Since finally blogging about OpenPhilosophy.org last month I’ve been thinking about how one could make a generic open source platform that could be used to power it, and other things like it. Enter ‘TEXTUS’: TEXTUS is an open source platform for working with collections of texts and metadata. It enables users to transcribe, translate, and [...]
Category Archives: history
TEXTUS: an open source platform for working with collections of texts and metadata
Also posted in bibliography, digital, humanities, ideas, literature, notes, open data, openknowledge, projects, publicdomain, technology 6 Comments
Ideas for OpenPhilosophy.org
For several years I’ve been meaning to start OpenPhilosophy.org, which would be a collection of open resources related to philosophy for use in teaching and research. There would be a focus on the history of philosophy, particularly on primary texts that have entered the public domain, and on structured data about philosophical texts. The project [...]
Also posted in bibliography, humanities, ideas, intellectualhistory, openknowledge, philosophy, projects, publicdomain, technology 6 Comments
Architectural Literature, Literary Architecture
A few years ago an architect friend and I used to fantasise about building and animating a model of a small but representative section of Borges’s “Library of Babel”. We wanted to incorporate the animation into a short film with a reading of Borges’s story, complete with lots of digitally-assisted indefinite zooming through the model. [...]
Also posted in architecture, art, events, exhibitions, literature Tagged architecture, borges, calvino, library, literature, unbuilt extremities 4 Comments
Who read what? Mapping influence in intellectual history
In my research I often wonder about whom and what the people I’m reading read. Did Wittgenstein read Nietzsche? Did Nietzsche read Hegel? Did Hegel read Shakespeare? Did Shakespeare read Chaucer? Did Chaucer read Sophocles? Knowing which texts a given writer was aware of (and which they probably weren’t aware of) can help us to [...]
Also posted in bibliography, digital, humanities, ideas, intellectualhistory, open data, openknowledge, philosophy, projects, technology 7 Comments
How much will digital tools change the nature of scholarship?
Will new digital technologies radically transform the nature of research in the arts and humanities? Generally I think I might be relatively old fashioned about this. Of course new technologies may change our modus operandi, and may alter the kinds of research we do. For example the (arguably disproportionate) dominance of the monograph and the [...]
Also posted in bibliography, digital, humanities, ideas, intellectualhistory, philosophy, technology 4 Comments
Historical Hooks: ‘X Hundred Years Ago Today, …’
Our daily lives are permeated by the past. Newspapers are full of commemorations of persons and occurrences we deem to be culturally and historically significant. Calendars are stuffed with births, deaths, battles, inventions, catastophes, riots, murders and miracles. “X hundred years ago today”, we are told, ships were sunk, saints were born, cures were found, [...]
Also posted in ideas, intellectualhistory, notes, openknowledge, projects, publicdomain Leave a comment
The Construction of Immateriality
The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) was launched last year at the conference for copyrighthistory.org, a digital archive of primary sources on copyright. In addition to the history of copyright, patents and other rights, the society aims to examine: [...] the diverse “roads not taken” in the evolution of [...]
Also posted in conferences, copyright, edwardyoung, events, intellectualhistory, law, legalhistory, notes 1 Comment
Jonathan Gray 
