It should be no secret to any of us that companies want to get as much information about us as possible. Usually the data that they are after is thought of as our traditional idea of what data is, including our name, location, gender, and age. With the widespread use of the internet, this conventional idea of data has expanded to include, for example, our online purchasing habits, as well as our search habits, by way of internet cookies and other technologies. Marketers use this data to better target the people who are most likely to purchase the product or service. However, data like this is not the only form of data that a company can use to expose who you are. Metadata, which effectively is “data about data” (Setting the Stage), as described by Anne Gilliland, is increasingly being used to take anonymous information that many companies keep about their customers and cross-reference it with other data sources, such as social media posts, to determine exactly who each piece of anonymous data belongs to.

        The use of metadata was not originally conceived with marketing purposes in mind. Rather, it was used in libraries, to create indexes and abstracts, and museums. Another application of metadata, resource discovery, can be closely related to what marketers use metadata for today. The way marketers use metadata to determine who the nameless profile is in a database is similar to how libraries used metadata to create groups of work based on content and metadata relating to the work. In the article by Robert Lee Hotz, this process is better described. After starting with said nameless profile in a database, this activity can be cross referenced with data from social networking sites. This data from social networking sites contains metadata of its own, time stamps, locations, and people tagged in the photo or status, that can be then compared to the anonymous data to create a match.

        The question is, however, does this use of data to gauge everything from buying habits, to who you are with, and where, invade the buyers privacy? For better or worst we live in a world of transparent personal data, in part because of our widespread adoption of the internet, and particularly social media. To touch on an interesting part of this concern for privacy, I have found that people are often concerned with marketers having this data, but never think twice about the people seeing the same posts on these social media sites.

        So to address the privacy concern, I want to pose a question. Is there a difference between your 250+ friends on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, having this information about you, and the marketers who want to push products to you? What about when you consider that some of your “friends” or followers on these sites you may not actually know personally? My opinion on the subject is that if a person is concerned about marketers having this data, perhaps they should examine exactly what they are posting on these social media sites in the first place, and determine if they are posting too much.

Kyle C.

Gilliland, Anne. “Setting the Stage”. Introduction to Metadata. retrieved from http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intrometadata/setting.html

Hotz, Robert Lee. “Metadata Can Expose Person’s Identity Even Without Name”. The Wall Street Journal. January 29, 2015. retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/metadata-can-expose-persons-identity-even-when-name-isnt-1422558349

Are you concerned with privacy? What does it mean to you? To me, it really is a big deal. I’ve always wanted to be able to say that my life was “private,” but when in reality, that’ll never happen. It doesn’t matter how many protectors you use, how many proxies you use, or “VPN’s” you use, your information will always be accessible. Doesn’t matter what you delete from your computer, it will always still be accessible as well. Back to my statement, I wished my life could be “private.” I’ve been wanting this for yours, but it never happened yet, nor do I think it will.

Anything that has been put on the internet, can be found again. Period. This is ridiculous in it’s entirety; it really bothers me that everything is so vastly available. You can literally find addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts, etc. Metadata falls into the same theory of finding information about someone so easily.

The article, Robert Hotz’s Wall Street Journal, was a great tool to learn more about metadata. What I found super interesting was the topic on social media sites. Everybody is perfectly fine with entering their information to sign-up for social media site, but they never know what the sites are doing with the data. They actually sell your information to anybody that is willing to pay for it. Then those companies take your information, and direct certain ads and commercials towards you. Weird, huh? Now you know why when you open up the internet, you get pop-ups from girls saying their “3 miles away from Stockton, Ca,” and want to “hang-out” with you? All because your location has been sold.

Robert Hotz’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Metadata Can Expose Person’s Identity Even Without Name,” raises concerns about security risk in an age where a person’s identity can be found online. Through a simple Google search one person can do a background search on anyone. Information is published online, which is picked up by others and eventually shared in the cyber world. Take, for instance, data brokers. Data brokers buy and share large quantity of personal information. If I had a unique buying trend on Amazon, this information will be shared with a company (like Facebook) so other companies are able to advertise to me.

This trend also brings to mind bulk collection of personal data from government spy agencies. Government has the ability to act like data brokers in the sense that information is collected on an individual and potentially shared. Should the government be able to collect this information and share it? Honestly, in a post-9/11 age this questions seems difficult to answer. We are in a time and age where we want safety and security – but are we willing to give up our personal liberties?

Yes, the two comparisons are polar opposites but it does bring to mind the information we put on the web is out there for everyone’s use. Perhaps individuals like to receive Facebook ads on products they want to buy. On the other hand an individual may not mind his/her/ze personal liberties being taken away for the safety and security provided by their nation.

As for the “data about data” made available on the internet, author Anne Gilliland provides information on the content, context, and structure of an “object” – however, no set definition is given. An example she gives through her article (one that I can closely relate to) is libraries. I am currently on the Dean of the University Library Search Committee and one thing to take into consideration is the day and age we are in. Should we expand our libraries online presents with ebooks? How should we maintain the current structure of the library; meaning should we uphold the traditional library.

We are currently in a day and age in which we are defining metadata and the liabilities included with it. Information that is stored online through data brokers is open for everyone’s use. In addition, the new generation of libraries and what metadata can actually do remains a mystery since we are still defining its purpose.

So… Metadata. Anne Gilliland explains that metadata is, “data about data”, and thus is all the available information about information objects. That probably doesn’t really help explain anything at all. The thing is, though, that metadata doesn’t seem to quite have a set definition, as there are so many different components, types, and aspects of it. But Gilliland breaks metadata down and explains it as having three components: the content, context, and structure of the information object in question.

A prominent example of metadata in today’s culture include libraries, museums, and archives that use metadata to provide access to their materials, as well as the context those materials are in to provide a value to their information. Libraries, museums, and archives thus use metadata as a means of cataloguing their information objects so that other people can use it to their own knowledgeable purposes. More specifically, metadata can provide a means of description and resource discovery, not only in libraries, museums, and archives, but in just about anything.

As I said before, there are several different kinds of metadata, in which they are categorized by their purpose and function. However, all of the different kids of metadata are unified under a certain set of aspirations and thus functions, that Gilliland states as being: “creation, multiversioning, reuse, and recontextualization of information objects; organization and description; validation; searching and retrieval; utilization and preservation; and disposition,” of all information. Metadata is meant to attain and accumulate knowledge over time, thus expanding our information about all things informative.

However, metadata can be used for more than just contextual and descriptive information. It can be used to identify individual patterns through the information provided, thus supplying a means of infringing on privacy. In Robert Lee Hotz’s Wall Street Journal article, he states that metadata can look at a variety of patterns and identify them with individuals, based on their unique patterns. He gives the example of looking at shoppers’ patterns and how data analysts were able to identify who the shoppers were based on what they bought and looked at, as well as how much time they spent shopping.

So I guess the real question that is elicited from the concept of metadata is, how much information is too much, when it provides the means for invading our privacy?

Metadata literally means “data about data.” That can be quite confusing and vague, so what is metadata really?

In “Introduction to Metadata,” Anne Gilliland sets the stage by providing the audience with multiple definitions and views of metadata. The 1990’s was quite accurate, defining it as the internal and external documentation of data contained in an information system. More specifically, metadata is about an information object. An information object embodies content, context, and structure. Thus, metadata does not have to be digital; it can be recorded in card catalogs, vertical files, and more. Though metadata is a broad term, there are specific types. For example, library metadata includes indexes, abstracts, and bibliographic records. As technology advances, it has expanded the market of metadata in creating automated means such as “metadata mining, metadata harvesting, and Web crawling.” Evidently, computer capabilities are becoming increasingly powerful and sophisticated. Paul Conway, though, takes a positive spin on metadata and says that the digital world maintains objects’ intellectual integrity.

However, does metadata cross the (privacy) line? An article by the Wall Street Journal titled “Metadata Can Expose Person’s Identity Even Without Name” speaks for itself. MIT’s research proves that, despite anonymity, this analytic formula can readily identify a person’s unique purchasing pattern almost 100% of the time; and with a little bit more research into public profiles (such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, “check-in” applications), they could place names to the numbers. It is not so alarming though, because this new technique is purposed for firms, advertisers, and retailers for better advertising.

Bottom line, I believe the digital world relies on metadata. It functions to create, recontextualize, validate, organize, and preserve and there are clear benefits. Out of those, I find its role in effective researching most significant. I think Wall Street Journal says it best, “metabase is not as important as content but remarkably revelatory.”

The Digital Citizenship and Crowdforcing articles are both quite interesting because they reveal the potential drawbacks of sharing on the Internet. The Digital Citizenship article discusses some rules about when and how to share others’ creations and ideas. This reading teaches me the significance of informing participants about the works we share. I found this article important because it shows the adverse effects of sharing works without giving credits to participants who create them. I could see how sharing without citing sources might lead to the decreasing amount of music and film productions. When people share others’ works without having their informed consents, it may deter them from producing quality works.

I think the article makes some excellent points about publication guidelines on the Internet. A lot of social websites should inform people about these rules and ensure digital piracy does not happen. They could provide some information about publication and sharing on registration pages. Each person will need to agree to the specific terms about sharing and publishing. When they share others’ publication of videos and images, people will also agree to the terms about sharing by clicking a checkbox next to the post button. I think this change will benefit people who share interesting productions on the social websites.

Crowdforcing article also shows some issues about sharing on the Internet. It talks about how some companies might share personal information with others when they gather data from people. One example is FitBit which is a calorie-tracker company that uses people’s lifestyle information to monitor their health. When FitBit gives personal information to insurance companies, it allows insurance companies to increase their sales by analyzing dataset. The insurance companies will create personalized plans and sell individualized products to people in which they have personal information. I believe that companies have the obligation to inform people about the personal information they might share. Although most companies understand the importance of privacy laws, they could still share personal information. I think companies should create an effective system to ensure their data does not go to other companies. I enjoyed this reading because it offers important insights about how companies might share personal data.

This week’s readings are referred to the guidelines and concerns that people have to think about when they begin posting any personal or private information online.  Privacy is an important factor to examine closely because anything that is placed on the Web can affect others in a way that could have a contradictory effect.  These sites have been helpful in explaining some of the consequences and challenges that digital users might face when thinking about what they want or can put up online.

The “Domain of One’s Own” website provided specific facts and ways on how people should consider when setting up something that might become public.  These guidelines were beneficial to people who are getting started in adding information through the Internet as they explained what ways are considered “fair use” in utilizing copyrighted sources and indicated the issues that might arise if they expose content incorrectly.  When sharing ideas and support online, it is important that people need to either cite the original author or ask for their permission to add the support.  This is crucial because if the author is mentioned in the writing, then they will be given some credit in the new work.

In Golumbia’s reading about crowdforcing, it demonstrated how sharing data can be difficult to think about what people want to show to the public.  Usually it is fair to share information to the public, but there are some materials that might not have that same permission since the public might have a different opinion on the subjects involved in the writing.  The idea of crowdforcing emphasizes on the digital user’s decision on how their actions could impact others in either a positive or negative way.  It is always important to respect other people’s privacy in how they want to be depicted in society and to be aware of the issues that folks online would confront.

Overall, always remember to think about the people in the works first before doing anything else.

In David Golumbia’s informational reading on privacy and digital citizenship, it was reinforced  multiple times that copyright infringement and plagiarism are real things that we need to be aware of. While many things in this article I felt were self explanatory, such as not simply taking an authors work without giving them credit, there are few pieces of information that I was not previously aware of before that interested me.

First, I did not know that there were ways to “override” a copyright. Golumbia talked about how if a copyrighted source is not published under a licence, it many times has a “fair use” exemption. That being said, if a copyrighted material is being used for educational or non-profit purposes, it most likely can be used. There are also three other exemptions: Nature (Whether the work is factual or creative) , how much you are going to take from the source, and if it is going to deprive the copyright owner of profit. These logistics were new to me but I deem them as pretty helpful!  I always assumed that if something was copyrighted that there was no wiggle room in using copyrighted material unless you asked permission by whoever owned the copy right. With these exemptions written out, it gives me, and I’m assuming a lot of other students at my level, more insight on what you can do.

Keep in mind that Golumbia also includes important logistics of what NOT to do that we don’t normally think about. For example, citing your sources is great, but not good enough to avoid copyright infringement. I feel that it is a common misconception to think this way and I’m glad  Golumbia included this and didn’t assume that the audience would already know this.

Bottom line, check, check, and triple check before using someone else’s work!

