The Emergence Of The Digital Humanities

224 Pages·2013·3.096 MB·English

by  Steven E. Jones

THE EMERGENCE OF THE
DIGITAL HUMANITIES
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THE EMERGENCE
OF THE DIGITAL
HUMANITIES
Steven E. Jones
Routledge
New York and London
First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Steven E. Jones to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him 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.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Jones, Steven E. (Steven Edward)
The emergence of the digital humanities / Steven E. Jones.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Humanities—Electronic information resources. 2. Humanities—Computer
network resources. 3. Education, Higher—Effect of technological innovations
on. 4. Digital communications. I. Title.
AZ195.J66 2014
001.30285—dc23
2013011696
ISBN: 978–0–415–63551–6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978–0–415–63552–3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–0–203–09308–5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans by
Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon
CONTENTS
List of figures vi
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Eversion 18
2 Dimensions 39
3 People 73
4 Places 98
5 Things 124
6 Publications 147
7 Practices 178
Selected bibliography 199
Index 207
FIGURES
I.1 3D printed prototypes, IIT Idea Shop 2
1.1 Twitter conversation, Gibson 19
2.1 QR code for this book’s Tumblr 41
2.2 QR code with instructions 42
2.3 QR code with glyph 45
2.4 Pixel Pour by Kelly Goeller, http://kellotron.com 48
3.1 reCaptcha 76
4.1 Skyrim map mashup 110
4.2 Skyrim Map iOS App 111
4.3 Virtual Harlem in Second Life 115
4.4 Digital Harlem 116
5.1 Ian Bogost, A Slow Year 130
5.2 Skylanders figurine 141
5.3 Skylanders in-game characters 142
6.1 Bookman’s Alley sign, Evanston, IL 150
6.2 Twitter conversation, Kirschenbaum 160
6.3 Twitter conversation, Sloan 161
7.1 Caitlin Fisher, Circle 183
7.2 Borsuk and Bouse, Between Page and Screen 185
7.3 Between Page and Screen being read 186
7.4 Between Page and Screen being read 187
7.5 Abstract 3D print, Nowviskie 192
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book really began as the subject of a spring 2012 graduate seminar, English
415 (“Media and Culture: The Network Is Everting”), where we all read texts
and played games and thought through historical developments, technologies, and
representations in ways that shaped the arguments that follow. So I’m grateful to
the group of English and digital humanities graduate students who made up that
seminar: Vicki Bolf, Trevor Borg, Alex Christie, Katie Dyson, Will Farina, Paul
Gonter, Erik Hanson, Nathan Jung, Saira Khan, David Macey, Colin McGowan,
Sean O’Brien, Maureen Smith, Cameron Phillips, Karissa Taylor, and Andrew
Welch. Two of these helped with the book more directly when they served as
my research assistants: Nate Jung and Will Farina. Erik Hanson provided access
to an early screening of Indie Game: The Movieat Chicago’s Music Box Theater,
as well as sharing his knowledge of video games—at a level far above any I’ll
ever attain. Other students in the MA in Digital Humanities program were also
helpful early responders, including Amy Cavender, Helen Davies, Katie Dunn,
Amanda Forson, Mandy Gagel, Niamh McGuigan, Caitlin Pollok, and Adam
Tenhouse.
Colleagues at the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities (CTSDH)
reacted to early versions of floated ideas with appropriate skepticism—Nick
Hayward, Kyle Roberts, Peter Shillingsburg, and George Thiruvathukal—as did
friends and colleagues who visited the Center as guest speakers, including
Steve Ramsay, Ted Underwood, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Kari Kraus, and Matt
Kirschenbaum. The DH community on Twitter and the blogs was a source of
everyday inspiration, ideas, and impressive hive-mindedness. Sometimes a crazy
bee stood out, of course, none more so than Mark Sample, whose buzz-worthy
performances online and in person always tested and provoked, and Ian Bogost,
who will not want to be included under the DH umbrella (like someone standing
viii Acknowledgments
on the train platform who’d prefer to get rained on), but who has done more
than many others to make DH worth debating and understanding. Both
generously checked portions of the manuscript draft as it was in progress, as did
Matt Kirschenbaum and Bethany Nowviskie, but all errors and shortcomings are
of course mine, not theirs. Bethany Nowviskie also gave a moving talk at MLA
2013 that helped to inspire Chapter 7 and then kindly responded at length to
my emailed questions. Artist Kelly Goeller took the time to discuss her work in
