Category: Perspectives

Posted on by Emma Raupp - No Comments on Understanding text as “data” and accepting its fluidity

Understanding text as “data” and accepting its fluidity

The survival of the humanities in the digital age relies upon the understanding that text is data: specific information that is carefully packaged for our analysis. In my experience as an English major, analysis is typically undertaken as a quest for interpretive meaning, bringing to the fore questions of symbolism and literary devices, like: “What does the green light symbolize in The Great Gatsby?” and “How does Fitzgerald’s diction convey this particular meaning, and not another?”

After focusing primarily on qualitative approaches to literary analysis, ENGL-340 introduced me to the quantitative analysis of text as data. With quantitative analysis, each bit of information is examined without projecting more meaning than what’s provided. An example of quantitative analysis applied to The Great Gatsby might be: “How many times are the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg mentioned? Where are they mentioned most often?”

ENGL-340 also introduced me to text as a corpus of data, or corpora if there’s more than one distinct corpus. We apply quantitative analysis to one body of text, or a collection of related texts, in search of patterns. Patterns are the keystone of meaning according to quantitative analysis, especially when examining a large corpora. For instance, you might wonder “What patterns can we discern across classic novels written by the modernist “Lost Generation”?” These “patterns” might materialize as the repeated use of a word, theme, or structural organization. From there, you might imagine why the great writers of the Lost Generation made similar, or different, stylistic choices.

Incorporating this mode of analysis into our literary approach is crucial because it bridges the perceived gap between the humanities and the sciences. Human thoughts crafted into words crafted into sentences crafted into coherent bodies of text are historical objects of information worthy of scientific analysis. They are markers of humanity’s achievements: some of the greatest, most timeless self-knowledge we’ve touched upon as a species is found in literature. Why not examine its concordance, then? Some tips for quantitative analysis that I picked up in ENGL-340, and which I hope to bring to future classes, are:

  • Searching a corpus for patterns at the command line: using a digital copy of the text you’re analyzing and the command line, you can search the text for the occurence rate of specific words, for a total word count, for the longest and shortest words in the text, for the word that occurs most often, and so on.
  • Generating graphs and other visuals for your data on Voyant: rather than using the command line, you can also view the quantitative analysis of textual data you upload on the website, VoyantTools.org. The cool thing about Voyant is that it generates different charts, graphs, and visuals of the data you’re focusing on.
  • Comparing data across versions using a Fluid Text Edition: here, we can analyze how data in a corpus has changed or stayed the same over time.

The second necessary development in my perception of literature as a result of ENGL-340 is tied to this final bullet point. First, there’s understanding text as data. Then, there’s understanding that text is fluid: not a fixed and stable object, but rather, an ongoing project.

Our favorite books, poems, and plays were formed gradually and with great care– not suddenly and miraculously crystallized. If we have access to earlier manuscripts/revised copies, we can compare versions of a text to better understand its development. Referring to a fluid text edition also brings awareness to the humanity of the author: reading Thoreau’s first draft of Walden, we are reminded of the flaws inherent in everyone’s first draft. It also serves to remind us, quite fittingly for Thoreau, that everything is done with some degree of deliberation in the literary world. Individual words are chosen with extreme care: Thoreau scratched out the words “book”, “work”, and “lecture” when describing Walden across various versions before finally settling on “book”. The attention put toward such minute matters reveals Thoreau’s dedication to “getting it right” as a writer– a quality not all writers, or authors, possess.

Thanks to ENGL-340, I am able to see the oft-overlooked juncture between qualitative and quantitative analysis in literary studies. With attention to the nature of text as “fluid data,” we can study the information before us both objectively and subjectively. Subjectivity particularly applies to imagining plausible revision narratives that explain changes made to a text. Of course, quantitative data is also fodder for further interpretation. Information, writing, art, life– I think James Gleick once called it a “moving target,” and I find that more than adequate. These things are constantly in flux as a result of being alive; final stability is like death, or whatever name you give to completion. Just like the way we learn from one another, we learn from art as we observe and analyze its change over time, its variations and constancies. In this way, ENGL-340 enhanced my understanding of literature and life.

