Short and Sweet Introduction to Digital Humanities

This post like my broken pencil, comes to you in two parts.

Part 1: How do we define Digital Humanities?

Well Merriam-Webster dictionary cannot define it, so we have to use good ole Wikipedia.

“Digital humanities is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. The nature of this activity ranges broadly, from the practical, such as digitizing historical texts, to the philosophical, such as reflection on the nature of representation itself.”

Humanities itself is learning literature specifically about human culture, history, art, music, and philosophy. So basically, digital humanities is a broad term used to describe how we use technology in our learning of those types of literature. If you think about it, you particiapte in digital humanities daily. Anytime you find one of your textbooks online because hardcover is just way to expensive, or groan as you read another online article for your social science class, even though he had already assigned three other articles that week, you are taking part in digital humanities.

Part 2: Why should you study it?

If you hadn’t noticed already humans are ever evolving. We are constantly coming up with new ways to communicate. From emails, Tumblr, to the new IPhone 500s, there are so many forms of communcation. With new forms of communication, there are more ways for people to get access to information, and communicate that new information to each other. Digital humanties teaches us how we communicate our ideas with technology, and how we as humans interact with one another in the digital world.

Sources:

“Digital Humanities.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 06 Sept. 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities.

Written on September 6, 2016 by Elissa Nunez