According to our readings this week, no. At least that was the impression I got from the “Crowdforcing” article. Sharing sounds more like an abomination than anything, when it’s shown in the light David Golumbia provides. (And no, sir, I do not believe you’ve “suggest[ed] the shape of a problem” so much as attacked the idea of digital sharing with a blunt force object, but that’s beside the point.) Though I found Golumbia’s wordiness and excessive efforts to sound intelligent rather exhausting, he made some valid points that should be taken into consideration when it comes to online “sharing.”

The whole idea of “crowdforcing” is frankly unnerving, especially when it comes to personal information. The Facebook example he used stood out in particular to me, because I’ve heard of people taking pictures from Facebook and posting them to their own profiles. Not only is the tagging system for photos basically in every user’s hands, but since we only have real control over our own profiles, it’d be hard to stop someone from sharing photos or other information we wouldn’t want shared otherwise. I remember a news story once that kind of goes in tandem with this issue; some creepy dude got caught taking pictures of someone else’s young daughter off the mother’s Facebook, and he pretended the little girl was his, reposting the pictures and adding comments as if he was her father. That might be a bit beyond Golumbia’s idea of “crowdforcing”, but it still exemplifies what sharing things online makes possible for strangers to do to personal data.

The fact that “crowdforcing” can cause gain for some and harm for others ties into the reading about copyright issues as well. Having a kind of “crowdforcing” mentality creates a false assumption that if, say, an artist were to post a drawing on their personal blog, someone else could pluck up that drawing and repost it without the artist’s permission. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen all the time, and what makes it sad is that the reposters tend to get popularity for simply posting the work that isn’t theirs, while the original artist doesn’t get the credit they deserve. Though online artists don’t always have “official” copyright on their work, it’s still violating them to steal their art and use it as if its creator didn’t matter. I know the “fair use” policy crops up in a lot of places online, particularly Youtube, and while I think it’s fair enough to use art or other media if the intent isn’t to make a profit, getting permission from the creator is still important. I can only imagine how big of a punch in the gut it would be to see your own artwork on someone else’s website, getting five times as much attention as the original should have.

So in the long and the short of it, I suppose sharing is caring so long as whoever’s stuff you’re sharing knows about it. And agrees to it. In as explicit phrasing as possible. It’s the same concept as “borrowing” something when you’re actually just stealing it because you thought it was pretty and never wanted to give it back in the first place. Sharing ideas and media online can help spread enthusiasm, get discussions going, and just improve communities in general. But don’t slap the creator of that video or show or album in the face by erasing them from existence. Give credit where credit is due.

When it comes to technology, privacy is a difficult thing. Due to the nature of the internet, once information is released, it is difficult to take back down. Even if ID Protection is purchased, as our reading explained, that information is still hackable or may not actually be hidden by the website administrators. The Ashley Madison case is an example of that. Truly, if there is a way to hide information, it would be to not give it out through the internet. This also ties back to the other reading as well. Once information is out, “crowdforcing,” as the author puts it, may occur. “Crowdforcing” is when information is shared without the consent of the owner. This is not unique only to information on the internet. Any information that relies on technology is susceptible to it, for example, smartphones. While certain information may not be harmful, nowadays, information like genetics have surfaced, which may lead to discrimination. As technology advances, so too, must the norms and ethics behind it.

I’ve learned about fair use and copyright only slightly. Especially with the internet these days, it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain ownership (or rather, keep its use private). Media is something that has been impacted in particular. Music is freely downloaded and pictures are used liberally without the permission of the owner. Perhaps some websites will take down copyrighted material, but there will always be more cropping up if not on that website, then on another. Many people don’t even know they are infringing copyright as they post information without realizing it. In these days, technology does enhance the difficulty of maintaining the law.

Regarding ethics, it is difficult to do no harm,especially in the realm of nonfiction. Perhaps for research, it is easier as facts are nigh immutable. However, for nonfiction, words are spoken to the discretion of the speaker which may be interpreted differently depending on the individual. At the end of the day, it is difficult to do no harm to whoever you represent as a seemingly innocuous bit of information may yet prove to be inciting to that person or to the public. However, it is correct to say that you should do your best not to do harm.

My experience with computers and technology was been interesting, my first experience with technology was with my Super Nintendo Entertainment System and it just prospered after that. I began to be interested in how technology worked, my Super Nintendo was having some issues so I put matters into my own hands. As I got older my interest grew, when I got my first computer I began researching on how the computers worked. I taught myself on how to use software and taught myself all the different shortcuts.

My experience with technology has not been all good, during the summer tutor children in math, and when ever I would ask them a question like, “what is the formula to find the area of a triangle.” So the children immediately took out their phones and googled the answer, even though their textbook with the answer was in their hands. Just after that i began to realize just how reliant are we to technology, and just how much do we expect to google the answer instead of using the good old textbook. It is not a big problem it is just a pet peeve knowing that the next generation is so dependent and trusting on what the internet says.

I have a really good relationship with technology when it is working. I am always on my phone and I always have it next me. I always play games, check social media, and rely on my phone. Except when it becomes faulty, I feel like I want to throw my phone across the room and at the wall.

When my technology is working I spend a lot of time on it playing games, chatting friends, and organizing my busy life of course, but I am also preparing my self for my upcoming classes, researching, and learning about miscellaneous topics. A lot of the time I will look ahead on the class schedule to research materials that will help me become prepared for the next class. In “When Women Stopped Coding” they explain to us that Ordonez thought that her classmate was some sort of genius because they knew how to do everything that was being taught. Ordonez said “I tracked him down. He’s now a tech consultant in Seattle. Lee remembers that time, and he says Patty was wrong. He wasn’t some kind of genius. He had something Patty didn’t – a home computer.” Having the accessibility and readiness of a computer allowed him to become successful. To me this story conveys the message that computers and technology can teach us so much. Even if individuals, like me, have a complicated relationship with technology we should get past it and appreciate what technology has to offer. The ability of having computers is a privilege and we can’t take them and technology for granted especially if they can help us become successful.

The following refers to George H. Williams’ “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities” and Planet Money’s “When Women Stopped Coding.” 

When I read the assigned text of Chapter 12 for today’s reading, on the topic of disability and “universal design,” I could have wept with joy for the unexpected address of a subject that is very close to heart for me.

My name is Chain, and though you might not think it to look at me, I am a disabled student. My struggles are not always identical to the ones that Williams’ specifically described or referenced in this chapter; I am not visually impaired or deaf, nor do I lack in physical mobility. However, I do suffer from a number of conditions that affect my ability to interact with the world – including OCD, ADHD, and a processing difficulty that, while still seeking assessment, resembles and may turn out to be CAPD (central auditory processing disorder). Because of this, the way I interact with digital tools is constantly informed by my personal needs and experiences.

Like those with more severe or total hearing loss (which I do also experience to a lesser degree), I find it difficult or impossible to follow video or auditory recordings without closed captioning or transcripts. Like those with epilepsy or sensory processing disorder, I am subject to hypersensitivity to resources that rely on flashy, overbright, or otherwise hyperstimulating displays. Like those with dyslexia or verbal processing hardships, disorganized, dense, or blocky text can require extra headaches and devotion to slog through. So, I feel very personally aligned with the experiences and accessibility gaps described by Williams in his discussion of disability and “universal design” concepts.

I also found that my understanding of the tools and formatting choices described by Williams was benefited from my experience in the workplace. Right now, I work for the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities on campus as an alternate formatting assistant. That means my job description is exactly what you all have read about: involving the difficulty of sparse and individually-powered efforts to reformat resources for the access of disabled students.

Since we are specifically addressing the digital humanities as a field, let me give an example. Say a class at the College of the Pacific relies on textbooks, articles, websites, or resources that can be accessed online. Say, then, a visually impaired, blind, or otherwise disabled student takes this course, and finds that the materials are inaccessible to them. They then submit a request to the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, or SSD for short. SSD receives the request. If not previously arranged, the resource must be requested from the publisher or otherwise reformatted into PDF form. Then, someone like myself must go through each page of the document individually, separating it into the appropriate sections and saving each as a unique document. The documents are uploaded, one by one, into an expensive program with screen-reading capabilities. Then they are gone through individually with a tool called the “zone editor,” with which we must tell the program what parts of the text – break lines, for example; images, figures, page numbers, or footnotes – not to read. After the entire document is zone edited, the text itself must be scanned for any point at which words are broken up by line. (For example, the end of the line may say “[…] Christ-” and the start of the next line may say “mas […]”, if the word “Christmas” had to be broken up.) The underlying text is then altered so that the program reads the full word instead of two separate syllables that will not make sense to a listener. Once this process is gone through for every page in each section, the sections are re-saved, then uploaded to a server for the student’s access. All of this has to be done by the time they need to consult the text according to their class syllabus, and does not include the more difficult outsourcing process if a text or resource relies heavily on visual figures, charts, or images, which must be given a verbal description.

Now, consider: how much easier would it be for that student, and indeed anyone else who might experience inconvenience or difficulty, if a standard of “universal design” had been adhered to, and all resources were created to be accessible and reformattable from the beginning?

For some it might seem contrary for me to promote the sort of free and open access inclusive resources that would essentially eliminate the need for my job. I disagree. I am employed for want of money, yes, but my choice to work with SSD specifically is motivated from the desire to participate in what I see as an extremely important effort. And, indeed, this is where Planet Money’s podcast on gender marketing of technology comes in, too. Williams is right when he says that universal design benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities. Similarly, universal access must take into account the same: that “we should always keep the largest possible audience in mind” (Williams, “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities). This includes people of all learning styles, of all levels of ability, of all economic situations, of all cultures, of all genders, and so forth. No person should be discouraged, kept, or barred from the science, technology, and resources that benefit our society as a whole – whether it be as a result of gender bias, inaccessibility, or privatization of resources.

To put my money where my mouth is, I’ll sign off from this post with a few resources that some of you may be interested in, too. Disabled or not, you may find them helpful.

• Bee Line Reader – This extension/add-on colors text with a gradient from one line to another, allowing the mind to process it with less visual difficulty. If you have trouble reading large blocks of text quickly, this may benefit you.
• Care Your Eyes – For anyone with sight or brightness sensitivity, this extension allows you to choose ‘night mode’ to protect your eyes from harsh or overintense color or text.
• Readability – This app simplifies and eliminates visual clutter from any webpage, allowing you to focus directly on the text itself – which displays in a clean, easy-to-read format.

Good luck and happy browsing!

My experience with computers and technology period has been a rocky one. I do appreciate technology and I think it benefits out way its negatives. When I was younger and even as I grew up I  have never really been that great with computers. But as smart phones and tablets came along I got a lot better but still my connection with computers was a distant one. My dad is really good at technology and fixing them so if I ever had a problem then I would just ask him to fix it for me. That may be a huge part of my problem right there and my be why its much harder for me because I never really had to deal with them myself. I find with my phone I can’t go without it and I do know exactly where it is at all times. When I was growing up though we did have an Xbox and a Wii so I was pretty good at using those and fixing them when they weren’t working right. Now I have a new laptop and I’m still learning how to use it and all the cool features it has. I didn’t even know that when you buy a new laptop Microsoft doesn’t come with it automatically you have to download it. No one told me so that’s how I thought it was. I am working really hard at changing my relationship and getting a much better one in the future. But to me I feel that Williams and I experiences are very different but that’s just how I see it.

We have all heard about technology in today’s day and age, but do you remember what technology was like when you were growing up? Whether it be the invention of the “flip” phone, new windows operating systems, or the evolution of the television, technology was advancing faster than we knew it. For me, my first interactions with technology had to do with computers. My brother was a mastermind behind a keyboard, and he always intrigued me with all the things he was able to do. Each and every time I would come home from school, I would sit and watch my brother work his magic on the screen.

In today’s world, everybody has some sort of connection with technology; whether it be a computer, your cell phone, a home security system, or something as simple as a washer/dryer. Let’s take college for example. When you were in high-school, your school work was all done on paper, not the internet. Now, looking at UOP as an example, we see that more and more assignments and quizzes are being administered on online websites. Why, you may ask? I believe its because we are making a way towards a technology led world, where we use it (technology) to aid in our everyday lives; like an alternative and easier way to turn in homework to a professor. Is this really the best option for everyone? I don’t believe so, and I can relate this to the article/podcast by Williams, on the topic of disabilities and the digital humanities.

Through his research, Williams’ found that the disabled do not benefit as much from technology, as the completely able people do. I believe this is completely true, to a certain extent. Sure, technology like computers, television, and basically anything with a screen, are not really beneficial to blind people, but there are technologies out there, such as braille readers, that are super beneficial to these types of people. I completely agree with Williams’ idea that technology should be created in a way that everybody is able to use it. If we were able to give the disabled people the same type of technology that we use, but in a way that they were able to use it, there’s no telling what they would be able to accomplish.