Posted on by Danielle Crowley - No Comments on Literature and Technology: The Connection

Literature and Technology: The Connection

Over the course of this semester in Literature and Literary Study in the Digital Age with Dr. Schacht, I feel as through I was given a unique opportunity to not only learn more about the things I can do on my computer, but also to think about literature, books, authors, and English as a discipline through a different lens.

For starters, as we near the end of the semester, I feel as through I have learned more about what my computer can do and have been given tools to help me manage my computer more effectively. With the use of github and the command-line, I not only have an online space to upload and store files that may be taking up valuable space on my computer, but I also have a collaborative workspace that may come in handy in the future. Additionally, I’ve learned valuable skills about the markdown coding language and how the python coding language works. These skills are obviously in high demand in many fields in todays society, so having this basic understanding will surely only help me post undergraduate education.

While learning all of the new things I can do on my computer were interesting, I think the most valuable lesson I learned this semester is in regard to how I view literature and what tools myself and other people can use to further understand it.

I don’t think I ever fully realized the amount of work that goes into creating a work of literature. Obviously, I knew that in order to get published, authors go through an intensive revision process that often times takes several different attempts to get it just right. I don’t think I understood that those revisions can be as intensive and tedious as simply changing one word to a different one until the author is satisfied. This idea has given me a greater appreciation for all the novels that sit on my bookshelf and around my room.

Going off of this idea, I also have found an appreciation for how easy it is to track these changes using technology. Using Voyant Tools and the Fluid Text reader, I feel like I have been able to connect more deeply with literature. Being able to find specifics about a text in Voyant Tools and then to be able to track those changes over a series of manuscripts has only deepened my understanding of the pieces of literature that we have worked with this semester. On top of that, its just pretty darn cool to see all the revisions to a text and how a manuscript may have started versus how it was published.

Overall, I think there is a huge connection between English as a discipline and technology. I think before I use to think of English more as just reading and writing – now I think of it more as a way of communication, a diffusion of ideas, and how we get from one point to another with the impact of technology. English is about how we communicate and how ideas are shared through reading and writing, rather than just reading and writing. Technology plays a very unique role in this, as the more advanced we become with our computers and our phones, the more we can do to communicate. From talking drums to the first telephone created by Alexander Graham Bell to the ability to group facetime, ideas are spread at a fast rate through talking. On top of that, the invention of the printing press has enabled us to share ideas through writings at a much faster rate than ever before, and it has just gotten faster as time has gone on – the use of a printing press is not even required any more, blogs, such as this one, and other online sources give you the same way to communicate through writing.

The connection between English and technology is a great one. The more you can do with technology, the more english enables you to do, share, write, read, and communicate. We have a web of information at our fingertips to learn and improve. Without the diffusion of information that english enables and the use of technology enabling more people to access it, the world would most likely be very different than it is today. This course, learning all these skills, and being able to have access to the tools that have been shown to us has ultimately changed my view on both English and technology; it has opened my eyes to how english, as well as other disciplines, and technology have a connection to one another that leads to improvements and advancements in all fields.

Posted on by Danielle Crowley - No Comments on Reverse Walden

Reverse Walden

As of Saturday, March 14st, 2020, I have been at home social distancing myself amid the COVID-19 outbreak, with my computer, my phone, my tv, and Netflix. Between moving from my bed, to my brothers room, to the couch, and then back to my bed, I’ve begun to think a lot about Henry David Thoreau and his experience with isolation in Walden. More specifically, how different the two are and how much I seem to be struggling with this sudden change.

Thoreau writes Walden about his feelings in isolation in the woods, completely away from technology. Thoreau is close enough to a town to be able to have human interaction and is in an area where people frequently visit his cabin. While I am surrounded by my family, I am in no way disconnected from technology. In this way, my experience is completely different from Thoreau’s experience in Walden. In fact, it almost makes me wish I did not have to be glued to my computer to complete my studies for the remainder of the semester.

