Papers by John Bonnett
Researchers use a mathematical model to perform a counterfactual study of the 1854 Charge of the ... more Researchers use a mathematical model to perform a counterfactual study of the 1854 Charge of the Light Brigade.
They first calibrate the model with historical data so that it
reproduces the actual charge’s outcome. They then adjust the
model to see how that outcome might have changed if the Heavy Brigade had joined the charge and/or if the charge had targeted the Russian forces on the heights instead of those in the valley. The results suggest that all the counterfactual attacks would have led to heavier British casualties. However, a charge by both brigades along the valley might plausibly have yielded a British victory.
Alexander Watson's Marginal Man makes three contributions to the Innis literature. It provides t... more Alexander Watson's Marginal Man makes three contributions to the Innis literature. It provides the most complete forensic analysis we have or are ever likely to have of Innis' interaction with the intellectual context of his time. Second, Marginal Man provides the first major biographical treatment of Innis' life since Donald Creighton's biography published in 1957. And finally, it provides a characterization of Innis' thought, an account of its trajectory, and an identification of its provenance. Watson's arguments -- particularly those associated with his third contribution -- are complex and provocative. But when they are read in conjunction with Innis' published and unpublished writings, they are not convincing. He attempts to articulate conceptual divides between Innis' economic and communication writings that do not exist. And he attempts to link Innis' thought to non-documented sources while ignoring sources that are cited in Innis' writings.
One of the most significant attributes of digital computation is that it has disrupted extant wor... more One of the most significant attributes of digital computation is that it has disrupted extant work practices in multiple disciplines, including history. In this contribution, I argue that far from being a trend that should be resisted, it in fact should be encouraged. Computation is presenting historians with novel opportunities to express, analyze, and teach the past, but that potential will only be realized if scholars assume a new research mandate, that of design. For many historians, such a research agenda is likely to seem strange, if not beyond the pale. There are tasks that fall properly within the domain of the Historian’s Craft and the design of workflows for digital platforms and expressive forms for digital narratives are not among them. In Section One, via the writings of Harold Innis, I make the case that a preoccupation with design is in fact very much part of Canada’s historiographic tradition. In Section Two, I present an environmental scan of emerging technologies, and suggest that
now is an opportune time to revive Innis’ preoccupation with design. In the following two sections, I present the StructureMorph Project, a case study showing how historians can leverage the properties of digital form to realize their expressive, narrative, and attestive needs in the digital,
virtual worlds that will become increasingly important platforms for representing, disseminating, and interpreting the past.
Reviews in American History, Jan 1, 1996
CH Working Papers, Jan 1, 2003
One of the key challenges currently facing humanities and computing scholars is the generation of... more One of the key challenges currently facing humanities and computing scholars is the generation of new conventions, particularly new forms of narration and representation to support student development of critical thinking skills. Drawing inspiration from the writings of the communication theorist Harold Innis, this study argues that conventions supporting information visualization the production of visual analogues of ideas or patterns represented by text and number can help students apprehend and interrogate concepts. The experience of the 3D Virtual Buildings Project suggests that a program devoted to 3D computer modelling is one way that Innis' ideas might be realized. Through tutorials students learn to reconstruct models of historic Canadian settlements and to translate historic data into numeric information for a 3D model. Most importantly, the tutorials show students that historical models are inherently imperfect, at best partial reconstructions of the past. Through a process of information translation and visualization, students learn to distinguish historical models from the objects they purport to represent.