First and foremost, my experience with technology specifically computers has always been marvelous. I have been around them since I was a small boy in Africa, and to this day ever strive to gain a greater understanding of them as a tool for the workplace and leisurely activity. From a young age, I was on the computer playing games, such as the old toy story game, which was a great time in my youth. Fast forwarding to when I was a teen, I started building my own computers and learning basic coding. Really it was more out of boredom, but it gave me a greater understanding of what the different parts did and how they operated. This allowed me to make custom parts and keyboards, which relates back to the reading, in that I was able to make things that which assisted me in my endeavours as they were made for my explicit use. One such thing was a keyboard I made from old typewriter keys and an ergonomic polymer which allowed me to be able to type without extra strain.

The importance of that goes into the question accessibility and ease of use. One of the main arguments was for a universal system that is easier to use overall, and is cross platform compatible. This is the thinking that comes out from an academic position, however, it is an argument that realistically speaking is unachievable and not practical. Arguably, advancement happens based off incentive, it is the reason why patents last for 20 years, so that people will create things and be able to profit from them. Software operates off the same principle, there needs to be a monetary incentive for their to be a real advancement in the industry.

An example of this is, whatever operating system you happen to be using on the computer or device you are reading this on. The system that operates what you are using probably cost millions of dollars to make, using research and development and doing testing on the software’s capability. So in turn the company that made it, are going to release it in such a way that they are the only ones that benefit from it, and it may lead you to buy more of their products so things are compatible, as it is the economically sound thing for a company to do. Now as people we would prefer if everything worked together, much like how the rest of the world hopes the United States will go the metric system sometime, however, neither are realistic goals.

I have been around computers all my life, receiving my first desktop around the age of seven. I don’t believe I even used the keyboard until I used computers in school. In school we had a class twice a week where we played with the program “Kid Pix” and also practiced typing. Eventually I found Role Playing Games and Real Time Strategy Games and that took over my life for a while. I eventually got so into games that I decided to build my own computer with the help of my dad. He used to fix computers as a side business and I would occasionally accompany him on his jobs. I guess it was my dad who really got me into technology, even now I believe that he knows more about computers than I do. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, at least when it comes to Windows (not MAC or Linux) and I think that it is because I have been computers for so long. I have run into problems and either fixed them myself or observed my dad fix them in front of me. I rely heavily of technology because I believe it makes life more efficient as well as convenient.

The Williams article talks about “Universal Design” and what exactly that term means. Accessibility and Affordability are the two main points I got from the “Why Universal Design” section. Accessibility meaning that anyone can have access to technology. Everyone should have access to technology because it will contribute to the wealth of knowledge that we have been accumulating. People in other countries who don’t have access as well as people with disabilities whom technology does not cater to, and even people who just don’t know how to use the technology are all excluded from our database. Affordability goes to the people who do not have access, if technology is too expensive it will always be out of reach for some and they will not be an active part of our records. We may know things about them from what other people write but it would be much better to hear what they think straight from them. People with disabilities are slowly being catered to, with new programs and devices to help them get close to the same accessibility as people who do not have their disability. As for people who do not know how to use technology, I believe that if you have not used technology for an extended period of time, or do not have a profound interest in technology and have the motivation to learn will be left behind in some ways.

In conclusion I believe that Universal Design is necessary if we are going to have a “complete” database. Early introduction to technology is the most important but to have early introduction we need everyone to be able to access technology in the first place.

As a person who does not have a major disability that makes it difficult to view information displayed on a technological apparatus, I have not paid much attention to the difficulties a person may face if he or she has one. However, from my limited experience, I do have to admit there are not a lot of resources to help. Perhaps, for those who are slightly visually impaired, they will have to rely on enlarging the website (using the zoom function). I have that problem (my eyesight is horrendous) and frequently find myself having to adjust the lighting and sizing of the page. But for those who are completely blind, they do not even have that luxury. They have to rely on a program that reads the information for them.

I agree with William in regard to the difficulties of navigating a page based on listening. Not only is not fast enough, it is also tedious to have to listen to things that are not relevant to what a person may be searching for. Although his program will help reduce extraneous information, there remains a plethora of text to filter through. It is also not fail-proof and will need to be customized to fit a person’s need depending on what degree of disability and what type of disability he or she faces. It is for that reason I cannot agree to an universal design, another point William makes on that matter.

Although having an universal design will suffice for the average person, regardless of extra cost or aesthetics, universal design cannot service everybody. It is correct to say sidewalk curb cuts allow people in wheelchairs easier accessibility to streets, but those individuals easily have more accommodations in their own private dwellings customized to them more so than what is seen outside. My point is that as technology functions as personal tools, there should be a certain degree of customization rather than just a single universal design. Yes, the cost may be greater, but if there is a market for it, surely, some will commit to undertaking extra measures in order to guarantee that extra customization.

There is also the matter of human compassion. In order to make the lives of our fellow inhabitants easier, rather than slot them in as an ordinary person, they should be afforded the extra details such that they are able to experience the full range of functions others are able to enjoy. Take note that I do not intend to insult or discriminate. Rather, should there be something that increases the comfort (or rather, the ease of use in this case) for a person, it should be done. In the end, I say all of this with good intentions, but it would be derelict of me to suppose what those with disabilities would desire. It would therefore be best to create a poll that would confirm or deny such thoughts. In that way, personal beliefs (and corporate ones, too) will not impede what would work best for those disabled.

As far back as I can remember I have always been very intrigued by computers and basically technologies of all types. My uncle is an engineer and when I was 5 years old he got me my first computer desk top and showed me how to use it. From that moment on I started to learn more and more about technology like how to use a cell phone, iPod, etc. At first my relationship with technology was actually fairly good, I found it very interesting and wanted to learn how to use everything from how to make a power point to how to use a play station. As I got older it seemed like technology started to get harder and more difficult as technology started to develop more and become more complex. As of now, my relationship with technology has gotten worse and worse. I now find myself having a difficult time even paying things online or even doing traffic school online. Little glitches and so many options that lead to other pages have made it seem impossible to be navigated to where I need to be. In the article, Williams explains and goes into detail on how most technologies today do not accomidate everyone in the audience that uses technology. For example, he talks about those who are visibly impaired or have hearing issues. These are big issues that may prevent certain people from being able to utilize technology to the best ability. I honestly feel that it would be impossible to accomidate every disability that each individual has but we can continue to try and research more ways that every one would be able to utilize the benefits of technology in this day and age.

I don’t have the greatest relationship with technology, but I definitely try to use it to my advantage. Although I’m often on social media and use sites such as Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and more, I never really understood what technology could do for me until recently. And even with that, I will never truly grasp the potential it has.

With Tumblr, I was able to be sponsored by some small Internet stores; in exchange for an item or two, I would write a review and take photos. I took it for granted in the past, but looking back on it, technology really helped me with everything. Without it, I wouldn’t have the connections that I did with the stores. In addition, I am currently trying to promote my travel/photography blog on the platform Blogger (also known as Blogspot) so I can do something with photography in the future, and I needed a way to get more views. When I made a post about it on Twitter, I suddenly found multiple people reaching my blog through Twitter (people I didn’t know) and I realized how far technology can help me reach. A Google search on my name can bring individuals to that page as well, and it really surprised me how I could use technology to my advantage just by using something as simple as key words. Earlier in the day I tried an experiment on Twitter. I gave a link to my Blogspot again, but this time I made sure to use the words “travel,” “France,” “photography,” etc. in the post. Sure enough, it brought more viewers. This sounds so simple, but it’s really just a small example of what technology can do and how you can use it to your own benefit.

Of course, I am no expert. I have Photoshop but I can’t do much on it. I’m on the computer and my phone quite often, but I only know a little bit about coding.

And now to the articles. The issues in Williams’ piece are definitely major. People with disabilities can’t access certain aspects of technology. Although technology has been created to help people with disabilities, we need to see more. Henn’s article/podcast centered around women’s involvement with technology and how it decreased over time. The market targeted men and boys more (ex: personal computers) even though women were widely involved before. I think that’s changing more now, but some women are looked down upon in the work field.

Perhaps that can change…and maybe digital humanities can help with that.

My experiences with computers and technology were amazing. I received my first computer when I was eight. I remember that I used to play games such as the Minesweeper, Tetris and card games. I also recall that I was quite excited when I tried to use the Internet browsers to search music, movies and articles for the first time. It was a quite memorable experience because the personal computers created a possibility of sharing knowledge on the Internet. Despite the heavy usage of computers, I think I lack unique skills or knowledge about personal computers. When I took computer science classes, I realized that computer programming requires a lot of practices to excel. My experience differs from William’s article and podcast statement in which that I do not think the early computer exposure helps foster computer expertise.

I think the issues that Williams and the podcast mention are quite significant. In William’s article, he talks about how the Digital Humanities allow people to share knowledge on the Internet. He uses the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project’s data to show how “eighty-one percent of all adults report using the Internet, but only fifty-five percent of disabled adults do”. This research shows that a substantial number of disabled adults does not benefit from learning on the Internet. I agree with William’s ideas that technology should be created in which every individual has the chance to use it. This principle is called the universal design which makes technology affordable and accessible. William’s article also mentions a new software innovation called Scripto which will enable people who have visual disabilities to read on the Internet by using screen readers.

Image source: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53ec5e31e4b0fd0d4cf4d36f/t/553ce7a1e4b0955fe5387d37/1430054820044/

From playing Disney trivia on my PC, endless tycoon games, online games on shockwave.com, I was OBSESSED with technology as a young child. My dad encouraged me and was the one to introduce me to childish games on schockwave such as my ultimate favorite, “Water Balloon Drop”. As I got slightly older, maybe ten or eleven, my dad bought me a Nintendo where I became obsessed with Mario games; and of course, like all the other girls, Nintendogs. I do credit my technology-based childhood on my dad; he would play street fighting on the Sega Console with me when I was just in elementary school and a lot of  my favorite childhood memories come from playing games with my father. I spent a lot of my childhood playing games on digital devices (of course I played outside too) but I remember being so proud that I was the only girl in my  class who could name all the characters in Mario.  I can’t really say when, but somewhere along the lines, all of that technology faded out of my life and I quickly became someone who was definitely not tech-savvy.  I wouldn’t say I’m incompetent when it comes to technology, but I do not know any of the latest games, I need help setting up my computer, and I often times ask my dad or boyfriend to set up the TV. I didn’t notice it before, but this reminds me of Henn’s podcast. I don’t have a solid reason as to why I stopped being involved with technology but could it be because computers are seen more as a “male’s tool”? As I woman, I notice that whenever technology isn’t working, we tend to always ask a male to fix it or take a look at it without even knowing if they can or not. It’s always assumed that males are computer programmers, males are technicians, and males can fix broken technology. This is an important thing that was brought up in the podcast because as a society, we need to start moving out of that mindset and normalize having a woman as a computer programmer!

As for William’s article, while I can not relate to having a disability and using technology, I think it is a very important issue to raise. When Apple produces a general iPhone for example,it is  specifically for those who do not have a disability. Blind people cannot use it, deaf people cannot use it, people with cerebral pasly potentially cannot use it, etc. There are many disabilities out there that we do not take into consideration when producing technology.  However, a quote in the passage states,  “approach every problem …with the ultimate goal of providing the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people possible”  and that quotes makes sense to me. It does not make sense to produce hundreds of phones with a braille keyboard if the majority of the consumers are not blind. However, it needs to be taken into consideration that there is a blind consumer out there who does need a phone. Perhaps there should be different options available for those with disabilities and they should be easily accessible to purchase. Right now, people with disabilities have to go through an extensive process in order to receive a customized version of simple technology that most of us have the luxury of purchasing right away and that is not fair.

-Jillian S.

photo from: Technology for the disabled – Google Search. (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2015.

I am not sure how or when I became interested in using computers, but I guess it must have been a long time ago since nowadays I am constantly on anything that is electronic.  My relationship with computers and technology is a bit complicated because I am not as tech savvy as my mother who works on the computers at her computer company.  I do admit that it frustrates me with how the WiFi access keeps interrupting me constantly whenever I need to use the Internet, this is possibly from the way most people use the Internet almost every hour of the day.

My first experience with a computer must have been when I was a little girl and I used to play these CD-ROM games made by Disney Interactive.  Throughout most of my childhood, the only activity that I usually did on a computer was playing online games since my idea of hearing the news and being entertained was watching the different channels on the TV.  So in this case, I was the type of person who liked staring at a screen, but from a different source.  As technologies started to upgrade, I began using computers mainly for writing papers for school.  Over the years I have used any electronic devices with a screen for watching videos on YouTube or checking in on recent events on Yahoo.  During my second year at UOP, I was able to get used to working with creative programs like iMovie and Adobe Photoshop.  Today, I have been using my laptop mainly for both school purposes and entertainment reasons like watching movies on Netflix.  I am even on my iPhone usually either playing Candy Crush or checking the times of the day.