Just during spring break alone, I spent two days over the phone and online trying to reschedule a trip, then, I spent a significant amount of time reading the various emails sent by the administration, and, most agonizingly, I spent time in front of the tv listening to President Trump and Governor Cuomo give various updates about New York State and the COVID-19 situation. I have been home for nine days – I am ready to throw my laptop out the window.

Thoreau, while in the woods, seemed to greatly enjoy being with nature and being alone – at least, that is what I have seen from his writing, for the most part, thus far. He would tend to his bean fields, entertain visitors, and travel into town. While being away from technology, he still was able to lead a somewhat normal life in the woods. I, however, and everyone in New York, simply cannot do that right now. We have to stay home to flatten the curve. We cannot see people who are not in our inner circle. We shouldn’t be taking trips into town to go to the store or the mall (not like we could if we wanted to since all unnecessary businesses are closed per the states mandate). Instead, as students, we get to sit at home in front of our screens, learning how to learn using a new style, and be surrounded by just our family.

My eyes are tired. I can’t rewatch another episode of Stranger Things. I can’t read another email about COVID-19 and the procedures to follow during te four days I had to collect my belongings from campus. I can’t watch videos of my professors teaching, I know I struggle to learn that way. On top of that, I need social interaction. I should be at Geneseo right now, rooming with my best friend from High School and preparing for midterms. Instead, I’m at home, in my childhood bedroom, with my brothers and parents down the hall.

The last time my whole family was home for an entire week on vacation was in 2007 – I was in Second Grade. That was when my oldest brother was a Senior in High School; it was the last time we all had a spring break at the same time. This upcoming week, while I begin to attend classes online, my entire family will be home, scattered throughout the house going about their day with a new routine. I can’t go to a library, a Starbucks, even just a random café – its all closed and I shouldn’t be leaving the house anyway.

At first, the thought of isolation was kind of fun, in the context of our readings for this course. I was going to really see what Thoreau discussed in his text. But this just isn’t it. I feel like I cannot escape technology no matter how hard I try. Five days of my week will be spent in front of a computer doing school work and going to classes. I know in this day and age we all use our computers to get work done frequently, but something about the prospect of taking classes online gives it a different feel. Before, I was able to put the laptop down and just relax with friends around campus, or I could take breaks in between classes from technology. Now it’s all technology.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful here. I love my computer, I love Netflix, I love being able to have information at my finger tips on my phone. But this whole thing? It feels more like a burden than a blessing, more like a hardship than a way of making something easier – you know, what technology was suppose to do in the first place.

Posted on by Noah Lieberman - No Comments on The Humanities and Information, Art and Artificial Intelligence

The Humanities and Information, Art and Artificial Intelligence

In thinking about the intersection between digital information and the humanities, I am drawn to a discussion we had as a class on artificial intelligence and its impact on online publication. At the edge of technology driving the world forward in terms of productivity, job creation, and countless untold applications is artificial intelligence. AI is a new frontier of collaboration and creation which will inevitably change the world in radical ways. With radical change comes anxiety and fears about what will be lost in the present. Disregarding anxieties over a changing job economy and robot overlords, a far more reasonable concern to have over what artificial intelligence will mean for us in terms of the spread, collection, and visibility of information in the digital world. In reading James Gleick’s The Information, we are introduced to his ideas on the information age and its titular “lifeblood”, information. Reading The Information has had me thinking about how we as humans are constantly moving towards more effective and instant forms of communication with each other. In finding more effective means of exchanging and distributing information, the circulatory system in play has changed over the years. In the information age, the internet is the most advanced and intricate means of communication we have ever seen. It is also the most easily accessible and widespread. As Gleick outlines, “Like the printing press, the telegraph, and the telephone before it, the Internet is transforming the language simply by transmitting information differently. What makes cyberspace different from all previous information technologies is its intermixing of scales from the largest to the smallest without prejudice, broadcasting to the millions, narrowcasting to groups, instant messaging one to one.”

