Introduction: The Background to SpecLab At the core of this book are convictions derived from a combination of theoretical investigations into problems of knowledge production and experimental projects

At the core of this book are convictions derived from a combination of theoretical investigations into problems of knowledge production and experimental projects conceived under the general rubric of speculative computing. Speculative computing arose from a productive tension with work in what has come to be known as digital humanities. That field is constituted by work at the intersection of traditional humanities and computational technology, using digital tools to extend humanistic inquiry. Speculative computing stresses the need for humanities tools in digital environments, thus inverting the power relation in which computational methods rooted in formal logic are granted more authority than methods grounded in subjective judgment. The arguments I make here–for the importance of aesthetics, subjectivity, and speculative work–are not relevant only to projects undertaken in electronic environments. But the insights arose in the process of working out problems in knowledge representation and interpretation that were central to digital humanities in the late1990s and early 2000s. The goal of SpecLab was to challenge the conceptual foundations of digital humanities through aesthetic provocation. Digital humanities, sometimes referred to as humanities computing, has taken upon itself the task of addressing the methods and implications of the migration of our cultural legacy into digital form and the creation of new, born-digital materials and tools. Nowhere was digital humanities more highly developed or charged as a field than at the University of Virginia in the 1990s. I arrived into that dynamic arena as a latecomer, but with a developed interest in aesthetics and digital work being done in new