Archaetech

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a few good congregations recently and something of a running theme has cajoled me once again into the blogosphere. The first was ‘Digital Heritage in the New Knowledge Environment: Shared Spaces & Open Paths to Cultural Content‘ hosted by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture in Athens. Following that, I managed to make half of the TEI and CRM-SIG meetings in London.

The former was a real eye-opener in a lot of ways. My background is in theatre, philosophy and archaeology, so I’ve always assumed Athens was pretty much built for me. Fortunately it didn’t disappoint. If sitting on top of the Areopagus at sundown with a couple of tinnies can’t bring the philosopher out in you, your days have run their course. The National Museum is a candy box of eye-popping archaeological delights (shame about the website), and, well I guess I’ll just have to take in a show next time.

The conference itself was one of the most stimulating I’ve attended in a while. As a mixture of Greek cultural heritage professionals and a more international group of invited digital specialists, the division between open and closed world views was starkly drawn. Inspired by the location to draw a gratuitous athenian analogy, I dubbed the competing factions the ‘new platonists’ and the ‘new socratics’. The platonists hold the view that there is some kind of objective value in culture that needs to be identified, nurtured and above all protected from the more philistine elements of globalistion. This can only be done by an elite professional class of curators (priests?) and academics (philosophers?). Meanwhile, the socratics see our role as entirely different - it is not our duty to protect, but rather to provoke, undermine and play with the narratives and interpretations we all normally take for granted.

Of course, we are all a mixture of both these tendencies, but depending on context one side or the other tends to play out. I was flying the flag of the socratics on this occasion, but similar arguments were levelled in excellent papers by (in no particular order) Stuart Eve, Eric Kansa, Stefano Costa, Kostas Arvanitis, Anna Simandiraki, Gregory Paschalidis and Christos Galanis. On the other side we heard about the need to protect culture from ‘globalisation’, the danger of putting archaeological data online where the public can see it (DVD is the preferred medium because you can make it look like a book), and the honest, and difficult, question as to whether countries with deeply contested histories can risk supporting multicultural perspectives in public museums.

Some interesting (and unexpected) light was thrown on that question by Greg Crane at the TEI meeting. The answer to the question ‘who is the most important classicist of the 20th Century?’ is arguably: The Ayatollah Khomeini. Prior to the 1979 revolution he was a political philosopher specialising in the Athenian philosophers. Apparently the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the name implies, is founded largely on the principles of Plato’s Republic. Can it be that the strongest argument against the greatest defence of paternalism in history is that same theory played out for real? The following day at the CRM-SIG, Greg raised the other big question close to my heart - How can we ask the big questions of Antiquity? We are finally in an era when our research is no longer limited to the amount that a human being can read (and recall) in a lifetime. The information deluge and the tools developed to deal with it have completely changed the ballgame. I would add that not only must we start to ask new questions but we can no longer answer the old ones. In the Googlepoch information is produced too quickly, and the gaps in our knowledge are too apparent, for us ever to feel completely sure of ourselves again.

And I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

PS A recent blessay on language by Stephen Fry captures the spirit of what I mean far better than I ever can.

A couple of things came down the RSS pipe today that seemed well worth a comment.

The first, courtesy of Lisa Spiro, is a nice piece of research which perfectly illustrates the point I made in the Athens Paper: New Media sources (in this case, Wikipedia) look set to increasingly compete with traditional ones, even in academia. Why and what this might mean for the future are things she discusses in a thoughtful and interesting post.

This makes it all the more encouraging that Internet Archaeology are once again using the power of their format to do something interesting. The beauty of a Web resource is that they can mash up their own content to make it easier for users to find just what they want - something particularly valuable in a journal with such a wide remit. In this case they’ve gathered together all their Roman papers, but they say it’s “the first of what we hope to be many themed content pages”. I certainly hope so too But hey, that’s still only broken down by themes that the IA editorial committee find interesting. How about a Tag cloud of keywords? or even (whisper it low) community tagging…?

