https://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/author/wthomas/Recent content in Wthomas on Journal of Digital HumanitiesHugoen-USThu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/conversations/what-we-think-we-will-build-and-what-we-build-in-digital-humanities-by-will-thomas/Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/conversations/what-we-think-we-will-build-and-what-we-build-in-digital-humanities-by-will-thomas/<p>After five years “<a href="http://railroads.unl.edu" title="Homepage for Railroads and the Making of Modern America">workin’ on the railroad</a>,” I find myself confronting one of the central paradoxes of doing digital humanities–what Jerome McGann, one of the leading scholars of electronic texts, calls the problem of imagining what you don’t know. In digital humanities, what we think we will build and what we build are often quite different, and unexpectedly so. It’s this radical disjuncture that offers us both opportunities and challenges.</p>