Digital History, Saturn’s Rings, and the Battle of Trafalgar

History and astronomy are a lot alike. When people claim history couldn’t possibly be scientific, because how can you do science without direct experimentation, astronomy should be used as an immediate counterexample. Astronomers and historians both view their subjects from great distances; too far to send instruments for direct measurement and experimentation. Things have changed a bit […]

The moral role of DH in a data-driven world

This is the transcript from my closing keynote address at the 2014 DH Forum in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s the result of my conflicted feelings on the recent Facebook emotional contagion controversy, and despite my earlier tweets, I conclude the study was important and valuable specifically because it was so controversial. For the non-Digital-Humanities (DH) crowd, a quick glossary. Distant Reading […]