Digital hermeneutics intro_and_historical_overview

An overview of the history of text
computing in general and Bible &
Computer in particular.

Beginnings (1): Calculation
machine
Source: http://expo.ubvu.vu.nl/carousel_intro.html?index=2&expoid=12&lang=_nl
The German scholar
Wilhem Schikard (1592–
1635), Professor in
mathematics and
astronomy, as well as in
the Biblical languages, was
the first to build a
mechanic calculator.

Beginnings (2): calculating
with words
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(1646-1716):
Quest for a universal language
that can be used as input for a
calculation machine.
We cannot calculate with language, but in
digital text, linguistic elements (letters,
words) correspond to numbers (e.g. each
character has its Unicode value), and those
numbers can be manipulated and calculated.

Beginnings (3) Mechanical
machines
Cabbage Mechanical Analytical engine (1837-1871)
Design for a mechanical general-
purpose computer designed by
in Charles Babbage.
Further development of Difference
Engine, a special-purpose machine for
the automatic production of
mathematical tables (logarithm tables,
tide tables, and astronomical tables)

Historical overview (1)
1940
-50
calculating machine >
universal machine
1941-48 forerunners of
modern computers

1940
-50
universal machine
modern computers
a machine that is capable of
doing any task for which it is
programmed

1940
-50
universal machine
modern computers
1949 start of R. Busa’s
Index Thomisticus

1940
-50
universal machine
modern computers
Index Thomisticus
Complete lemmatization of
Thomas of Aquino’s works (181
works; 11 million words);
project lasted 30 years.

1940
-50
universal machine
modern computers
Index Thomisticus
1960
-70
1960s: computer enabled
to process text
1963 first edition of ASCII
standard

1940
-50
universal machine
modern computers
Index Thomisticus
1960
-70
to process text
standard
7-bits encoding, e.g.
1000000 @
1000001 A
1000010 B
1000011 C
(total 128 codes)

1940
-50
universal machine
modern computers
Index Thomisticus
1960
-70
to process text
standard

1980 ’82 AIBI founded
1990
2000
Association
Internationale
Bible et
Informatique

’85 AIBI-1 text
1990
2000

1980 1981 Apple Lisa GUI
1984 PageMaker
mid/late 80s DTP revolution
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990
2000
Use of page
layout software to create
documents comparable to
traditional typography and
printing. — PC and
WYSIWYG

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990
2000

1984 PageMaker
1989 Microsoft Office
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990
2000

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990
2000

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990 1992 BibleWorks 1.0
1994 Accordance 1.0
2000

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990 1990 TEI P1
1991 Unicode 1.0
1991 WWW
1995 Internet Explorer
1992 BibleWorks 1.0
1994 Accordance 1.0
2000

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990 1990 TEI P1
1991 Unicode 1.0
1991 WWW
1992 BibleWorks 1.0
1994 Accordance 1.0
1996 TC, JHS 1998 Hugoye
2000

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990 1990 TEI P1
1991 Unicode 1.0
1991 WWW
1992 BibleWorks 1.0
1994 Accordance 1.0
2000 2001 Web 2.0
2001 Wikipedia
2004 Facebook

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990 1990 TEI P1
1991 Unicode 1.0
1991 WWW
1992 BibleWorks 1.0
1994 Accordance 1.0
2000 2001 Web 2.0
2001 Wikipedia
2004 Facebook 2000 AIBI-6

1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990 1990 TEI P1
1991 Unicode 1.0
1991 WWW
1992 BibleWorks 1.0
1994 Accordance 1.0
2000 2001 Web 2.0
2001 Wikipedia
2004 Facebook 2000 AIBI-6
Computer
and...
grammar
statistics
discourse
education
multi-media
publishing
community

1940-50 calculating machine >
universal machine
modern computers
Index Thomisticus
1960-70 1960s: computer enabled to
process text
standard
1984 PageMaker
’82 AIBI founded
’85 AIBI-1 text
1990 1991 Unicode 1.0
1991 WWW
1992 BibleWorks 1.0
1994 Accordance 1.0
1996 TC & JHS
2000 2001 Web 2.0
2001 Wikipedia
2004 Facebook
2000 AIBI-6

What can we observe when we see
these developments from the early
beginnings until the first years of the
21st century?

In this development one of the main
concerns of the ETCBC was: how to
use the computer as an analytical
tool, rather than merely as a library,
an office tool, and an imitation of
traditional tools (e.g. word searches
instead of printed concordance).

*Systematic
*Objective
*Quantitative
*Experiments
*More laboratory-like

How to find a way in which the ability to
sort, quantify, reproduce and report text
through computation and the related
scientific mode of inquiry can be fruitfully
combined with interpretation as the
valued mode of assigning or discovering
meaning as understood in
traditional scholarship and
the related reflexive concepts
of individualism and
subjectivity.

Tendencies in computer science and
digital text analysis in the last
decade(s)

*Humanities 1.0: the hermeneutic and critical
tradition as it was developed during the nineteenth
and twentieth century.
*Humanities 2.0: the identification of representation
of patterns by digital means in the humanities as it
has been developed in the second half of the
twentieth and twenty-first century.
*Humanities 3.0: the hermeneutic and critical
tradition applied to these tools and patterns
obtained by humanities 2.0

*Artificial Intelligence: the effort to automate
intellectual tasks normally performed by
humans.
*Symbolic AI: explicit rules, manipulation of
logic (prevalent in 1950s till 1980s)
*Machine learning: can a computer go beyond
the instruction and rules it is given, and learn
by itself how to perform a certain task?

*“Intelligence by machines”. But what is
intelligence? How can the computer “mimic”
human cognitive processes?
*What about other human capacities, e.g.
“artifical creativity”?
*What are the theological and moral
implications, e.g. accident caused by self-
driving car? Will robots too be in the image of
God?

*There are huge differences between e.g. the
BNC and the Hebrew Bible in size (100 millions
vs. 420,000 words), metadata (data, author),
selection (based on linguistics or religious
tradition).
*But new research on Twitter, blogs etc. is
based on a completely new type of fuzzy data,
which seems to resemble the OT much more
than the BNC does.

*“Bible & computer” started in modernist,
positivist mindset. What is the effect of the
transition to post-modernism?
*Striking results of AI and deep learning, e.g.
self-driving cars, but also scepticism. Whereas
Bible & computer started from a desire to
explicitation, are we now going to put our trust
in a black box?

Digital hermeneutics intro_and_historical_overview

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