Digital Humanities Fundamentals

What is Digital Humanities? What defines the Digital Humanities now? What isn’t the Digital Humanities?

These three questions direct the main points of digital humanities by illustrating elucidating the modes which are a form of the definition, as well challenging ideas that misrepresent the concept. The author asserts that Digital Humanities is a cumulative concept, in which it doesn’t just include the purely digital and computerized version of information, but builds on the forms of communication before the dominance of the digital era. Not only this, but the author as well identifies that Digital Humanities has also fundamentally changed due to the advent of social media, which introduced a brand new form of social interaction that is purely impersonal. This is much less an opinion and more so a baseline definition to stand on his assertions. Although, what is more opinionated concerns the definitions of what isn’t Digital Humanities. The author gives a vague example in the form of an experiment that utilizes the “digital tools for the purpose of humanistic research…” I assert that if Digital Humanities is truly a culmination of what has been directed and issued from the past, which should also be in essence the culmination of humanistic research, then isn’t being able to use modern-day tools to analyze the humanistic research, similarly to using the human intellect to analyze literary pieces, classify as Digital Humanities? Despite this the author rejects the option to do so, but as well accepts the transformation of the Humanities as a whole.

Where does Digital Humanities come from?

Within this response, the author addresses the true roots to Digital Humanities, as the first utilization of computers to directly analyze humanitarian works, which is a direct contradiction to the characterization to what the author said previously as to what comprises Digital Humanities.
How do the Web and other networks affect the Digital Humanities? What is ahead for Digital Humanities? What is particularly interesting is what the author identifies as some of the plausible transitions the concept has taken or will take. The author asserts that “a new generation of Digital Humanities work that was less text-centered and more design-driven” will prosper. We can already see evidence of this in the transfer from digital books, towards more of a movie/tv show culture. Youtube content creators and actors have become some of the biggest names in pop culture, while book authors and traditional artists have fallen into the background. It is generally easier to become more immersed within video content rather than text-based content, so I agree that this transition will be more impactful with the advent of more immersive content, such as virtual/augmented reality.

The Project As Basic Unit

Why projects? It is an intriguing concept to identify both the objective and actionable modes of the word “project,” especially since the context to which the concept is utilized is generally the noun. For the word, to also signal as an construction or idea that will be created/conceived within the future, almost asserts that a “failed” project, or a project that is never completed, is not truly a project at all. Or rather a project is not truly a project until it has reached its completed or proposed state. Who is involved in Digital Humanities projects? How are Digital Humanities projects organized? The traditional individuals involved and the ways in which Digital Humanities projects are organized are entirely replicable in everyday projects. What is the difference between Digital Humanities projects and Big Humanities projects? Seemingly the only difference between Digital Humanities and Big Humanities projects is the scale between these projects, with Big Humanities projects being projected across many generations and exactly the opposite for normal Digital Humanities projects. How is the Digital Humanities continuous with the traditional forms of research and teaching in the humanities? How is the Digital Humanities discontinuous with traditional forms of research and teaching in the humanities? The author addresses some of the similarities and differences between traditional and digital humanities research. Seemingly the main deviation from traditional forms of research is the type of knowledge the mode is willing to preserve, which is inherently just the form of media it is on. But is this really a key difference to point out? I could argue as well that Aristotle created a division between written and oral research, since it is by definition a new mode of communication as well. How does the Digital Humanities function in the print-plus era? The key assertion made by the author here is the single-layered perspective brought by the print era, which is entirely different from the multi-layered perspective brought by the digital era, through filters, revisions, and instant access to differing source materials. Clear evidence of this is the Bible, in which multiple revisions and interpretations of the document exist for the average person in the modern day, while pre-digital humanities era, the average person will only be guaranteed one version of the religious text. How are Digital Humanities projects funded and sustained? What are the prevailing crediting and attribution conventions and authorship models for Digital Humanities projects? Very similar to traditional forms of authorship and funding.