Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the inaugural lecture and launch of University College London (UCL)'s new centre for Digital Humanities.

"Digital Humanities studies the intersection of digital technologies and computational techniques with humanities and cultural heritage". Basically, the way I understand it, the sciences have 'owned' technology advances for too long, and humanities (i.e everything that isn't science) are doing some pretty amazing stuff with technology.  Did you know, for instance, that a recent digital humanities PhD project (digitally recording Roman soldiers' letters from Hadrian's Wall) drove advances in digital scanning that have produced much more effective breast cancer screening techniques.  Pretty cool no?

My main interest in the centre stems from client work - I think there will be increasing synergies between my clients' technologies and the projects going on at UCL, however I didn't appreciate just how interesting the lecture itself would be.

The guest lecturer was James Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe and Asia, News Corporation.  Rupert Murdoch watched on proudly, just a couple of rows in front of me.

Not a natural presenter, Murdoch (junior) opened by apologising for the irony of a college drop-out addressing a largely academic audience at one of the world's leading education institutions.  Predictably, he used his lecture to reinforce News Corp.'s belief that newspapers should be able to get "a fair value for their online editions".  He dismissed the 'content wants to be free' argument as flawed, closing with the advice that when someone says they want content to be free, what they mean is "they want your content, for free".

I found many of Murdoch's arguments confronting ("we can't assume that greater connectivity is good").  His unapologetic representation of his own commercial interests, framed as academic discussion could, I felt, have benefitted from more disclaimers.  However he made some interesting points.

According to Murdoch:

More than half of internet traffic is illegal file sharing and other illegal activities

Devices are lifeless without content, which means manufacturers have an   interest in driving down the cost of content

Public sector interests harm commercial. E.g. newspapers have been required by law to make editions available to the British Library for archive - and now the British Library is making that content available online for free (and it's not theirs)

109 newspapers in the US last year shut down or moved to online-only

Making Avatar in 3D was worth the investment because it made it less  attractive to piracy

200,000 jobs in the content creation industries have been lost through piracy

In conclusion he asserted that unless we place a value on creative endeavour, news will only be produced by the wealthy, the amateur and governments.  I just wonder whether that is much different to what has always been? The Murdoch's, bloggers and the BBC...

I entered the lecture disagreeing with him, and I left still disagreeing, but less comfortable with the strength of my own arguments.  But then... I am also a big fan of the open source movement.

Emily