This is somewhat similar to the two readings because I was not introduced to some of the very technical works with a computer and I have been depending on my electronic devices a lot for some time.  The issues that Williams and the podcast matter because they focus on not only the digital humanities community, but also society as a whole, whether they are women or people with disabilities.  I do agree with Williams on how teenagers are relying more on their mobile devices and that digital humanists should try to become more involved in developing ways that would include folks with disabilities to join in.  It would help in bringing people together as a united society with common ambitions.  This also connects to the podcast reading as it concludes that women do come back in being involved with computer studies, once they became determined to study it more closely.

Overall, I think technology is a bit confusing on how it works and what we can do with it, yet it should also be offered to others who would like to be involved with digital humanities.  It is also worth noting that the digital humanities community must consider the possibilities of expanding their works that would help support not only themselves in their studies, but also their society in bringing them together.

So… as whoever actually reads this has probably guessed, my relationship with technology is a very intense love/hate one. Meaning, I love it, but it hates me with a passion. That’s not for lack of trying, I’ll try very hard to understand technology, but it kind of just slams the door in my face and says, “Yeah. Good luck with that.” So rude. I can understand the basic functions of computers, like, ooh if I hit the “Pages” button on my computer I will be able to type stuff, or hey, if I want the internet I have the choice of Google Chrome or Safari. It makes me feel like I’m as dumb as a box of rocks, but that’s okay, because basic functions are the way to go.

I guess my experience relates to the experiences that Williams and the podcast describes because I didn’t have a lot of access to computers when I was younger. I had one desktop computer that was shared by the whole family, and hey, YOU try pushing your older brother off the computer when you want to use it. The point is, I didn’t have a whole lot of access to mess around with computers, or develop my relationship with them. The podcast and Williams talk about similar experiences in the fact that, a lot of disabled people (as Williams says) don’t have computer programs that address their disability and work around it, so that they can still use computers and share and learn new things. The podcast also talks about how a lot of women in the 80s didn’t have a lot of access to computers either, which is why there was a drop in female computer science engineers.

The issues that Williams and the podcast describe are important because, as Williams says, it’s just morally right for everyone to have equal access to computers. Also, it enables the flow of information to continue, unhindered, and for women people with disabilities to contribute whatever ideas they may have. So, as Williams says, they may contribute an idea that others would never have thought of (lie the blind woman who was able to hear and understand things that came out of her speakers at a really fast pace), thus broadening the variety of perspectives and areas of research.

Ah, computers. Where do I even begin with computers. We have a complicated relationship, computers and I. Sometimes we’re in love, and everything is unicorns and meadows full of daisies. Sometimes they allow me to enjoy my Internet browsing or my Sims games in peace, with a little assurance of, “Go ahead, do your thing, friend, I got your back.” And then there’s the times where we absolutely hate each other. These are the days when my laptop just gives me two big middle fingers, crashes all my programs, refuses to turn on, and does everything else in its power to infuriate me. I’m not sure it knows just how close it’s brushed with death on these days.

My history with computers goes pretty much as far back as I remember. My parents are fond of telling me stories about how they would find me in my room at three years old, sat at my clunky old desktop and learning my ABC’s. That being said, I’m no computer expert. I know how to use most basic programs – I’ve even been declared a Photoshop wizard on occasion – but if my computer throws a serious problem in my face, I would have no idea how to fix it. I have the basics of a tech savvy person, but I don’t really know what makes computers tick, or how to play around with their codes. In that case, I suppose I’m similar to Patty Ordóñez from the podcast we listened to this week – if I was sat down in a computer class like she was, I’m sure I’d get plenty of stares that just screamed, “Wow, how basic are you?”

That being said, I feel like I fall right into the category of young adults that Williams’ mentioned in his article, that percentage of us that are on our phones even in our sleep. The familiar set up of the Internet on a mobile device, or of a computer with a screen, keyboard, and mouse, is basically ingrained in me. I’ve never really thought how my access to a computer could be set up differently, which is exactly one of the points that Williams makes in the essay. He talks a lot about how people who are quote-on-quote “normal” don’t always think about what using technology might be like for disabled people, and that’s a serious issue that should be resolved. Because as he says, people who are blind or deaf interact a lot differently with the Internet and whatnot than most of us do. His whole idea of universal design is something that really should be implemented everywhere, because without it, there are a lot of people who can’t access the same things that “normal” people can, both in regards to the digital humanities and in general. It’s not fair to exclude disabled people from the digital humanities field just because they can’t use a regular computer like a sighted or hearing person can.

As far as the podcast about women and computer coding goes, the words “geek culture” just kept flashing in my mind over and over as I was reading/listening to it. It reminded me of all the dudebro gamer nerds that have an elitist attitude toward video games, computers, and technology in general, like it’s something exclusive for them and above women’s understanding. And based on what the podcast was saying, it would seem part of that is due to how computers were marketed toward boys once they started becoming available at home. Personally, I think that’s just sad. Like the data showed from the podcast, women were extremely tech-savvy until about 1984, when all of a sudden computers became a man’s profession. It’s unfair to exclude women from that technological world, just as it’s unfair to exclude disabled people. The digital humanities is all about sharing knowledge with everyone, and that should extend to all aspects of computers possible. The whole point of the Internet, DH, and computers is to bring people together, so I think it’s about time we start figuring out how to include everyone.

Reiterating what I mentioned on the first day of class, “it’s a working relationships.” I am not the most tech-savvy you will find. But I know enough to get by. For example, I recently learned how to make Excel charts for my job at ASuop Student Activities Center. Prior to this, I would always instruct the front desk receptionist to have the Excel chart on my desk by the next business day. As simple as this may sound – it’s all I can do. I am not advanced enough to be able to start my own website or even online business. A connection that I made while interning in Vladivostok, Russia helped to create an online portfolio for me, which I can easily update with content. I do not know how to connect my mobile device with my laptop and anytime I have technology problems, I would call Eduardo from Student Life Tech to assist me.

What George Williams notes in his article, “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities,” is that scholars focus on creating standard so information in the digital world can be created, organized, and preserved for future generations. Going further into this, Williams notes how people’s first impression of a universal design is an exclusive environment. Meaning, a universal design only targets a certain group of people versus the population as a whole. For example, the reading notes, “We classify some software and hardware tools as ‘assistive technology’—sometimes the term ‘adaptive technology’ is used instead—because they have been designed specifically to assist those people with ‘special needs.'” What we must remember is that all technology is assisting everyone – to an extent.

What the NPR podcast highlighted is men dominating the computer science field. However, what the article notes – and what I surprisingly found out – is that women pioneered the field. This does not mean all women were successful with computer technology. Patricia Ordóñez, for example, received a C in a computer class, which forced her to change majors. Ordóñez symbolizes a problem that I face with technology. That is, the field is ever changing and we must be ready for it. Rewind history several decades and you will be witnessing the rollout of home computers. Between then and now technology significantly increased to the point that you have a computer on your phone, in your watch, on the go, and for your desk. I feel as if I identify with Ordóñez, meaning that I have a troubling relationship with technology. However, we must be ready for whatever technology produces next and encourage involvement of women in the field.

In my household, we have five computers – one for each person. Each person also owns a mobile device for themselves, and my mom, being extra special, gets an iPad as well. My personal relationship with technology can be basically summarized in one word – dependent. I also think that technology is beginning to govern our learning, being that there are online courses and the increasing use of advanced technology in the classroom, such as SmartBoards. There is no denying that we are in an Internet era. So clearly, our experiences today with computers and technology dramatically differ than those in Patricia Ordóñez’s time from the podcast. An issue posed in the podcast was what I believe should be considered a marketing problem with unforeseen effects – home computers were advertised as toys and targeted at boys. This almost directly led to the decrease in women computer science majors in 1984. Computers became an advantage and without women consumers and exposure, computers and technology became male-dominated. Today, we can clearly see that as an issue. Coding can be considered a universal language, so both men and women should participate equally.

On the other hand, Williams addresses the use of universal design in the field of Digital Humanities. The first error that many people make is describing universal design as a focus on those with special needs but it is directed toward all people. In pursuing universal design, digital humanities scholars will not being creating “barriers of access” and will ensure that those with disabilities will have the opportunity to participate in the digital humanities. In the long run, there are reciprocal benefits: the digital humanities community will benefit by working with disabled people and expand on how digital devices could and should work for the vast majority.

It is important that we recognize that although we are breaking ground with technology, there are still divisions, specifically the reduction of women pursuing computer science and the barriers of technology for the disabled. Ultimately, these issues are important in order to establish a fair and open virtual environment as our lives advance electronically.

Digital Humanities is using technology like computers and phones to studying humanities. But, there are a lot of speculation on what exactly is focused in the study of digital humanities. Where most people think that digital humanities is about building, when actually digital humanities is about sharing. But, honestly I do not understand why we study digital humanities and the many opinions about digital humanities is making to understand digital humanities extremely difficult.

When the question “What is Digital Humanities?” is asked we think it is the use of technology to explain humanities, but it is not as basic as that. This subject of digital humanities is still new and the discussions and debates to try to explain it is an on going occurrence. In “This is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities” in Debates in the Digital Humanities they explain to us that there is a “community that comes together around values such as openness and collaboration (pg.16, Spiro).” Through my experiences in class, I portray digital humanities as a way to understand things using media and digital techniques. I think there is a crossroad between the two words “digital” and “humanities” and there are debates and problems that could arise.  The digital humanities department at UCLA attempts to define digital humanities as the interpretation of “the cultural and social impact of new media and information technologies.” I agree with this and I think that digital humanities can offer insight and explanations to things that we want to find out more about. http://www.cdh.ucla.edu/about/

In the article “The digital humanities is not about building, it’s about sharing,” by Mark Sample, explains to us that today there is debate “between those who build digital tools and media and those who study traditional humanities questions using digital tools and media (Sample).” I am in favor of try to build new technology to explain the humanities and to expand and explore not only the traditional humanities, but social sciences, arts, and natural sciences.

Both of our readings today centered on various aspects of what makes the Digital Humanities the Digital Humanities. Mark Sample’s “The Digital Humanities is not about Building, It’s about Sharing” focused in on the future of DH, talking of the MLA’s new “Office of Scholarly Communication” and how with its leadership under Kathleen Fitzpatrick he has high expectations. He rattles off a list of potential outcomes for this future and his desire to advance DH. “Now is not the time to base the future on the past” is brought up at the end of his article, which points out and ignores the questions of legitimacy and scope, showing his desire and wishes for DH to flourish. His last point is that as Digital Humanists, we should share, “Because we can”. He raises the notion that we should share, collaborate with each other whether we are creating or analyzing. And this point is supported by Lisa Spiro’s “‘This is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities”. She first uses her article to prime the reader on the necessity of having an overarching and more cohesive “Statement of Values” which would help to define the questions in this post: What are the Digital Humanities and Why are the Digital Humanities? Spiro’s proposed set of values include openness, collaboration, collegiality and connectedness, diversity, and experimentation. Collaboration goes back to what Sample talked about with Digital Humanists sharing and working together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. She proposes these values as a base for the rest of the DH community to expand upon, and with all of her listed values, I agree with them.

To answer the first question: What are the Digital Humanities?

I answer with: The Digital Humanities are a conglomeration of different, related though disjointed from their history with each other, set of thinkers and creators whose goal is to produce knowledge that furthers that which is already available to humanity through the use of new and emerging technologies and interaction opportunities.

The second question: Why are the Digital Humanities?

Can similarly be summed up as: The Digital Humanities exist as a critical eye to criticize, dissect, and produce that which we are now able to create and manage through the use of these new medias available to us, so we use and refine our definition of DH to suit what we are experimenting with in new ways to learn with this technology.

-Luke Bolle

To define digital humanities is essentially moving what we see as information, communication, and entertainment into a digital or non-physical form. A lot of the information we see as “legitimate” has converted from physical media to digital media. Documents such as Newspapers, Encyclopedias, Books, and Academic Journals usually have both a physical copy as well as a digital copy published, but I believe that digital humanities expands the concept of “legitimate” information. Why digital humanities is becoming such a relevant subject is because most people are on the internet and leave a “digital footprint”. If only a few people were on the internet speaking with each other digital humanities would not be very helpful unless someone in the future was researching those few people. Digital humanities will allow everyone who has left a digital footprint to be researched in the future.

