Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the closing plenary address of Digital
Humanities 2012. Following the keynote will be the closing ceremony. I'm Harold Short
from King's College London and the University of Western Sydney. It is my very great honour
and pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, Professor Masahiro Shimoda of the University
of Tokyo. He is from the Department of Indian Philosophy and Buddhist Studies with a cross
appointment in the Centre for Evolving Humanities in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology.
He is also president of the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities, which at the beginning
of this week was admitted as a new constituent organisation to the Alliance of Digital Humanities
organisations. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge with thanks the help of Professor
Charles Muller and others of Professor Shimoda's colleagues in preparing my remarks. Professor
Shimoda is a highly respected international figure in the field of Indian Philosophy and
Buddhist Studies. In Japan, he has established himself as a scholar who is not only consummate
in his mastery of traditional Japanese methodologies and approaches, but at the same time has
a deep interest in the approaches of scholars from other cultural regions as well as from
other disciplines in the humanities. He devotes considerable energy to understanding and assimilating
these differing approaches, seeking always how to bring the best of different kinds of
scholarship to his specialist fields of inquiry. In the world of Buddhist Studies, Professor
Shimoda is a leading figure in the history of the early Mayana or Great Vehicle Movement
in India. Since historical records from ancient India are relatively scant, there has always
been room for considerable debate in this area. The work that firmly established our
speaker internationally within this debate was his landmark and magisterial treatment
of the Nirvana Sutra, where he documented and analysed the multiplicity of factors
that went into the composition of this seminal religious scripture, including the tendencies
among the community of believers who created it and the variety of social and philosophical
factors in the religious milieu of India at the time. In the earlier part of his career,
Professor Shimoda might have been described as a quotation marks old-fashioned humanities
textual scholar, but then his mentor Yasunori Ejima gave him a new and daunting challenge
that of leading the digitization of the massive Japanese edition of the East Asian Buddhist
Canon, the Taisho Canon, Professor Shimoda quickly came into a deep understanding of
the significance of this task and threw all his energies into the project. The Taisho
Canon is a huge body of material written in classical Chinese, the volumes of which fill
the entire wall of an office, and their digitization required the marshalling of a considerable
number of resources. One of the first challenges was that the OCR technology available in the
early and mid-90s was far from adequate for the task, so the process of digitization also
had to include much hand-typed input, along with the gathering of pre-digitised materials
from various places, followed by all the correcting, editing and arranging that such work requires.
It soon became clear that it would be impossible, completely impossible, to digitise such a
massive collection of texts on the basis of the limited academic funding that was available.
Professor Shimoda therefore had to find alternative ways to assemble the funds and personnel needed
to carry out the project. He was able to do this, however, demonstrating a remarkable
facility for identifying and persuading the right people to help him achieve his goals.
The end result of his efforts can be seen in the online SAT database of the Buddhist
Canon. This not only includes the fully digitised Taisho Canon in a state-of-the-art search
environment, but also serves as the interactive hub for a rapidly growing number of Buddhist
textual sources and database, making it the leading web resource for the field of Buddhist
studies at the present. At the same time, Professor Shimoda has been working tirelessly
within the University of Tokyo to create interest in digital humanities across all the humanities
and related divisions, and to create an interdisciplinary teaching curriculum in digital humanities.
In part, this is because, in his far-sighted way, he has come to the view that the future
of Buddhist studies, and indeed of the humanities as a whole, depends to some significant degree
on developments in digital humanities. This vision extends, of course, beyond the University
of Tokyo, and it is no surprise that Professor Shimoda has been a driving force behind the
founding and development of the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities, which I mentioned
at the beginning of my remarks. I was privileged to attend the inaugural conference of JADH
in Osaka last September, and it was a remarkable occasion for many reasons. Not least the number
of Japanese universities represented, over 30, but also the number of younger scholars
who participated, a characteristic shared with this conference, and something that
in both cases can give us confidence in the future of our field. It is part of Professor
Shimoda's style to be inclusive and collaborative, and for those of us who believe this to be
an intrinsic characteristic of the digital humanities, we are likely to feel that he
has a natural intellectual home here. Certainly, we value these and many other qualities which
Professor Shimoda brings to our field, so it is with very great pleasure that I invite him to
give our closing keynote at DH 2012, Embracing a Distant View of the Digital Humanities. Professor
Shimoda.
Thank you very much, Professor Houtshawat. What a kind introduction. I've been fascinated,
moved by your introduction to who you are introducing. Thank you very much. It is a
genuine honor and extreme pleasure for me to be given this precious opportunity. All the more so,
since this is an occasion placed at the last moment of a wonderful array of full weeks
of cutting edge productions in the digital humanities, I'd like to express first of all,
my wholehearted congratulations on the great success of this conference, and I'd like to offer
my special thanks to Chris and Catherine, as local organizers, Paul, chair of the program
committee, and Ray, chair of the ADHO. Among the numerous notable points of this conference,
what has attracted my attention most is the remarkable diversity of the presentations in
terms of discipline, method, and subject, such as culture and language of the conference theme
of digital humanities, 2012, precisely points to. To the best of my knowledge, my knowledge is quite
limited, though. There has been no conference comparable to DH 2012 in terms of extent in
compassing almost the full range of humanities research. It has been noticeable as well that the
digital humanities are increasingly deepening humanities research by engaging in unprecedented
collaboration with natural scientists, and at the same time broadening that terrain by taking
advantage of the greater variety of information technologies. I believe that they will shortly
come when the digital humanities is listed in the standard university curriculum as one of the
liberal arts course for which freshmen is required to register in humanities schools and departments.
We should be prepared for the near future. In contrast to the broad scope of this topic covered
in this conference, I'd like to restrict the topic of my speech within the confines of textual
studies with a specific desire to clarify the relationship between the digital humanities and
the humanities by shedding light from the perspective of the humanities of the East.
The reason I'm taking up this subject is very simple. All of us here would agree that the
humanities and the digital humanities have a purpose in common, that is, to properly transmit
cultural heritage. The transformation of cultural information, when done best, would be an
uninterrupted sequence between different generations or different cultures. To that end,
the relationship of each culture or generation to another should be made clear. This should
hold true between the humanities and the digital humanities. However, there seems to be a rift
between them, which is widening as the digital humanities develops. The prospects of the digital
humanities are being obscured behind the wall of the cloudy relationship between these two studies.
