McGann views the movement into the digital humanities as an inevitability\u2014a part of our social evolution predicted by the human drive to learn and master new things. He argues that \u201cMen (and women) are indeed called to the mastery of things\u201d (62), meaning that part of what makes us human is our desire for learning and mastering new tools. This drive leads us to efficiency and complex technologies. Some academics working in the humanities reject digital scholarship (McGann uses the MLA\u2019s refusal to cite online works as an example p.56) likely because evolution means leaving comfortable stasis behind and transitioning into an unknown state. Yet, humanists, like McGann, who are interested in how humans interact with and come to master their tools, understand that there is no resisting this evolution.<\/p>\n
McGann reveals an interesting ambivalence in his argument, but that ambivalence ultimately strengthens his argument for embracing the digital humanities. His self-proclaimed position as a traditional \u201cbook scholar\u201d puts him in a position to resist–he is part of and still embraces the \u201cold way.\u201d But he argues that \u201cWe can no more \u2018refuse\u2019 the digital environment than we can \u2018refuse\u2019 the empire the US, for better and for worse, has become\u201d (50). His stating \u201cfor better and<\/i> for worse\u201d in this quotation reveals that he may have misgivings about how digital scholarship has shaped the humanities. However, he also understands our human drive toward mastery means that we will continue seeking new ways of doing things. Those who refuse will not be swept along but left behind.<\/p>\n
Those who develop \u201cdigital literacy\u201d as McGann discusses (53) will be in a better position to utilize the tools that others have created and mastered; scholars who continue to pursue emerging technologies and develop new literacies (digital or otherwise) will have an advantage in their field. The \u201cmarvels\u201d that young people\u00a0take for granted (52) like online data bases and search engines are a far cry from the dusty stacks older professors had to dig through during their graduate work. These taken for granted digital advantages put young people in a position to master whatever field of humanities they wish to pursue. I think McGann would argue that young scholars, in turn, will have to keep driving forward,\u00a0mastering the next emerging technology or evolution in the humanities. Perhaps more importantly, they will want<\/em> to master these new tools because curiosity and the desire to master new tools is part of what makes us human.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" McGann views the movement into the digital humanities as an inevitability\u2014a part of our social evolution predicted by the human drive to learn and master new things. He argues that \u201cMen (and women) are indeed called to the mastery of things\u201d (62), meaning that part of what makes us human is our desire for learning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}