From the first reading Twitter was brought up as a possible form of legitimate material. I believe this could be the case but I also believe that it can only be legitimate if both parties are experts on the topic of conversation. Reading the conversation between two Academic Journal Authors could be like summarizing both of their Journals. Rather than reading both their Journals which can be very dense and hard to understand here you have summaries of what each of them have researched and what they have concluded after doing that research. The second reading sort of agreed with the first in that we should be more receptive as well as open with information online. When events unfold in the real world yes they are documented but how the event affects people is not always mentioned. For example, look at the Chinese Economy. As a normal person we may hear that the United States believes that China’s economy has taken a hit and is not doing as well but what does that mean for the people here? How would a normal person with no knowledge of  world markets know how they will be affected by the change? One helpful tool could be “Reddit” and to be more specific the sub “ELI5 (explain it like I’m 5)”. Here people pose questions about things they have little to no knowledge in and people with more knowledge in the particular subject try to explain in a manner almost everyone can understand. People in the community who also have knowledge about the subject may also chime in but eventually a “top post” arises because other users agree that this is an accurate description and it is also conveyed in a way that most people can understand. This is an example of pulling knowledge from a bunch of people, maybe even experts and putting it in a form of digital media that may not be in the conventional “legitimate research material” of today.

I believe that in the future things like Reddit as well as Blogs, Twitter, and even Wikipedia could be some of the best research materials in the future. If more credible people used as well as identified themselves as credible (website runs a background check before) I believe that research material could be consolidated into just a handful of websites. Digital humanities is making information more readily available as well as accessible to the average person but also making it easier for scholars to research more thoroughly.

Digital humanities is the studying of humanities through the use of computers and other digital sources. This definition of what the digital humanities is what leads one to the understanding of why study digital humanities. Many major points are brought up through the readings provided for this week. With both having a focus on how digital humanities is community based. Although the reading by Sample shows a division between the digital community as those who build the software and those who use and study it. The idea that digital communities do exist is a notion that solidifies the practice of using computers to aid in research as a legitimate educational source. However, it does pose some problems to the definition I synthesised. For Samples argument really simply is saying that the computer programming side is not part of digital humanities while the definition I gave has to include them as they make the digital part of the digital humanities.

Spiro further acknowledges this idea by speaking about the creation of a community set of values. In this it would appear Spiro is addressing the community as a whole, rather than one sect of the population. Although Spiro goes into how a code of ethics for digital humanities is not broad enough for what digital humanities covers, the argument presented seems to go against the real use of why to use digital humanities. Spiro’s thinking is that a set of values including things such as openness and being collegial would serve as base guidelines for the operation of the digital humanities community. However, in operating under a set of values such as this, it leaves much room for interpretation by different members of the community. The purpose of using digital humanities rather than conventional methods can really be isolated as a few key things. The use of digital technology allows for a wider array of information, ideas, methods to sort and analyse information. If the term values are used for this process then, why use digital humanities when everyone in the world could interpret what things such as being collegial or open differently? A code of ethics would seem more useful as with things such as the Hippocratic Oath or the Engineers Hippocratic Oath, both are uniform throughout the world. They have the simple idea of do no harm, yet medicinal and engineering practices around the world are still different, but all under an established uniform understandable guideline. Which allows a diverse set of views and beliefs to be used and shared, without as much of a possibility of misunderstanding due to different interpretations.

The digital humanities, specifically what exactly encompasses the broad term, appears to be a topic that is of much debate between scholars. If we go back to our week two readings, there is an excerpt from our textbook titled, The Humanities, Done Digitally, where the author attempts to define what exactly the digital humanities are, or rather “what is the digital humanities” (Fitzpatrick), as she put it. What is interesting to me about this piece is the fact that our readings for week three both reference the work done by this author very early in each article, implying that she is a sort of expert on this debate.

The debate between what the digital humanities are seems to stem from what each individual considers to be the focus of the digital humanities, namely making, or if it should in fact expand to include interpreting as well. While some consider that the digital humanities should only include making, others, such as Mark Sample, believe that the digital humanities are not about producing, rather they are about reproducing (“The digital humanities is not about building, it’s about sharing”). In a similar attempt to define the digital humanities, Lisa Spiro attempted to create a statement of the core values of the digital humanities, including openness, collaboration, collegiality and connectedness, diversity, and experimentation (“This Is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities”). It appears by the values that Spiro selected, she includes both making and interpretation in her definition of the digital humanities.

From my point of view, I think that the digital humanities are both about making and interpreting. The humanities at their core are about interpreting, but I think when the digital element is added, making is just as large, if not a larger, piece of the puzzle. So far in class we have discussed ideology such as the idea of us becoming post human with the addition of technology in our everyday lives. This is interpretation on our part relating to the digital world we live in. As for the “making” side of the digital humanities, we will be doing that as well, as I understand, later in the semester. To use an example of a program that follows this idea that the digital humanities can be about both making and interpreting, Voyant was made with the ability to interpret in mind. Voyant, in my opinion, represents the digital humanities and both of its sides. The making of the program, Voyant, is obviously the creation of it, and it can then be used to interpret some form of data in a humanistic way.

Kyle C.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. “The Humanities, Done Digitally”. Debates in the Digital Humanities. 2012. retrieved from http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/30

Sample, Mark. “The digital humanities is not about building, it’s about sharing”. 25 May, 2011. retrieved from http://www.samplereality.com/2011/05/25/the-digital-humanities-is-not-about-building-its-about-sharing/

Spiro, Lisa. ““This Is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities”. Debates in the Digital Humanities. 2012. retrieved from http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/13

For me these past 2 weeks of class have been confusing and frustrating. Even the readings have made me even more confused because everyone has a different opinion as to what digital humanities is. What I have gain from the readings and in class discussions is that digital items taking on human characteristics and humans taking on a robotic way of thinking or doing. Sounds like a very interesting topic, yes to some it might be but for others like me its hard for me to make a connection with what is being discussed so I care a lot less. However, I do like what Mark Sample said “The heart of digital humanities is not the production of knowledge; it’s the reproduction of knowledge”. This is a true statement and it speaks to how the field of digital humanities even came about. I also liked Lisa Spiro and how she talked about having a core set of values and then using that to achieve a bigger goal as a united community. I think with team work and determination you can do anything. Me, do I love this field so far no, but that doesn’t mean I wont learn to love it later on which is what I hope to do. From the looks of it those that do truly understand this field find it so intersecting that they can’t wait to find out more and do more research on this topic. I do realize that once I do have a full complete understanding of digital humanities then not only will I care but I will most likely want to learn more too.

I think one thing we all learned from our readings last Thursday was that “specifying” the digital humanities isn’t exactly easy. There are multiple reasons for this, of course, not the least of which that, as an emerging field, all the scholars of digital humanities are having a particularly difficult time deciding whether the basis for digital humanities should be theorizing about it or actually practicing it. There are several other conflicts, including how the “digital” part should interact with the “humanities” part of digital humanities. Many scholars are unsure whether people should be using technology to study the humanities, or if technology should be studied in terms of the humanities. Observing all these disagreements, you can see why it’s pretty difficult to define exactly what the digital humanities is.

I think, perhaps, the most important idea that Spiro introduced in ways of defining the digital humanities is by introducing a set of common principles among digital humanities scholars. This would unite the interests and possibly the general aims of digital humanities research, even though there are already several divisions regarding what that research should actually be. Spiro strongly implied that collaboration was the most important aspect of digital humanities research, as well as openness (which, I might add, could be depicted as a facet of collaboration), diversity, and experimentation. Altogether, Spiro’s values can be construed into establishing a more united identity for the field of digital humanities, despite the multiple conflicts that occur within the parameters of digital humanities work (like the two I mentioned in the first paragraph).

Mark Sample, while his article was much shorter and less repetitive than Spiro’s, also got his point across that, even though the field of digital humanities is already experiencing several divisions about how the research should be conducted, collaboration was key to the main goal of digital humanities, that is: spreading knowledge. Sample states that it doesn’t matter how scholars go about doing their research, as long as they share it in the end.

The digital humanities is particularly beneficial to scholars of all fields because, as Sample says, it enables us to more easily share our research, no matter what it is about. Digital humanities provides the means for the important communication that Spiro describes, as long as we do exactly what we should as digital humanities scholars, that is, collaborate about our findings.

I think, perhaps, the most evidential aspect of digital humanities that we, as a class, have already experienced is when we form our groups and communicate our different perspectives as to the readings or whatever other topic we’re discussing that day. We collaborate, and thus gain a broader sense of what we are talking about through the different perspectives. How cool is that?

Digital humanities are the research of the technology and humanities and how they intersect with each other.

While that is the definition of the phrase, the actual study of it is more complicated than merely that. As Mark Sample explains in “The Digital Humanities is Not about Building, It’s about Sharing,” there have been debates of whether the digital humanities should be practical application (for lack of a better phrase) or theoretical. However, rather than the production of knowledge for either points, it should be the reproduction, “the way the digital reshapes the representation, sharing, and discussion of knowledge.”  Sample puts an emphasis on the new forms of communication, trusting it to be what the digital humanities is about, noting that communication is how the communication will aid in identifying who is credible.

While what the author writes is true, that the digital humanities center around sharing information, that is not what the digital humanities are about. Sharing plays a huge role, but the actual study banks on, as Sample himself explains, either the practical application or the theoretical. The new forms of media are merely the vehicles that propel the idea forward.

Lisa Spiro appears to be in accordance with Sample’s idea that there have been debates concerning what the digital humanities are about. However, she takes a more proactive view on how the definition of the digital humanities should be settled, attempting to identify certain regulations that will make the digital humanities and its researchers more credible and legitimate. She suggests a statement of values that will unify said researchers as it will set a common goal, and further explains how to develop one. Spiro emphasizes that the community must come together and agree on a set value in order for it to have a value. However, the digital humanities is quite different from other traditional studies, having different focuses, making it difficult to define in a traditional sense. the digital humanities’ intrinsic values are vastly different as well, the internet being a novel medium of freedom and morality. The author brings all of the information together by proposing values, including openness, collaboration, diversity, and several others.

In class, we learned about the various programs and theories behind the digital humanities that seem to promulgate what the digital humanities are about. Voyant is a tool that aids in capturing the style of writers, dissecting their words and comparing them to other writers, representing the “practical aspect.” On the other hand, representing the theoretical, myriads of articles explain of the hazards or benefits of digital devices. Just as other studies encompass both a practical and theoretical aspect, so do the digital humanities. Both forms add to the knowledge of how technology has changed humans and vice versa. Thus, the importance of studying the digital humanities lies in what we gain from the studies; an understanding of the impacts of technology and how we can further/stop using the technology should it prove to be beneficial/harmful to us.

Both articles focus on the uses of digital humanities in people’s lives. Although both authors discuss about the benefits that digital humanities offer, they do not think there is an agreed definition about digital humanities. For example, Lisa Spiro’s article mentions that we should “develop a flexible statement of values that help identify the digital humanities”.

Both articles discuss a substantial amount of positive changes that digital humanities will bring. In Mark Sample’s article, Sample mentions that digital humanities can “reshape the representation, sharing, and discussion of knowledge”. Lisa Spiro’s article also talks about how the digital humanities will help promote “scholar innovation and democratization of knowledge”.

I believe the digital humanities will be useful in terms of gathering information as our academic resources. When the Internet became widespread, most people look for scholar resources on the Internet nowadays. We conduct research and find data on useful websites such as Google. The digital humanities also give us a different option of showing up to job interviews. People will be able to use digital tools such as Skype to conduct an interview. I was also able to use digital tools such as laptops in class for class activities. I think that the digital humanities might be able to create a new and exciting learning environment for us. The digital humanities will also benefit our societies because they make everything more convenient and easier to do than before.

Although the digital humanities may benefit the societies, Spiro’s article mentions that the digital humanities “will need to demonstrate how it can advance humanities research, provide support for teachers who want to use digital tools”. I agree with her ideas that the digital humanities might have certain drawbacks. For example, the digital humanities may increase our reliance on digital tools.

Source: http://www.tdbowman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/wordle.png

I remember Googling “Digital Humanities” before I took this course, hoping to find a good definition to help me understand the class more. Even after the Google search, reading various articles, and being in class for two weeks, I still don’t have the full understanding of it. But maybe that’s all right. I feel like Digital Humanities is open to interpretation by everyone. In all the articles we’ve read, we haven’t had a complete agreement on what Digital Humanities actually is. However, we can all agree that it’s an exciting concept and provides a new way to look at the world around us.

