Response to Cody’s Prompt
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 4 The digital humanities do change people fundamentally. This is in ways of learning, and growing with the ever changing world into a machine of forward digital movement. Of course this would either attract or repel people, and this, as always, relies on age and experience. Digital humanities can propel projects to be done faster, people to communicate easier, and things to be created more efficiently. Mitsuyuki Inaba refers to DH as “a kind of ‘fast-acting glue’ that allows scholars with different academic backgrounds to collaborate instantly” (282) and this is very true, in that, without the growth of DH in the past decade, the world of humanities would still be stuck in all-text mode. Take the Edith Wharton library for example, if not for the fast-acting glue of DH, the library would never be on it’s way to being digitalized. Most people don’t even know Wharton has a library, let alone the amazing things inside it, and the things you can learn about her as a person and author within her books. It is because of this surge of DH, and the attract that it had on Dr. Liming that made the digital library possible. However, many people will shy against this fast-acting glue, and stick to the traditional way. Who are these people? Probably older people, or people with not much experience with humanities in the first place, or people who never got the chance to be trained in the digital arts in the first place.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 2 Joanquin Rodriguez defines DH quite simply: “There’s no way to divide humanities from its digital basis just as there was no way of separating the humanities from their previous (still alive) analog medium, paper. We live, write, read, learn, work, digitally, and we create, deliver and use every content digitally as well” (282). Isn’t this the case? That we do all of these things, and they come quite naturally? Even being attracted to a billboard on the Interstate is being attracted to the DH, because that was something made digitally. Someone wrote, read, learned, worked, created, and delivered, this one piece of art and advertisement, and this roots from the humanities of their company. What once was just McDonald’s, with burgers and paper menus, turned into an entire array of foods and the digital showcase you see from your car–or, as Brad Brace says DH is, “[S]omething borrowed, something new…” (283).
You use the word “traditional” here like it’s a bad, despicable thing. What exactly about the traditional way is so inferior? You’ve defined DH also something that just makes things work more efficiently so, if that’s true, why not leave the people alone who would have trouble using modern ever-changing technology? I would argue that the traditional way is not inferior, it just reaches less people is a slower fashion. I think, in some ways, it’s dangerous to try and teach an 80-year-old who has trouble using the Google how coding works. The complexity of it may discourage them from using any technology at all.
This is true but your statement depends on whether or not Dr. Liming intends on promoting and advertising the final project. Because if there’s no advertisement, as I suspect there won’t be because of limited funding and grant money, then I don’t think the people visiting the site will be those who didn’t even know Wharton had a library before. This project allows scholars already in the Humanities and interested in either the early 20th century in America or Edith Wharton to look into what resources are in the library. It’s a valuable resource but it is not likely to draw someone into the humanities who wasn’t already there and specialized. What use would an engineer have for this library, for example? This doesn’t decrease the worth in any way but it maybe doesn’t fit with your quote about collaboration between different academic backgrounds.
“What use would an engineer have for this library, for example?”
Well, an engineer might be interested in the works of engineering, science, and technology that Wharton owned and kept in her library. Engineers, after all, need to know about history as well — about how people used to go about educating themselves with regards to new technology, structures, materials, theories, and methods. Wharton, for instance, has a copy of Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization (1934) in her library, and it’s annotated, showing that she read it. Now, what would a genteel, literary woman in her 70s want with a manual about the history of mechanized production and machine engineering? Good question! (If I were an engineer, I would definitely be interested in finding out how widely-read Mumford’s text was, and using Wharton’s annotations as a way of thinking about the way that readers responded to it during the time of its publication …)
What all this means, in short, is that you’re being a bit hasty and glib here, Ali. Though you are right about one thing: exposure and promotion are key. See, for example, my NPR interview about the digitization project.
This is interesting, because hear you are arguing the reverse of what you stated in your comments to Ali. How did this happen? How did you move from a position of agreement (“The digital humanities do change people fundamentally.”) to one of vague disagreement?