With this difficult situation in mind, I'd like to suggest here a distant view of the digital
humanities over the long history of the humanities. It is true, all the issues we digital humanists
have at hand are pressing, and what we need is a close, clear view with which we should
cope with these issues. However, at the same time, the undertaking of the digital humanities is so
profound that it can be seen as equivalent to the entire pursuit of the humanities, down up to date.
In discussing the digital humanities, it is crucial to keep a balance between the two
dimensions of the issue, one requiring immediate reaction and microscopic precision,
the other long-term response and the telescopic perspective.
My conclusion on this issue is, again, very simple. In my view, the respective histories of the
humanities and the digital humanities will constitute an unbroken sequence, a sequence
in which some part of the humanities will be replaced by the digital humanities and increasingly
so as the time passes. There is nothing new about this view. However, this prospect has more
important implications than it first appears to, which will be clear when referenced into more
general formula as follows. How should cultures transmit what they believe to be of vital
importance from their own culture in its period of decline to another culture on the rise?
This is a question raised as a challenge to historians by the eminent historian,
Romulal Tapal. This formula functions well in discussing the significance of the digital
humanities in relation to the humanities in the age of media transformation from the following
two perspectives. One is the scale of the period in which the event is taking place. The transformation
in medium from non-digital to digital is undoubtedly in the millennial scale,
and it deserves to be dealt with in the timescale, the transmission of cultures.
The other perspective is that of the semantic structure of this question.
This question lacks a personal agent of the action of transforming the culture.
A statement in history usually requires the term who as the primary element. However,
in this question, the subject is culture, an aggregation of activities, and there is no
personal agent. This statement is actually referring to the transformation of identity
of a culture. The topic of the transformation of identity with a shift of viewpoint from
agent oriented to action oriented, one of the key concerns of this speech will be dealt with
in the last part of this talk. Now, as one of the prerequisites for obtaining a distant view of
digital humanities, let me first draw your attention to the different nature of diversity
found between the humanities and digital humanities. To begin with, the humanities as
a whole is diverse and has become all the more so in the versioning of transdisciplinary approaches.
However, this diversity is quite different from that of the digital humanities,
and this difference has an important implication for understanding the unique mission of the
digital humanities. Let us first pay attention to the nature of the diversity of the humanities.
The humanities, roughly speaking, have two modes of diversity. One is concerned with the object of
research, and the other is related to the method of research. The first mode of diversity concerned
with the object of research originates in the difference in language and culture of human beings.
There are thousands of differences in language on the earth. Given that a culture is formulated
in essential connection to the structure and the function of the language a society adopts,
there would appear in theory to be the same number of different cultures as the number of the
languages. Given that the humanities have the mission of describing the gamut of activities
of human beings as manifested in each culture, they would necessarily be diversified.
The humanities have another mode of diversity. This derived from the difference in method
adopted for the comprehension of human activities. This difference, in my analysis,
can be classified into the following three approaches. One is to reconstruct the relationship
between a documented discourse and an external affair or a fact in the frame of reference of a
chronological sequence of cause and effect. This method is called history, the most predominant
method in the humanities. Another is to highlight the structure and function of the language of a
text by relativizing the significance of the framework of absolute chronology as something
external to the language of the text. This method is exemplified in the disciplines of philosophy
or literature. The other approach is, in contrast to these two, to keep a distance from the function
of the language and instead to place primarily emphasis on the human behaviors outside of verbal
text. This can be seen typically in behavioral sciences such as sociology or psychology.
The differences in method in the humanities derive from the differing distances between existence,
consciousness, and the language. The three axes that construct the cognitive space of a science.
We should take note of another origin of diversity in the humanities, which paradoxically
comes from an effort to overcome existing diversities. When the diversity of a certain
field of study has reached the saturation point, there would appear in the relevant fields an effort
to integrate the hitherto dispersed researches by reaching across the gaps in object and method
lying in the relevant fields. However, this effort of integrity over the passage of time
would be fainted to adding a piece of new diversity in the whole range of the humanities.
An attempt at the rectification of a difference would end up in the further stimulation of
diversity. In this manner, the unfolding of the humanities in the course of history
is on the whole the centrifugal dispersion of research into a variety of mutual independent
disciplines. This development has the tendency to imprison scholars within the confines of each
discipline they have chosen for themselves, obstructing their mutual communication.
On the other hand, the diversity seen in the realm of the digital humanities is considerably different.
There are two modes of diversity in the digital humanities in terms of its origin. One derives
from the aforementioned diversity of humanities research, and the other is caused by the incessant
innovations in technology. In either case, the diversification is not engendered by the
digital humanities themselves. Here we can see a stark contrast to the humanities.
What the digital humanities are doing is, in principle, either an honest attempt at
representing the diversity brought about by the humanities or an upright confrontation
with the diversity caused by technological innovations. Both of them are honest responses
to something taking place outside the digital humanities. This fidelity is one of the most
distinctive and positive characteristics that define the quality of the digital humanities.
Let us examine in some detail the first mode of the diversity
of digital humanities coming from the diversity of the humanities.
And one of the missions of the digital humanities, as represented by the endeavor of TEI,
lies in the attempt of representing the transmitted text combined with their related researches
in the new context of digital media with the research processes taken in the history of the
humanities preserved and scathed to the greatest degree possible. This is an undertaking to
integrate into the domain of digital media the hitherto developed diversities
stored in the codex or the book in either implicit or explicit fashion.
In this sense, the digital humanities is proceeding in the direction of constraining the
diversification of the humanities, showing us a centripetal development in contrast to the
humanities of centripetal dispersion. This centripetal tendency of the digital humanities
has been being put forward with sufficient discretion so as to make apparently incompatible
presentation systems harmoniously coexist in a single context of digital media by means of
laying down common rules among different disciplines at the meta-language level.
The issue of language sharing within a field of study has long been solved in the natural sciences,
which have conducted research by virtue of numerals and symbols. At the advent of the
digital media, this theme has become an urgent need in the field of the humanities, a study
being conducted on the basis of a variety of natural languages. In this sense, the digital
humanities may well be regarded as taking a role similar to that of mathematics, which has served
as a shared language in the natural sciences. Now let us turn our attention to the second
mode of diversity of the digital humanities, namely the diversity produced by technological
innovations. The digital humanities are based on the digital medium, of course an unprecedented
working environment for the humanities scholars. This medium has been transforming and will
continue to transform at a bewildering pace. This will unavoidably require the digital humanities
to diversify over a relatively short period of time. This diversity, however, seen from another
continent populated by traditional humanities scholars, believing themselves to be of unchanging
identity, may appear as a situation of chaos brought about by digital humanities scholars
as the aim of fathering their own goals. The case is completely opposite to this,
I believe. The digital humanities have been making strenuous efforts to enable the humanities
researchers to be sustainable by providing proper navigation in the vast ocean of digital medium
so as not for humanities scholars to be drawn by the repeated strikes of the wave of technological
innovations. Indeed, sustainability in the midst of the incessant transformation of technology
is one of the most challenging responsibilities with which digital humanists are always burdened.