In “The Digital Humanities is not about building, it’s about sharing,” Mark Sample states that Digital Humanities involves “reproduction of knowledge.” We can see an example of this with Voyant, which we used in class to further our analysis of various works and open our eyes to things we had not seen before. In addition, “‘This Is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities” by Lisa Spiro details the author’s thoughts on Digital Humanities. She mentions that the Digital Humanities “seeks to push the humanities into new territory by promoting collaboration, openness, and experimentation.” This refers not only to her wanting the community to collaborate and connect, but also to showcase her own answer of what Digital Humanities is and why we need it. Whenever we discuss the articles in class, I am always pleased to hear everyone interpret the articles in a different way but still collaborate with each other and agree on certain things. When we do so, everyone learns new things and sees things from a different perspective.

We all have our interpretations of the Digital Humanities, but one thing is certain: It makes us look at the world in a new way.

So…What are the Digital Humanities? After I had enrolled in this course I had trouble telling people that I was going to take a Digital Humanities course. I had trouble, because I really did not know how to describe the Digital Humanities. I thought that it was a branch of the Humanities relating to digital technology – how things like art and literature connect to technology. But after the first week of the course, I am not entirely sure. This post will be my way of “thinking aloud” and producing an answer to the question: what are the Digital Humanities?

I read the Sample and Spiro texts with the hope of finding a clear description of Digital Humanities, but I might be more confused than before, because it does not seem like Sample or Spiro know how to describe the Digital Humanities. The reason that they cannot give a clear definition to the Digital Humanities is because people are still debating to this day what the Digital Humanities are. There is division between Digital Humanists, to quote Sample: “One tension in the digital humanities that has received considerable attention is between those who build digital tools and media and those who study traditional humanities questions using digital tools and media.” Are the Digital Humanities about creating or studying? That is the question to answer.

I’m currently just a student taking a Digital Humanities course, so I could be wrong, but I believe that the Digital Humanities can be both about creating and studying. I could be wrong, but I am sure that the Humanities is made of artists who produce literature and works of art and scholars who study the literature and works of art. The Digital Humanities can be that too, especially if the Digital Humanities is seen a branch of the Humanities. In class, I’ve had to use Voyant, a digital tool, to dissect and examine dozens of documents, and in another class I’ve listened to Dr.S talk about the idea of putting a person’s mind into a machine and the idea of programming the mind itself. The Digital Humanities can be about creating and studying. I will conclude with a quote by Spiro: “I believe that articulating a set of values for a community should be done by the community.”

When first studying digital humanities, we ask ourselves “what is digital humanities” and “why is it so important to us.”  From my perspective, it is a new medium that tries to help people understand the changing world through some digital programs.  However, it also distracts us from acquiring a better comprehension of today’s society as a whole because most programs are making us become less common with others.  The first few weeks of class were very interesting as I gained some insight on how digital humanities is relevant to the world around us.  Some of the readings were a bit difficult to comprehend, but it later made sense as I thought about it has recently affected modern society.

According to the two readings about defining digital humanities, both authors explained their interpretations on how it has impacted our lives through positive and negative aspects.  The first reading illustrated how the digital media is reshaping knowledge that expands a bit more than from printed resources.  It analyzed the way the public needs to share their knowledge to the public instead of dividing ourselves with programmed software.  In Lisa Spiro’s document, she talked about how digital humanities should challenge people into figuring out different ideas that would help their community be more open and collaborative towards the public.  This emphasized that as a community expands their knowledge, they have to consider the possibilities in also extending their relations to others who share those same views.

In conclusion, I believe that digital humanities can be both useful and distracting depending upon a person’s interests and opinions.  There is no right or wrong answer to how people define digital humanities, as long as they are able to express their ideas that can possibly change the world and it’s future.

~ Danielle Lee

According to one of the required articles I read for the reading the author says “It is imperative that digital humanities work take into account the important insights of disability studies in the humanities, an interdisciplinary field that considers disability not so much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do.” Digital humanities is becoming increasingly popular as far as focus. There are now hundreds of digital humanities centers worldwide and the digital humanities subject is taught in at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Yet, there’s no solidity yet in defining digital humanities. The first article, “The Digital Humanities is not about Building it’s about Sharing” by Mark Sample was very similar to te title of the article. Sample believed that in Digital Humanities, knowledge is not produced and is shared and reproduced.

The term is much debated and has not yet fully established its identity due to the fact that researchers are still continuously finding more and more things they can do with DH tools and methods. So just because no one really knows the exact definition, we still may have an idea.  There are many different outlooks and and opinions about how people define the term digital humanities. I don’t believe that there is a right or wrong answer as to what you think digital humanities is, it’s more of what you get out of it. After just a couple weeks of being in class I’m still not exactly sure what DH is but thus far my outlook on digital humanities is that it expresses the fields of computer science, an area of research. Digital humanities gathers information from articles published over the past 10 or so years and explores the digital humanities field. DH looks at current and past events.

Ahmanni S.

What is Digital Humanities? Why the Digital Humanities? I still not sure after a few week in the class what digital Humanities still is.  We have been shown so many examples over the last two weeks. In the first reading Ian Bogost he is points out that most of our live are control in some aspect by an algorithm. The second reading which was one of the hardest thing I have ever read to comprehend. The next few reading were a little easier to understand they were about how technology can be used to scan reading the program we introduced to was Voyant. The article scanned court cases from the time of the civil war they showed how certain words were referred to slavery one was one and these cases were from the south and how the one from the north were different. The clinical meaning of what Digital Humanities is according to google it is the study of the intersection of computing and the discipline of Humanities. Some of our reading have been very confusing to me. But as I write this post I think a few thing our coming together for me now. Example when we used Voyant we looked at Shakespeare work. We looked at the word “love” throughout his works, in some of the stories where the love appeared like some of his comedies “love” was very frequently used. The why of digital Humanities, computers and technology let us as human study so much more and so much faster when it comes to information. I would hate to think how long it would take to read and analyze Shakespeare work to see if there was a pattern with it coming to a frequency of a word used. Technology does makes our live easier but we also have lost some of what we call the personal touch. I was a manager in the restaurant business for over 20 years. When I first was in the business world it was us going filling out an application and handing it to a manager, now it go to our website fill it out and I am sure there is an algorithm picking out who they talk to a for an interview.

The cirrus generated above is based on the four most recently assigned readings; clearly, they all discuss the digital humanities and sharing (disregard pingback as it is just an automatic notification). It also includes interesting words that describe the digital humanities such as scholarship, imagine, share, new, ideas, debates, and communication.

Being a newly emerging field of the humanities, digital humanities has not fully established an identity. I believe the main reason to this is that there is, as Kathleen Fitzpatrick describes it, a “theory-practice divide.” There are scholars who use digital technologies to study traditional humanities objects and there are those who use methods of contemporary humanities to study digital objects. With that being said, Mark Sample, author of the article “The Digital Humanities is Not About Building, It’s About Sharing,” describes the “heart of digital humanities” as the reproduction of knowledge. Furthermore, Andrew Smith’s “The Promise of Digital Humanities” proposes that the most promising aspect of the Digital Humanities is the machine analysis of texts, also known as data mining.  But now that we know that digital humanities has its prospects, practices, and problems, what is it exactly?

The digital humanities, to my knowledge and in the simplest form, is a cross between computing and the humanities, purposed to share ideas and create a new, public channel for scholarship. In my experience (four two-hour classes of an introductory class), there has been a huge emphasis on our relationship with technology. It is no secret that we are on the horizon of an internet age, or what some may call an algorithmic culture, or even a computational theocracy. Therefore, we as modern creatures have created many digitized habits.Although the digital humanities clashes with the norm, it promotes openness, collaboration, and experimentation. Nonetheless, I believe the digital humanities is purposed to “pursue a public role for scholarship,” as Lisa Spiro (“Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities”) words it. The digital humanities should not be debated about, rather embraced by both types of scholars (whether that be more humanities or digital-oriented) and used as a community to share. In this new technology-governed society, traditional humanities is being repurposed, beginning with digital humanities.

Since being in this class, we have been exposed to many things: Cybernetics, technology, text tools, etc. These are all a part of the Digital Humanities. Now, I have not yet been able to find a very straight forward definition for the term, but I believe it symbolizes so many things. The DH (Digital Humanities) can be referring to things such as: using a computer to type up a paper, using a cell phone to send a text message to your friend, or communicating with someone through skype.

The topic that most interested me throughout the beginning of the course, has to be the topic about algorithms, and whether or not we associate them with having god-like abilities. The culture of algorithms includes different aspects, including: Netflix recommending you watch things, based upon things you have previously watched, determining the retention rate at a university, or using text analyzing tools, such as Voyant, to find a deeper meaning to a set of text. This intrigued me because it opens up one’s thinking to other possible answers to various questions. The algorithmic culture that is upon is, is flourishing, and we are becoming more and more dependent upon things to just hand us information, instead of coming up, or thinking of it, ourselves.

The digital humanities is further examined by Mark Sample, and stated that it is not about building, but about sharing. Sample constitutes that a person is supposed to expand upon another person’s idea, or work, in order to move the development of that particular field forward. Lisa Spiro, in her essay, speaks more on behalf of “collaboration,” and how different humanists are supposed to share their work, including ideas about different technology, as well as their own personal points of views on certain aspects of the DH. When you factor in the matter of communication amongst humanists, the best way is through the technologies, because it allows them to communicate much quicker.

So all in all, the digtal humanities has been evolving day by day. Its been pushing more and more to a technological field, allowing the communication between humanists to be much easier, as well as being more centered around “collaboration”.

The question of whether or not there is an actual definition, which defines the digital humanities, seems daunting. As mentioned in Mark Sample’s article, the divide of those who build and those who study the digital humanities is a contributing factor as to why there is no set definition. Personally, if I was to create a definition for this term, it would be along the lines of “a new era in technology in which a human dependency is placed on technology.” This definition is supported by our class conversations on algorithms. For example, in The Matrix we saw the main character instantly download an algorithm code so he would be able to practice karate against his mentor. In a more practical setting, we live in an algorithmic culture in which we place blind trust in. A simple example of this is Netflix. The billion dollar company has its own system which provides movie and television suggestions based on the shows you watch. I am a fan of the NBC television show, Frasier. After watching the entire series, Netflix suggested I watch Cheers, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Everybody Loves Raymond. Originally following through on these suggestions I discovered that I am more of a fan of Everybody Loves Raymond than Cheers and The Dick Van Dyke Show. However, I placed blind trust in Netflix’s algorithm and “suffered” through several shows in order to come to the decision that maybe I shouldn’t be watching these television shows.

However, the digital humanities was defined by Mark Sample as something worth sharing – not building. Sample’s article started with comparing and contrasting the two points of views (which were previously mentioned). Afterwards, it went more into depth about how this field is produced and reproduced. Typically a person expands on the work of one person in order to further develop the algorithm and the field. As for Lisa Spiro article, “‘This is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities,” it is the job of scholars within the field of digital humanities to initiate critical dialogue on the sharing of ideas within the field of digital humanities. Ultimately this answers the questions “Why the Digital Humanities?”. If we do not take the ideas of other influential people and expand on them we will never be able to improve on the algorithmic culture we live in. As a result we will be stuck in situations where we are faced with boring Netflix reflections. But more importantly, we will not be able to improve on society as a whole.

Shane-Justin Nu’uhiwa

There isn’t really a concrete definition for Digital Humanities, but there multitudes of values attached to the phrase. When I think of Digital Humanities, I think of an abundance of technology used to help humans or society in general. Whether it be asking “Siri” to look up a question, Googling the answer to a problem, or using a GPS to navigate a location, technology is highly utilized in order to make life easier for humans.  In class, we spoke of algorithmic culture which is apart of the Digital Humanities. The algorithmic culture includes such things as receiving advertisements tailored to your interests or or having Netflix generate a section based on shows you watch. While I can’t disagree that it is helpful, I believe certain things make us dependent on technology. For example, college students now are more dependent than ever on using the internet to research items when instead they could walk down to the library and open a book. My hope would be that certain things that are easy to manually do aren’t over taken by technology and humans eventually forget how to do it themselves.