There is a clear and important way that this is changing how the humanities are being consumed with specific regard to the forums and platforms they are represented on. Journalism, art, music, history, all of these humanities have their most widespread readerbase, viewerbase, and listenerbase on social media. What I’ve been thinking about because of Gleick’s writing and our in class discussions is just how different the time we’re living in is now from all of our past. For the first time, the entities overlooking and moderating the platforms used for discussion of the humanities are no longer human themselves. A week or so I would’ve argued that this is an objectively good thing. Having a standardized and all encompassing set of rules enforced by an unquestioning and unbiased mind seemed like the perfect solution to protection of free speech. If everyone’s speech is judged the same no matter who they are or where they stand politically there can be no selective censorship. An AI moderator would eliminate the need for humans to subject themselves to the negative and harmful content present on any social media platform. That same moderator would be active day and night and to prevent others from seeing such things. I realize how foolish that perspective was having thought it out. It is a danger for the public to view AI in the way that I had previously thought of them.

An AI does not come from nothing, it must be instructed. It is not without bias. An AI will no doubt be a reflection of its creators, their political ideologies, ideas, and values will be represented in it. This is the other danger of allowing an AI to police thought and dialogue. An AI cannot question the ethics of what it does by censoring content based on its parameters which are always subject to change. There is no chance for an AI to make decisions based on anything but what it has been programmed to do. With current machine learning this is a fact. There’s no telling what the future will hold, but at that point of development there may be little difference between a human moderator and an AI. It’s at that point the humanities will be tasked with cataloguing and creating art about a whole new aspect of the human experience. How will the artists, writers, and historians of the future approach artificial intelligence once it becomes difficult to distinguish it from organic? I wonder about this and I hope to see it within my lifetime.

Posted on by Sean McAneny - No Comments on Data-Mining Walden: Tools for Literary Analysis

Data-Mining Walden: Tools for Literary Analysis

Henry David Thoreau had a fraught relationship with technology. As we discussed in our presentation, it is difficult to tell whether he would be on board with our digital projects regarding his work. What we can say for sure is that the technology we have engaged with this semester have allowed us to read his book, Walden, as deliberatively and as reservedly as it was written. By apprehending his text in the digital dimension we achieved new and unique insights into the way Thoreau thought about place and how he crafted his thoughts into writing. 

Melissa, Sean, Cal, and Emma each took a chapter to mine in order to track the language of place and its developments throughout the text. This required the downloading and installation of some software with the help of Kirk Anne and Dr. Schacht. Brianne worked on answering the “so what?” question by analyzing the data collected by the other group members. We worked with the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) and spaCy,both of which allowed us to mine for certain words and types of words. However, eached proved to have their own limitations within each chapter. We found that spaCy was better equipped in Cal’s mining of “The Ponds” whereas NLTK was more helpful for Melissa, Sean, and Emma.

Zooming out, data mining a text such as
Walden did not come without challenges. Whether it was the virtual machine or the local server, Python proved to be a very demanding language, one with a steep learning curve which kept us guessing a lot of the time. Similarly, NLTK and spaCy had to be downloaded directly to our devices in order to accomplish the task at hand. It became pretty clear that while digital tools can often make reading easier learning the tools necessary to do so is all but simple. Still, when grappling with the limitations of all of our tools we seemed to be simultaneously addressing larger questions about the utility of technology, just as Thoreau does in
Walden.

Nevertheless, the technology proved indispensable for our project because it helped us to expedite the mining/reading process. Python, the language we used to learn more about Walden, allowed us to operate on the text, while spaCy and NLTK provided a bank of resources that we could apply to the chapters we all chose. Each tool informed us on a general sense of place which we followed up with closer readings. We were able to clearly discern between the broadly spatial chapters (“The Village” and “House Warming”) and the specifically geographic ones (“The Ponds” and “Conclusion”). Whether he was talking about physical places or metaphorical spaces, as in headspace, Thoreau constantly framed his thinking through place specific language. This sort of “mapping” truly makes Thoreau into the “Surveyor of the Soul” that Huey Coleman claims him to be. His attention to the local and the distant, from Concord to Siberia, demonstrates both the interconnectedness that technology in the 19th century was making possible and the expansive reach of an inner geography, a soul whose territory outran the map.

