The important quality that digital
humanities needs to have is complexity.
In studying my favorite sites, such as time lapsed maps in which
borders, cities, battles, concentration camps are shown to emerge and disappear
over time, there are only a handful of pieces of new data that initially
emerge. In studying a map of
concentration camps put out on Stanford's Holocaust Geographies site, I learned that there were camps prior to Dachau, which is
generally said to be the first camp. That was a serious bit of information, I thought.
Having seen the dots on the map denoting camps appear and then flicker away, one would want to click on them to get the more
detailed history. I can look at the map
of concentration camps, examine their patterns, compare them to other web sites
with large maps, develop spatial ideas about where Jews and others were rounded
up, imprisoned and killed. There is lots of unspecified information to be
gleaned from looking at a map. The visualization of spatial relations is
invaluable, yet having studied the map, one would need texts to elaborate on
the emergence, operation and disappearance of the dots on the map. And indeed, “emergence” and “disappearance”
are problematic terms, because they dispel the notion of agency. A map does not explain what and who caused the
places it names to come into existence.
The map distributes places, and implicitly distributes responsibility,
but it does not claim to spell out a causal sequence.
A successful DH map would then have
to have links to texts about the locations it displays. As an old-fashioned reader, books
are still the standard that I would use to organize my thoughts about DH. A map begs for a text. Historical atlases, which contain only maps, are wonders for viewers
who have already a reasonable understanding of historical narratives, otherwise a time-lapsed map is a tease, at best. How
many visualizations of knowledge are just that, a tantalizing display that
compels you to look elsewhere for further information? This need not be a problem, no one source of
historical information need be definitive, yet it would be great to see more
information wrapped into visual displays, more background, hypertext.
Digital humanities sites appear
online as works in progress. What seems
like a first layer of information now, will no doubt be more complex in six
months. Web sites can appear in draft
form, as presentable but not yet complete, thereby allowing for public
commentary and re-evaluation in the process of putting them together. In this sense DH sites are like ordinary
blogs.
The Holocaust Geographies site
raises many of these questions about historical narrative as well, and the key research task for the site and its users is to answer them,
otherwise the project will hover incompletely with a set of questions waiting
for someone else to answer them. How
many DH sites are there which are half-finished because their progenitors have
run out of money and time? In this sense, DH sites can turn into fragmentary movies by aspiring directors who have run out of financing. The complexity that a web site requires to
provide anywhere near the nuance and information of a book requires time and
money that stretches out for years. In
that sense, high-quality DH may not be any faster than writing a book manuscript. The key difference is that it won't take a year to get out into the public. A click of the return key suffices--just like this.