The two articles that we read had slightly different viewpoints on what the Digital Humanities are but both had the same overall concept.  The first article, “The Digital Humanities is not about Building it’s about Sharing” by Mark Sample stayed close to its title. Sample believed the in Digital Humanities, knowledge is not produced but instead is shared and reproduced. According to Sample, the Digital Humanities gives us endless possibilities since we are no longer bound to physical material such as books but now we have a whole other world at our hands. On the other hand, Lisa Spiro speaks of Digital Humanities as more of a community that needs to produce values. Similar to Mark Sample, Lisa believes that Digital Humanities should foster   conversation and knowledge. A quote from Spiro that I thought was interesting was, “Grounded in humanistic values but catalyzed by Internet values, the digital humanities seeks to push the humanities into new territory by promoting collaboration, openness, and experimentation.” I feel like this quote is the closest to summing up what Digital Humanities really is. Why Digital Humanities? Because we now have the power of technology at our hands to open new doors and together as a humanistic society, explore endless possibilities and opportunities. Some may argue that it is dangerous, while others may argue that it is necessary.

-Jillian S.

Picture Citation:

In the wake of the two readings we’ve been given for Tuesday, the biggest conclusion about the Digital Humanities (DH) I can draw is that no one can seem to agree on what it is. I imagine all these different people and organizations involved with the DH as chickens running around squawking and pecking at each other. And no doubt it would only be worse if they were all stuffed into one chicken coop together. These people must be a lot of fun at parties, right?

But I digress with my poultry analogy. If I were to give some kind of definition of the DH myself, it would be along the lines of, “people involved in Humanities work that either use digital media to examine texts, art, etc, or contribute to the Humanities through digital media.” It seems the happy medium of the DH would be to bring together the “hack vs. yack” sides, as Mark Sample puts it in “The Digital Humanities is Not about Building, it’s about Sharing”. Because truthfully, the DH involves both theory and practice, just as regular Humanities studies do. We’ve been doing both in class – examining texts with tools like Voyant, and then discussing our theories about them in our blog posts, for instance. Those who pick apart historical documents using computers and technology are just as much Digital Humanists as those who write their own essays and journals online. Frankly it baffles me why many scholars haven’t seemed to realize that yet. Why can’t we all just get along, guys?

In light of this, I think the question of why the DH, as opposed to what they are, is much easier to answer. Lisa Spiro essentially spells this out for us (in a rather repetitive way, I might add, but we’ll ignore that). Her lengthy discussion about a potential value statement for the DH is precisely why this shiny branch of the Humanities exists. She puts particular emphasis on “openness” and “collaboration” throughout her essay, which I think gets right at the heart of the matter. The DH provides a medium for sharing insight, findings, creative work, and a whole truckload of other information about the Humanities that hadn’t been available before the kind of technology we have today. Humanists can share with each other across global divisions in a matter of seconds when they work digitally, and that allows for nearly everyone to have their work seen and discussed, rather than isolating people to a small ring of local chitchat. It connects everyone who dabbles in the Humanities, and provides a means for us all to work together.

Spiro also mentions how diverse the DH are, at least in terms of things like occupation, education, gender, etc. (She does mention the DH are not as racially diverse as they could be, but that’s an issue for another time that needs to be worked on.) The diversity that the DH does have as of now is another essential expansion on what is normally referred to as just the Humanities. Bringing all these different kinds of people together through the digital world allows for input on Humanities subjects from varied viewpoints, rather than just from specific scholars who publish their work in written journals. Spiro brings up social media like Twitter in her essay, and how that brings about the chance for basically anyone to join a discussion about the Humanities. Though that may not always be a good thing, depending on who you ask, I do think it’s important to allow for that kind of broad contribution to the Humanities, something else that wouldn’t exist without the digital realm.

So in the long and the short of it, the Digital Humanities is an evolution of sorts for the Humanities. It’s moving Humanities work to a technological sphere, one that provides that “openness” and “collaboration” Spiro was so fond of rehashing. And to me, that’s a fantastic step forward for the Humanities as a whole. Because let’s be real, without it, Humanists would most likely be holed up in their own little thinking caves writing down their discoveries on pieces of paper. While the being holed up part might still be true, at least if there’s a computer involved, one wouldn’t be so entirely alone.

My group explored website #2, it was a tumblr blog on Nirvana and their rise to success so quickly. It showed concert dates, videos, mapping information on concerts and a website link to more information. The website itself did not have sufficient text to look further into it through Voyant so we looked up the link that it offered. It had a chat room page where fans were able to comment on Nirvana through there. We wanted to research the way that Nirvana fans spoke about Nirvana and ultimately could not find any information on their comments because we did not have login information. When putting the initial website link in Voyant and nothing of relevant information towards our research question was available. -Group 2

The research method used in “Papers Of the Past” combined an empirical study with analysis of extraneous factors for the nations oldest newspapers. This methodology of using a combination of the empirical and theory based research would serve especially well when looking at the influence of public policy. One such example would be to look at the views held over a pipeline being built between Northern California and Southern California. A research question that could be posed is who is in support of the pipeline would be popular support within the state. Looking at data from newspapers such as the LA times and San Francisco chronicle, the differences in language shows a clear difference in who is in support of the project.

Now obviously to get an appropriate data a multitude of newspapers would have to be entered, but the differences in opinion based upon location indicate that the research method used from “Papers Of the Past” would serve to reach a more definite answer to the question.

-Brandon, Ashley, Dylan, and Jaime

Using this software I was able to sort through data and able to highlight key words. The benefit of which obviously comes from the ability to analyze patterns in text, and thus form certain hypothesis. However, there is an implicit danger in seeing correlations or lack there of within writing, as it could lead to a faulty hypothesis. As correlation does not imply causation, the use of the voyant tool as a means to find an explicit relation is obviously flawed as it takes the text entered out of context.

That being said the tool is still a very helpful tool. It allows for the sorting of data without a lot of work, and can highlight texts which could in theory have some relation. For that the tool is incredibly helpful. Though again it is important to note the tool can only do what it is asked and programmed to do, which is a essentially a text finder. Any relations found must be analyzed by an individual in order to ensure an optimal result.

Going into the process of using Voyant as an analytical tool, I felt pretty confident. As soon as we began to use the tool, my mind was baffled. Voyant began to confuse me with all the different buttons, searches, highlights, and so forth. The more I began to use it, the more I started to learn a bit about it. Voyant was a program that I have never heard about before, so I did not know what to expect when going into using it. I chose to use the “test corpus” as my text of choice. After uploading it into Voyant, I could not make out what type of text it was. I then took out the stop words from the text, and it began to seem more clear. Words that came up quite often, were “God,” and “Christ.” So based upon these words, I began to view it as a religious text. This was pretty much the biggest takeaway I could get from the text. My Voyant skills have not gotten superb yet, so I’m still in the midst of bettering them.

Overall, I would say that I have at least gotten a little bit of insight into how Voyant is used. Just by going through it a few times and playing with the different tools, I have gotten better. I still have a bunch of questions about the program, but I’m sure that I will be able to figure them out as the class goes on.

-Ray Baig

Going into the process of using Voyant as an analytical tool, I felt pretty confident. As soon as we began to use the tool, my mind was baffled. Voyant began to confuse me with all the different buttons, searches, highlights, and so forth. The more I began to use it, the more I started to learn a bit about it. Voyant was a program that I have never heard about before, so I did not know what to expect when going into using it. I chose to use the “test corpus” as my text of choice. After uploading it into Voyant, I could not make out what type of text it was. I then took out the stop words from the text, and it began to seem more clear. Words that came up quite often, were “God,” and “Christ.” So based upon these words, I began to view it as a religious text. This was pretty much the biggest takeaway I could get from the text. My Voyant skills have not gotten superb yet, so I’m still in the midst of bettering them.

Overall, I would say that I have at least gotten a little bit of insight into how Voyant is used. Just by going through it a few times and playing with the different tools, I have gotten better. I still have a bunch of questions about the program, but I’m sure that I will be able to figure them out as the class goes on.

-Ray Baig

After multiple trials and focusing on different aspects that Voyant offers the most useful to me is how it allows you to understand the text that the most frequently used word is used in. So the unique part about this feature I’d say is how it puts all the sentences that have the word in it all together in one place. From reading the sentences including the word one can gain understanding the context further. Something that could not be done in a regular “find this word in a text” system is that it doesn;t comprise all the phrases in one location in the way that Voyant does. -CC

Voyant is a particularly interesting tool to use to help a person with dissecting various writings. As the assignment was to use it on a dataset, I used Voyant to examine dataset #2.

The first thing I did was to apply the word filter, English (Taporware) to the documents. After filtering out commonly used words, I found “said” to be the most popular word used throughout the documents. “Said” is frequently used in fictional novels, denoting spoken words from a character. Thus, it can be inferred that dataset #2 most likely tells a story of some sort. This is further confirmed by the following most recurring words, “God” and “Christ.” Those words additionally hint that the dataset potentially contains scriptures.

After learning about the subject of the documents, I continued to analyze popular recurring words using the word cloud. “Judgement” and “martyrdom” popped up, as did “tyrant” and “emperor.” The combination of words suggests that the scriptures have a common theme of facing torture and tribulations from a person in power (lord, emperor, etc.) and choosing to follow God’s teaching rather than to submit. Essentially, the theme is martyrdom.

Following my analysis of the subject and theme, I turned to word patterns to further my analysis. I wasn’t surprised to find that “judge”, “death”, “tortures”, and “life” were commonly seen together. However, I was surprised to find that “martyrdom” and “death” were not frequently seen together, as martyrdom nearly always means a certain death. Of this, I won’t be able to understand perhaps unless I read the actual documents.

In the end, using Voyant to analyze text was an interesting experience. It can certainly help in ascertaining which author wrote which pieces and how the author writes stylistically. However, aside from those niche functions, Voyant does not have many other uses. Perhaps when applied to the internet, it can help filter websites. But when it is used by itself to discern what the theme or subject of a text is about, it would be more prudent to scan the various documents. Key words and frequency of use only go so far. There is a lot of guesswork and analysis in doing that in comparison to doing some light reading. Additionally, using it to discern the location of certain words is also somewhat pointless, as “control f” works as well as Voyant to locate said words. It also does so without having to filter the whole passage or page into a program that takes minutes to reveal text information.

Aside from the usefulness of the program intrinsically, Voyant may cause problems for those going to school in terms of learning how to research. Of research, Voyant may oversimplify research to the point where students won’t understand how to research in the future. Alternatively, students may rely on the program such that they miss pivotal information that may help them in their research – side information that adds to the quality of their work. If most students worked on the same topic, they all may retrieve the same information due to the use of Voyant, thus relegating the point of research moot.

I believe that Voyant is a great way to simultaneously analyse multiple documents about the same subject. When looking over academic journals for a research paper instead of skimming though every journal one by one for certain words or phrases, Voyant simplifies the process and saves time. The “keywords in context” would be the most helpful when trying to find certain phrases for your research. Also narrowing the search down with the “words in documents” tab can make your research much more efficient and organized. There are some problems that could come up, such as not being able to find all of your research materials online for Voyant to process, or Voyant itself just not loading. I ran into the later when trying to upload a picture of word trends. The main thing I took away from Voyant was the ability to collect written material and sort and search the material in a timely manner. Also knowing that all the material was thoroughly looked through and you are not missing any instance of when you searched for. I believe that this is a way of reducing human error and I really like the concept.

Voyant is an interesting website that enables scholars to analyze themes of novels. It is a caring software that helps people to save a significant amount of time in understanding the main ideas of digital texts. I remember that we used to have to read and annotate to comprehend books. Voyant helps highlight the most important concepts for readers in books. I tested Shakespeare’s novels on Voyant to experience several features. The most frequent word is shall which appears over two thousand times. I also selected few words to see whether they have correlation in Shakespeare’s novels. The words lord, death and world all have a high correlation in Hamlet which enables scholars to compare the themes of Shakespeare’s novels all at once.

The feature that I found most interesting on Voyant is the word cloud. I think it helps a lot to know many of key words in novels that I am interested to read.

At first I was very intrigued by the program, I had never heard or seen anything quite like it before. At first the tool was very confusing and it didn’t make much sense to me, but as I used it and got more familiar I really enjoyed it and it was interesting. I thought the aspect of being able to view similarities in different texts was very fascinating, but as I used it more and more I decided that I would never really use this or need to use this tool in my daily life. Even though this is a new idea and innovation that I see being used for a research project, I wouldn’t need to use this in my daily life. In terms of using it as a research assistant, I like that you could analyze the text and other sources before deciding whether to use them or not. I also remember in class the professor saying that there are other versions of Voyant tools that are more sophisticated, and I think that would be a better tool to use in other aspects of our lives besides doing research. I did like the aspect of being able to learn the tool very fast and efficiently. I really liked this quality of the tool and if I ever did need it I would feel comfortable using it.

I’m an English Major and on many occasions I have had to read many classic works of literature and I have had to analyze and compare different texts. I have a process that I follow when I write essays, and I am sure many other students follow the same steps:

1. I read the text.
2. I highlight specific passages that make an interesting point or that I will want to find in the future.
3. I figure out what I want to write about.
4. I look through the text again, searching for passages that support my thesis.
5. Write my paper.