Just as some of Thoreau’s themes exceed the scope of a geographic specific reading, so too did our task at hand exceed the capabilities of some of our tools. One thing our group really wanted to stress in our presentation is the importance of validating failure in digital projects. All of the setbacks, miscues, and limitations faced by engaging with Jupyter Notebook, Atom, Python, Anaconda, spaCy, NLTK, and beyond were equally as useful to thinking about the digital humanities as our successes with each of these tools. When we encountered errors in our work we were forced to ask why. This moment of self-reflection was critical for doing digital work because of the knowledge that stood to be gained by asking questions about the tools. Coming to this class with a variety of digital backgrounds, it was very important that we moved as a unit. Fortunately, the tools we used leant themselves well to collaboration and, ultimately, this project became about creating our own community space around Walden. 

From his comparative measures of White and Walden Ponds, to his rambles through Concord, to his building of a house in the woods, and his reflections on place inward and outward, Thoreau was constantly attuned to the language of place. We too were attuned too language, constantly seeking the instances of geography in his text by moving through it digitally. Just as Thoreau spatializes his world in Walden, so too do we attend to space by tracking its relative importance throughout the book. By using digital tools we were able to read Walden collectively, collaboratively, effectively, and deliberately.

Posted on by Logan Carpenter - No Comments on Digital Humanities and Literacy

Digital Humanities and Literacy

In class a couple weeks ago we started to have a discussion on TEI and XML. At the start of this conversation I had no idea what those acronyms stood for or what they meant. I came to learn that TEI stands for Text Encoding Initiative and XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. Even after learning what these acronyms stand for I still don’t really understand what they mean or why they are important. We started talking about how TEI and XML add a rigorous structure to data and they take the shape of a tree, like a hierarchy. I still don’t completely understand what this means, but I found a connection between this and my Literacy Education course I’m taking this semester. We discussed how our ebooks and books in general also take the structure of a tree. The title could be seen as the trunk because it’s the base of what you’ll read later on and then as you go up the tree things get smaller such as the paragraphs, sentences, words, and individual letters. We also have to take into account the punctuation, spacing, and all individual bits of data. While creating our ebooks it’s important to represent that data and be able to recognize it. I found a relation between this and my literacy course because on the first day of class the professor showed us a picture of a bunch of symbols and asked “What do you need to know in order to read this?”

 

Some of the answers that we came up with were what each symbol stands for, what sound is associated with each symbol, what the difference between one symbol and two of the same symbols together sound like, and you have to read left to right. There are five pillars of early literacy that are essential to learn in order to be successful in reading and writing. They are: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In my literacy course we focused on phonological awareness and phonics. Phonological awareness is the general appreciation of how language can be divided into its components. For example, we speak in sentences. Sentences can be broken down into words and words into syllables. Just like TEI and XML having its own bits of data that people have to recognize and understand to be successful, children have to recognize and understand the small bits of language in order to read and write.

Posted on by Sean McAneny - No Comments on Democracy and Digitization

Democracy and Digitization

Like the human brain or the deepest parts of the ocean, the potential for discovery in the digital age seems boundless, especially to someone new to computing like me. Literature and Literary Study in the Digital Age has provided me with keys to locks on doors that I never even knew existed. The technical tools and languages fascinate me, how they command my computer to do things I never thought possible. However, I want to focus on how these technical things build a sort of digital democracy and how this might act as a model for other social environments. We have learned that most of what makes the internet work is open source and free to use/observe. Granted, editing the web can be limited by administrative privileges, but if I learned anything, it is that I am more in control than I thought when it comes to shaping my computing experience.

