notions of exclusion, which run contrary to the (proposed) values of collaboration and openness in the digital humanities as outlined by this week's readings.
Works Cited:
Blackshaw, Tony. "Contemporary community theory and football." Soccer & Society 9, no. 3 (2008): 325-345.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew. "What Is Digital Humanities and What's It Doing in English Departments?" in Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold (2012).
Preece, Jenny. "Sociability and usability in online communities: determining and measuring success." Behaviour & Information Technology 20, no. 5 (2001): 347-356.
Spiro, Lisa. "This is Why We Fight" in Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold (2012).
Svensson, Patrik. "Beyond the Big Tent" in Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold (2012).
I'm reminded here of the story of ecommerce software company Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke (full disclosure - my employer) addressing the problem of copycat SaaS products. In a sort of tongue in cheek attempt to mitigate one copy of his product that had been made available on GitHub, he simply copied the copycat code, deleted it all, & sent back a pull request saying he had 'improved' the code by deleting it, because it was such a blatant copy (http://www.obj.ca/Technology/2012-10-09/article-3086063/Keeping-cool-with-copycats/1). A tool like Shopify, although for-profit SaaS, is open source & accessible, and what makes the 'real' version superior is that it is constantly being worked on & improved to meet the needs of users. When people in the community have created pull requests or contributed to the 'community' in a way that present valid criticisms & improvements, they're often offered positions within the company. I wonder if tools of DH, even if they end up being developed & controlled in a proprietary way, say, by Ivy League schools, would stand up if they're inferior...
I've been thinking about how the idea of failure being useful - leading to new experiments, jettisoning inferior iterations in favour of superior ones, and so on is rather in keeping with the values listed by Lisa Spiro & others regarding DH - openness collaboration, collegiality & connectedness, diversity, and experimentation. But I wonder, as I asked above, if the development of tools in DH will really work this way. Trevor Pinch and Weibe Bijker, who founded the SCOT movement within the sociology of science and technology, describe a multidirectional view of the development of a technological artifact, famously using the development of the bicycle in The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts (1987). Amongst other things, Pinch and Bijker describe the way the bicycle comes to be known as a bicycle, with all its characteristics and constituent parts; along the way, they illustrate that by no means is the end point a necessary one - variations in the technology along the way could have resulted in a very different artifact - but for a variety of reasons, the modern iteration is the one that came out on top. The reason I bring Pinch & Bijker into the discussion is as a counter to my assertion above - that the best tools may win out by merit alone. Do factors like power (think Ivy League here perhaps?), economy, gender, and so on mentioned by Pinch, Bijker, and other folks in STS remain relevant in an age of open-source & collaborative creation?
(1) Ethos: Svensson addressed more the failure to acknowledge the origins and traditions of the DH, in other words, as voiced out by bloggers in this group, the notion of 'patents' in the open-source culture is of a concern to DH. Based on our class discussion, I guess the new humanists may want to start thinking outside the box of their traditional predecessors. Humanities have evolved and embraced technological innovations. DH, therefore, is now overtly exposed to all humans regardless of temporal and spatial boundaries. It is high time to redefine the concept of ethics and moral theory in the new era of DH for the sake of inclusiveness and to "use these creations for the purposes of research and education" (Matt, Jan18) and not to exclude "the freedom to rework and critique" (Matt, Jan18). Once, a contribution appears in the digital format, it becomes part of the collective memory of humanity and should not remain the property and associated to a single individual or a community of individuals. I am positive that there will be a tool or ways to observe ethics and values in a redefined dimension which is distinct and distant from the monopoly and overprotection aspects of past practices of humanities. Please refer to this depicted excerpt "If moral philosophy is to properly function as a field that contributes to the improvement of aspects of human society and living, it must adapt and appreciate new challenges while looking forward and anticipating emerging issues. These new challenges emerge from changes in policy, the activities of private entities, technological and economic development, developments in moral theory, conflicts in culture, etc." ( COVE conference)For more on this conference:
Carleton University Centre on Values and Ethics
6th Annual Graduate Ethics Conference : Emerging Issues in Contemporary Ethics and Moral Theory
Date: March 29-30, 2014
Location: Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
(2) Collaboration and Community:
My rationale behind redefining ethos is to boost the spirit of collaboration among members of DH community . ' Community' in the broader sense of the term, not specifically restricted to specific individuals or discourse community . Thus, inclusive rather than exclusive to DH stakeholders, this is in line with Jordon (Jan 16) comments. The term 'community' should be redefined to convey inclusiveness of the entirety of humanity, regardless of space and time. Only then , collaboration as outlined by Spiro can still play a significant role so that precedent DHers inform future DHers ,hence, extensive exchange of knowledge and practices in line with the claim "both something nostalgically remembered and magically created" (Blackshaw, 2008, 342 as cited in Jordon, Jan 16) .
