Journal of Digital Humanities 1:1 (2012)

The Journal of Digital Humanities is a comprehensive, peer-reviewed, open access journal that features the best scholarship, tools, and conversations produced by the digital humanities community in the previous quarter.

The journal offers expanded coverage of the digital humanities by publishing scholarly work beyond the traditional research article, selecting content from open and public discussions in the field, and by encouraging continued discussion through peer-to-peer review.

Contributions by Tim Hitchcock, Trevor Owens, Scott Weingart, Chad Black, Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser, Jeremy Boggs, Alison Booth, Daniel J. Cohen, Mitchell S. Green, Anne Houston, and Stephen Ramsay, Nik Honeysett and Michael Edson, Fred Gibbs, Natalia Cecire, Benjamin M. Schmidt, William G. Thomas, Jean Bauer, Patrick Murray-John, Elijah Meeks, Tom Scheinfeldt and Ryan Shaw, Mark Sample, Alexis Lothian, Peter Bradley, Tim Sherratt, Moya Z. Bailey, Amy Earhart, Boone B. Gorges, Jeremy Boggs, David McClure, Eric Rochester, and Wayne Graham

Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter 2011
Editors: Daniel J. Cohen, Joan Fragaszy Troyano
Associate Editors: Sasha Hoffman, Jeri Wieringa
Publisher Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, April 2012
ISSN 2165-6673

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Vilém Flusser: Does Writing Have a Future? (1987/2011)

“In Does Writing Have a Future?, a remarkably perceptive work first published in German in 1987, Vilém Flusser asks what will happen to thought and communication as written communication gives way, inevitably, to digital expression. In his introduction, Flusser proposes that writing does not, in fact, have a future because everything that is now conveyed in writing—and much that cannot be—can be recorded and transmitted by other means.

Confirming Flusser’s status as a theorist of new media in the same rank as Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Friedrich Kittler, the balance of this book teases out the nuances of these developments. To find a common denominator among texts and practices that span millennia, Flusser looks back to the earliest forms of writing and forward to the digitization of texts now under way. For Flusser, writing—despite its limitations when compared to digital media—underpins historical consciousness, the concept of progress, and the nature of critical inquiry. While the text as a cultural form may ultimately become superfluous, he argues, the art of writing will not so much disappear but rather evolve into new kinds of thought and expression.”

Originally published in German in 1987 as Die Schrift. Hat Schreiben Zukunft?, Göttingen.
Translated by Nancy Ann Roth
Introduction by Mark Poster
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2011
Volume 33 of Electronic Mediations
ISBN 0816670234, 9780816670239
208 pages

Review: Bob Hanke (Int’l J of Communication)

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Richard Sproat: Language, Technology, and Society (2010)

This book traces the history of language technology from writing – the first technology specifically designed for language – to digital speech and other contemporary language systems. The book describes the social impact of technological developments over five millennia, and addresses topics such as the ways in which literacy has influenced cognitive and scientific development; the social impact of modern speech technology; the influence of various printing technologies; the uses and limitations of machine translation; how far mass information access is a means for exploitation or enlightenment; the deciphering of ancient scripts; and technical aids for people with language disabilities.

Richard Sproat writes in a clear, readable style, introducing linguistic and other scientific concepts as they are needed. His book offers fascinating reading for everyone interested in how language and technology have shaped and continue to shape our day-to-day lives.

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2010
ISBN 0199549389, 9780199549382
Length 286 pages

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