The combination of Dan Cohen’s comments (posted here on his blog– read the comment section too) and those of Paul Duguid, and the evasions of Google’s Brandon Badger highlighted a dynamic that I think is, in a certain way, related to the sparring over digital humanities and new media studies going on over twitter and in the blogosphere (here’s a list of recent posts on the subject). … And, with Badger, this was highlighted by his allusions to what he was reading on the plane (a book on how to improve one’s short game in golf) as an example of the perceived limitations of Google’s ability to get good metadata on their scans, and to “sharing what Sally’s reading” on the social media side. … I was struck in reading Ian Bogost’s manifesto on the future of DH, and even more so in the comment section as the discussion quickly evolved into a debate on whether or not New Media Studies and Digital Humanities were synonymous, by the extent to which digital humanities as a concept is used in the blogosphere actually as a synonym for some for or another of literary studies, criticism, rhetoric.

… I think it may be the case, though, that the difference between Digital History and Digital Humanities described here goes deeper than an interest in building audience (which all too often is far from the radar of practicing professional historians), and more to do with notions of how we historians read and what we are trying to represent, particularly in the post-narrative age of historical writing.