Book contents
- The Dangerous Art of Text Mining
- The Dangerous Art of Text Mining
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Toward a Smarter Data Science
- Part II The Hidden Dimensions of Temporal Experience
- Part III Disciplinary Implications
- Chapter 13 A Map of World Culture, Purged of Bias
- Chapter 14 The Future of the Art
- Appendix: Notes on Data, Code, Labor, Room for Error, and British History
- Index
Chapter 14 - The Future of the Art
from Part III - Disciplinary Implications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2023
- The Dangerous Art of Text Mining
- The Dangerous Art of Text Mining
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Toward a Smarter Data Science
- Part II The Hidden Dimensions of Temporal Experience
- Part III Disciplinary Implications
- Chapter 13 A Map of World Culture, Purged of Bias
- Chapter 14 The Future of the Art
- Appendix: Notes on Data, Code, Labor, Room for Error, and British History
- Index
Summary
This chapter investigates how hybrid practices like those surveyed in this book may transform the future of research. It foregrounds three promising directions: the “auditing” of institutional cultures for issues such as diversity and inclusion, meaning the regular review of institutional progress toward ethical norms as derived from a review of text; the building of public-facing portals designed to make governance more transparent and participation more vital; and the pursuit of new frontiers of hybrid research in the university, by teams where humanities knowledge is as privileged as the knowledge of data science. The chapter builds on earlier chapters in the book to argue that history and the humanities must have a place in the modeling of any smart data science in the future. It revisits the dream of a predictive social science, borrowing from Donna Haraway in proposing that we replace the fantasy of prediction by acknowledging the reality of hybrid practice already at work in most forms of humanistic study today – a reality that we might call the cyborg historian. It articulates a call for philosophers of history to help us understand more of the dimensions of the past and for data scientists to use historical understanding to investigate the limits and promise of their models. It envisions a robust historical practice, embraced by some (but not all) members of history departments, that uses text mining to answer the historical questions for which it is best suited, especially the auditing of how contemporary institutions are changing.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dangerous Art of Text MiningA Methodology for Digital History, pp. 419 - 444Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023