Literary and linguistic computing, Jan 1, 2004
In the coming decades, the platforms and formalisms scholars employ to display, transform, and tr... more In the coming decades, the platforms and formalisms scholars employ to display, transform, and transmit information will continue to evolve. Innovations in information management did not stop with the codex. They will not stop with the PC. The purpose of this paper is to explore a specific implication that new paradigms of computing—especially those pertaining to 3D objects and 3D environments—will present for the discipline of history. Put simply, this study suggests historians will need to re‐think the aesthetics of their discipline. Drawing on the experience of the<it> 3D Virtual Buildings Project</it>, it suggests there are two possibilities historians can and ought to explore. The first is to test the efficacy of 3D objects as cognitive tools, tools designed to assist student realization that historical works are models, models that must be distinguished from the objects they represent. The second is to explore the use of 3D‐immersive environments as platforms to display research findings. If Virtual Reality is to emerge as a viable medium for the historical discipline, scholars will need to transform their practice. Assumptions regarding the constitution of narrative, authorship and the scholarly work will all require modification.
It is a truism in the digital humanities, a constant one, and a good one, that it is always in a ... more It is a truism in the digital humanities, a constant one, and a good one, that it is always in a state of transition. Such an observation is not surprising since the instrument upon which it relies -- the computer -- is itself in a state of flux. For the moment, its computational power remains firmly in the grip of Moore's Law, exponentially increasing its computational power as the decades pass. Scholars, whether they want it or not, are constantly being presented with new paradigms of computing -- be it cloud computing, ubiquitous computing, or high performance computing -- and new tools and markup schemes to express, treat and analyze content. In any publication devoted to the digital humanities, then, it would seem superfluous to mention that change is our constant condition and our constant preoccupation, a trite observation best left unsaid. We sympathize with this view. But when it comes to describing digital humanities scholarship generally, and computationally supported scholarship in Canada particularly, we think it is wrong. In Canada and abroad, a number of important developments have recently emerged that will impinge on the practice and future trajectory of our inter-discipline. They are new, important, and are reflected in the contributions to this issue. They are of sufficient moment and frequency that we feel justified in rendering this issue of Digital Studies with the thematic stamp it now bears: that of transition.
Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, Jan 1, 2009
In 2006 CFI announced its financial support for the creation
of a national High Performance Compu... more In 2006 CFI announced its financial support for the creation
of a national High Performance Computing (HPC) platform, and the formation of a new organization to govern it: Compute Canada. The platform now affords Canadian researchers with more computational power than they have ever enjoyed before. HPC presents rich research possibilities for Canada’s social scientists and humanities (SSH) researchers. Our respective research communities, however, are not yet prepared to exploit them. This report outlines two possibilities that HPC presents for SSH research, centering on serious computer games and Massive Multi-User Persistent Worlds. It also contains recommended steps for SSHRC and the SSH research community to take in order to exploit them.
War in History, Jan 1, 1997
Innovations in computing are presenting historians with access to new forms of expression with th... more Innovations in computing are presenting historians with access to new forms of expression with the potential to enhance scholars' capacities and to support novel methods for analysis, expression and teaching. Computer-generated form can change the way we generate, appropriate, and disseminate content. If these benefits are to be realized, however, the discipline must make room for a new domain of practice-based research. the practices we have for knowledge generation were devised in association with print technology, and historians must now acquire and develop practices that can inform our use of digital forms of representation, as well as the platforms that sustain them.
In Europe and North America, scholars are beginning to shed the assumptions of print culture. The... more In Europe and North America, scholars are beginning to shed the assumptions of print culture. They are also only beginning to perceive the possibilities of a computerized, electro-magnetic culture. In this first decade of the twenty-first century, historians face a challenge: how, and to what extent, are we to appropriate the 3D-immersive environment as an instrument of representation and interaction? In many ways, the situation is analogous to that faced by scholars at the close of the Roman Empire. Virtual Reality (VR) - the generation of artificial, three-dimensional, immersive environments by the computer - is the codex of our time. As a medium of communication, it presents new methods for representation, narration and instruction. In this study I suggest how using the 3D Virtual Buildings Project as a framework for discussing what is currently possible and as a prototype for discussing what will soon be possible.
