Ledger 8 – Data Digs

I had the pleasure of listening to Geoffrey Rockwell's lecture on all things data in the humanities (the bonus being an incredible history lesson) a few weeks ago.  

The idea that stuck with me the most is the lack of neutrality of all platforms, systems, technologies that we use. I've toted that idea around for so long, and I understood what it meant in a negative connotation.  But Hermanuetica (his recent book co-authored with Sinclair) really opened up a new perspective...data IS NOT neutral.  

I know.  

I just said that.  

But think about it again. It hit me like a revelation, it'll likely not hit you (my dear invisible, probably fed-up readers) like a brick but I hope to elicit at least a wide eyed moment.  

The humanities, although it may not seem like it, enjoys "play". Exploring new avenues, adventuring into the unknown, rearranging and "playing" with text until it works.  

Data and the sciences, are not like that. When data is provided/generated, it is normally interpreted in one way. Once it is interpreted, that's it. Reinterpretation is a whole other experiment, or it's simply not allowed. It's tampering, damaging or plain useless.  

But I don't think it's that way with the humanities. We have the opportunity to play! Adjust! Explore! And we should do the same with data (of course, within reason). Many of the corpuses we handle have a lot to do with language. If the words don't reveal what we expected, there's likely something we're not looking at or manipulating right!  

Accepting that as a strategy or methodology is okay. This was HUGE to me. I was so stuck in thinking, well, data isn't neutral so playing with it makes it worse. But there are so many ways that it can enhance and improve our processes and treasure hunts for answers.