“Digital Humanities necessarily partakes in and contributes to the “screen culture” of the 21st century.”
Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 1-26.
This particular passage from the reading grabbed my attention because of its reference to the “screen culture” of the 21st century that is so pervasive in everyday life. I found this quote interesting because of the multitude of ways it can be interpreted. Do you personally think digital humanities adding to the already enormous screen culture is a good or a bad thing? What does the author think? These spiraling questions on the effect of digital humanities on humanity outside of the field is fascinating to me.
Reading this part of the reading connected to my current interest on the digitization of the world. The humanities are not often correlated to the digital world, but this is changing. The introduction and creation of digital archives and websites to preserve history has taken over. While these digital projects are beneficial for the preservation of knowledge, I feel they can also sometimes lose sight of what the original material was meant to stand for. There is a fine line that the experts in these fields are still trying to figure out. To be quite honest, the fact that I am attending college and taking a class in the digital humanities while the fine lines of the field are still being figured out excites me because it means that I could potentially have a small role to play in the development of this field. It is an exciting time to be alive, and digital humanities is proving that. It sparks endless wonder in my little nerd heart.
I am the most interested and excited to pursue how digital technology can work with the field of history seeing as how history is my potential major. I am very big into finding ways to present information easier and allowing more people to understand what is being presented to them, and I feel digital technology has the power to do that with history.
3 thoughts on “Reflective Blog Post (Max Votruba)”
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You bring up a very good point about how this quote is a little surprising for this context. I would assume that anyone who is so deep in the topic of digital humanities would be very positive about modern technology. However, the way they use it makes it seem like “screen culture” is a bad thing and they are confessing to participating in it. Personally, I think screen culture can be a good or a bad thing depending on the context but generally modern technology and screens are a great invention. However, it seems that the author thinks screen culture is a bad thing.
I think this is an interesting quote too. It seems like the author has a negative connotation of digital humanities as it causes more people to be on screens. However, I believe that the sectors digital humanities has so many benefits. One example is with the project that we did for lab 1: 3D modeling. 3D modeling has made it possible to visualize objects, designs, and buildings that we wouldn’t be able to like ancient artifacts.
I agree with your idea that while digital archives are important they can harm our understanding of the original work. I think this can be especially seen in paintings. Paintings are pretty easy to digitally archive, however, I feel that in photographs you lost the sense of scale and vastness some paintings portray. In regards to the questions you raise, I think it’s hard to say. You would think that someone who wrote a book on the digital humanities would be pro-digital humanities, but I feel in the modern world we perceive “Screen Culture” as bad.