Digital Humanities (Introduction)

 

Digital Humanities is a diverse field encompassing the application of digital methods by scholars in the arts and humanities, as well as collaborative efforts between Digital Humanities specialists and experts in computing and scientific disciplines. Additionally, it explores how the arts and humanities provide unique perspectives on the societal and cultural implications of evolving digital technologies. This field requires collaborative endeavors, drawing on a variety of skills, disciplines, and expertise.

 

The use of computers for analyzing research data in humanities disciplines like literature and history has roots dating back to the 1940s. The University of Cambridge played a pioneering role in humanities computing, establishing the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre in 1964 under the leadership of Roy Wisbey. Initially, the focus was on leveraging computers to facilitate the creation and organization of extensive concordances and thesauri for historical texts. Early innovators, including Wisbey, contributed to the formation of an international community of humanities computing specialists during the 1970s and 1980s. This community concentrated on developing computational methods capable of accommodating the intricate structures inherent in the primary materials used by humanities scholars.

 

Digital Humanities, also known as humanities computing, represents a field that involves study, research, teaching, and innovation at the intersection of computing and humanities disciplines. It is methodologically driven and interdisciplinary, encompassing investigation, analysis, synthesis, and presentation of data in electronic form. The field explores the impact of various media on the relevant disciplines and examines the contributions these disciplines can make to our understanding of computing.

 

In discussions about the internet, the notion that English exclusively dominates is debunked. Within the unregulated expanse of the internet, language transcends borders, defying conventional grammatical rules and adopting distinctive internet-specific slang. This phenomenon revolutionizes linguistic norms. Millennials, at the forefront of linguistic evolution in today's internet-driven landscape, have grown up with computers and the internet, crafting a unique language, dialect, and English slang. This generation challenges the traditional grammar-centric approach, experimenting with English grammar and blending it with vernacular languages.

 

While the term "digital humanities" has circulated for over a decade, providing a precise definition proves challenging. Discussions on how to characterize the field and delineate its boundaries predate the actual label. Nevertheless, a working definition is necessary for progress. Various books and journals on Digital Humanities present working definitions, recognizing the dynamic nature of the field. The following excerpts from different definitions highlight the diverse and evolving nature of Digital Humanities:

 

"Digital humanities is a diverse and still emerging field that encompasses the practice of humanities research in and through information technology, exploring how the humanities may evolve through their engagement with technology, media, and computational methods." (Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2010)

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"Digital Humanities refers to new modes of scholarship and institutional units for collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally engaged research, teaching, and publication. It is less a unified field than an array of convergent practices exploring a universe where print is no longer the primary medium for knowledge production and dissemination."  When Digital Humanities emerged, it was initially referred to as "humanities computing," and while there were some agreed-upon aspects of its origin story, there was no cohesive account of how this "new" field came into existence. Over the years, it has evolved through various events, leading to the present state of Digital Humanities.

 

Digital Humanities is not a singular field but rather a collection of convergent practices that explore a universe where: Print is no longer the exclusive or normative medium for producing and disseminating knowledge. Instead, print becomes integrated into new multimedia configurations.

Digital tools, techniques, and media have transformed the production and dissemination of information in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

The term "Digital Humanities" was coined by Padre Roberto Busa, an Italian Jesuit, who collaborated with Thomas Watson, CEO of IBM, in 1949, on a punch-card concordance of the works of Aquinas. Fifty-five years later, Father Busa contributed the foreword to the Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities, the publication that introduced the term "Digital Humanities" into the academic vocabulary in 2004. Given the technological advancements over those fifty-five years, Father Busa saw the history of Digital Humanities as a history of miniaturization.

 

In the early 1990s, the proliferation of new network technologies, particularly the World Wide Web (WWW), revolutionized the interaction of humanities and arts with digital technologies. The increased ease of creating and sharing non-textual files such as images, sound, and moving images marked a significant shift. This era saw the establishment of major projects aimed at providing large-scale digital editions and archives of texts and cultural artifacts spanning various periods and civilizations. Institutions like libraries, archives, and museums initiated extensive digitization programs to enable remote access to their collections. Concurrently, commercial entities like Google undertook large-scale digitization efforts of Western cultural heritage. This reevaluation of the relationship between humanities scholars and their primary materials extended beyond digitization, encompassing the utilization of technologies like Geographic Information Systems and 3D visualization. As government documents, literary works, and artworks increasingly transitioned into digital formats, humanities scholars grappled with curating and researching born-digital data.

 

A contextual backdrop for the growth of Digital Humanities involves the ongoing discourse surrounding a perceived "crisis" within disciplines, particularly the humanities. Paradoxically, Digital Humanities emerged both as a phenomenon raising questions about this crisis and as a potential solution. In the Anglo-American context, a sustained decline in funding for the humanities, post the late 1990s global recession, juxtaposed against relatively stable support for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and other natural sciences, has fueled this crisis narrative. The challenges include budgetary cuts, a decline in employment opportunities for humanities graduates, the prevalence of adjunct positions resulting in reduced full-time employment and inadequate compensation for faculty, and a general scarcity of resources for research in the arts and humanities. The perceived lack of practical value for the humanities lies at the core of this issue, making them appear dispensable during challenging times. The complexity of Digital Humanities as a "field" stems from its diverse disciplinary and institutional nature, along with its varied engagement with information technology. Acknowledging this diversity, the multifaceted nature of cyberculture studies is highlighted, described as "diverse and heterodox, too undisciplined to be called a discipline" (Bell, 2007).

 

The introduction of the digital has taken various forms in global south countries, often framed through rhetoric about its potential to address social and economic problems. There's a tendency for anything digital to be automatically perceived as "good" and "beneficial." Bridging the digital divide has been a mandate for stakeholders, including the state, policy-makers, private organizations, NGOs, and academia. India, with its substantial and growing internet user base, has implemented measures like the Digital India initiative to address concerns about digital infrastructure, governance, services on demand, and increased digital literacy. This initiative reflects a vision of techno-democracy or a governance model that integrates technology within a framework of rights and social development.