Digital Wisdom

[sartorias]

The truth is, we find ourselves endlessly fascinating. And horrifying. Sometimes even inspiring.

Specifically, how we're bringing digitalization to history and literature. The other day, movingfinger linked to this article, which takes the quantifier scholars of the seventies one step further into their dreamland

Comments

[asakiyume]

I didn't read the article on quantification carefully, but dipping into it, I was charmed and fascinated by the notion of collecting random data--or not-so-random data. How far people walk--that's fascinating, isn't it? And who says what, when, who talks... it's *interesting* in the way that raw data can be interesting.

[sartorias]

I love how such facts illuminate daily life. Like when the first coffee cups appeared in that German town.

[heleninwales]

I listened to an interview with that researcher on the radio just the other week. The minutiae of life can be so fascinating.

My LJ friend endlessrarities recently posted about the Roman fort of Vindolanda where heaps of documents that were supposed to be burned as rubbish were preserved in the acidic waterlogged conditions and have revealed a lot of useful and interesting information about ordinary lives, such as complaints about the state of the roads!

[sartorias]

I love that.

[sollersuk]

My favourite is the covering letter that came with some pairs of socks and a pair of underpants. Latinists cavorted with glee because they'd guessed at what the word for underpants would be, and they had been right.

[barbarienne]

The problem with electronic transmission is that we can't be sure any of it will be evidence in the distant future. It requires maintenance and technology. What becomes of our record-keeping if the machines that read it disappear?

I'm imagine there are still a few machines around that can read 5.25" floppy disks, but not many. Presumably anyone who was determined to read them could analyze the disk with some newer machine, and pull up the palimpsest of the now-corrupted and degraded magnetic coding. But in 300 or 500 or 1000 years, will archaeologists even recognize those pieces of plastic as information-storage devices?

[sartorias]

Very true. I am assuming that somebody in grade school now is going to invent some way to store that data that will be akin to those Sumerian tablets.

[la_marquise_de_]

The hardest thing -- and the most important thing -- for any scholar is trying to work your way as closely as you can into the mindset of your subject, into their worldview, their sense of place and purpose and importance. It's easy to analyse, to sneer, to rip apart, to feel superior. Understanding is hard, but it's crucial.
And yes, delicacy. Like grace, a word whose meaning we have let slide, a word whose nuances are so much greater than we now usually know.

[sartorias]

There is one kind of history that I heartily despise, the ones that choose bits of an old paradigm just to sneer at it from our modern pinnacle, which (implied) of course is the height of civilization.

[la_marquise_de_]

Oh, yes. Loathsome.

[barbarienne]

Okay, this bit in the article made me laugh:

One of the lists Dennison looked at came about when the owners of the estate became suspicious of the amount of clothing their serfs owned. A decree was issued, which accused the serfs of having, as Dennison put it, “several changes of the nicest clothing while at the same time being in arrears on their taxes.”

-->Definitely an example of how some things never change.

[sartorias]

Oh boy. There could be an entire study done just on sumptuary laws. It's amusing to read the rants of courtiers, for example, just before the Revolution, going on about how uppity merchants' daughters are getting, daring to ape court fashions, and even wearing gold embroidery--which those of 'gentle birth' cannot afford. If such things are permitted, who knows what will happen?