{"id":620,"date":"2013-04-01T12:19:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T17:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/?p=620"},"modified":"2014-01-25T12:22:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T17:22:17","slug":"office-of-digital-humanities-to-release-formal-definition-of-digital-humanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/?p=620","title":{"rendered":"Office of Digital Humanities to Release Formal Definition of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Digital Humanities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Note that the following post was originally published on April 1, 2013. Cross-posted with Day of DH 2013 site<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The Office of Digital Humanities (ODH), a grant-making office for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), announced today that a prototype for a formal definition of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153digital humanities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is currently undergoing testing and would be released \u00e2\u20ac\u0153soon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 ODH director Brett Bobley stated, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Given the contentious debates over the definition of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdigital humanities,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 we thought it would be better to address the issue sooner rather than later.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n

The task for completing the definition was assigned based on government procurement standards. An RFP was announced last year, with top bids reportedly coming in from Oxford University Press (publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary), an anonymous hive editorial team submitted through the shadow group \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Wikipedia Foundation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Donald Trump, revealed a source who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the privacy surrounding government procurement procedures.\u00c2\u00a0 However, to the surprise of some, the bid was given to government defense contractor Lockheed Martin.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are delighted to receive this contract and keep our workers on the job despite this period of austerity,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d stated a Lockheed spokesperson, who further noted that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the digital humanities seems to be where you can find all the jobs these days.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The definition of digital humanities is currently in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a testing phase,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d noted Senior Program Officer Jennifer Serventi.\u00c2\u00a0 She recently visited Lockheed Martin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Theory Tunnel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d where the development team was checking the definition\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153theorydynamics.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to make sure the definition responds equally well under different theory conditions, and that no one theory creates too much drag,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d explained one unnamed senior theory scientist.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right now we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re working on psychoanalysis, which is just bringing the definition to a full stop,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d revealed a source who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the testing. According to the source, psychoanalytic drag is causing the definition to adopt a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153weird Da Vinci-style mirror script, which is obviously problematic with the definition in its infancy \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hoping to get past this \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmirror stage\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 soon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Unsurprisingly, humanities disciplines began lobbying for their individual methodological approaches once word of the definition leaked late last month.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had some issues with security,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d noted Senior Program Officer Perry Collins, who thanked the library community for standardizing security procedures yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 Jason Rhody, also a Senior Program Officer, revealed that just last week before the new security protocols took effect, a small group of game studies scholars collaborating with linguists \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Zerg-rushed the definition\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it took us three days to remove all the prepositions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Once the definition is finished, it will be copied and delivered to the Office of Digital Humanities, where it will be placed in the Office\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s official vault.\u00c2\u00a0 The original version of the definition will be transported to the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), where it will take its rightful place between to the formal representations of the measurements for the inch and the mile.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d notes one NIST employee, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153once we switch to the metric system like the rest of the world, all of these standards and definitions will be just so many bits of scrap metal and word cloud.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Further information about how to define the digital humanities can be found at Day of DH 2013 (http:\/\/dayofdh2013.matrix.msu.edu\/members\/<\/a>), a project that documents a day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s activity for digital humanities practitioners in a variety of disciplines and contexts.\u00c2\u00a0 Day of DH 2013 is on April 8, 2013.<\/p>\n

[Disclaimer: the above is a fictional April Fool\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Day amusement and is the personal work of the author written during his own personal time and representing neither endorsement nor opinion from the federal government, Donald Trump, or Lockheed Martin.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Note that the following post was originally published on April 1, 2013. Cross-posted with Day of DH 2013 site<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The Office of Digital Humanities (ODH), a grant-making office for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), announced today that a prototype for a formal definition of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153digital humanities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is currently undergoing testing and would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/misc.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}