In a nutshell, our concepts about ethos should be redefined in the new era of DH to comply with the concept of DH as a community of collective collaboration in the entire humanity heritage.
There are potential restrictions to the idea of a "community"--which both Jordon and Ridha alluded to in their posts--but I'm not sure that I have a problem with using the word community to talk about the group of DHers as a whole. It is more of an umbrella term to refer to the individuals working within the field, and of course not everyone will work in this field and some people might not want to at all. To borrow what Benedict Anderson says in his book "Imagined Communities," the idea of the "community" is a socially constructed notion based on shared affinities that certain individuals possess. Of course this won't include everyone, because there will always be people who are interested in different things. No matter what kind of language we use in-lieu of the word 'community' we imply that there are others who are not participants or members. For example, 'group,' 'collective,' 'club,' 'discipline,' etc. So if not "community" what word can we use to describe DHers as a whole? Because-at least at this point-not everyone is doing DH research. As I see it, the DH community is incredibly inclusive, and anyone who is interested can learn about it and/or participate in DH projects. It only takes on that restrictive connotation if we think about in the setting of the academic institution and in disciplinary terms. For example, Carleton's DH program connotes a certain degree of restriction, because only so many people are allowed to take the specialization per academic year; however this is simply the way that academia works. (Perhaps we should also think about the individuals who practice DH research and where they are coming from in our effort to find a word to encompass the whole of DH research.)
To go back to the idea of collective memory in DH, Ridha's idea in his post regarding digitally published research: "Once, a contribution appears in the digital format, it becomes part of the collective memory of humanity and should not remain the property and associated to a single individual or a community of individuals." This seems to be a digital extension and an advancement of the ideas in Barthes essay, "The Death of the Author." Barthes posits that the key to a text is not to be found in its "origin" but in its "destination", and the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. DH takes this notion further by arguing for open access and sharing research publicly; it is not so much about who wrote an article, but what it says that is important and the reader can comment or suggest things at their leisure (crowdsourcing and open-access FTW).
Perhaps by sharing Digital Humanities research in ways that are openly accessible and we can avoid the restrictions that come from the notions of "community" and "academic research." Once it has been published digitally, our research does become a part of the collective memory of humanity--however, at this point, it is up to humanity to decide whether or not they will read it.
Obviously it is all well and good to aim for a broad, inclusive, interdisciplinary sense of community within Digital Humanities, but as Svensson points out in his piece, this idea is much easier said than done. I do, for the most part, agree with Danuta's use of Anderson as justification for using the term "community" rather than some of the alternatives, but I think that some of the reasoning people use for questioning it has less to do with DH's self-described inclusivity, and more to do with divisions already existing within the field. As Danuta pointed out community "is a socially constructed notion based on shared affinities that certain individuals possess" (Jan 19), but the issue, I think, stems from the fact that there are a number of different affinities at play in DH; namely, the debates surrounding the concept of making things or, as Brian put it in class, "less yak, more hack." Even the manifesto engages in this debate, when discussing the "diminshers" of DH and arguing that "[t]hey have rarely, if ever, built software, parsed code, created a database, or designed a user interface" (The Digital Humanities Manifesto v2.0, 10). While the manifesto is obviously referring to those in the academy who would argues that those "building" practices do not constitute legitimate scholarly pursuits, the language used implies that there is a division of priorities between making and everything else. I am not attempting to argue that the Digital Humanities can not, or should not, use the term community to describe themselves; however, it must be acknowledged that - as with many things - it seems that the term is much easier to use in theory than in practice.
I find the concept of community to be especially appealing given my own experiences in my discipline. Film Studies, despite its dependence on technology, has been surprisingly slow to embrace studies of digital films or the Digital Humanities. And many of those who do research that could be considered DH in nature do not tend to think of their work as such. This is especially true of the program here at Carleton, which no longer has a faculty member whose focus includes any form of digital technology. As well, even though they were hiring a new professor last year, they were looking for specialists in "American Cinema" and neither of the final candidates were researching films made after 1980. I love the program here at Carleton, and the people in it, but this near-sighted (maybe even backward) approach to the medium is rather concerning. As well, even though our program and faculty is very social (we spend a lot of time together outside of school) there is no collaboration to be found. At the end of the day, everyone returns to their own isolated research interests. I truly wish that the program will be more willing to embrace the Digital Humanities in the future, and perhaps this new Specialization will aid in speeding up this process.