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Digital Humanities in the Web 3.0 Era: Introduction

Les humanités numériques à l’ère du Web 3.0 : Introduction
Roberta Padlina

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In memory of Hans Cools (1961-2021)
“I miss him deeply, but like so many of my friend’s and mentors’ his voice has become an integral part of my thinking” (Sacks, Oliver (2015),
On the Move. A Life, New York, Knopf)

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1The pervasive impact of computers, the Web, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on almost every aspect of modern life has become an undeniable reality. We are currently navigating an era often referred to as Web 3.0. While interpretations of this term vary – encompassing concepts such as the Web of Data, the Semantic Web, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, AI, cryptocurrencies, and blockchains – it broadly refers to the widespread integration of digital and computational technologies into the fabric of our society through the mediation of the Web.

2The field of Digital Humanities (DH) has expanded significantly in recent years and continues to grow, although it remains an evolving discipline that has yet to realize its full potential. While the community of DH theorists and practitioners is steadily growing, and there is a growing consensus that the substantial benefits outweigh the effort required, the impact of digital methodologies in the humanities has not yet achieved the pervasive, paradigm-shifting influence seen in the natural sciences. The integration of DH theories and methodologies remains relatively limited and unsystematic.

3The field of scholarly digital editions is an example of this dual situation. On the one hand, we are witnessing the development of highly advanced digital scholarly editions featuring interactive and highly useful functionalities. Many of these adopt the contemporary paradigm of Linked Open Data and use Semantic Web technologies to align with the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles. On the other hand, such practices are far from standard within the humanities. A standardized system for encoding and analyzing texts, as well as a unified formal and methodological framework, is still lacking. Such standards are essential for fostering meaningful connections and achieving true interoperability between the datasets – and their associated semantics – produced by research.

4This thematic dossier aimed to examine the current state of the relationship between digital theories and practices while exploring innovative methodologies, technologies, standards, data models, computational tools, and applications that facilitate the integration of key aspects of Web 3.0 into humanities research. The objective is to assess the potential, challenges, and impact of applying new technologies to editing and textual analysis, with a particular focus on the unique requirements and conceptual frameworks of humanities scholarship.

5The dossier features three articles offering perspectives from three main humanities disciplines: philosophy, history, and philology. Together, they provide a balanced exploration of both theoretical and practical aspects, highlighting the interplay between conceptual frameworks and their applications in these fields.

6The first article – “Machines, Symbolic AI, and the Semantic Web: What They Are and Why They Matter in the Humanities” – has a didactic purpose, offering a historical-philosophical exploration of computer science and its underlying principles. It traces the evolution of the dream of “intelligent” machines, from its inception to the contemporary vision of the Semantic Web, emphasizing the role of symbolic formal languages and logical formal systems.

7The article begins by examining the explosive success of current Large Language Models, while also addressing the tangible risks associated with these emerging technologies. In contrast to these sub-symbolic AI technologies, the author highlights the tradition of symbolic AI, which, although more complex and demanding, offers greater transparency, explainability, and consequently, trustworthiness. The discussion then shifts to the benefits of symbolic AI and Semantic Web (SW) technologies, which are also rooted in this AI tradition.

8To demonstrate the relevance and potential of computational methods and SW technologies for the advancement of humanities scholarship, the article introduces their theoretical foundations and key characteristics, fostering a deeper understanding of their power, potential, and limitations. It traces the origins and foundational ideas behind digital computing machines, drawing on the work of pioneers such as Leibniz, Boole, Turing, von Neumann, and Feynman. Following this historical perspective, the article transitions to the present, providing an overview of the Semantic Web: its vision, concepts, components, and the unsolved challenges and advances that are shaping its evolution.

9Francesco Beretta’s article, “Conceptualising Information Production in the Context of the SDHSS Ontology Ecosystem”, explores the challenges and complexities involved in developing shared conceptualizations to support a cross-disciplinary ontology ecosystem and knowledge graph for research data in the humanities and social sciences. This exploration is conducted within the framework of the Semantic Data for Humanities and Social Sciences (SDHSS) project.

