Link to these slides: http://bit.ly/dh-measure
Presented by Elisa Beshero-Bondar
Assoc. Professor of English and Director, Center for the Digital Text @ Pitt-Greensburg
Twitter: @epyllia | GitHub: @ebeshero
docked at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, Norfolk, VA
(*) Credit: Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
Analog computing: uses physical mechanical properties to model and solve problems
Rapid development of analog and digital computing during WW II
The Colossus machine = first digital computer: developed to break the encryption code of German radio messages
Lorenz cipher machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages sent over radio
Every letter of the alphabet is a combination of dots and blanks:
Papers with holes punched = input
Decryption discovers the encryption key and releases the original message
Data input format with 19c origins in
People get really good at calculations when working a simple computational interface
A: Translation of symbolic objects into physical forms (analog computing here), manipulated by digits, comprehended by brains.
Q: How do you "do math" with an abacus?
Ancient and ongoing computing technology
all about translating from one way of knowing to another
Example one: a blind student who needs to analyze a poem for class. Can she study the poem in the same way as the other students?
What is the best option?
Example two: An issue with international standards for encoding measurements
This involved the TEI community...
What is the TEI?
Not any of these TEIs. . .
An international community
Interoperation: Can texts prepared for machine processing in one computer system be understood by others?
Interchange: Can the machine-readable parts of the texts be understood by humans, who can work with them as needed, without additional information?
ISO attempts to set precise standards based on measurable physical properties of our universe. According to ISO, a "second" in time is defined thus:
The second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. |
Contemporary nuclear science prevails in this measurement. Is it applicable to explanations of time duration from past centuries?
A nuclear physics lab can consistently measure the passage of one second from observing subatomic particles. This is more precise than watching a spring-and-weight driven watch or pendulum clock.
Standard weights and measures from ancient Egypt
4 digits = a palm
Digit-al Humanities
Visualizing New Kingdom units of measure (1500 - 1000 BCE) as they relate to one another
Digital Humanities ”commons” values:
open source, open access, open sharing
Banksy, the stunt artist defying property owners: Here, the partial shredding of ”Girl with Balloon.”
Did Banksy free this artwork from its ”owners” at Sotheby's auction house? Or create something new to shock the auctioneers?
applies computation to measure how widely distributed the phenomenon of Banksy artwork is in the world.
<bibl>
<title>Choose Your Weapon</title>
<alternate>Haring Dog</alternate>
<date when="2002"/>
<medium type="spray_paint"/>
<location lat="51.4986" long="-0.0757">London, UK</location>
<size orientation="landscape">large</size>
<ref target="http://www.banksy.co.uk/">Banksy's Personal Site</ref>
</bibl>
Network graphic plotting which countries contain Banksy art installations, with graffiti works in red
Shown: UK, USA, France, Iceland, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Palestine, Mali
Both student projects:
Thank you for listening! For more on my students' projects and my courses, please visit https://newtfire.org
”Minute Exercise”: Jot down three things worth remembering from this talk.
Are there any questions?