Incorporating the Sensemaking Loop from Intelligence Analysis into Bespoke Tools for Digital History.: Integrando el ciclo de comprensión del análisis de inteligencia en herramientas personalizadas para la historia digital

William Turkel

doi:10.48102/hyg.vi64.543

Authors

William Turkel University of Western Ontario, Canada https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4734-9894

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48102/hyg.vi64.543

Keywords:

digital history, historical methods, intelligence analysis

Abstract

The discipline of intelligence analysis, like the discipline of history, requires its practitioners to create interpretations supported by large collections of sources that may be incomplete, inconsistent, ambiguous, and occasionally deceptive. Here I argue that models of the intelligence analyst’s research process, structured techniques for qualitative reasoning under uncertainty, and software for incorporating human ‘sensemaking’ can all be adapted for use by historians. In doing so, I provide a sustained example of digital historical research using a large online collection of historical sources, the Old Bailey Online.

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Author Biography

William Turkel, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Professor Turkel is a Professor of History at The University of Western Ontario in Canada and a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (2018-25). His research involves computational history, big history, and science and technology studies (STS) with a focus on methods. Two of his new projects focus specifically on (1) electronics, sound, and esoterica in modular synthesis; and (2) a disability studies / disability history approach to astrobiology and security studies. He is engaged in a number of ongoing research collaborations in digital history with Tim Hitchcock, Edward Jones-Imhotep, Rob MacDougall, and others. In his work, he often use historical experimentation and reverse engineering to create material objects, typically drawing on mechanical design, 3D printing, and electronics or minimal computing. As part of this research, he has built a series of 3D printers and other CNC tools, and have reverse engineered the vacuum-tube-based computers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s using the transistors and analog integrated circuits that became available a generation later.
Professor Turkel is the author of Spark from the Deep (JHU 2013) and The Archive of Place (UBC 2007). The second revised edition of his open access, open content and open source textbook Digital Research Methods with Mathematica (2020) can be downloaded from williamjturkel.net

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Incorporating the Sensemaking Loop from Intelligence Analysis into Bespoke Tools for Digital History.

Integrando el ciclo de comprensión del análisis de inteligencia en herramientas personalizadas para la historia digital

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Author Biography

William Turkel, University of Western Ontario, Canada

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