Talks by John Bonnett
Harold Innis' writings on media and communication technology are well known and remain a point of... more Harold Innis' writings on media and communication technology are well known and remain a point of departure for scholars seeking to understand the cultural and cognitive implications of the instruments we use to communicate. Less well known is Innis' preoccupation with the concept of information. Like his contemporaries Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon, Innis was keenly aware that information had a significance that extended its semantics. It also had a quantitative significance. It flowed through cultural systems, and was governed by specific dynamics that regulated the behaviour of the systems of which it was a part. Sometimes, when the quantity of circulating information became too high, it caused the systems it governed to become dysfunctional, and eventually collapse. Innis introduced his ideas on information in the neglected anthology _Political Economy in the Modern State_. In fact, in the cultural essays he offered an interpretation of western history built on the premise that circulating information was a help and hindrance to cultural evolution and adaptation. Innis believed that the emergence of the steam printing press in many ways had proven to be a disaster for the West.
In my talk, I will explore why he thought that was so, and what he believed scholars should do in response. His solutions, in retrospect, are very interesting because they anticipate a trend emerging in multiple domains of research and practice today: the use of topographic form to support expression, instruction and thought.
"The Topographic Revolution in the Digital Humanities -- There has been much talk lately in the N... more "The Topographic Revolution in the Digital Humanities -- There has been much talk lately in the New York Times and elsewhere about how the Digital Humanities are “the next big thing” in the Humanities. That discussion for the most part has centered on the activities of humanists in literary studies, history and linguistics who have used computation to support their work with two expressive objects: the letter and the number. The letter and the number of course has been used to create massive corpora and other data sets, and scholars have used computation to discover significant patterns within those data sets, to support activities ranging from authorship attribution to descriptions of demographic change over time. It is important to recognize, however, that computation is providing new expressive objects that in their sum are creating what I believe is a topographic revolution in human communication practice. The computer is making it easier to access forms of representation that are:
•Topographic – meaning they have two-, three- and four –dimensions
•Dynamic – meaning that they move
•And Autonomous – meaning that they perform behaviors independently of any direct manipulation by their author or programmer
These forms, I suggest, will have two important implications for digital humanists. To start, they will influence how scholars teach, analyze and express their content, and in this lecture we will consider how. The second implication is that it will open a new domain of research. Traditionally, digital humanists have concerned themselves with the task of pattern detection. The emergence of computationally-generated forms suggests they will need to pursue another: practical support. The digital humanities will need to make the design and assessment of expressive forms, computing applications and workflows a central part of its research mandate in the years and decades ahead."
Books by John Bonnett
Harold Innis was one of the most profound thinkers that Canada ever produced. Such was his influe... more Harold Innis was one of the most profound thinkers that Canada ever produced. Such was his influence on the field of communication that Marshall McLuhan once declared his own work was a mere footnote to Innis. But over the past sixty years scholars have had a hard time explaining his brilliance, in large measure because Innis' dense, elliptical writing style has hindered easy explication and interpretation. But behind the dense verbiage lies a profound philosophy of history. In Emergence and Empire, John Bonnett offers a fresh take on Innis' work by demonstrating that his purpose was to understand the impact of self-organizing, emergent change on economies and societies. Innis' interest in emergent change induced him to craft an original and bold philosophy of history informed by concepts as diverse as information, Kantian idealism, and business cycle theory. Bonnett provides a close reading of Innis' oeuvre that connects works of communication and economic history to present a fuller understanding of Innis' influences and influence. Emergence and Empire presents a portrait of an original and prescient thinker who anticipated the importance of developments such as information visualization and whose understanding of change is remarkably similar to that which is promoted by the science of complexity today.
