1. Introduction: the Digital and the Humanities
Computers, digital tools and the Internet have been radically changing the way scholars work, collaborate and publish their research and supported the creation, the storage, the analysis and the dissemination of data and information.
While many areas of study within the natural, medical, and social sciences have a long tradition with these technologies, most of the humanities disciplines have been more reluctant and have found it more difficult or inappropriate to integrate computational tools that are generally built to perform quantitative analysis.
Even thought in the last years new activities and new research opportunities have emerged from the intersection between the humanities and the world of digital technologies, what we call today digital humanities, represents an undefined and heterogenous set of studies and practices that aims at understanding the implications and the opportunities that digital technologies can provide as media, tools, or objects of study in the humanities [1, 2].
What is sure is that the enormous quantity of information coming from digital collections and in a more general sense the “digital world”, is offering different opportunities to rethink the traditional research activities and tasks in the humanities (Moretti, Manovic...).
These new relationships between the digital and the humanities are rapidly demanding new modes of observation, exploration, and interpretation and in this perspective information visualization and interfaces are becoming essential tools to explore and make sense out of the increasing quantity of available data.
Due to the fact that most of the methods and technologies adopted by the digital humanities come from other discipli...
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...ming from the Internet, not only to study the online culture, but in a more general sense as a unique data source to analyze society and culture (Rogers, 2009).
The situation in the artes and traditional humanities, especially literature and history studies, is quite different. They usually don’t create their own data but they rely on records, whether newspapers, photographs, letters, diaries, books, articles; records of birth, death, marriage; records found in churches, courts, schools, and colleges; or maps. Basically, “any record of human experience can be a data source to a humanities scholar” (Borgman, 2009).
Cultural records and materials are usually stored in libraries, archives, museums or other public and private agencies under a complex system of access rules and, if already digitized, through different online platforms build with different technologies.
People all around agree that technology is changing how we think, but is it changing us for the better? Clive Thompson definitely thinks so and this book is his collection of why that is. As an avid fiction reader I wasn’t sure this book would captivate me, but the 352 pages seemingly flew past me. The book is a whirlwind of interesting ideas, captivating people, and fascinating thoughts on how technology is changing how we work and think.
When it comes to the definition of technology in their articles, both Carr and Cascio have similarities and differences. Both authors are debating about the use of technology in today’s society. Both of their articles touch base on the ideals of “what technology is” in their perspectives. Carr believes that technology is making us want the quick path to information or common knowledge and says the Internet is “a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information”. Cascio also believes th...
Turkle, Sherry. “How Computers Change the Way We Think”. The Bedford Guide for College Writers, with Reader, Research Manual, and Handbook. 9th ed. Eds. X.J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Marcia F. Muth. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 602-608. Print.
Technology has improved drastically in the past few years, improving society a large amount, but what if these new electronics are not actually improving it but instead making it worse? What if all of these advances are only taking away humanities? Bradbury’s short stories “The Pedestrian” and “The Veldt” tell about technology in the future and what it will do to humans. Bradbury’s views on technology’s growth predict that technology takes away what makes humans, human.
Kellerman, Susan, and Rebecca Wilson. "Survey Results." Digitizing Technologies for Preservation. Ed. Laura Rounds. Washington D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, 1996. 3-28. Print.
It does not take Galilean perceptions in order to understand the complexity of new media and digital culture and the evermore expanding cosmos of the computer mediated communications. But, it leads us in a vague, indefinite space of exploration of this complex state. Certainly not an utopia, if we’d say that this is an utopic state nor condition, we would be circling around the utopic vision itself, and that is not what we pursue. How to understand digital culture, how to
"The arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decade of the 20th century has changed the way students think and process information”. (Prensky)
Theorizing digital cultural heritage: a critical discourse by Fiona Cameron and sarah kenderdine. 2007. Journal from sciencedirect.
If the writing that comes out of such minds are still understood and the broad ideas behind it all is still passed on, then all the literature art is still conserved because the audience is still sharing the message they interpreted from what their brain is digesting and absorbing. It is this process of observation, thought, and response that has been the practice of all literate arts. One idea, feeling, thought, or dream that is conveyed through a certain medium, no matter what the form is, it still elicits some type of response that can turn into something bigger for all to read or write for pleasure. With the Internet sculpting the classic definition of literature, the basis of it all is the pure art of writing on a subject with creativity. In The Edge of the Precipice: Why Read Literature in the Digital Age?, it is discussed that “…literature remains as a fundamental means to mediate human life and the way it deals with the world in which it operates. The technique and language necessarily change, but the essential work of literature, its projection of human issues and concerns onto the external landscape, remains” (Socken 6). Paul Socken dismisses Miller’s ideas by saying that with the digital age expanding the work of literature is only evolving . The sole purpose of it is to exchange opinions and ideas in a way of art and with the Internet it is allowing more to come into realization of how important and sacred writing really is. It also allows for exchange in information and teaches everyday skills that helps in major events in our life. Miller sees reading and writing as taken over by technology in today’s society, and believes that the value of experiencing different points of view in cultures and learning will soon be vanished in the educational world. However on the contrary,
Grossman, Lawrence K. The Shape of the Electronic Republic. Composing Cyberspace. Richard Holeton. United States: McGraw-Hill, 1998, 311-327.
The digital age has altered not only humanities, but also life as we have known it. Realizing what is being done – that techniques, data and information from the digital realm is being infiltrated into every aspect of our lives - we can make sure that we stay connected to the rest of the world. Although popular literacy and orality are important aspects to keep humans from drifting from these fundamental elements, history and philosophy play an important role as well. Overall, humanities are a building-block to the past, a link to the present and a glimpse into the future. It provides a view into the digital cultural shift and helps society understand the world while bringing clarity to the future.
In the latter half of the twentieth century society, culture and science evolved visions and capability around the common prefix ‘cyber’. It took on several virtual, computational, functional, scientific, sexual and criminal connotations. In the 21st Century, many computational notions have been replaced by ‘e’ to mean ‘of computer’ - however ‘cyber’, represented in music, words and films emerging at this time, which communicate the content of culture at the time, not simply technology – have not become ePeople, eMusic or eFilms, but remained postulated in cyberculture.
For overall, crucial services will be provided by a critical discourse for an interested audience to identify sources, establish utility and value, commonalities and missed opportunity. In digital humanities, there are a few general criteria that may be broadly applicable to digital work which are transparency, reusability, data and design. These kinds of general criteria operate in a large theoretical context that may be profitably represented in an adaption of a well-known diagram of
Rosen, senior editor if New Atlantis, on her essay published in Wilson Quarterly in autumn 2009 “In the Beginning Was the Word,” points out how digital technology, especially in communication and entertainment, affects negatively on our lives socially and cognitively. She believes that although technology might appear as sign of our progress as humans, it is withdrawing us from the core literature. Rosen explains th...
Boepple, Paul. "Internet." The New Book of Knowledge. 34th ed. 20 vols. Chicago: Grolier Inc., 2000.