Oh, and two other niggles, guys: 1) Breaking papers into sections is fine for the web but a real drag when all you want to do is print it out and read it over a cup of tea. Surely a PDF download is easy to create for most of the articles? 2) Like a lot of other folks, Zotero RDF has revolutionised my citing. Or at least it has for IT texts - one search, one click and I have all the details. Sadly, Archaeology has lumbered along behind as ever and I almost inevitably have to type in citations by hand. Perhaps IA could lead the way in this too? Don’t take this as a whinge though - you’re still my favourite Arch/IT journal

I just had this posted as a comment on my About page. It seemed a slightly curious way to go about advertising (does anyone read my About page?) but a million quid could be interesting to some of Archaetech’s loyal readership so I’m reposting it here.

Dear Archaetech, We would like you and your readers to consider applying for and to help get out the word about our second (200 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition. It’s a $2 Million Competition. Focus: Participatory Learning
Application Deadline: October 15, 2008
Full information at: http://www.dmlcompetition.net
Awards will be made in two categories:

Innovation in Participatory Learning Awards support large-scale digital learning projects
$30,000-$250,000

Young Innovator Awards are targeted at 18-25 year olds
$5,000-$30,000

Full information at: http://www.dmlcompetition.net

A Digital Heritage Working Group was set up at WAC, both to support the organisation and also work through and provide guidance on digital and communication issues in global archaeology (an area on which I’ve been making my opinion rather clear of late). If you are interested in joining please get in touch with Michael Ashley - we’d value help from any corner

I indicated to Yannis and Umberto that I would be happy to display or link to any information they provided on this blog and Umberto has requested that I post an email (which is similar to one on the - closed - WAC mailing list) that he sent to me. The full text is below. He also feels that the vote was not as close as I suggested in my blog to which I have replied that it is simply my recollection, as someone with a view of about 2/3 of the chamber. I am willing to be corrected by any independent authority on this matter. I am still concerned that no effort has been made to correct the misinterpretations of those in the press and blogosphere that read the earlier Press Release and continue to encourage Yannis and Umberto to do so.

Dear Leif,

Many thanks for your email. I’ll let Yannis deal with most of the issues you
raise as I believe he is in a more appropriate position to do so, but I would
like to clarify the point in which you call me into cause. In fact it is a
point that seems to have generated some really unnecessary confusion and which
I have already clarified more than once with Claire - sorry Claire you are now
going to hear this one again! - and I have also sent a message to the WAC list
about this (that for some strange reason not all members seem to have received
- a technical itch)

You mention that there were amendments made at the plenary, in fact made by
myself. I would like to clarify that there were no amendments whatsoever made
either by myself or anybody else. What happened at the plenary is that the
chairman (assuming an authority that he really should have not had) decided to
split the resolution into two. The two separate parts of the resolution were
both carried by the plenary. The resolution was split to allow separate votes,
and since the two votes generated the same result, in terms of the opinion of
the plenary it makes absolute sense to reestablish the resolution to its
original format.
Concerning the advice passed to the assembly (and eventually to the executive)
the only obvious slight rewording that became necessary was that by divorcing
the second paragraph from the first the reference to Iran had gone. I made this
absolutely clear at the plenary: the resolution only concerned Iran and not
just any relationship with the military. It is very unfortunate that despite my
clarification and despite what I believe should have been obvious the second
part of the resolution was not discussed by the executive - I assume in totally
good faith - for what it was but it was rather taken to mean any relationship
with the military. This mistake has become clear from the information provided
by Claire including the justifications why the executive decided not to follow
the advice of the plenary on the second paragraph. The splitting of the
original resolution has therefore created unncessary confusion and Yannis has
been right in reestablishing it to its orginal format. I hope you will consider
this clarification and what I am telling you now in the information you will
provide in your blog. I am confident that we are both keen to present the
evidence honestly and clearly, independently from our potential differences of
opinion. If there are still grey areas, please do get back in touch.

Cheers,
Umberto