Why not follow the effort by digital humanists to directly confront and steadfastly prepare for
the incessant innovation of computational technologies, the significant amount of
knowledge of the humanities transmitted up to date would be destroyed or simply vanished.
I will now move on to the next topic of the issue of the background for the distant view of the
digital humanities, that is the history of the humanities. The history of the humanities,
as represented by the history of philosophy, has been written to date mostly within western discourse.
Starting with ancient Greece and ending with contemporary days. It is true that there are
lots of advantage to this understanding for the reason that the idea of the humanities and their
related concept by which to elucidate the entirety of humanities activities had been developed in the
west, producing abundant insightful discussions. This trend will continue further
to form the framework of the discussion of the humanities. However, in the aim of exploring the
potentials for the digital humanities in regard to future-oriented quality, it is preferable to
liberate ourselves for a while from this framework to adjust the focus on the history of the
humanities in modern times that has managed to catch sight of the humanities in the east.
As Europeans in the age of the Renaissance found their cultural origins in ancient Greece, so did
the late 18th to early 19th century Europe discover its distant roots in the existence of
one of the Indo-Iranian language, namely Sanskrit. The discovery of this ancient language and the
recognition of the east are shared in the advent of the humanities of modern times,
radically broadening the perspective of the humanities to a global scale,
increasingly assimilating humanistic knowledge in the east to the western tradition of the humanities.
Here, I would like to call this newly emerging humanities study the modern humanities.
Given that the globalization of the humanities research in the east was more or less the
westernization of the eastern traditional knowledge, this theme could be dealt with
from the viewpoint of colonialism or nationalism culminating in Orientalism.
However, I will touch on later the nature of the digital humanities is potentially free from the
fault of Orientalism. The significance of the globalization of the humanities resides in the
fact that a common stage was prepared for the first time for the east and the west, which
had been separated from each other since the beginning of their history. We should not pay
excessive attention to the fact that it was the west that prepared the stage. To understand what
happened in the encounter between the east and the west in a constructive manner as possible,
we should get rid of the asian-oriented phrasing of a question, such as who prepared for whom,
and replace it by an action-oriented one, such as what happened in what circumstances. This is
exactly shown by the question put forth by the historian. Then a much more important fact will
come into a site that shows the beneficial affinity with the modern humanities that have
found the east. This is concerned with the distinctive disposition of the humanities scholars
toward the discovery of the truth. As represented by the sense of truth found in religions,
humanities scholars tend to think that the truth is not something to be created anew,
but something that was once discovered in the past and has been hidden somewhere in the entire
legacy of knowledge transmitted up to the present. The mission of the humanities is, therefore,
to rediscover the truth that is embedded in a particular form of knowledge and to reveal it in
a proper manner in the present context. Therefore, the wealth of the humanities is dependent on the
width and the depth of the total amount of knowledge handed down from the past.
At the time, a common stage of the modern humanities was established. The new found
awareness that cultures in the east in such spheres as India or China were present in far
greater quantity and from a much earlier period than that of ancient Greece understandably came
to attract scholarly attention initiating a change in the direction of the humanities.
This stands in contrast to the natural sciences where it is believed that their work consists in
discovering new findings one after another. In fact, this has something to do with the digital
humanities which make use of the digital medium as a product of the natural sciences.
We will come back to this point at the end of this speech. Another crucial characteristic inherent
in the global realization of the humanities starting with the western discovery of Sanskrit
should be added here. The most distinctive difference between the Renaissance that
acknowledge the foundation for European culture in the Greek age and the modern humanities that
assumes European origins in Indo-Iranian language consists in the extensiveness
and the abstractness of the cognitive space. The Renaissance was a sort of retrieval of the lost
memory from their origin in the space of their living experience whereas the modernist discovery
was a purely idealistic venture to set up an origin in the world alien to their immediate living
experience. The formation of the origin of Europe in the Akari form of Indo-Iranian language
enables the establishment of an idealistic space of cognition distanced from living experience
that had long been intrinsic to the traditional humanities. This awareness brought about a far
broader context than ever before in which to compare different histories, languages, and colleges
to attain a deeper understanding of them. In the 19th century, the mountain of traditional
knowledge accumulated in the east came into the site of European intellectuals. Interestingly
enough, it was Indology that took the leadership of forming the new stage for the modern humanities
whereas it was Buddhism that was relocated on the stage of the modern humanities prepared
by Indology. Indology and Buddhology, a pair of studies in a sibling relationship, can be
exemplars for considering the implications in the modern humanities from the side of the west and
the east respectively. Indology producing religious studies and promoting linguistics
in the 19th century Europe encapsulated the birth of the modern humanities in the west.
For European intellectuals, Indology was certainly different from the humanities
of the previous ages in respect to the object of research being outside the European Christian
world but it was at the same time closer to the humanities of Europe than any other studies in
terms of the linguistic affinity of Sanskrit to Greek and Latin. Here, another unexpected
stroke of good luck came, namely discovery of Buddhism by the west, one of the world's major
religions having its origin in ancient India. Awelling itself of this discovery, Indology
expanded the scope of activity to Buddhism involving synology, Tibetology, Japanology and so
forth. On the other hand, Buddhism which had existed delimited by the distinct cultural and
regional spheres of South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet and East Asia began to integrate it into
a new form of knowledge to play on the same stage of the modern humanities.
As might be imagined, it was at the level of the text that
different traditions of the humanities that had been centrifugally dispersed in the course of
development were reunited here. As might be imagined, it was at the level of the text
that the reunion of different lineages of Buddhism by the modern humanities was successfully
accomplished. The transformation of traditional Buddhism into the medium of the book
The transformation of traditional Buddhism into the medium of the book was a necessary
condition for initiating Buddhist studies in a newly emerging space of cognition of the modern
humanities. The provision of the printed book by typography was of pivotal significance in
establishment and dissemination of this new scope of cognition in the 19th and the 20th century in
both the East and the West. The continuous sustenance of a specific cognitive state
requires technologies and media to externalize the cognition.
