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Hacking as Scholarship
FatherBusa writes "I am a professor of English who specializes in what is usually called "humanities computing"--a discipline concerned with creating and theorizing about the use of computers in humanities research (the homepage for the Association for Computers in the Humanities has some info). I was recently asked to join a working group charged with the task of establishing a peer review process for scholarly software projects in the humanities and stumbled across the Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages put out by the Modern Language Association (the main professional organization for language and literature studies in North America). Hackers working in humanities departments may want to give it a read. It's an interesting statement that speaks to the (sometimes difficult) process of getting "tools" and other sorts of digital work evaluated as academic scholarship in promotion and tenure processes."
I'm a computer engineering student in my 4th year of study @ Memorial University. Right now we have to do an Assesment of Technology course and an Ethics course before we graduate. The Ass. tech covers the social implications of past tech. work and other topics along those lines.
:)
I also never heard of a CE/EE student in Canada/USA who don't have to do these courses and i'm quite sure that we make up a fair share of the "Hackers" In the world.
Either way they are interesting courses to take
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
If you're in the tech things/scientific and don't know who Strauss was, you are automatically banned in the limb of the mind numbed tech freak, while if you studied history of arts and you don't know what a square root is, that's simply normal.
I remember time spent fixing pc for other students that had to finish their thesis about don't know the role of granary in the middle of dark ages and that trated the "machine" as the root of evil, the stuff that was wasting their precious time.
They were of course thankful but at their eyes you were just a cleric of the satanic cult of technology that behave in a very gentle manner, and fixing the pc was a sort of dark ritual.
So if someone in the Humanities starts looking at the technology in another way maybe is the begining of a better world.
Many readers apparently found this to be boring and irrelavant reading. I think they may be missing the point.
In the "old school", professors would get recognized (and tenure) for their contributions thorugh publications (appearing in critical journals, for example).
Now though, you can make MAJOR contributions by writing "software" (not just programs, but anything published in a digital medium). Using the old rules, you wouldn't be recognized.
The article referenced implies that such digital contributions are equally relevant for recognition, PROVIDED that they follow the same sort of review process - peer review, unique contribution, etc.
This seems to be a good approach and good news for "hackers" - our value is being recognized in fields beyond software development.
The conventional evaluation method is for a professional society in a subject to think the creation is worth saving in perpetuity. Then they provide archival and serving of this material. The official stamp of approval is the "citation reference", which could be electronic. This is normally done with peer-reviewed papers in journals. However some of these journals are now entirely electronic.
I'm not a computer scientist, but even if I were I don't think I'd dismiss the computing done in the humanities as fluffy or trivial.
When I was at Michigan State University I worked with their Humanities Computing unit Matrix. A lot of the work they did humanities-wise was preservation of spoken and visual texts and making those texts available to scholars digitally. The interest here is obvious for linguists working in oral histories. Some of those tapes have barely been played more than to be transcribed. It's great that they're getting digitized and made available to people online.
Computing wise, the thing that interested me most in their work is how complicated it is to come up with accurate and helpful metadata to describe the stuff that's getting digitized and cataloged. They work pretty hard to make sure that these texts will be easily searchable and usefully listed for the people that will be using them to write dissertations.
A Transmission From PlanetJIM.[end trans]
Many /.'ers thumb their noses at the academy. Who needs a degree if you have the skills? Why pay money for a piece of paper when one can get right to coding? But the acceptance digital media within the ivy-covered walls can help the acceptance of digital media as more than "playing" video games, surfing pr0n, and "stealing" copyrighted content (not that any of these are not worthy endeavors in themselves ;) ). One of the best ways to ensure the evaluation and production of digital media is to have them studied in an academic context, and only a tenured professoriat can make that happen in ways that matter academically.
At present, digital media are often marginalized as low-brow. Video-games are often blamed for encouraging mindless violence, the web is blamed for shortening attention spans, and security-checking is vilified as terrorism, email is the font of spam, and reverse-engineering is called breaking copyright. This is the public understanding of digital media.
Specialized software and digital research being done at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanites is at present abstract and does little to affect the thinking of the unwashed masses of undergraduates, let alone the public at large. But this kind of work is important because it influences the scholars who drive the field, and their work goes largely unnoticed by the established disciplines that might most benefit from them. On the other hand publicly-accessible texts are in many ways the "content" the web has been looking for (as demonstrated by usage), but recognition of such projects is still limited to circles of elite users. This must change, and a cohort of professors teaching students can help bring about that change.
Creating an established body of scholars able to use computers in ways that help normal people understand how Art and Architecture, Modern Languages and Film shape the world in which we live--this will further the widescale acceptance of digital media as worthile and noble ones.
It is important that people see digital media as more than video-games and surfing the web. Devising a body of standards by which digital media can be evaluated in the context of tenure review (limited though that context might be) will help.
The need for a set of standards to review and assign value to the digital work of humanities scholars is crucial to the culture of computing.
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I have a masters degree. I have defended my thesis against a panel of Doctors who will later take my best ideas and trademark them as their own.
Here is how academic book publishing works. Write a book, make your undergrads use it in your course and cash in. Every year revise it by adding a useless chapter. Then require your students to buy the newest revision saying it's 'important to be up to date'(tm).
IMHO the best thing about the digital age is that their is a preference to work like the IEEE boards who ratify standards based on "rough consensus and running code". Many people, myself included, consider this "keeping it real".
I should not have to beg an academic institution for brownie points for a software implementation that I researched, developed and implemented. I don't have to be taxed for being different and taking the lead. If my software is of use to the world then others can pick it up and go from there, assuming it's public source. Otherwise, the project can die on it's own without a lengthy debate by noble men.