What if I told you, “when a large number of similar entities interact among each other and with their environment at a low scale, unexpected outcomes at higher spatio-temporal scales might spontaneously arise?” I would, personally, be a little confused. Yet, in this succinct, albeit perplexing, explanation, Oriol Artime and Manilo De Domenico describe the concept of emergence. In a rather basic sense, some larger systems are more than the sum of their constituent parts. The things that make up the systems work together to produce something that is qualitatively different than just adding up all the connecting parts. What comes from this is emergent phenomena. Think about the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the WHO, there have been 774,954,393 recorded human infections of SARS-COV-2. Can we really reduce the pandemic to these numbers? Is there not something qualitatively different about the pandemic than just the sum of infections? I believe there is: behavioral changes from the individual to the international, the public consciousness around infectious diseases, and the telecommunications systems that we use to network all shifted since early 2020. After the advent of COVID-19, a new era emerged.
What does this have to do with history? Well, quite a lot! But, there’s one unexpected connection to draw: crowdsourcing. Trevor Owens, whose blog has a fascinating deep dive into the mechanics, applications, and importance of engaging enthusiasts in historical projects, describes the product of a well-orchestrated crowdsourced history project as an emergent phenomenon. For instance, the communication, discussions, and interactions that individuals provide for a history wiki can produce a something that extends past the sum of its contributions to make a more useful platform. Crowdsourcing goes beyond just wikis and discussions. There are many web-based initiatives that people can contribute their historical attention to.
Doing history can take quite a bit of time and energy—it is work, after all! One of the most tedious and labor-intensive parts of this work, for example, is transcribing. This is a great example of the power of the crowd. What would cost a lot of money, take a long time, and lead to fatigue for one person or a small group of individuals, a crowd can accomplish much more efficiently. I decided that I wanted to check out one of these crowdsourced transcription initiatives to see how I can contribute and what the process looks like.
Transcribe Bentham’s homepage is clean and academic. It just make take some time to explore all of the links and options
I decided on Transcribe Bentham a project that asks for volunteers to comb through digitizations of the titular author’s handwritten works and, to the best of one’s albitites, type out what appears on the scans of the notes—misspellings, idiosyncrasy, and all. I was excited to see this initiative because I am interested in Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy and ideas (utilitarianism and the panopticon are still important). The website is professional and gets to the point. I was excited when starting out; however, this feeling did not last the duration of my engagement.
To begin with my issues, I am not a public historian and I do not frequently transcribe historical documents. So, right off the bat, I was out of my element. Yet, I wanted to take the opportunity to grow and work on a new skill. I read through the general information and welcome text and set up an account. Following this, there was a large introductory document that detailed the process of transcribing and the parameters of the project. Honestly, it was frustrating. Even after reading through this document, it was difficult to find an unlocked document to transcribe. Clicking around the site led to other how-to guides, which quickly accumulated to a difficult to read stack of digital texts. I appreciate the detailed information. Just be warned, however, that you likely have to be a transcribing enthusiast or truly care about the cause of preserving and illuminating new documents from Bentham to find joy in the process.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t add any new transcriptions to the project. I had difficulty reading the unlocked documents I could accesses, so I would made mistakes that other transcribers would have to fix. Additionally, I did find errors on other transcriptions, but these were locked, so I was unable to make the corrections. In the end, I do not want to discourage enthusiasts from adding to the potential of crowdsourced history initiatives. The field needs the emergent phenomena that results from the wisdom and work of the crowd. I just need more time with Transcribe Bentham and to work on my transcription skills. Hopefully, our increasingly tech literate field will find more intuitive ways to harness the power of the crowd.
I ran into similar problems on the Citizen Archivists page. Most of the “easy” transcriptions are already completed, so all that remains is handwritten notes. It can be extremely difficult to read these documents, let alone trying to transcribe the random formatting. I do think transcription of documents is crucial to historical work, but people should be aware that it is not a quick and easy task. On another note, I appreciate your use of scholarship to relate different ideas and fields of study.
It does seem like people underestimate the work of transcribing. And, yes, it is very important! That’s why the power of the crowd is so important! Thank you for noticing the other connections! Interdisciplinary stuff is important to me.
Tucker, the connections you drew in your introduction are fascinating! I appreciate your positive take on crowdsourcing and I share the same opinion. In the projects that I looked over, I found the work to be high-quality and it is fair to assume that the people doing it are passionate about doing it correctly. The process of reviewing proves that projects are committed to the work being done to benefit research.
Thank you for the feedback! Yes, I believe for a project like this one must be passionate to overcome the hurdles of learning the systems and the frustration of navigation and difficult-to-read documents. All this means that it is so important to connect those who have the passion with the memes to contribute!