We’re 14 years old now, a venerable age in this medium, like everything else somewhere between coming into being and going out of it, “like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came.”[1]
On May 7th, 2001, Willard McCarty in his reflections on the 14th birthday of Humanist, quotes Bede’s story of the conversion of Edwin of Northumbria in the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, II.13. He leaves out the comparison between the swallow’s flight and the short known life of man which “appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.”[2] The same might be said of our ignorance of the field previously known as humanities computing. Most of us know little of what went before and we certainly don’t know what will come after, and that is what this essay is about, how we know ourselves as part of a community like that which called itself “humanities computing,” but has begun to call itself the “digital humanities.” In particular this is about a way of knowing ourselves through our own methods of studying electronic evidence, in this case the flight of the archives of HUMANIST from 1987 to the present.
On the 12th of May, 1987 Willard McCarty sent the first test message to the newly created “BITNET mailer for people involved with the
support of computing in the humanities” called HUMANIST,
Date: 12 May 1987, 23:50:02 EDT
Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS
Sender: HUMANIST Discussion
From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS
This is test number 1. Please acknowledge.
After a couple more test messages Ian Lancashire replied on May 14th, “@Message received@” and thus the HUMANIST discussion list was started3 and this list has been the primary site for announcements and discuss since then.[4] Moderated by Willard who also bunches messages by topic to keep down the traffic its archives can be treated as a diachronic record of activity in humanities computing.
1 Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 1. See http://www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/Archives/Virginia/v15/0000.html
2 Another translation of the passage form the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation appears in
Another of the king’s chief men, approving of his words and exhortations, presently added: “The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he. is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.” The other elders and king’s councillors, by Divine inspiration, spoke to the same effect.
3 See the first archive, http://www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/Archives/Virginia/v01/8705.1324.txt. If you scroll down you can see the welcome message which opens,
HUMANIST is a Bitnet/<a href="/freelinking/NetNorth">NetNorth</a> electronic mail network for people who support computing in the humanities. Those who teach, review software, answer questions, give advice, program, write documentation, or otherwise support research and teaching in this area are included.
4 For an introduction HUMANIST by its moderator, Willard McCarty, see http://www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist/announcement.html which links to a PDF of an article the discusses the history and significance of HUMANIST see “HUMANIST: Lessons from a Global Electronic Seminar”, Computers and the Humanities. 26 (1992): 205-222. The <a href="http://staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/essays/" title="http://staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/essays/">http://staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/essays/</a><a href="http://hermeneutica.stefansinclair.name/freelinking/McCarty">McCarty</a>,%20Humanist.pdf.