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century BC) was digital. The abacus is regarded as the oldest digital calculating
aid. The Romans also used digital bead
frames. Similar devices are offered today
at flea markets. Digital calculating machines appeared in the 17th century (
inventions by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise
Pascal, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz). In
1614, the Scotsman John Napier invented digital Napier rods, used for multiplication and division. Since the middle of
the 19th century, mechanical calculating
machines have been mass-produced in
France (Thomas Arithmometer, patent
1820). Charles Babbage’s (unfinished)
analytical engine (1834) and a similar
machine of the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo (1920) were also
digital, as were the widely used punch
card machines (Herman Hollerith,
1890).
Digitalization is therefore nothing
new. The first mathematical instrument
was not an analog but a digital device,
the abacus. Significant phases of digi-
tization began in the 1940s and 1950s
with the advent of relay and vacuum tube
computers. The shift from mechanics
to electronics, which began mainly in
the 1970s, replaced analog slide rules
and digital mechanical calculators with
digital electronic computers. For many
years, analog and digital electronic com-
puters competed against each other.
In my opinion, the humanities are
neither analog nor digital. They increasingly using digital resources. It would
be better to speak of computer-aided or
computer-assisted humanities. The pre-digital era must have been before the
Greek abacus.
Robin K. Hill
Tech User
Responsibility
https://cacm.acm.
org/blogs/blog-
cacm/231489-tech-
user-responsibility/fulltext
September 30, 2018
Some years of experience with faculty
assistance has led me to speculate that
the well-known frustrations of IT user
support hide even deeper problems.
Many of us with such experience know
the chronic difficulty suffered by both
client and consultant in the support
scenario. Each day promises, and delivers, repeated problems, trivial issues,
and deep misunderstandings attendant
on the use of applications and devices.
Users ask the same questions, individually and severally, over and over,
requesting help when what they really
want is someone who will do it for them.
In my own experience providing technical support to faculty and also to members of a volunteer civic organization, I
Herbert Bruderer
There Are
No Digital Humanities
https://cacm.acm.
org/blogs/blog-
cacm/232969-there-
are-no-digital-humanities/fulltext
November 26, 2018
Digitization and the digital revolution
are quite confusing. Probably most
people believe digital is something
new. Many think the opposite of digital is analog or mechanical. However,
the forerunners of electronic or digital
journals and books are printed works. I
would not call them analog. Historians
sometimes speak of a pre-digital era.
Even museum experts are surprised
when historical mechanical calculating machines are described as digital.
For them, digital and electronic are
synonymous. A new field of the humanities is named digital humanities.
However, the equation digital = new,
analog = old does not work. Digital is not
an achievement of the 21st century. Even
the antique Salamis counting board (4th
Seeking Digital
Humanities,
IT Tech Support
Herbert Bruderer explains why the opposite of digital is not analog;
Robin K. Hill describes how the challenges of user support
are aggravated by indeterminate client responsibility.
DOI: 10.1145/3297799 http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm