Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Algorithms are Not Enough: Lessons Bringing Computer Science to Journalism

There are some amazing algorithms coming out the computer science community which promise to revolutionize how journalists deal with large quantities of information. But building a tool that journalists can use to get stories done takes a lot more than algorithms. Closing this gap has been one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Interface Critique

I’m writing a new piece for Places on “interfaces to the smart city” — or points of human contact with the “urban operating system.” As I explained to the editors, I’d like to consider these urban interfaces‘ IxD — with outputs including maps, data visualizations, photos, sounds, etc.; and inputs ranging from GUIs and touchscreens […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: How to Theorize with a Hammer and an Oven: Steampunk & Critical Making

The emerging field of “critical making” is one way to frame a more nuanced approach to Latour’s conundrum. For Matt Ratto, critical making “signals a desire to theoretically and pragmatically connect two modes of engagement with the world that are often held separate — critical thinking, typically understood as conceptually and linguistically based, and physical […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Geographics

ORBIS is nearly two years old, and the ongoing update to the site has me once again in conversation with a cartographers, geographers, designers, and digital humanists…And so one of my major goals in updating ORBIS is to dramatically improve the cartogram functionality, as well as provide mechanisms to improve the use and understanding of […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: On the Origin of “Hack” and “Yack”

 One of the least helpful constructs of our “digital humanities” moment has been a supposed active opposition, drawn out over the course of years in publications, presentations, and social media conversation, between two inane-sounding concepts: “hack” and “yack.” The heralding of DH as the academy’s “next big thing” has been (depending on whom you ask) […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Digital Humanities at MLA 2014

This is a list of digitally-inflected sessions at the 2014 Modern Language Association Convention (Chicago, January 9-12). These sessions in some way address digital tools, objects, and practices in language, literary, textual, cultural, and media studies. The list also includes sessions about digital pedagogy and scholarly communication. The list stands at 77 entries, making up […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: History Spaces

I can think of several reasons why right now, today, historians need to be not only thinking critically about the kinds of spaces we’re in, but also advocating as loudly as possible for change in those spaces. At the top of my list are three prominent contenders: the growing importance of digital in the history […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Highlights from a Year of DHNow

While taking stock of the year in Digital Humanities Now statistics for last week’s PressForward post, I made a list of some of the individual pieces that were well-received, much-discussed, or frequently-visited on our site in 2013. I’ve divided them into categories and listed them in reverse chronological order, rather than rank them. It’s hard […]

Editors' Choice

Editors’ Choice: Gephi and The (Mis)Adventures of a Newbie DHer

The week we discussed data visualizations in seminar, some of our classmates took a look at data visualization programs and reported back to us. The steps below roughly approximate my first experiment with Gephi, and, though they do not produce anything nearly as complex as the Les Miserables visualization, are enough to get a novice […]