4.1041 Rs: Planning Humanities Computing (2/35)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Fri, 15 Feb 91 14:15:58 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1041. Friday, 15 Feb 1991.


(1) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 91 18:20:05 PST (17 lines)
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 4.1030 Qs: Planning Humanities Computing

(2) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 91 21:35 EST (18 lines)
From: Prof Norm Coombs <NRCGSH@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>
Subject: Computers, research, etc.

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 91 18:20:05 PST
From: cbf@athena.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber)
Subject: Re: 4.1030 Qs: Planning Humanities Computing (2/72)

I don't know whether the report has been publically released,
but UC Berkeley went through about 18 months of committee
meetings to produce a long-term plan for academic computing.
The absolute top priority recommendation was to finish the
campus spine network.

Chair of the committee was Eugene Hammel (gene@qal.berkeley.edu),
but requests for copies of the report should be directed to the
Vice Provost for Academic Computing, Curtis Hardyck
(hardyck@violet.berkeley.edu).

Charles Faulhaber
UC Berkeley
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 91 21:35 EST
From: Prof Norm Coombs <NRCGSH@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>
Subject: Computers, research, etc.

The request for advice re the committee on humanities and computing made
at least one interesting assumption. It seemed to me that when it spoke
about using computers for research, it seemed to assume the computer was
running some kind of program to assist in analyzing ddata. Maybe, I
should rather say in generating data. I believe that organizing and
evaluating data is the most important part of any research project. The
computer may do a bit of this, but usually it is a human who has to do
it. The human, at that point, is likely to use a humble computer as a
word processor. Using it, the data will be organized, edited and
finally produced. Research is not necessarily done on expensive
computers. Some of the most important research is done on a micro
running Word Perfect or some similar program. Not only do faculty teach,
research and play golf, but word processors are integral to instruction
and research.