Applying these technical tools and concepts The Reader’s Thoreau is the best example of the sort of democracy I am talking about. This community, in which Thoreauvians can exchange questions and ideas about his works, is a microcosmic formation of democracy made possible by the computer. Apprehending a plain text version of Walden, raw and unbound from the material book, allows readers the access to the words at a level beyond that of the book. Plain text and plain-text editing with XML or HTML makes things like CommentPress possible. Digitizing Walden has not only brought the text to the more readers, it has engaged them in conversations with other readers. Here, then, is an example of how the technical can perform the conceptual, how digitization can democratize. After working with XML and HTML in the fall to digitize Yeats, I ultimately wanted all of my digital humanist work to surround this core issue, the democratization of information. Little did I know that the internet is set up perfectly for this type of work.

In my investigations of Lessig and Free 
Culture it became clear to me that computers are the backbone of what Lessig calls “remix culture.” The ability of markup languages like XML and HTML are instructive and thus can produce and reproduce texts that shed new light on old words. Similar to riffing in music or stigmergy in organizational theory, these languages allow developers (citizens of the web) to repeat and revise content in new and interesting ways. Lessig writes, “democratic tools gave ordinary people a way to express themselves more easily than any tools could before” (33). Just like a camera, the computer allows take control of their reality, revise and remix it to their liking. This makes the internet rich in texture and vibrant in culture. It reflects what is so good with democracy and it relies on technical copying and revision. This copying and revision happens, for us, at the command line, where we have been spending some time this semester. We can participate actively in the process of making and remaking by directly accessing our computers internal structure. Knowing the technical hierarchy gives each of us the chance to govern ourselves, which is both fundamental to democracy and vital to self-preservation in the hyper-surveillance culture we live in today.

True, the accessibility computers provide people can be used for harm. We are living in an era of “memetic warfare,” where hate can be propagated through the exact same methods of copying and revision. Open sourcing the internet is always at risk of this. Trolls on YouTube and Wikipedia will constantly disrupt the ideal digital democracy, just as corruption and scandal will plague our own democracy. However, the moment we attempt to purify this democracy by placing tight restrictions on spaces like Wikipedia and YouTube we sacrifice that very same democracy. In my directed study with Dr. Doggett, we are talking about this precise issue. The theorist we are reading, Slavoj Zizek, would say that to purify democracy is actually a totalitarian move. Thus, we must preserve the aberrations and deal with hate quickly and effectively. Wikipedia does this by running a “Talk” page alongside each entry, a separate HTML file for people to discuss and suggest changes to each page. It relies on a democratic schema to self-organize and create good.

Similarly, we have seen both sides of computer-as-society with The Reader’s Thoreau. We have engaged in a rich conversation of Walden all semester with each other and readers around the world. Blogging and commenting has fostered a community that exemplifies what we should strive for on and off the internet. We have also seen individuals penetrate the community looking to cause harm (I am referring to the woman asking for money). However, thanks to the self-organizing principles of the internet and some quick action from the site’s administrator, the community was able to move passed this and get back to reading deliberately.

All of this has been made possible by a hyperlinked internet that allows users to move freely between data points and information. As Jeffery Pomerantz points out, the potential of an HTML file is the precise reason why we have the internet. This the underlying technical structure of what makes the computer a democratic tool. Texts connect to other texts which connect people to texts and people to people. This is probably the most important thing I will take from this class. The computer’s ability to convene more and different people around a text, inviting new perspectives always, intrigues me as a student and excites me as a person. I want to take the digital humanities into my education going forward as it has proved so helpful in considering the ethics of writing, something I think about constantly. In short, the technicalities of digitization have prompted me to think in new ways about things that have always been important to me. By continuing in the pursuit of discovery, I will continue in my pursuit of democracy.

Posted on by David Beyea - No Comments on The War of the STEM and the Human

The War of the STEM and the Human

STEM and Humanities majors, engaging in brutal warfare

There is a war currently being waged between STEM and humanities
majors. This is not a violent conflict, no blood has yet been shed;the only casualties are those who become polluted into thinking that
either field is inherently better than the other.

