Computational Engineering of Historical Memories: With a Showcase on Afro-Eurasia (ca 1100-1500 CE)

187 Pages·2022·3.37 MB·English

by  Andrea Nanetti

Computational Engineering of
Historical Memories
Nanetti outlines a methodology for deploying artificial intelligence
and machine learning to enhance historical research.
Historical events are the treasure of human experiences, the her-
itage that societies have used to remain resilient and express their
identities. Nanetti has created and developed an interdisciplinary
methodology supported by practice-based research that serves as a
pathway between historical and computer sciences to design and build
computational structures that analyse how societies create narratives
about historical events. This consilience pathway aims to make histor-
ical memory machine-understandable. It turns history into a compu-
tational discipline through an interdisciplinary blend of philological
accuracy, historical scholarship, history-based media projects, and
computational tools. Nanetti presents the theory behind this method-
ology from a humanities perspective and discusses its practical appli-
cation in user interface and experience.
An essential read for historians and scholars working in the digital
humanities.
Dr. Andrea Nanetti is an award-winning and internationally recognised
expert in Digital Humanities. He has carried out trailblazing research in
Europe, the United States, China, Africa, and South-East Asia for over
30 years. Since 2013, he has been a Professor at Nanyang Technologi-
cal University, Singapore. Using the history of Venice as contextualised
within late medieval Afro-Eurasian trade systems, he achieved interna-
tional standing within a broad research spectrum that spans from criti-
cal editions of primary historical sources to computational applications
and web-based media. As a result, several world’s top-level institutions,
including Harvard University, Princeton University, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, Brown University, Johns Hopkins University, and Ca’
Foscari University of Venice, invited him to be a visiting fellow.
“Dr. Nanetti’s research reimagines history in the golden age of AI.
Computational history is not simply a stagnant past or the point
of departure for an impending future but the anywhere door for
other realities.”
Dr. Chin-Yew Lin, Senior Principal Research Manager of
the Knowledge Computing Group at Microsoft Research,
Beijing, PRC.
“Sitting at the intersection of history, computer science, media
studies, and philosophy, Nanetti’s work justifies and maps a way
forward for historians grappling with the implications of the dig-
ital turn. Computational methods offer solutions to obstacles of
language and culture, not just those that separate regional schol-
arly traditions, but also those that separate academic scholar-
ship from the public sphere. Put into practice in the Engineering
Historical Memory platform, his ideas show the promise of digital
approaches for expanding, rather than just streamlining, the pro-
duction of historical knowledge.”
Dr. Adam Kosto, Professor, Department of History, Columbia
University, New York, USA.
“Professor Nanetti has compiled a beautiful book demonstrating a
vital step towards bringing traditional expert-intensive inquiries in
historical materials and engineering tools and practices together
into an integral system. This must-read book lays the groundwork
for enabling machines to work with historical materials, leveraging
extensive digital resources, including datasets and models in engi-
neering and humanities. The book and its realization as interac-
tive applications, the Engineering Historical Memory, will be the
essential resource for anyone interested in designing and building
engineering systems that can empower researchers in humanities
and engage a broad audience in the general public. In a world with
countless AI applications powering our daily life, this book show-
cases how we could work together to integrate new engineering
technologies and historical materials and create powerful interac-
tive systems encoding human experiences in the long term.”
Dr. Yao-Yi Chiang, Professor of Computer Science and
Engineering, University of Minnesota.
‘“Computational Engineering of Historical Memories’ is a par-
ticularly timely book – digital humanities is currently in danger
of dissipating into a number of digital sub-disciplines. Andrea
Nanetti introduces a suite of techniques to help understand
global human history and then demonstrates how his approaches
can be applied through some practice-based research. Professor
Nanetti’s vision is to make historical memory machine-under-
standable and, ultimately, to turn history into a computational
discipline. This is nothing if not revisionist and I commend this
book for its ambition.”
Roger Kain FBA, Professor of Humanities, School of Advanced
Study, University of London, UK.

Computational Engineering of
Historical Memories
With a Showcase on Afro-Eurasia
(ca 1100-1500 CE)
Andrea Nanetti
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
Informa business
© 2023 Andrea Nanetti
The right of Andrea Nanetti to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.
taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0
license. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN: 9781032316802 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032316819 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003310860 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310860
Typeset in Times New Roman
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
To those scholars, media artists, software engineers,
web developers, UX/UI practitioners, publishers,
cultural institutions, and others who, through their
collaboration with the international web-based
initiative for the engineering of historical memories
(EHM), contribute to the open and free access to
primary historical sources and recognise it as a
fundamental human right for the advancement of
knowledge and peacebuilding in our glocal societies.
Facesti come quei che va di notte,
che porta il lume dietro e sé non giova,
ma doppo sé fa le persone dotte
Dantis Alagherii Comedia, Purgatorio XXII, vv. 67–69

Contents
List of Figures xii
List of Abbreviations xiv
Foreword xv
Preface xviii
Acknowledgements xx
1 Computational Engineering of Historical Memories 1
1.1 Vision, Mission, and Motivation from
a Human Sciences Perspective 1
1.2 Reloading the Treasure of Human
Experiences into the Digital Time Machine 6
1.3 The Online System Engineering Historical
Memory (EHM): Methods and Tools 13
2 Historians and Computers 30
2.1 Computers in the Historian’s Craft.
Opportunities and Limits 30
2.2 Reflections on the Training of Machine Learning
Algorithms for the Next Generation of Historians 35
2.3 Towards a Computational Approach to History.
The Principle of Computational Equivalence
and the Phenomenon of Computational
Irreducibility in Historical Sciences 40
3 History, Films, and Online Video Streaming 61
3.1 Communicating History with Films 61
3.1.1 Documentary Films 62