Although I believe that Mullen’s argument in “We’re All Digital Humanists Now” is a little weak and needs more support and refinement, I get her point of view, and I can\u00a0imagine the digital humanities being on\u00a0a “spectrum”, where the most\u00a0professional humanists\u00a0are on one side, while the least professional humanists are on the other side,<\/p>\n
To make my point clearer, I think on the spectrum of digital humanities scholars\u00a0need to be categorized according to how much knowledge they have about technology, and how comfortable they are\u00a0using it. So in this way, I am suggesting that all contributors need to have the least knowledge about technology, such as how to operate a laptop\u00a0or a desktop. Otherwise they can’t have a place on\u00a0the spectrum. Being an ignorant of technology is still a problem among\u00a0humanists from developing countries.<\/p>\n
On one side of the spectrum, I can see those who have\u00a0exceeded the average knowledge about technology,\u00a0and have reached an advanced level in dealing with and in using digital tools and software. I will call this group “the professionals”. The most important skill\u00a0these professionals have is\u00a0the ability to build and analyze software and websites\u00a0where humanists can gather and exchange knowledge and points of view, The type of training that help humanists acquiring\u00a0such a skill, would typically be done by taking face to face or online courses in website and software designing. These type of courses are usually given by a computer science department, or by a computer science institute. Jerome McGann is\u00a0included in the professionals\u2019 category because I think his NINES project represents the level of proficiency\u00a0that\u00a0is associated with this category. All of the activities linked to\u00a0this category are complex and need particular attention from those who are involved in them, so not anybody can do them, only those who had proper training in them.<\/p>\n
On the opposite side of the spectrum, lies those who have the least knowledge about technology. “The\u00a0amateur”, or those who are interested and engaged in DH, but don’t have\u00a0sufficient digital knowledge to help them\u00a0excel in the field. The activities these individuals are involved\u00a0in include, the ability to post and comment on simple online websites (like Word Press), searching different websites or databases for certain topics, and finding online resources to support a paper they write or an argument they make. Therefore,\u00a0most of the tasks included in this category are simple in nature, and more accessible by the majority of humanists. Also, there is no actual training in demand here because it’s something people obtain\u00a0after becoming familiar with computers. Having said that, I find it difficult to put any of the authors we’ve read for in this category because I feel all of them have this initial knowledge already.<\/p>\n
Finally, on the middle of the spectrum, I imagine those who have moderate knowledge of everything digital, but are not afraid to try anything new. “The experimentalists”. They can post a full blog at Word Press (by full I mean a blog with some pictures or videos, and a hyperlink to an external source), and\u00a0at the same time they can use a software\u00a0designed to\u00a0search different\u00a0collocations of a word. Some of the activities scholars in this category experience are commenting on a text in Microsoft word, besides inserting tables and charts to a certain paper, experimenting a new scholarly search engine specialized in a certain filed, etc.\u00a0Now when it comes to which author I think fits in this category, I immediately thought of Terras because I believe\u00a0she is in this middle point. As it’s very obvious that she used a software\/program to calculate the number of presenters according to their country of origin, and to calculate the most commonly used words in the ACH\/ALLC 2005\u00a0conference, all to show her knowledge about the subject she’s discussing.<\/p>\n
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Although I believe that Mullen’s argument in “We’re All Digital Humanists Now” is a little weak and needs more support and refinement, I get her point of view, and I can\u00a0imagine the digital humanities being on\u00a0a “spectrum”, where the most\u00a0professional humanists\u00a0are on one side, while the least professional humanists are on the other side, To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}