In a previous text (Rieder & Röhle 2012) we argued that the existing traditions of the humanities and social sciences, including their particularities, interests and methods, are currently encountering an object _ the computer _ that is characterized by its own logics, logistics, styles of reasoning (Hacking 1992), habits, (best) practices, modes of valorisation, actor-networks and institutions. The computer may well be a contained technical object, but its accumulated history and therefore its substance is full of heterogeneous elements that constitute a type of a priori that cannot be easily ignored. Now that various attempts are being made to build ‘digital’ versions or extensions of long-established disciplines, this encounter marks a moment of destabilization and deterritorialization, a moment that implies significant contingency and different possible outcomes. Although it remains doubtful that even Kuhn’s ‘normal science’ (1962) was ever truly settled, this is a moment that provokes and requires far-reaching debate and inquiry into the practice, meaning and purpose of our academic disciplines.