In a post on Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage’s blog (based on a talk given to new CLIR fellows), Lorena Gauthereau discusses “the importance of minority archives” and the idea of postcustodianship. As Gauthereau explains, “archives have historically functioned as mechanism of colonialism. They have helped to structure our understanding of history and the nation in a way that also structures…
ethics
DH Read: “Digitization ≠ Repatriation: When Digital Humanities Provides Access But Not Restitution”
In this follow-up blog post to an article on Hyperallergic, Sarah E. Bond argues that: An examination of the Ethiopian cultural heritage held in the libraries and museums of Britain can perhaps demonstrate a seminal point about digitization and the digital humanities more broadly: Digital editions can never fully replace an analog object. No matter how many manuscripts we digitize…
DH Read: “Are you scared yet? Meet Norman, the psychopathic AI”
This article from the BBC by Jane Wakefield reports on a “psychopathic” algorithm created at MIT “as part of an experiment to see what training AI on data from ‘the dark corners of the net’ would do to its world view.” The algorithm is trained to interpret abstract shapes. Trained on images of people dying, Norman (named after Norman Bates)…
Responding to the Technophobes and the Technophiles
For our weekly meetings with Dr. Robertson, the DH fellows each find an interesting new post about digital humanities to share with the group. Over the course of the year, we’re supposed to track some sort of theme or trend. Last year, I focused on posts and projects that work to Indigenize and/or decolonize digital humanities. This year, I’ve followed…
