“Digital Humanities is unified by its emphasis on making, connecting, interpreting, and collaborating”.
Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,”
Via these words, only a mere peek into the content and richness of what Digital Humanities is portrayed to the beholder. Since it cannot be concretely defined, Digital Humanities can be more easily understood through its impact and how that is achieved. To reach a better understanding of the impact Digital Humanities has, it should be broken down into its two individual words; ‘digital’ and ‘humanities’, in order to dive deeper. Of course, the digital part in the equation of Digital Humanities is not very hard to grasp; the use of technology as in computers, various software, and anything electronic is encompassed by the word ‘digital’. Now, delving into humanities is what becomes quite increasingly more abstract. Although, as my interpretation of Prof Saladin puts it, the humanities are sets of information, or more simply put; data. That is data of anything and everything human in nature or produced directly by the work of humans whether it be a Shakespearean play and possibly how many new words were created in said play, as Prof Saladin suggested, or it could be the number of people in a certain demographic and the tendencies they exhibit. Furthermore, in order to finally envision Digital Humanities, the two concepts of technology and data points must be synthesized, as returning the two individual words back into one name suggests. This synthesis can be manifested in many ways including that of learning about a group of people modern or ancient or can be used to render what a ruined civilization once looked and functioned like at its peak. Noting that such a wide range of ideas and concepts across media, history, language, and geography can quite easily be encompassed by Digital Humanities shows that, in the end, Digital Humanities can be defined by its goal of sharing or reimagining information rather than by its topics.