The common perception is that STEM majors are intelligent but rigid, unappreciative of art and unable to see the “human” factor. This is contrary to the humanities major, who is wise and thoughtful
but so focused in on their particular niche they lose sight of what can be truly useful to society. Such toxic mentalities are rampant in college circles, as students stick to their clustered cliques, tut-tutting the other side for just not getting it.

Into this open vacuum of stuffy jingoism comes this strange little class: the Digital Humanities. And into this strange little class came a student who has long held the belief that those STEM majors just don’t get it. He had heard of this strange little class with its oxymoronic title and he just had to check it out. So this poor student, who has always held a certain degree of contempt for those STEM majors and their stupid intelligence, finds himself learning that the reason he has access to all of his beloved media, his art, his literature, is because of a few lines of code and some strips of a metal he probably couldn’t even pronounce the name of.

That poor student, being me of course, finds himself in an awkward position when at the end of the course he actually thinks that all of these technical STEM things are all of the stuff he always thought was monopolized by the humanities. Languages are just issues of communication solved through the grouping of symbols and sounds. Every time a writer goes back and edits their existing material, trimming away the lines that don’t work, they are engaging in the same behavior as the scientist or mathematician or computer technician that is solving a complicated set of code, or discovering a black hole. What is in our books? A rigid structure of chapter>page>paragraph>sentence>word>letter. It’s just the same as in coding or mathematics. Librarians, those brave guardians of the humanities, use coding and mathematical processes of data collection, as we learned in “Metadata”. So… I guess problem solving isn’t just in the realm of the STEM majors.

Towards the beginning of this class, we discussed what the study of humanities was, and it’s a question I keep returning to even as we trudge into the muck of html and source code. What we do in class, picking through backchannels on networking websites and adding brackets to couplets of letters, that is part of the humanities. It could also be considered part of the STEM field. This class helped to dispel the notion that there is a binary existence of art on one side and math on the other, only separated by a thin de-militarized zone where business majors eke out some sort of meager existence. Rather, it is a nebulous field where both exist, borrowing elements most think belong to the other and transforming them into what we recognize as its pure form. I guess “Digital Humanities” isn’t such an oxymoron.

Whatever I say, I’ve still got my eye on you, STEM majors.

Posted on by Emilio Garcia - No Comments on Emilio’s Blog Post #2

Emilio’s Blog Post #2

I knew about the existence of languages like HTML and XML long before taking this class. However, it seemed like such a foreign concept to me, that one would need to be a genius with technology in order to make anything with it. As we moved further along in the semester I learned that markup and markdown languages aren’t a mystery, they’re a tool, and just about anyone can learn to use them if they had the passion for it. Granted, I myself have a long way to go before I can confidently work with TEI in my group project, but I have the confidence that by the end of the semester it will be no mystery.

What I think is important about markup languages is how valuable they are as tools. As a blacksmith cannot work without a hammer, a web designer cannot work without a universal markup language. Unlike a hammer, XML is only limited by the creative mind of its user. We have seen in class some of the practical ways in which XML and other languages have been used. Some of these include

  • Distinguishing differences, such as what was included, left out, or changed, in writings such as the Gettysburg Address and in Walden.
  • Highlighting certain words in specific colors with TEI, such as proper nouns being blue, in order to determine where something happened, at what time, and telling us who was involved.
  • And building a website to showcase information that would otherwise be hard to find, as seen with Omeka

Granted, on a conceptual level, most of what can be done online can also be done offline, however what I have tome to appreciate is how much easier and more focused studying literature can become with technology. In a novel we read for this class, we had learned that when it came down to computing, the hardest part was the equations. Said equations were not difficult to solve, but it was the effort needed to plug in each and every number, which was all done by human hand, and the amount of time that took which then took time away from research into a topic. With technology, the most laborious factor gets taken away, and this also connects to our study in Digital Humanities; without the difficulty of searching of varying sources of literature, Walden for example, we can instead focus on the differences in those sources which can then be documented through a markup language.

