There Will Be Numbers

Abstract

Beginnings are always hard to trace. They tend to belong more to the realm of myth, as Tristram Shandy well knew. At what point did it become necessary, in the sense of unavoidable, to use computation to study culture? Was it a certain polemic, new kinds of data (Google Books, Project Gutenberg), the rise of analytical techniques (natural language processing, machine learning), technologies such as the internet or social media, or simply that powerful social actor called "critical mass"? It is hard to say with much certainty, although I suspect people will be battling over this for years to come. For many, of course, there is nothing necessary about this approach at all. It seems profoundly unnecessary. It consumes resources, it is politically and technologically expedient, i.e. it fails to resist.

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