Objects, like people, locations, and various other types of named entities, are often easy to detect in language and present on the semantic web. Without events, however, they lack meaning. Assigning roles to objects in events is a step towards bringing them meaning, but the detection and representation of events is much harder than for objects; they are typically not named and humans have difficulty identifying them and distinguishing their boundaries, as well as linking and ordering them consistently. Many event-centric approaches in NLP have attempted to “fix” the problem of human disagreement regarding events by over-specifying their semantics for isolated tasks, but this leads to brittleness and lack of coverage.

Here are the slides:

His results are positive in the sense that the focus group definitely sees a place for digital platforms in sharing their memories and preserving their stories. We were also pleasantly surprised that they already seem to be building narratives around objects, something that is very much in line with the way we would like to offer context to objects. The secondary school pupils liked the demo in the sense that it is a much more active way to work on a topic than to listen to an instructor or read it from a book, but the interface is far from optimal.

Ardjan’s studies gives us some good insights into how we can improve the demo and connect with various user groups to ensure that the Agora platform will indeed become an ‘Agora’ where different communities come together to learn about and discuss objects and their historical contexts. His thesis describing his studies in detail can be found here.

Here is also a slideshow of the context and current status of Agora as presented by Marieke:

History as Dialogue

 “The goal [of digital history] is not to displace argument, synthesis, interpretation, and understanding in favor of a celebration of infinite possibility, but to broaden the participation in a dialogic process of engagement, questioning, and reflection on answers.” __Michael Frisch¹

It is indisputable that the virtual reconstruction of Rome, the real time simulation of the Apollo 11 flight, and the searchable archive of social life in early modern London, are important and exciting means of presenting history with the use of new media. However, these genres are not digital alternatives to academic history writing.

For a long time, the book has been history’s medium and the monograph its genre. The monographic narrative, however, no longer seems appropriate in a digital environment. I will argue that the dialogue as a genre is the most likely candidate to achieve online what the monograph aimed at before: providing a comprehensive synthesis of the past. This online dialogue might develop out of the already existing discussion networks.

Two arguments will be put forward. 1) What is regarded as typical of digital media – it is variable, interactive, dynamic, collaborative, and consisting of hypertext – is in agreement with the online dialogue. 2) Historical monographs provide panoramic interpretations of part of the past. Such historical understanding can also be achieved by means of an online dialogue.

This second argument allows me to partly criticize the supposed rapprochement between the sciences and the humanities in digital humanities. Admittedly, there might be such rapprochement on the level of methods of analysis, however, on the level of understanding and writing, the sciences and the humanities will remain distinctive realms of thought.

1. Cohen, Frisch, Gallagher, Mintz, Sword, Taylor, Thomas III, and Turkel, “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History”, Journal of American History Vol. 95 no. 2 (2008) 452-491.