Conference Presentations by John Bonnett
There are many things that can and should keep digitally-inclined scholars awake at night: things... more There are many things that can and should keep digitally-inclined scholars awake at night: things that promise opportunity and intellectual discovery; and other things that promise botheration and a mad scramble to keep up. In our work we have been preoccupied with two “C” words that have presented both botheration and opportunity: computation and convergence. With respect to the first, scholars in the past decade have witnessed the shift of computing to what Ray Kurzweil has referred to as “the second half of the chessboard” (Kurzweil, 1999: 37). Computers such as IBM’s Watson, through a combination of brute computational power and A.I., now have the capacity to perform heretofore impossible tasks such as driving cars, making medical diagnoses and engaging in legal reasoning (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014). Historians
in the next couple of decades likely will find themselves using similar devices to locate relevant data on-line. With respect to convergence, we refer to a trend with which most of you are
familiar: the aggregation of multiple tools into a single device in order to enhance the capabilities of users (Peddie, 2001). A smart phone is a well-known example of what we mean here. It integrates applications and devices such as the computer monitor, QWERTY keyboard, camera and phone into a single construct.
In this paper, our purpose is to argue that convergence is a process that will impinge on the future of historical GIS. Indeed, the process has already begun. One outcome of GIS’
integration into a new software/hardware construct is that it will invite innovation: new formalisms and practices will be devised that will complement or replace existing ones found in
GIS. In this contribution, we present one innovation for potential inclusion into this mix, the Complex Object, which we believe will emerge as a functional equivalent to the polygon in
today’s GIS. Our purpose here is to present the concept of the Complex Object, and to display an alpha version of the software we are developing to construct it.
Drafts by John Bonnett
This contribution provides a definition of High Performance Computing, and then considers the imp... more This contribution provides a definition of High Performance Computing, and then considers the importance of the computing paradigm for the humanities. It identifies potential applications of HPC for the humanities, and factors in Canada that currently constrain effective humanist exploitation of HPC.
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Papers by John Bonnett
They first calibrate the model with historical data so that it
reproduces the actual charge’s outcome. They then adjust the
model to see how that outcome might have changed if the Heavy Brigade had joined the charge and/or if the charge had targeted the Russian forces on the heights instead of those in the valley. The results suggest that all the counterfactual attacks would have led to heavier British casualties. However, a charge by both brigades along the valley might plausibly have yielded a British victory.
now is an opportune time to revive Innis’ preoccupation with design. In the following two sections, I present the StructureMorph Project, a case study showing how historians can leverage the properties of digital form to realize their expressive, narrative, and attestive needs in the digital,
virtual worlds that will become increasingly important platforms for representing, disseminating, and interpreting the past.
of a national High Performance Computing (HPC) platform, and the formation of a new organization to govern it: Compute Canada. The platform now affords Canadian researchers with more computational power than they have ever enjoyed before. HPC presents rich research possibilities for Canada’s social scientists and humanities (SSH) researchers. Our respective research communities, however, are not yet prepared to exploit them. This report outlines two possibilities that HPC presents for SSH research, centering on serious computer games and Massive Multi-User Persistent Worlds. It also contains recommended steps for SSHRC and the SSH research community to take in order to exploit them.
Talks by John Bonnett
In my talk, I will explore why he thought that was so, and what he believed scholars should do in response. His solutions, in retrospect, are very interesting because they anticipate a trend emerging in multiple domains of research and practice today: the use of topographic form to support expression, instruction and thought.
•Topographic – meaning they have two-, three- and four –dimensions
•Dynamic – meaning that they move
•And Autonomous – meaning that they perform behaviors independently of any direct manipulation by their author or programmer
These forms, I suggest, will have two important implications for digital humanists. To start, they will influence how scholars teach, analyze and express their content, and in this lecture we will consider how. The second implication is that it will open a new domain of research. Traditionally, digital humanists have concerned themselves with the task of pattern detection. The emergence of computationally-generated forms suggests they will need to pursue another: practical support. The digital humanities will need to make the design and assessment of expressive forms, computing applications and workflows a central part of its research mandate in the years and decades ahead."