Newly created cognition is able to be externalized in actuality if and only provided
with an appropriate medium. Especially the publication of a corpus of the scriptures
that had been preserved as complete canon written in Pali language, a sort of dialect of
Sanskrit became the primary concern of European scholars. The Pali text society was established
in London in 1881 and the corpus of Pali text started to be published on the basis of the strict
editorial principles of hilology using biblical criticism in comparison to the traditions of
Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Indeed the publication of the scriptures of a religion
in a complete corpus is equivalent in insignificance to the emergence of the entire religion
as such. The publication of the Pali library was a stunning accomplishment for the Buddhist
countries in East Asia, particularly for Japan, a country that has achieved leadership status
in Asia in terms of modernization of its academic structure. In fact, however, there existed a
Buddhist canon in the form of a Chinese translation which is far greater in size and which includes
more ancient and diverse content than that of Pali canon. In response to this situation,
the revealing of this world that had been completely invisible to the West was taken
as a pressing issue by Japanese scholars. For that purpose, the transformation of the Chinese
Buddhist canon preserved in the form of a cortex of woodblock printing or manuscript
into the readily distributable form of the modern book was inevitable. However,
the creation of printed books through metal typography of Buddhist canon comprised of more
than 27,000 kinds of Chinese characters was undertaking of incredible proportions.
It was Takaku Tsujinjuro, the first professor of the department of Sanskrit literature of Tokyo
Imperial University who took on the responsibility and brought it into completion under the name of
Taisho Shinshu Daizoku. This corpus is composed of 100 million characters and 7 million
lines in 85 volumes as Harold kindly introduced.
It's here.
And we have finally come to the good part.
Yes.
It was only 60 years from the time the canon had been transfigured into the movable type print
until a Japanese project called the sati set began digitizing it in collaboration with
projects in Taiwan, Korea, China, a surprisingly short period of time.
In Japan, religious scripture had existed in the form of manual described or wood printed
cortex for more than 1400 years by the end of the 19th century serving as a foundation
on over a high rate of literacy. In contrast to the west that experienced a dramatic impact from
the advent of the Gutenberg Bible in the 15th century, the period during which
the typographical printed book monopolized the intellectual market in Japan was astonishingly
brief. With regard to the other Asian countries suffice it to say that they made the transition
of new mode of publication of distribution later than Japan. The printing technology in the east
demands the manipulation of tens of thousands of accomplished Chinese movable types and requires
highly skilled workers. This situation is less conducive for mass production. It is therefore
natural that this technology would tend to readily give way with appearance of new technology that
can handle the task more easily and cheaply. As I have noted above, the primary significance of
the advent of the modern humanities is primarily concerned with establishment of a new platform
on which to consolidate the knowledge and culture of the east and the west. This in fact suggests
the promising potential of the digital humanities. In almost all the aspects of the humanities such
as the preservation, presentation and exchange of transmitted knowledge with perhaps the only
exception of intensive reading, the digital format is most likely to excel the potential of the
printed book. No one would deny the growing likelihood that the digital medium will take
over the printing technology inviting the digital humanities as the protagonist.
In fact as far as the Buddhist studies are concerned the digital humanities is now
undoubtedly in acute need.
Every time the history of Buddhism of 2500 years can be seen as a process of relocating
the transmitted knowledge into the technological progress, yes, every time a development in
technology or a media transformation took place in such transition from oral to written language,
manuscript to Udu block, block to typography and typography to digital, Buddhist scholarly monks
and modern scholars posed there to retrieve an overall picture of the transmitted knowledge
tracing back to the past finding hidden things therein and integrating all the findings to take
forward into the future. As a consequence the content of the Buddhist knowledge has become
increasingly prosperous and complicated. In particular Buddhism rarely shows a linear
transmission of authority in which a single entity is replaced another newly appearing single one
thus forming a single genetic line of transmission. By contrast Buddhism allows the coexistence of
different lineages which when combined will form a plane not a line of transmission composed of a
variety of contemporary entities. In addition Buddhism has been richly realized in a variety
of cultures of the wide range of Asia written in a variety of languages. Furthermore since the
introduction of the modern humanities in the late 19th century Buddhist studies have shown an
unprecedented scale of development having produced a vastly greater volume of research than ever before.
All of them are inevitable for understanding Buddhism since they are ramifications from the
whole of Buddhism. To gain a proper understanding of this vast network of knowledge to gain a
bird's eye view is indispensable. Apparently we have now reached a point where no proper
centripetal integration could be attained without the help of the technology of the new
media and the new form of the humanities that is the digital humanities.
As the last topic of this issue I'd like to refer to the distinctive aspect that the digital
humanities are shedding a light on with the introduction of digital media into the humanities.
Sorry this is the last slide.
This is the subject of transformation of identity. As far as textual studies are concerned
this subject can be narrowed down this transformation of identity it can be narrowed
down into the following two characteristics. First the vanishing of the boundary of text
and second the challenging of emergence of the digital dimension to the humanities.
First it is no exaggeration to say that it is the digital humanities that are fully prepared
for dealing with the specific nature of Buddhist scriptures in terms of disappearance of the
boundaries of text. Buddhist scriptures of ancient India show distinct characteristics
that cannot be neatly classified in any modern concept of text. Each scripture has usually
several different titles and one of the same title is in other few cases applied to completely
different texts. Among other things a scripture transformed its identity in the course of the
development. The difficulty of the identification of a text by means of a title holds true to
authorship as well. Scriptures called sutras which were produced for more than a thousand years and
which reached voluminous amount in quantity are all ascribed to the Buddha. This means in point
of fact that the author of the scripture was consciously made to be anonymous.
Commentary on the script on scriptures have the names of authors but many of them are
legendary or even mythical figures some of whom are said to have lived for more than several
centuries. A fact which renders attributed authorship useless in the work of identifying text.
In addition the boundaries between scriptures and their commentaries are often very obscure.
A part of a scripture in one lineage is found in a commentary in another lineage.
Furthermore scriptures differ in size to an astonishing scale between one kilobyte to one
megabyte. Such traditional categories as title, author, journal, and scope the crucial means
for the identification of a text cannot work. If we stuck to the author-oriented notion of text
provided with distinct demarcation showing its rigid identity an important part of this
sutras would be doomed to failure. The traditional humanities that transform the established notion
of text by going beyond the boundaries of text in the corpus and hypertextually linking them
in a flexible manner have started to bring about invaluable benefits toward the task of
the analysis of religious scriptures. Let us now move on to the second characteristic and
last topic this talk. The emergence of the digital medium is the emergence of a new dimension
independent of and known to and unknown to the humanities in that it is being led by the science
of informatics. Up to the end of the last century humanities scholars had enjoyed autonomy
in their activity in the bilateral relationship between the scholars and their object of research.
