Digital Humanities is taking off and well it should. The potential is tremendous and there seem to more new, wonderful resources to be discovered everyday. Documents and books that were once locked away in a remote castle under Communist rule are now readily accessible through the internet. You can access the info without having to travel to a specific site, that reduces the adventure but it improves the ability to mull over the info. Here is today’s find: http://www.dariah.eu/index.php
As the digital networks expand, we might bear a few limitations in mind:
Starting off on an epistemological scale, we can point out that there are limits to digital humanities in terms of the interface between the digital network and our sensory perception. The two systems do not directly align, thus there are many bodily perceptions that cannot be replicated digitally, for example the haptic experience of other bodies and space. Digital reinforces sight and sound over touch, smell and taste.
How the information is indexed will shape its use, the example of montage and editing in film show clearly that the arrangement of images alters our understanding: chop info up into small units that alternate or deliver info in long theme related streams and you will alter how the info is understood. Does digital humanities want to deliver fragments or an epic narrative?
What will become of culture that does not have a digital platform? Well-endowed nations will replicate their culture digitally, others will not. Certain art forms—music will quickly adapt, others not. Will cultural info be processed into a similar format, so, for example, will all north African music be produced to sound appealing to Western consumers sitting at a screen?
Already back in the 1980s, switching to digital meant losing certain sounds, you don’t have to be a music snob to know that Jimi Hendrix sounds better on vinyl than on CD
Will digital humanities respond and transmit those cultural artefacts that fit its format while neglecting those that cannot be transmitted?
Will digital humanities networks allow a mixture of institutions to participate so that not just nation states or elite universities are involved, but that smaller scale organizations without the same internal controls and restraints will also be able to join, will an avant-garde theater group be able to participate as well as the government cultural institute?