This knowledge has helped me better understand the use of information. Honestly I haven’t changed much as a person, but overall I must say that I am more inquisitive about the ways in which information is used; the idea that, the number of times the word tree or trees are used versus the number of times people are mentioned in Walden and what meaning can be interpreted from it, is fascinating.

Posted on by Clare Corbett - No Comments on The Endless Possibilities of Google Maps

The Endless Possibilities of Google Maps

When most people think of an English course, they likely think about literature and writing. It would be rare for a person’s first thought to be about using digital technology to better understand concepts that are relative to the English major. However, in English 340, incorporating different computer programs into our class is exactly what we have been doing. The information we have learned has taught me several valuable lessons that I probably would not have learned in any other class.

Prior to this semester, I have always used Google Maps to get from place to place while driving, but I never realized that it could do much more than offer directions. As demonstrated in class on February 25th, Google Maps can be used to add certain points of interest to a map. During our in-class activity, I took the opportunity to construct a map that included all of the schools I have attended throughout my lifetime. This allowed me to gather a general idea of their distances from each other. At a young age, I viewed my elementary school as being far away from my house, when in reality it was only fifteen minutes away. Today, I view my college as being relatively close to my house, even though it is an hour and fifteen minutes away. The map allowed me to recognize how much my concept of time has changed from the time I was young.

Along with adding data to maps from our personal lives, our class also learned how to insert data that represents statistics from around the world. I chose to overlay the locations of every American Indian Reservation onto my Google map. It’s interesting to get a sense of their locations, especially pertaining to my current location. I never realized how many reservations there are in relation to Buffalo and Geneseo. Surprisingly, it is relatively easy to import the statistics onto the map. To add a new layer onto Google maps, you need to start by choosing “add layer.” Next, you select “import” and then choose “select a file from your device” under the “upload tab.” As long as the statistics pertaining to your topic have been saved to your computer, you should be able to choose the downloaded information from your files to insert onto the Google map. Once you press complete, the information should appear as another layer on the map. This knowledge has changed the way I look at Google Maps. The technical concept is also a great way to compare statistics from several different maps. It also allows people to conceptualize information that might not be understood when presented as a list of numbers. I now see it as a useful tool that can help me to understand certain statistics in an easier way.

The information that we learned about Google Maps during class has helped to make our final project task more understandable. The project that my group is focusing on is based on Google Maps. Our task has been to find all of the place names that Henry David Thoreau mentioned in Walden and place them on a map to make the knowledge easily accessible to internet users. Taking the time to truly understand how to use Google Maps in class has allowed my group to approach this project with a good amount of background knowledge. We have a clear understanding of how to plot the locations on the map and add details that allow the viewer to grasp what they are looking at. The knowledge we gained in class about Google Maps has made it easier to successfully complete our project thus far.

In addition to using Google Maps for the final project, I have considered using it as a way to plot where my family members have lived. I feel as though I have an elaborate family ancestry, which includes ancestors originating from Armenia, Ireland, England, Italy, and many other countries. My mother’s side of the family has a pretty clear understanding of where our ancestors are from, but no one in my family has ever taken the time to plot this information. I have very little knowledge of where my father’s ancestors are from. I would love to take the time to go through family records and figure out more information about my dad’s side. Google Maps offers me the perfect opportunity to label where my ancestors are from. I feel as though this information would be very beneficial to know, for both my current and future family members. Had we not learned about Google Maps in class, it is likely that I never would have considered taking the time to track my family ancestry on a map.

By taking English 340, I feel as though I have learned about several types of computer programs that I never would have learned about elsewhere. Google Maps is a program that I have used for many years, but not to the fullness I could have. This class has allowed me to realize how much Maps has to offer. Already, Maps has allowed me to create maps, document data about Thoreau’s Walden, and look further into my family ancestry. I am excited to see what else I can do with Google Maps in the future.