This was made possible as a consequence of their success in the long-standing effort
over five hundred years of domesticating the medium of printing technology.
At present however the digital dimension has intervened in this stable relationship
compelling humanists to immigrate in the new domain of trilateral relationship of scholars,
their objects and the independent media. One of the challenging issues that have been brought
into humanities scholars by this change would be a conflict in the sense of the truth between
natural scientists and the humanities scholars. As already mentioned natural scientists confirm
the incessant progress of the science by attaining consecutive new findings whereas
humanities scholars regard their discoveries as a sort of version of the past knowledge.
The dimension of the digital medium produced by and under the control of natural scientists
reasonably shows closer kinship to the sense of truth of the natural sciences and causes
uneasiness in the humanities scholars. The sense of the truth of the natural sciences
started to be realized when they succeeded around the seventeenth century in separating
the existence of nature from the humanistic world of existence making it a terrain independent of
natural language and its related consciousness. This sense of the truth has been increasingly
reinforced as the distance between these two modes of existence having been widening.
However in order to realize the sequential transmission of culture the re-humanization
of the dimension of the digital medium by retrieving the access of natural language
and its related consciousness would be crucial then this comes here.
So what attitude should digital humanists assume for this purpose? To answer this question I'd like
to turn back again to the question posed by Romeo Tapal that is how should the culture
transmit what they believe to be of vital importance from their own culture in its period
of decline to another culture from the rise? If the modern humanities transmit more
mode of research they believed to be of vital importance to the digital humanities. This is
a transition from the modern humanities to the digital humanities with each humanities provided
with its own regional definition. But seen in a broader perspective that includes both the
humanities this may well be regarded as the transformation of identity of the humanities
in larger scale. When we succeed in grasping a phenomena from an action-oriented perspective
as something of dialectical movement taking place between different dimensions of the phenomena
this insight will effectively work in carrying out the transformation of a culture. On the contrary
a personal agent oriented idea on the basis of the notion of unchanging identity composed of its
own rigid property as seen in the treatment of cultural differences by Orientalism is in
no way functional in this broadened perspective. It is true that the natural sciences have been
fully successful in extinguishing the personal agent from the field of research but they have
done this in the one-sidedly centrifugal development of the study at the cost of the
significance of the natural language and its related consciousness of human beings.
Dealing with humanistic affairs in the domain of natural sciences is therefore now not even
something taken under consideration. However the emergence of the digital dimension will work as
a common platform in which the language of the humanities and that of the natural sciences
encounter each other to perform the identical undertaking of preserving and transmitting the
cultures of human beings. The digital humanities of a centripetal and action-oriented nature
are now entrusted with an unprecedented mission to continue to elaborate a monument scheme for
properly realizing the transformation of identity of the cultures of human beings. Thank you.
Thank you very much Professor Shimoda for a wonderful final keynote for this conference.
A number of intriguing things that you had to say, many of which I'm sure were new to
the people in the audience, inviting us to think about centripetal and centrifugal forces I thought
was very interesting and also to think of it meditate on the characteristics of diversity
in different spheres of activity. I couldn't help but reflect on the significance of the East
in the modern humanities as you were outlining in your remarkable tour de force through
the development of the modern humanities in the West and thinking that there's some resonance with
the rapid growth of digital humanities in Asia and beyond and thinking also about how much there
is that we can all of us learn from scholars in other in cultures other than our own, our own of
course being in each case a very subjective thing and it also I think helps to place for all of us
place our own scholarly concerns in a much broader context and I think that's something
that we can all take value from. I couldn't help thinking through your talk about the English
phrase saying distance lends enchantment to the view and I think you gave us some indication of
that but of course what you had to say was a much greater significance than enchantment
and so I what I take and I'm sure the rest of the audience will take from your talk is a
rousing challenge for the digital humanities to broaden its horizons and to think more deeply
about some of the things that we do. Thank you very much.
Well in addition to to Harold's comments what was a wonderful and engaging speech
talk I'd like to add that I knew for me at least that I was in the right community
when one of our esteemed keynote lecturers said after 20 minutes a very very engaging argument
and now for the interesting part. One of the characteristics of this community is not only
its knowledge, its esteem, its practicability, its adaptability, its diversity in so many ways
so I believe it's good collegiality and friendship and both our keynote speakers I think exemplified
this in wonderful ways. Would you join me in giving both of them a hand both Claudine and Mr.
We have a few things to say though before we go on to what's next and what's next includes a number
of things among them a tour for those Beatles fans of some important places and an excursion
tomorrow as well two excursions tomorrow as well. We'll take a moment now though to
to present our final awards and hear about awards to come. We'll have a few closing comments
generally on behalf of Adho and other groups perhaps we'll even thank Chris and Katrina and
colleagues again and and then we'll move into considerations of the future Nebraska and and
beyond. Let's turn to awards in a moment and as Uhvend is coming up here one thing I would like
to say is last night at the banquet a few people asked how they could become involved in supporting
our community specifically through awards to emerging scholars to come to our conference.
One even offered to write a check on the spot I asked for cash and small denominations.
This is I think testament to the generous nature of our community and recognizing that not only are
we the folks who make the community what it is but we also support ourselves and others in our
community in the most positive of ways. If you are someone who's inclined to think this way to help
an emerging scholar a graduate student come to join our gathering here our gathering in Nebraska
join other gatherings associated with our community I'd like to present you with the man to speak to.
Thank you for a very good introduction. No I have a very very nice job I can be pleasant to people
and the awards committee as many of you will know awards tree prizes. I will talk about one of them
and we'll hear more about it to you other later. We also hand out a number of bursaries they were
presented to the winners at the banquet yesterday night but today the topic is the 40-year prize.
It honors honors the memory of Paul Fortier. He was awarded the honor of university distinguished
professor by the University of Manitoba in 1993 where he had taught at a rank of professor since
1979 in the department of French Spanish and Italian. Paul had a keen ear for new voices
and new voices on two levels not only the voices themselves being new
but also newness in what was said by those voices. The winners of last year's prize Scott Weingart
and Gina Jorgensen had their paper based on their winning presentation published in
literary and linguistic computing very recently because the recipient receives in addition to a
cash award of 500 pounds a featured publication in one of the ADHO publications appropriate
for their presentation including assistance of the editor and staff of the designated
publication to prepare the work as needed. This year given the number of excellent abstracts
we presented a rather long short list for the prize in the opening plenary consisting of six
papers showing the the breadth of our field. I also feel that the list includes a nice
combination of old and new. Some of the topics and methods have been with us for a long time
in one form or the other whereas others are novel and the combination of old and new is
also found within single papers. We have had a group of anonymous reviewers sneaking around at
presentations where the papers were presented and I want to thank those individuals very much for
all the valuable input and help they have given us in this very difficult process.
