Digital Scholarship Seminar 43: Peter Stokes

Digital Scholarship Seminar 43: Peter Stokes

12pm | Tues 20 Nov 2018 | Arts Millennium/Psychology Building G067

Peter Stokes (Paris, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Université PSL)

Modelling texts and manuscripts: some digital approaches to material texts

Palaeographers, codicologists and indeed textual editors have long engaged with technological developments and the challenges that they present, and recent years are no exception to that. Developments in digital imaging, the internet, the availability of powerful computers and new algorithms in machine vision and artificial intelligence: all these are already transforming the way we study and understand books and the texts they contain. Nevertheless, real questions remain here. What does it mean to represent a material object digitally: what do we gain and lose, and when does it matter? Where are the foreseeable limits to what the computer can achieve? Conversely, are we fully taking advantage of all the computer has to offer? Are we driving the technology, or is it leading us? This talk will discuss these issues through consideration of some recent developments in the application of digital and computational methods to historical books and writing, focussing particularly on the recently completed ‘Exon’ project on the Exon Domesday survey of South-West England.