Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 362.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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                       www.dhhumanist.org
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        Date: 2019-10-29 07:18:25+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty 
        Subject: what we're not only ready for but doing

In yesterday's lot of postings from Humanist, Bill Benzon observed of an
ongoing exchange that the written paper he had cited earlier as a
contribution to the conversation had been ignored. To draw out what's
going on, let me suggest a thought-experiment: that we imagine the same
exchange enacted face-to-face on the one hand, and on the other, carried
out through a series of published articles. I situate what's happening
on Humanist inbetween these two hands. My argument would be, and is,
that such things as Humanist are much closer to the former than the
latter. As you've doubtless observed, I come at Humanist for research
purposes to engage in offhand conversation, with all its sloppiness,
non-sequiturs, tangential remarks and so on. I think of it as panning
for gold; or tuning a complex adaptive system close enough to chaos that
unexpected things start to happen; or putting myself in the path of
serendipity. And how valuable it has turned out to be!

Yours,
WM


--
Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
(www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist (www.dhhumanist.org)




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