scott b. weingart

The earliest jointly-appointed professor of English and (Computer and) Information Science, to my knowledge, was Sally Sedelow at UNC-Chapel Hill. It was 1966.

Points go to @mm-jj-nn.bsky.social for the closest guess.

Answer: 1965 marked the "coming of age" of computing in the humanities, after two decades of striking advances.

Aren't these winamp wraps?

Reminder that if I get handed a truly obscene amount of money, I'd take a few years off to write my three-volume set:

I: Quantitative Tendencies in Studying People, Culture, and Society Since 1600

II: Busts and Booms: Humanities Computing (1945 – 2005)

III: The Rise and Fall of Digital Humanities

Raccoon has been checked into a facility and would appreciate some privacy during this difficult time.

Also she was still around as of a couple years ago. Maybe you can ask!

@grockwel.bsky.social uploaded a full CV on his institutional repo, which you should be able to find too if interested in exploring more.

By the way, I suspect I'm about to blow your mind:

One of the two scholars highlighted in this 1965 article was English professor Ephim Fogel, Robert Fogel's older brother and intellectual inspiration.

Or maybe you already knew that!

Answer: 1965 marked the "coming of age" of computing in the humanities, after two decades of striking advances.

It is not a coincidence that she and Josephine Miles were the two most likely candidates from the era.

The earliest jointly-appointed professor of English and (Computer and) Information Science, to my knowledge, was Sally Sedelow at UNC-Chapel Hill. It was 1966.

Points go to @mm-jj-nn.bsky.social for the closest guess.

Well guessed! One year off at 1966. Revealing the answer elsewhere in the thread.

It was the sibling of that conference! Also IBM-funded, but this was the one in Yorktown Heights.

Good guess! I don't believe Miles (Berkeley English prof as of 1940) was joint appointed to school of information science, though I could be wrong. At any rate, "Information Science" did not exist at Berkeley until 1976, and the person I'm thinking of had their joint appointment before that date.

Hah, my random post asking for an EU-to-US HDMI cable converter.

Anybody else? We've got two (serious) guesses so far: either someone just before @junsworth.bsky.social in the 1980s (by @tedunderwood.com, or Rick Powers by @badtoss.bsky.social.

Nope, much too late (if we're thinking of the same guy).

I mean Information Science so-named.

This is the first time I've posted this specific article, although not the first time I posted about this conference.

cc @bschmidt.bsky.social and @jtauber.com (who guessed closest at 1969.)

www.jstor.org/stable/1979563

February 1965!

I feel like Yorktown Heights, NY narrows it down too much, for those who know their computing history.

Guess also: who was the first professor jointly appointed in English and Information Science, and what year (or decade) was it?

cc @tedunderwood.com

Quick: without looking it up, what date was this article written?

To answer the two questions on everyone's minds: yes, of course I know the raccoon—everyone in Richmond does. No, I did not know he had a drinking problem.

Fabulous critical reaction to Dan Cohen's post last week on handwriting recognition:

Fabulous critical reaction to Dan Cohen's post last week on handwriting recognition:

Introducing AI to an Online Petition Platform Changed Outputs but not Outcomes The rapid integration of AI writing tools into online platforms raises critical questions about their impact on content production and outcomes. We leverage a unique natural experiment on Change$.$org...

Excited to share a new working paper!

What happened when Change.org integrated an AI writing tool into their platform? We provide causal evidence that petition text changed significantly while outcomes did not improve. 1/

arxiv.org/abs/2511.13949

I won't specifically call out the folks more adjacent to us, but (e.g.,) medical record digitization is one big player here.

So I really don't think it's a strawman that Leon is building, though of course I still think HTR can be a net benefit to the study of the human past if historians/archivists/etc. remain central to its careful development and use. Maybe that's where the disagreement lies, if there is one.

And there's also the legitimate concern of intent vs. outcome. That is, even if we humanistic HTR "boosters" truly believe in the value of inky fingers, we're getting hoodwinked or swept up in a process that will nevertheless lead to our own demise.