Do Digital Humanists Need to Understand Algorithms?

• Published in: Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 p. 546
• Main Author: BENJAMIN M. SCHMIDT
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: University of Minnesota Press 18.05.2016
• Subjects: Algorithms; Applied sciences; Arts; Behavioral sciences; Blogs; Classical mechanics; Communications; Communications media; Computer science; Data management; Data processing; Data recording; Data smoothing; Digital humanities; Digital media; Digital publications; Electronic media; Fourier transformations; Historical methodology; Historiography; History; History of science; History of technology; Humanism; Information management; Information science; Integral transformations; Kinematics; Literary elements; Literature; Mathematical expressions; Mathematical functions; Mathematical transformations; Mathematics; Mechanics; Narrative discourse; Personality; Personality psychology; Personality theories; Physical sciences; Physics; Psychology; Sentiment analysis; Social sciences; Syuzhet; Text processing; Trajectories
• ISBN: 0816699542; 9780816699544

Ian Bogost recently published an essay¹ arguing that fetishizing algorithms can pollute our ability to accurately describe the world we live in. “Concepts like ‘algorithm,’ ” he writes, “have become sloppy shorthands, slang terms for the act of mistaking multipart complex systems for simple, singular ones” (Bogost). Even critics of computational culture succumb to the temptation to describe algorithms as though they operate with a single incontrovertible beauty, he argues; this leaves them with a “distorted, theological view of computational action” that ignores human agency. As one of the few sites in the humanities where algorithms are created and deployed,