2/4/2014
I read the NYT article "Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches" by Patricia Cohen. This article mainly discussed the challenges humanists are facing when it comes to digital humanities. More specifically, how big data are changing the scope and the way humanist do research.
In this article, the author mentioned that "Digital humanities scholars also face a more practical test: What knowledge can they produce that their predecessors could not?" In other words, what can humanists do with the unprecedented data available to them and what conclusions can they draw from them?
After reading the article, I personally think digital humanities is more like an opportunity than challenge to humanists. Most time, a good book, an amazing movie, a fantastic musical may mean different things to different people. The impact of them is in our hearts, in our mind, hard to describe accurately, even harder to share sometimes. But with digital tools, imaginations, pictures in our mind, even feelings can be built into a concrete object. More amazingly, a lot of people can work together to make it more accurate, comprehensive and delicate.
To me, this evolution in humanities is very similar to the evolution form 2D to 3D movies in the film-making industry. It's not destroying something old and building something new. Instead it's develop new things on the basis of old things.
There are challenges, but more opportunities coming with it. Every one should embrace this new era or big data, both scientists and humanists!
"this evolution in humanities is very similar to the evolution form 2D to 3D movies... It's not destroying something old and building something new."
ReplyDeleteVery interesting analogy. I wonder if digital humanities work will lead to new interesting questions in close reading.
Your comment about the collective nature of digital humanities scholarship ("a lot or people can work together to make it more accurate, comprehensive and delicate") points to the potential power of this type of research, and perhaps also to something that has people resist it - as it seems to go against the traditional, individualistic notion of personal ownership/originality of ideas and scholarship.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably true, but there are already successful cases of this kind of collaboration in information and technology world. A good example of this is Wikipedia. Everyone can use it for free. At the same time, everyone can also contribute to it by editing and adding information to it.
DeleteAnother example is open source software. They are also open to everybody to edit, modify, and use of course. For example, the well-known operating system-Linux, which is an alternative system to Windows and Mac, is open to everyone to modify and improve.
I believe it' just takes time for this to happen in humanities. Maybe it already happened.