1. Comments on “Big? Smart? Clean? Messy? Data in the Humanities”

The concepts of “big data” and “smart data” proposed by Christof Schoch fascinate me. Automatic annotation and crowdsourcing are the two ways to combine them, although I believe that annotation should come after crowdsourcing. Our OpenRefine practice relied heavily on crowdsourcing, and as a result, we learned that small bugs can be extremely frustrating. Only after eliminating all bugs can we annotate between each other. As discussed in class, annotation involves machine learning, which results in artificial intelligence. The most intuitive annotation, or the simplest way for people to transmit information, is to imitate the human thought process; therefore, AI is essential. When the day comes, big data and smart data are identical.

2. Comments on “Humanities Data: A Necessary Contradiction”

It appears that one of the difficulties in Digital Humanities is the asymmetrical communication of information between technologists and traditional humanities scholars. Their various interpretations of “data” are. Personally, I believe that traditional researchers’ pride prevents them from adopting the digital method. On the one hand, they are eager for the digital aspect to assist them with “crowdsourcing,” but on the other, they believe it is difficult to collect “data” elements such as emotion and sensation. The later aspect is the primary impediment at present.