The prize is rewarded to a scholarly work of high quality but we demand more than that.
The presentation itself is also an important part of what we have looked into in the selection
process. Well that's enough about the general picture. I assume people want to know a little
bit more detail so we will start zooming in on the winner and I will quote a few sentences from
the reviewers of the winning paper and I quote the presenter was extraordinary a great storyteller
and good use of images to tell the story of the project end quote and in you this presentation
remind me of the excitement I felt at first discovering humanities computing end quote.
Also he handled questions extremely well and there were a lot of them end quote and then a
lengthy one towards the end which will give away quite a lot I think. A fascinating combination of
visualization methodology and diachronic coverage of language change which could not have been
demonstrated without digital methodology. This is undoubtedly a work of great promise and will
chart a new direction of language studies and of course the paper was also highly esteemed on
twitter. I have the great pressure to present the winner. The paper is called Patchworks and Field
Boundaries Visualization the History of English by Mark Alexander University of Glasgow in the UK.
APPLAUSE
Now I will continue presenting things from the awards committee or I won't continue. I will
now give the floor to Karina Fandall-Oscombe. She is the chair of the panel for the next San
Polly Prize and she will give two announcements. Professor Oscombe please.
Well I don't have to introduce myself anymore thank you for that.
The San Polly Prize is awarded every three years by the Alliance of Digital Humanities
Organizations in recognition of an outstanding singular achievement in the digital humanities.
The prize is named in honor of Antonio Zampoli, one of the founders of the Association for
Literary and Linguistic Computing and its president when he tragically died in 2003.
The first award was given last year at Stanford University to Chad Gaffin. The next San Polly
Prize will be given at the DH conference in 2014. The award committee made up of members of the
constituent organizations of ADHO now invites your nominations. These may be made by anyone with an
interest in digital humanities and neither nominee nor nominator that's important to state I think
need to be a member of any of the ADHO constituent organizations. I won't go into further details
for now but just state that nominations must be submitted before the first of October this year.
More information about the award can be found on the several websites of the organizations
in the mailing lists many of you will have already seen that. The winner of the award will
be announced at the 2013 meeting and awarded at the 2014 meeting. That was my own announcement.
The second announcement I want to make is on behalf of Matt Jockers who cannot be here
but who asked to have his announcement read by somebody else.
Matt writes, I was very pleased to serve as the chair of the Busa award committee this cycle
and though I am disappointed that I was unable to travel to Hamburg this year to make the announcement
in person I am delighted with the end results. I am also delighted that the award will be given
at the 2013 conference hosted by the University of Nebraska. Having recently joined the faculty
there I'm quite certain I will be attending next year's meeting. Matt continues, the winner of the
2013 Busa award is a man of legendary kindness and generosity. His contributions to the growth
and prominence of digital humanities will be familiar to all of us. He is a gentleman,
a scholar, a philosopher and a long-time fighter for the cause. He is by one colleague's accounting
the Obi-Wan Kenobi of digital humanities.
And I must concur Matt says that the force is strong with this one.
The scholar selected for the 2013 Busa award is Willard McCarty.
Such wonderful news. If you take a second to look around the room at all the exceptional
people sitting around you and then imagine how exceptional you yourself are, I myself am,
think in those terms and then imagine what it must be like being on the awards committee.
In essence recognizing excellence in an already excellent community. I'd like you to join me in
giving them a hand for all their efforts. They take their work very seriously.
As does Paul Spence, chair of our program committee who has an announcement to make
about the proceedings from the conference. Thank you, I'll be brief. First I'd just like to say
thank you to all of the authors that have come to the conference that have presented some wonderful
papers and panels and posters. And after the conference I realized that at the moment the
last thing people want to be doing is thinking about doing more work. But I'd like to encourage
authors of the long papers, short papers, panels and posters to consider submitting to a peer
reviewed, to a special edition of the LLC journal which will be announced very shortly
by CONF tool. So you should receive emails, all of you who have contributed and the details of which
will announce shortly. But it'll be a special issue of something like eight to ten papers,
most probably. And as is the tradition we will also be looking at possible publications for the
other ATO venues, DHQ and digital studies. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much Paul. And now a few words I think of closing and in fact of opening,
given the way we typically do these sorts of remarks. And one thing I'd like to begin as an
observance, begin with an observance of what a fantastic time it really has been all together.
It seems like it was just three days ago I was sitting next to Paul on the other side down there
before our keynote speaker, before all the action really started happening, unless you'd been to
workshops, conferences and pre-conference meetings I mean before our gathering. And
this moment I think now is a time when we tend to think back on all that we've done over the past
few days or more than few days again depending on your initial point of engagement. Think of the
company of our colleagues and friends and community that's really making a positive difference in
academe and beyond. Think of all the great presentations we've heard, the posters we've
discussed and the keynotes we've enjoyed. Think of the discussions we've had coming out of all
these great things we've been doing together but also coming completely out of the blue as they
can only do when we spend time together working hard, engaging ideas hard and then socializing in
the convivial way our community does. That tends to lead to more good things and with these more
good things in mind I think back also to the plans that I've made and I'm sure each and every one of
you have made of good things to come in the future all in such a great place which such wonderful hosts.
I hope you're going to join me in thanking many of those involved in that wonderful experience
that we've all shared over the past days beginning with Chris Meister and his local organizing
committee including Katrine Schoenart and their team of colleagues, assistants and volunteers.
Chris, good training.
Wonderful. And also I think about the very generous support that we've enjoyed from
the University of Hamburg for our gathering, the DFG and other sponsors, friends and fellow
travelers all. Think of all the presenters and the attendees, all of us in this group,
we're the group that makes the conference happen. We're the ones who are responsible for our own
positive experience and being DHRs we all know how to pitch in to do our own stunts to keep things
going in appropriate ways. Think about that when we're thinking of all the good things that have
been happening and who's responsible for them. Think also of the chair and co-chair, vice chair
of the program committee for this year's gathering. It's Paul Spence and Susan Brown.
We could give them a round of applause as well.