email exchanges and granted permission to reproduce her photo of her own iconic
Pixel Pour in Chapter 2.
To Matthew Gold I’m grateful for the opportunity to present a version of
the argument as part of his open-access Debates in the Digital Humanities, where
comments from peer-to-peer reviewers, especially Jentery Sayers, Tanner Higgin,
Claire Warwick, and Dave Parry, were very helpful. Similarly, anonymous
reviewers for the DH 2013 conference at the University of Nebraska offered useful
evaluations of a proposal based on the introduction. I’m grateful too for the
feedback provided in person at conferences and talks over the past year, including
at University of Illinois Chicago—at the invitation of (the other) Steve Jones,
who also answered a number of questions specific to the arguments—and Marie
Hicks and Carly Kocurek at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), who also
kindly took me on a quick, impromptu tour of the Idea Shop at IIT’s University
Technology Park, as I recount in the Introduction.
The usual thanks to my family have to include, in this case, more specific
forms of recognition, as this book benefitted a good deal from the touchstone of
Heidi’s computer-science expertise (and general worldliness), and from Hannah
and Emi’s insights into education and the arts and chicken farming (as they
contribute to Appalachian Maker culture). I remain inspired by the amazing
Henry’s ever-resurgent creativity in multiple media, and I’m grateful for the
time we worked downstairs together in adjacent rooms. I thank them all for
listening to me read aloud the new bits, about which I was least uncertain, but
especially for leaving me alone in the mornings to write, then joining me later
at the beach for beer and grouper sandwiches.
A note on sources: On a topic so embedded in the present digital network,
it has been necessary to cite a good number of online sources, including potentially
ephemeral ones, individual blogs and Twitter among them, but also project
Wikis and experimental publications on CommentPress and similar platforms.
References to online sources by URL or DOI were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor the press is responsible for URLs that may have changed
or expired since the manuscript was completed. I also make use of e-books in
many cases, so I declare the format (usually Kindle) and cite by location or page
(where available) in my copies, but, of course, as is often the case these days, text
search may be a more efficient way to locate cited passages. Because of their
practical ephemerality, wherever possible I cite Twitter exchanges in the body
of the text using screen captures.
INTRODUCTION
On a cold March day in Chicago, I crossed the heavily designed campus of IIT.
I had just given a talk (on this very book, then in progress) and had enjoyed
coffee in the dramatic campus center designed by architect Rem Koolhaas (with
the Green Line train running through it). But my hosts from the Humanities
department had also arranged for me to drop in to see the fabrication and rapid-
prototyping lab, the Idea Shop at the University Technology Park.1In one empty
room we looked into, with schematic drawings on the walls, a large tabletop
machine jumped to life and began whirring, as an arm with a router moved into
position. A minute later, a student emerged from an adjacent room and adjusted
something on the keyboard and monitor attached by an extension arm to the
frame for the router, then examined an intricately milled block of wood on the
table. Next door, someone was demonstrating finely machined parts in various
materials, but mostly plastic, wheels within bearings, for example, hot off the 3D
printer. At the table where he stood, a box full of colorful 3D-printed prototypes
or experimental objects (it was hard to tell the difference just by looking) was
laid out, like interesting toys. Most had been built up out of melted polymers
squirted onto a base, extruded according to the specifications of CAD (computer-
assisted design) and STL (stereolithography) files.
What exactly, again, was my interest as a humanist in taking this tour, one of
my hosts politely asked? Why was I so eager to visit this kind of combination
machine shop and design lab, where “technology transfers” and start-up
companies shared space with students, interns, and faculty members (some of whom
were creating those start-ups)? It was a very good question. The answer is the
subject of this book, really, and I’ll come back to 3D printers throughout
the chapters that follow, with a special emphasis in the final chapter, Chapter 7.
But to begin, let’s just say that I’m convinced that the newer forms of the digital