The CS pipeline problem and DH: a Twitter Transcript
Ben Brumfield
cliotropic: As much as I'm excited about DH, I have qualms about its
tendency to reinforce existing pipeline-narrowing effects for poc &
women. [1/2]
cliotropic: Combining the weed-out effects of compsci and of
humanities grad pgms leaves dig. history more of a white boys' club
than it shd be. [2/2]
benwbrum: @cliotropic I disagree completely -- DH provides an
excellent second pipeline to get women into CS/IT.
http://sarabrumfield.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-get-more-women-in-programming
cliotropic: @benwbrum Yes, agreed; 2nd pipelines wouldn't be as
relevant if CS/IT in (coed) classrooms didn't have a history of
chasing many women off.
benwbrum: @cliotropic Sigh. There are many, many things that chase
girls off CS/IT. Classrooms have a role, but the main contraction is
earlier.
benwbrum: @cliotropic I think #digitalhumanities is a second pipeline
into tech, see women successful in it who've acquired the tech after
the [1/3]
benwbrum: @cliotropic middle-school contraction. Women also seem far
better represented in DH than in industry fields that draw from CS
majors [2/3]
benwbrum: @cliotropic (such as mine). You seem to fear introducing a
tech-style contraction into the humanities, however. Do I read you
right? [3/3]
cliotropic: @benwbrum Yes, that's my concern: retracking women into
CS after the middle-school contraction is great, but building a
subfield that [1/2]
cliotropic: @benwbrum ...requires CS skills *plus* post-BA-level
humanities means building a (sub)field open mostly to the economically
elite. [2/2]
benwbrum: @cliotropic But there's a big difference between requiring
CS skills and requiring a CS degree for success. I gather that most DH
folks[1/2]
benwbrum: @cliotropic are tech autodidacts, their formal training
being in the humanities. That's a very good structure for equality.
And a good [2/3]
benwbrum: @cliotropic structure for successful DH projects, which
require less hardcore CS and more of what @TheRepoRat calls "banging
rocks together"
cliotropic: @benwbrum Yes on the "banging rocks together" but DH will
only remain accessible for tech autodidacts if DHers keep that an
explicit goal.
benwbrum: @cliotropic What are the conditions under which DH could
restrict itself to the narrow (and male-heavy) CS pipeline?
benwbrum: @cliotropic 1. Abandoning the Web as a platform. Unlikely,
and so long as HTML markup is the entry-point for the DH pipeline,
gender eq=good
benwbrum: @cliotropic 2. Serious dependence on CS theory, rather than
OSS tools. Unlikely: A) Most DH is what industry calls integration
work, rather
benwbrum: @cliotropic than pure dev, and that's a good thing for
autodidacts. B) cutting-edge humanities work/DH != cutting edge CS
theory -- show me
benwbrum: @cliotropic a successful (==running code) collaboration
between an academic CS department on a humanities project.
benwbrum: @cliotropic 3. scads of unemployed CS grads who turn to
well-funded academia-based DH projects for work, allowing DH to be
more selective.
benwbrum: @cliotropic I don't see those happening soon. Have I missed
anything? (Like grant requirements or something?)