Think also about the way we're all going to continue to embrace the things that naturally
bring us together in and around the great professional community that we comprise,
that is ADHO, all of us representing ACH, ALLC, the group formerly known as CITESEMI,
whose acronym I can't pronounce yet, CENTERNET, AADH and now JADH, coming immediately into our
body of community. With all this in mind and thinking of all the good things that have passed,
one thing I'm explicitly going to try not to do is to say goodbye. This is something I said last
year at Stanford too. I'm still not going to say goodbye. In fact, on behalf of everyone involved
in the gathering here, on behalf of myself as the ADHO steering committee chair, Bethany Novicki
of ACH, Lisa Leno Obasanin and John Nurbahn of ALLC, Dan O'Donnell, Michael Eberle Sinatra of
CRSH, SCHN, Neil Freistat and Kay Walter of CENTERNET and Paul Arthur of AADH, as well
Masahiro if you'll allow me this year on behalf of you as president of JADH. For a second year in
a row, I'm deliberately not even going to say so long. We're a group that keeps in touch well and
frequently in the times between our times together, like the ones we're sharing right now. Those times
are full of much rich contact, much of ongoing work, much of the engagement that brings us together
at times like it does now, which more than tides us over from one thing to the next in those very
positive ways. So I'd like to say after such a great event in such a great year for our community
among a number of great years for our community, I suggest that we now think of enjoying the last
few moments of our time together as we think about even the time we'll have together in Beatles Land
and other places later today and tomorrow. Think also though about the things we're going to be
doing together between now and our next time together in Nebraska in 2013, all under the
very diverse, increasingly larger, big tent of the digital humanities. So rather than goodbye,
I say welcome and say welcome again to my friend and colleague Neil Freistat who takes over
in about five minutes as chair of the ADHO steering committee to continue the program. Neil.
Hello DH 2012. Those of you who were at the banquet last night were able to hear many
ADHO colleagues sing Ray's praises and give him thanks for the two years he spent splendidly
leading this organization. We even mobilized the ADHO Glee Club to sing a song for him.
At this moment though, I'd like us all just to thank Ray once again for a splendid two years.
Ray, where are you?
Okay, I want to change our line of sight from present pleasures to future delights.
We have presentations about not only DH 2013 but DH 2014. So it gives me great delight
to, as my first official act as ADHO steering committee chair, to welcome my colleague and
friend Kay Walter who's co-chair of Centernet and co-director of one of the most illustrious digital
humanities centers in the world to tell us about what we can expect to experience next year in
Nebraska. Kay.
While we're working on the technical end of getting this going, first of all, I really want
to thank Ray and Neil for the hospitality and Neil for the great introduction. I'll tell you a
little bit first about the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and I have a video that will show and
hopefully it won't mess up my whole PowerPoint. UNL was founded in 1869. It's a research and
land-grant institution with 25,000 students from 120 countries. Digital Humanities is a priority
program of the university receiving 3.4 million dollars in programs of excellence funding since
2004 which has been matched by the university libraries and the College of Arts and Sciences.
The center is a joint initiative of both of those groups.
This is our welcome center.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd be happy to.
Can somebody help me get this started, please?
Here we go.
Thanks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ok, so some important dates are coming up.
From July 14-16
board meetings will be held and pre-conference activities.
The conference keynote and reception will be the 16th, starting at 5.30 p.m.
And the conference proper will be three days, the 17th through the 19th, ending with a social
program on the 20th.
I thought you might like to know some of the faculty that we have.
You probably recognize some of these people, and some of them are here, not many, are left.
But if you're from CDRH, would you stand?
Thanks, guys.
Okay, so Lincoln, Nebraska is the state capital, and it has about 258,000 people.
The conference hotel is the Embassy Suites.
It's exactly across the street from campus.
And a couple of things to note about it.
They have a complimentary breakfast, a free cocktail hour, and the rooms will be around
$130 a night for two people, and for more than that, about $150.
Most of the conference activities will be here, but not all of them.
In addition, we'll have dorm rooms on campus, particularly for graduate students.
They will run probably around $50 to $55 a night, and that will include full board.
The conference venue is within easy walking distance to restaurants.
And the keynote address is across the street also from the conference hotel.
This is Kimball Hall, and the poster sessions will be in the Nebraska Union, which is about
three blocks from the hotel.
There are a number of museums in Nebraska that are worth seeing.
One of them is the International Quilt Study Center.
Another one that I understand is quite fun to go to is the National Roller Skating Museum.
The Sheldon Museum of Art, we don't have a venue planned there, but it's just two blocks
from the hotel, and they have great 19th and 20th century American art, and some very nice
European pieces, including quite a collection of Brancusi.
Music is a very big part of the scene in Lincoln.
The gentleman on the left is Darryl White, who has a really great jazz group, and they'll
be playing on Thursday night at the reception there.
And the Kiara String Quartet is on the right, really a great group.
Nightlife is really a big thing, so if you're interested in groups like Kratty and Arch
Nemesis and Marty Party and Superficial Friction, you want to go to the Bourbon Theater,
but if you're interested in blues and bluegrass, the zoo is your bar.
Also during July, the Nebraska Repertory Theater will be putting on productions in the evenings,
and they always have a good group of professional theater actors and actresses.
For social program, we're thinking one day in Omaha, the Henry Dorley Zoo features,
in particular, white Bengal tigers, and the Jocelyn Museum of Art has a wonderful American
Indian art collection.
Not on this list is that we are now trying to secure the ability to go to the Union Pacific
Railroad Control Center, which is one of the largest control centers for one of the largest
railroads in the United States.
It's apparently quite fascinating.
I also have been told that we need to offer a fly fishing and a morning run, so those
things will happen.
For those of you who've never been to Nebraska, it is where the West begins, and some of you
may recognize Buffalo Bill Cody.
His ranch, Scout's Rest, is three and a half hours west of Lincoln.
So if you decide you want to stay over, there are lots of things to do.
Today, Native Americans make up about 1% of the population.
There are four American Indian tribes in Nebraska, the Ho-Chunk, the Omaha, the Ponca, and the
Santee Sioux.
In addition to that, Lincoln is a U.S. refugee resettlement community with new immigrants
changing the makeup of the state, especially Spanish-speaking peoples.
We have some great Mexican restaurants, Indian restaurants, Thai restaurants.
Railroading really made the state.
Settlement depended upon lands claimed by royal companies back east, and homesteading
accounted for most of the growth in the state.
On the right are Will Thomas and Leslie working to the people from the center.
Oops, went too far.
Okay, in the 19th century, the Oregon Trail passed through Nebraska in about 365 miles,
or 580 kilometers, west of Lincoln.