10Beretta provides a detailed analysis of three key challenges (epistemological, semantic, and methodological) that must be addressed to achieve semantic interoperability across disciplines: 1) the representation of factual reality as interoperable data, grounded in cross-disciplinary ontologies; 2) the complexities arising from the vexed question of identity and the subtle notion of sameness; and 3) the integration of precise, factual data with the uncertainties and inconsistencies characteristic of humanistic research data.

11To address these issues, Beretta offers an epistemological analysis of the concepts of data, information, and knowledge, examining their interrelationships before focusing on the concept of information in the humanities and social sciences. In particular, he explores the distinction between two epistemic levels of information: factoids and factual information. He also discusses key principles of ontology engineering, presenting the OntoClean methodology alongside two foundational ontologies (DOLCE and DnS). In addition, the article includes an analysis of core classes within the CIDOC CRM ontology and its extensions in the SDHSS ontology. These principles are applied to the information production process, providing solutions to the three challenges. The article emphasizes that scientific information, represented as digital data, is not merely a representation but an approximation of factual reality ‒ making its accurate documentation essential.

12Jeffrey C. Witt’s article, “Finding Relatedness: Pathways for Detecting Textual Relatedness in the Medieval Scholastic Corpus”, explores applications of natural language processing, information retrieval, and data visualization in scholarly editions. The article begins by examining the paradigm shift that digital editions enable ‒ a shift that has yet to be systematically embraced. This transition moves from the sole objective of preparing texts for human reading to the broader goal of creating data for computer processing. By making data machine-accessible, digital editions can generate not only traditional text versions but also a wide array of outputs and results. The objections commonly raised against digital editions often stem from a misunderstanding of this shift, as they are still often seen as textual presentation rather than textual data.

13Witt underscores the importance of achieving a critical mass of data to fully realize and demonstrate the potential of this new paradigm. The challenge, however, is that there is currently insufficient data to convince sceptics of its transformative power. The article seeks to generate interest by showcasing computational methods for large, aggregated corpora, specifically designed to detect textual relatedness between texts (sources, influences, quotation trends). Witt examines methods such as N-Gram vectors, document embeddings, the TF-IDF approach, and convolution.

14Witt illustrates the research results that can be achieved using these methods, emphasizing that machine-accessible data enables the effortless creation of services that would otherwise be prohibitively costly and labour-intensive. He also highlights the principle that “no one method is sufficient” and that the choice of the best approach depends on the specific research question being addressed. Additionally, Witt emphasizes the role of knowledge graphs in supporting statistical analysis and facilitating meaningful visualization, using the SCTA Corpus and its associated knowledge graph as examples.

15Together, the three articles highlight the possibilities and limitations of digital and computational methods in humanities research. Their common goal is to spark curiosity and inspire readers to further explore the vast field of Digital Humanities. They also emphasize the importance of sharing not only final outputs but also structured (both syntactically and semantically) data to foster collaboration, advance research, and support innovative technologies.

16To address the challenges outlined in these contributions, it is essential to cultivate a culture of sharing and raise awareness of the transformative potential of structured data and semantic knowledge graphs. Achieving the digital paradigm shift and leveraging the full potential of computational technologies will require machine-accessible data at scale and collective contributions to shared knowledge graphs.

17In conclusion, this dossier is a double invitation. It calls on humanities scholars to embrace the digital and to experiment with computational tools and methodologies. At the same time, it encourages the humanities to enter the digital realm ‒ not only with their data, but also with their distinctive sensibilities, knowledge, and skills. This dialogue between the digital and the humanistic promises a future in which each enriches the other, advancing both scholarship and technological innovation.

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Bibliographie

Sacks, Oliver (2015), On the Move. A Life, New York, Knopf.

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Référence électronique

Roberta Padlina, « Digital Humanities in the Web 3.0 Era: Introduction »Methodos [En ligne], 24 | 2024, mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2024, consulté le 22 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/methodos/11196 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12xqg

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Roberta Padlina

University of Geneva

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