New Infrastructure and Instruments for the Human Sciences, and Implications for the Locus of Research and the Evolution of Disciplines in the Academy

This talk, based on a paper currently in draft, examines several developments. I explore a broad view of the prospects for observational and analytic instrumentation and accompanying cyberinfrastructure to support new kinds of inquiry in a wide range of disciplines, including the humanities, the social and behavioral sciences that are practiced both inside and outside the traditional academy. A key point is that in contrast to the physical and life sciences, where most instrumentation and cyberinfrastructure is intentionally purpose built, here we find that many key systems depend on, or are the result of commercial activity, of the transition of other media and formerly ephemeral human interactions to more persistent and computational accessible digital forms, of government needs, or of citizen humanities activities. Finally, I'll speculate about where research using such tools is likely to take place, and how this relates to the evolution of the traditional academic disciplines.