When Worlds Collide

Left brain... this is right brain. Right brain... this is left brain.

That is how I felt throughout reading Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History by Matthew L. Jockers. In short, Macroanalysis introduces his audience to the concept of large-scale literary computing, and with the knowledge gained from that, the revolutionary outcomes of macroanalysis.

Somewhere in a lab, two worlds collided when this concept of computational analysis was created. The digitalized words for anyone can now been thrown through an algorithm and keywords, phrases, and linguistic patterns can now be detected with a couple good lines of code. Think of the possibilities!

Personally, I have first hand knowledge of the powers of digital text analysis. It is similar to what Jockers explained, but in a little different area. Using digitalized text and computer-applied math my step-dad (a statistician) and fellow scholars were able to disprove several well known sources as being written by different author(s). It was the use of linguistic patterns in digitalized text files that Jockers talks about that made these discoveries possible. There was definitely more math and logic behind the whole process than I am leading on to, but it's a case study to show that Jockers was correct in saying these were revolutionary developments in the world of digital humanities and computational science.

^^How my brain felt when I thought

about how I could use these tools!