So, into the chopper it went: Gabriel Egan and Julianne Nyhan

Title

So, into the chopper it went: Gabriel Egan and Julianne Nyhan

Subject

An oral history interview for the Hidden Histories project

Description

This interview took place at the AHRC-organised Digital Transformations Moot held in London, UK on 19 November 2012. In it Egan recalls his earliest encounters with computing when he was a schoolboy along with some memories of how computers were represented in science fiction novels, TV programmes and advertising. His first job, at the age of 17, was as a Mainframe Computer Operator. He continued to work in this sector throughout the 1980s but by the end of the decade he recognised that such roles would inevitably disappear. In 1990 he returned to University where he completed a BA, MA and PhD over the next 7 years. He recalls his shock upon returning to University as he realised how little use was then made of computers in English Studies. Nevertheless, he bought a relatively cheap, second-hand Sinclair Z88 and took all his notes on it. Later he also digitised his library of 3000 books, destroying their hard copy versions in the process. The interview contains a host of reflections about the differences that computing techniques and resources have made to Shakespeare Studies over the past years, along with insightful observations about the contributions and limitations of DH. In this interview Egan describes himself as a ‘would be Digital Humanist’; indeed, it is the landscape that he describes from this vantage point that makes his interview so interesting and useful.

Creator

Julianne Nyhan and Gabriel Egan

Source

Julianne Nyhan and Andrew Flinn 2016. Computation and the Humanities: towards an oral history of Digital Humanities. Springer.

Date

19 November 2012

Rights

Interview audio files are made available under a creative commons licence “by-nc-nd” with the following characteristics:
• by: the content must be attributed to me and the interviewer.
• non-commercial: commercial use of the content is not allowed.
• no derivative works: the material is to be allocated in its original form and may not be
edited.
See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/
3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode.

Format

MP3

Language

English

Transcription

Interviewer

Julianne Nyhan

Interviewee

Gabriel Egan

Location

AHRC Digital Humanities Moot, London

Files

Citation

Julianne Nyhan and Gabriel Egan , “So, into the chopper it went: Gabriel Egan and Julianne Nyhan,” Hidden Histories: Digital Humanities 1949 – Present, accessed March 29, 2024, https://hiddenhistories.omeka.net/items/show/49.