Like their print predecessors, format conventions in screen environments can become naturalized all too quickly, with the result that the thinking that informed their design goes unperceived.
Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 11-12.
Burdick et al.’s piece emphasizes the great potential for innovation that Digital Humanities can offer. In the near-decade since the publication of their guide, digital humanities practitioners have engaged in research and collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that would not have been possible in the traditional research publications of humanities academia. The possibilities of the new, still-expanding field of digital humanities have allowed researchers to reexamine some of the “givens” of more established academic fields’ conventions and practices.
I chose this quote because it reminds us that the innovative potential of digital humanities is rooted in the expansive, questioning mindset that the field has encouraged, asking new questions or reexaming old ones with a fresh eye, not just new applying old techniques with new technologies. This potential could be sapped if digital humanities is reduced to a buzzword, reproduces existing exclusionary practices and biases present within academia at large, or becomes yet another academic discipline with its own sets of received wisdom that needs to be followed without being examined too closely.
I think that some humanities students and researchers (myself included), sometimes underestimate our own capacity to work with new software or platforms and so accept superficial stylistic conventions as “necessary” for a program to work, or forget that technology is created by humans and isn’t above human biases. Instead of viewing digital humanities projects based on data, algorithms or other quantitative programs as entirely objective, we need to remember to examine the human choices that went into making them.
I’m looking forward to learning more about metadata and data visualization, two terms that I’ve heard tossed around a lot, but still don’t know exactly what they mean. I want to learn how to more clearly convey my ideas using digital humanities techniques.
