“Digital_Humanities adopts a different view: It envisages the present era as one of exceptional promise for the renewal of humanistic scholarship and sets out to demonstrate the contributions of contemporary humanities scholarship to new modes of knowledge formation enabled by networked, digital environments.”
Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 7.
Out of the three readings, I enjoyed reading One: Humanities to Digital Humanities the most. I like this paper as it has an optimistic view on the digital humanities rather than a pessimistic one. I feel as though this excerpt really resonates with me as I completely agree with it. I really like the way it exhibits that technology is not something to kill the humanities but actually could help it last longer.
I feel as though this is something very relevant to my life. After my freshman year of college I got a grant to draw illustrations for children’s books and learning materials on a Native American reservation. I saw first hand how using digital technology can help preserve stories and language. I think our education system if anything is what is failing the humanities and not the advancement of technology. I used software to draw and a software called Boom cards to make interactive learning materials. These materials were used by the students to learn both Lakota and math at the same time. I think that it is impossible to stop the advancement of technology so rather than view it as a force of destroying the humanities it should be seen as a tool to make stuff last forever.
In addition, for instance, it can also be used to help people who are far away from artifacts to see an accurate representation via a 3D model. I am most eager to pursue 3D modeling as I have always been interested in environmental video game design. Although after starting this class I think the possibilities to apply my new 3D design skills are much broader than I ever thought. I never thought of using 3D design to help build an artifact online so someone in another country could see something that was in our current museum. I see the digital humanities as a way to use technology as a more up to date medium.