Books by John Bonnett
Conference Presentations by John Bonnett
in the next couple of decades likely will find themselves using similar devices to locate relevant data on-line. With respect to convergence, we refer to a trend with which most of you are
familiar: the aggregation of multiple tools into a single device in order to enhance the capabilities of users (Peddie, 2001). A smart phone is a well-known example of what we mean here. It integrates applications and devices such as the computer monitor, QWERTY keyboard, camera and phone into a single construct.
In this paper, our purpose is to argue that convergence is a process that will impinge on the future of historical GIS. Indeed, the process has already begun. One outcome of GIS’
integration into a new software/hardware construct is that it will invite innovation: new formalisms and practices will be devised that will complement or replace existing ones found in
GIS. In this contribution, we present one innovation for potential inclusion into this mix, the Complex Object, which we believe will emerge as a functional equivalent to the polygon in
today’s GIS. Our purpose here is to present the concept of the Complex Object, and to display an alpha version of the software we are developing to construct it.
Drafts by John Bonnett
They first calibrate the model with historical data so that it
reproduces the actual charge’s outcome. They then adjust the
model to see how that outcome might have changed if the Heavy Brigade had joined the charge and/or if the charge had targeted the Russian forces on the heights instead of those in the valley. The results suggest that all the counterfactual attacks would have led to heavier British casualties. However, a charge by both brigades along the valley might plausibly have yielded a British victory.
now is an opportune time to revive Innis’ preoccupation with design. In the following two sections, I present the StructureMorph Project, a case study showing how historians can leverage the properties of digital form to realize their expressive, narrative, and attestive needs in the digital,
virtual worlds that will become increasingly important platforms for representing, disseminating, and interpreting the past.
of a national High Performance Computing (HPC) platform, and the formation of a new organization to govern it: Compute Canada. The platform now affords Canadian researchers with more computational power than they have ever enjoyed before. HPC presents rich research possibilities for Canada’s social scientists and humanities (SSH) researchers. Our respective research communities, however, are not yet prepared to exploit them. This report outlines two possibilities that HPC presents for SSH research, centering on serious computer games and Massive Multi-User Persistent Worlds. It also contains recommended steps for SSHRC and the SSH research community to take in order to exploit them.
In my talk, I will explore why he thought that was so, and what he believed scholars should do in response. His solutions, in retrospect, are very interesting because they anticipate a trend emerging in multiple domains of research and practice today: the use of topographic form to support expression, instruction and thought.
•Topographic – meaning they have two-, three- and four –dimensions
•Dynamic – meaning that they move
•And Autonomous – meaning that they perform behaviors independently of any direct manipulation by their author or programmer
These forms, I suggest, will have two important implications for digital humanists. To start, they will influence how scholars teach, analyze and express their content, and in this lecture we will consider how. The second implication is that it will open a new domain of research. Traditionally, digital humanists have concerned themselves with the task of pattern detection. The emergence of computationally-generated forms suggests they will need to pursue another: practical support. The digital humanities will need to make the design and assessment of expressive forms, computing applications and workflows a central part of its research mandate in the years and decades ahead."
in the next couple of decades likely will find themselves using similar devices to locate relevant data on-line. With respect to convergence, we refer to a trend with which most of you are
familiar: the aggregation of multiple tools into a single device in order to enhance the capabilities of users (Peddie, 2001). A smart phone is a well-known example of what we mean here. It integrates applications and devices such as the computer monitor, QWERTY keyboard, camera and phone into a single construct.
In this paper, our purpose is to argue that convergence is a process that will impinge on the future of historical GIS. Indeed, the process has already begun. One outcome of GIS’
integration into a new software/hardware construct is that it will invite innovation: new formalisms and practices will be devised that will complement or replace existing ones found in
GIS. In this contribution, we present one innovation for potential inclusion into this mix, the Complex Object, which we believe will emerge as a functional equivalent to the polygon in
today’s GIS. Our purpose here is to present the concept of the Complex Object, and to display an alpha version of the software we are developing to construct it.