Pioneers would have encountered an 800-foot-high bluff, now known as the Scott's Bluff National
Monument, and the wagon tracks can still be seen there.
The sand hills of Nebraska are noted for abundant wildlife, prairie grasses, marsh
lakes that bubble up from the Ogallala Aquifer, and Carhenge, near Alliance, Nebraska.
It was built by a family and dedicated on the summer solstice in 1987.
So, watch for details on our website.
So the website's up.
Please explore, and we'll be adding new things probably every week.
Thanks.
Thank you, Kay, and we'll be expecting music at the airport when we arrive.
Now we do a brief coming attraction for DH 2014.
We will be going to Switzerland for that conference, to Lausanne, and Claire Clivas,
who is one of the two local hosts, will be telling us about what we can expect.
So hi to everybody.
I'm Claire Clivas from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and we will be really
delighted to welcome you in 2014 in Lausanne.
We are two local organizers.
My colleague, Frederique Capland, from the Swiss Polytechnical School, EPFL, in Lausanne
and myself.
But both institutions share the same campus by the lake, and you will see it in just a
few seconds.
And the committee comes already, Melissa Therese from UCL and Adé Acho, as program chair.
And we have already begun to speak, the three togethers, and we really try to do our best
to offer a wonderful meeting in Lausanne in 2014.
So as you see, we are by the lake in a really great region.
Switzerland stands in the middle of Europe, with international airport to 35 minutes from
Lausanne by train in Geneva, Geneva International Airport.
And Lausanne is at the same time a very ancient city with a lot of history, but also a city
encouraged in our time with the Olympic Games Foundation.
And here you see our common campus, University of Lausanne and EPFL, with a lot of diverse
facilities, cafeterias, meals at the good time, and all the staff.
And as I say, we are already three people inside the committee, and we are waiting for
the complete program committee from Adé Acho organizations that will be nominated next
year in Nebraska.
And Lausanne is not really well known in the world of digital humanities, because we are
a starting team, but with already some jobs in DH in Switzerland, and there is an open
job in Bern, if you are interested in it.
And we have already produced this first e-book available in two weeks, reading tomorrow if
you are interested in knowing what we are trying to do in Lausanne.
We will try to organize really great events, like a boat trip with a meal one night on
the lake.
We will also enjoy a day in Creer, it's an old city, with all the Swiss feathers, so
an ancient castle, Swiss chocolate fabric, and the Swiss cheese fabric, so it's typical
days for family.
And if you know to learn everything at the bosom, it will be also possible, because we
will have a special visit by the CERN in Geneva, and with the special physicians to present
everything to us.
Last but not least, I am sensitive to the question of family and children, so we will
organize full comfort activities for children during the conference.
So you are very already welcome in Lausanne in 2014.
Thank you, Claire, I want to go tomorrow.
Okay, our time travel is now stopped, we are coming back to the past, and the last word
here will be heard from our local organizers, to whom we owe so much.
So Chris, I would like to turn it over to you.
Thanks, Neil.
In case you wonder how you're going to decide on what you're going to do in Nebraska and
in Lausanne, that's a decision-making process, and for anybody working in the digital field,
we know that decision-making is about yes, no, on, off, one, zero, but that's a fallacy.
To prove that, we supplied you with a flexible decision-making device, which offers all opportunity
to procrastinate, take a break, yes, maybe tomorrow, make use of it, and it's also very
useful, comes in very useful, very handy if you're dealing with administrators, because
you can throw it at somebody.
One decision you will have to make is which excursions you want to do now, immediately
after the conference.
We will assemble in the front of the building 630 for the Beatles tour, or if you want to
go directly to the subway station Feldstrasse, when we'll set off at 7pm.
That's my last housekeeping announcement for this year, I hope, and what I have to say
now is much more delightful to me, personally.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of you who made this happen, and that
is mainly you, the delegates, who came here to Hamburg, who participated in a very rich
programme and it was really a wonderful and intellectually enriching thing for me to see.
I haven't been able to visit a lot of presentations, in fact, I'm lying.
I visited the opening keynote and closing keynote, but that's why we streamed and podcasted
almost everything, so the next week I'll spend in bed and that will be my personal DH2012
with my laptop.
I'd also once again like to say thank you to ADHO's conference coordinating committee
and particularly to the programme committee, to Paul Spence, to Susan Brown, to the army
of reviewers that pulled this off, and I'd also like to thank once again our sponsors
and supporters, the DFG, the German Research Foundation, the Volkswagen Stiftung, Google,
my university, of course, the University of Hamburg, and the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic
City of Hamburg.
I'd particularly like to say a big word of thanks to the university marketing division
that has helped us here with perfect logistics and that was the work of Constanze Weizmann,
Alexandra Kallenberg, Christian Heilm and their crew.
A big thank you also to the technicians who have supported us here and keep on supporting
us, to Gerhard, Niels, Jan and Eva, to the crew from the Computing Centre, and last
not least to our caterers who prevented us from keeling over during these very long days.
As local organiser and local host, I was particularly impressed by the commitment of our student
helpers, local and international, and ladies and gentlemen, I think let's give them another
hand.
Over the past couple of months, if not years, I have terrorised a couple of people particularly
badly and I feel so bad that all I can do is hand over flowers to them.
It's quite an amount of flowers and the first bouquet, Imke, would you please come up here
on stage, goes to Imke Borchers who sat at the reception and helped you with checking
in, checking out, and helped me with numerous things.
Thanks very much.
The second bouquet goes to Veronica Oleges who actually managed to get us on page one
of the science section of Hamburg's leading newspaper, Tomorrow Morning, that's a big
first and it's really due to her commitment that this happened.
Veronica, where are you?
Is she here?
Please, come on stage.
Next, I'd like to ask onto the stage, Marijke and Lena, who have been the drivers behind
a thunderstorm of tweets and blog entries and coordinated all our student helpers.
Come on stage, please.
You won't get your flowers down there.
There is a particularly large bouquet which is due to be handed over now.
It's not for myself.
You know who it is for and I don't have to mention her name again.
Give a big hand of applause to Katrin.
I have one final bouquet and this one I will hand over to a dear friend and you can hear
from my voice.
I'm moved.
Before I cry, I'll better hand over the flowers.
I'm handing it over to a person who I'm particularly thankful for making it to this conference.
Those of you who know her a bit better know why this word of thanks is really due here.
This one goes to Lisa Lena.
There she sits.
And that's it.
I now pronounce DH 2012 formally at an end.
Go happily out among the city, tour the streets that the Beatles played in, take excursions
and come see us in Nebraska next summer.
Bye, everyone.