That all probably sounds pretty familiar. Almost everyone who has had to write a paper follows that process, or at least something similar.

However, in this age of technology and algorithms, there are new applications and tools make it easier to look through texts and show readers things about classic works that they have never seen before. Voyant is a tool that does exactly that. Voyant can take dozens of documents, analyze them, and produce graphs and charts about the use of language and words in those documents and compare their usage.

By putting 23 Shakespeare plays into Voyant, the tool can tell me that “SHALL” is the most common word in throughout those plays. Voyant can also tells me that Hamlet is the longest text of the 23 documents with 34,183 words and that Comedy of Errors is the shortest with 18,080 words.

Do you want more? OK. Othello is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. If you have not read it I suggest you do, it is a beautiful tragedy. If I am writing a paper about Othello, I will probably write about the love between Othello and Desdemona, the hate Iago has for Othello, and all of the death and murder that occurs in the play. With Voyant, I can see how often the words “LOVE”, “HATE”, and “DEATH” occur in the text, as well as how frequent they appear throughout the play.

As you can see, “LOVE” and “DEATH” are not mentioned in the beginning but the word “HATE” is there. In fact, “LOVE” is not mentioned at all but the word “DEATH” becomes really common in the end. I think that this information is interesting because it says something about the relationship between the characters and it also says something about the mood. There is a lack of love and death is a specter that hangs over the play.

Voyant can do so much more, and there are probably other programs that can do even more than Voyant. I think that Voyant and similar applications, show that digital technology and algorithms have a benefit to humanists who want to examine classic works in way that is faster and perhaps more efficient than spending hours or days, reading and carefully examining each line of text.

Voyant was not easy to use at first, but it soon made perfect sense. I thought it was immensely interesting to see how it could break down the texts and not only extract individual words, but also showcase detailed graphs and more.

Although some people think Voyant is unnecessary, I think it’s a pretty cool program to have. I believe it actually can help us understand a text more. For instance, seeing which words appear the most can help us understand the author’s thought process and emphasis on certain ideas. In addition, it can display certain words (ex. life and death) to demonstrate contrasting elements in the story. Even if people do not use it for these purposes or deem the program useless, the aesthetics of Voyant stand out regardless of its contribution to our understanding of various works.

Let me start off by saying that I am not a very technology-savvy. When I first opened voyant, I was overwhelmed by the layout, graphs, and tools. After a few tutorials and watching Dr. S, I somewhat got the hang of it and realized that it is a very unique and interesting tool. I have never heard of it before and I have mixed feelings on its usefulness.

I decided to upload the test corpus into voyant at home since I had already tried the other two in class.  I wanted to see if I could figure out what the text was about by using voyant. After eliminating stop words from the word cloud, I was left with unique words such as “God”, “judge” “Christ” “Habib” “tyrant” and “governor” . By these highly used words alone, I was able to gather that this is some sort of religious text, or at least involves religion in some way. The word “tyrant” is is more of a dated word so I can assume that this is an older text.

However, one of my issues with voyant is that, for example, just because “tyrant” is a dated word, it doesn’t mean that the text is dated. The word could be used in a different context or have a totally different meaning all together and there wouldn’t be a way that I would know just by looking at statistics.

All and all, voyant is interesting tool for the advanced, but it can not go into the depth of a text and break it down that far.

–Jillian S.

As we looked at Voyant in class and now at home this is a very interesting tool. This is something I have never heard or seen before in my years on this earth.  I am very impressed by this tool. As we saw in class it will counts all the words in a text or even a series of books as we saw with the Shakespeare download and gives us a Word cloud and many other useful tools. In the word cloud the words that are used the most are represented by larger images of the words. It allows us to filter word from the text so we can specifically see at certain words or groups of words.

By clicking on a word we can see graphs of statistically information as we seen in all the Shakespeare file. As demonstrated by our Professor with word love. I chose the word “Thou” and have inserted the graph showing the results.

This tool I would guess would allow us to do many different possibilities when we are doing research to break down a text in a different way. It allow students a teacher, anyone doing research to see how many times a word appears in a text, we can also by selecting a word click on any text and see the passage where appears. Which will help a person to analyze maybe how the word is being used in a sentence or paragraph. In my scholastic endeavor I am not sure how I will use this other than maybe for our class. It will be fun to play with it.

I am one for innovation and efficiency, but I believe that while Voyant completes a task of highlighting and identifying words that are frequently used in the text it does not tell you anything else about the text. It’s innovative in the approach that it has not been done at that magnitude before but finding specific words through most online documents is really simple to do, like Voyant though no other information about the searched word’s relevance to the main theme of the passage is disclosed. I guess what I am having trouble understanding is how it helps us understand and interpret literature better. I don’t think that know the amount of times that descriptive words or nouns are used in a given length of a passage is as important because those highlighted words, although used frequently, say nothing about the way they are being used which can skew an interpretation drastically. -CC

The dataset provided in Figure 1 is provided from the Test Corpus 2 files.

Uploading the Test Corpus 2 dataset provided to us onto Voyant, I feel as if the word cloud tells a story of its own. For instance, words like God, command, and martyrdom (as seen in Figure 1) provides biblical references to the Old Testament. Imagery of God fearing people are painted in mind – this is reinforced with words like judge, tortures, and sacrifice.

However, focusing on the summary component on Voyant, I realize locations like Palestine plays an influential role with the text. Also, in Maccabees, for example, one can conclude the story focuses on a tyrant with strict laws who is harsh towards women and children. This is because tyrant is used at least 44 times, law 38, women 34, and children 31.

The dataset provided in Figure 2 is provided from the Test Corpus 2 files.

Upon clicking on tyrant in the summary component, I am shown the frequency for the aforementioned word. In segment five of the document, the word was used the most – segment seven was when the word was used the least.

After using this assignment to get familiarized with the program, I stand by what I said the first day of class – for me, “it’s a working relationship” when it comes to technology. I admit I am not the most “tech savvy” person and I had difficulties using this software. I have a feeling that Digital Humanities may be a difficult course because of my incompetencies with technology; however, I will also admit that the program was beneficial. Voyant made me realize the power of words and how we are able to distinguish certain writers. I honestly cannot wait to fully comprehend this program (and learn how to successfully manage a blog) throughout the course of the semester.

During Tuesday’s class session we were all introduced to a new tool known as Voyant. Voyant can be accessed online or can be downloaded to your computer, desk top, etc. At first I did not completely understand how Voyant worked or what it was used for but after the class was instructed on what to do it became more clear to me that voyant is used for multiple things but mainly for word count and comparing different words. Once you download a document onto your computer and upload it onto voyant, it will reveal how many times a certain word is used. This can be helpful since it will give you an idea of what to expect and whether or not the document is useful. For example, the documents Dr. S gave us to upload onto voyant showed the word “God” many times which can give the reader the clues that the document could have a lot to do with the subject of religion.

Voyant is basically used for digital texts for analysis and to study texts. At first Voyant did not seem to be that helpful to me just because I myself am not familiar at all with digital texts but I am sure if I were to use digital texts it would most definitely come in handy for analysis and studying. I am sure we will be using many digital texts in this class so it will help more once we start to actually get the hang of it as we go. Other than that, I find voyant to be a really cool tool that all of us in the class will utilize.

Voyant is an extremely useful and clever tool to use in the digital humanities… especially when you’re looking at vocabulary. However, when looking at something other than vocabulary and word frequencies within the content, it’s pretty much useless.

When first entering Voyant, there’s a colorful word cloud that visually depicts how often a word will appear within the dataset, and one can remove the more common words like “the” or “and” by going to the “Stopwords” options. Then the more interesting words, the words that are more able to show the point of the content, appear.

Clearly, these words are much more interesting than “the” and “and”. Not to say those words are unimportant or anything, but, well… you get the point. Looking at the word cloud as a whole, it seems like the content of the dataset is really interesting, I mean, look at all those cool words: “death,” “tortures,” “shall,” “martyrdom”, et cetera, et cetera. This obviously implies that the content is a lot more complex than “and” or “the” would entail.

Moving on from the word cloud (difficult, right? There’s so many pretty colors), one can see that there are a lot more tools that can be utilized in examining the vocabulary content of the dataset. The summary shows how many documents are in the dataset, the longest and shortest of those documents, the highest vocabulary densities in the whole set, and the frequencies of the words. The corpus reader, just to the right of the word cloud and summary, shows the content of the dataset in its natural form, along with certain words that you can select to be highlighted.

Now, possibly the neatest thing about Voyant is the”Words in the Entire Corpus” tool, as it shows you the most common word frequencies (which can also be filtered by using the “stopwords” option), and allows you to compare certain word frequencies throughout the dataset.

Here, I compared the words “men” and “beasts”, just because they seem pretty opposite in definition, and it’d be neat to see how many times they’re used in the same document. What I found was that, there was always a notable difference in the word frequencies of each document (besides 10)scilitan and 12)readme, in which both words do not appear at all). While “men” would be used multiple times within a document, “beasts” would appear quite infrequently, if at all, and if “beasts” was used generously in the document, “men” would seldom appear.

Interesting, right? It kind of makes you wonder what these words were being used for. And that’s exactly the problem with Voyant.

It’s undeniable that Voyant has its uses, but it doesn’t quite have a knack for finding the context in which a word will appear, without searching through the whole “Corpus Reader” tool to find it. You just don’t know if, in the documents provided, men are being called beasts instead of men, or if they really are alluding to men. Sure, the Corpus Reader can help with that, but it can be pretty tedious to have to search through the whole thing for two words that repeat over one hundred times to see how they are used in context. So it really does seem like you would have to read just to see how a word is used instead of clicking on the nice, pretty words provided in the “Cirrus” tool to find out just what the texts are about.

Upon dropping the “test corpus” file into the Voyant system, I found myself embarking on a journey into the inner workings of vocabulary quite unlike one I have ever taken before. For one, Voyant makes words much more colorful than the text in a book might, so that was understandably exciting. My fondness for aesthetics aside, Voyant proved to be quite the useful tool for unraveling word usage and trends in documents, especially ones I myself am unfamiliar with.

The first thing I was drawn to was the word cloud – or more specifically, the word “said” in that jumble of colorful letters. (This was
after filtering the cloud, of course, because let’s be honest, nobody wants to count how many times the word “and” is used in a document. That would be as tedious as counting how many times the average teenager says “like” in one conversation.) Looking at “said”, obviously we can tell there’s a lot of talking in these documents. 312 instances of it, to be exact. But that doesn’t tell us much otherwise, unless we compare “said” with some of the other words that crop up frequently.

This brings me to the other batch of lovely colors Voyant has to offer – the graphs of word trends. Upon clicking on “said” in the word cloud, Voyant generated a chart for me that detailed how often “said” appeared in each of the “test corpus” documents. It cropped up the most in the document titled “scillitan”, and the second most in “justin-et-al.” This doesn’t tell me much as someone unfamiliar with the context of these texts, so in order to enlighten myself, I compared “said” with another word, “god.”

When I politely asked Voyant to show me the frequencies of both words, it generated the graph at the left. Though the trends in “said” and “god” don’t entirely match up, “god” seems to peak in both “scillitan” and “justin-et-al,” matching the peaks of the word “said.” Clearly this, along with the word cloud, points toward the documents being of religious origin. I think it’s also safe to infer that the texts where “said” and “god” appear together most often involve some kind of religious speeches. Upon examining some other common words in the corpus list, such as “death,” “tortures,” and most obviously “martyrdom,” I can conclude that the people most likely giving those speeches were martyrs, perhaps at the ends of their lives, perhaps trying to inspire the people of the faith they were dying for.

Overall, my venture into Voyant’s database gave me a bit of context for the “test corpus” documents where I had none previously, and it granted me a peek at how certain words and vocabulary come into play within the texts, giving them their due emphasis. However, beyond that, it didn’t really teach me how those words were used in their specific contexts, which could be problematic if I were researching these documents. I would still have to read the documents themselves to understand how those words came into play, who said them and for what purpose, and all that fun jazz. So essentially, Voyant is useful for getting a basic overview of a document, and deciding whether that document would be beneficial to read, but apart from that, it doesn’t give much to go off of as far as content. Regardless, I can’t say it’s not fun to play with.

Voyant allowed me to kind of discover what themes or what aspects were more prominent in a specific story versus several others. For example, when we used Voyant in regards to Shakespeare. It was the most fascinating when we took the example of narrowing the search down to “love” the amount of times that the word came up most, compared to other pieces from Shakespeare was in The Merchant of Venice. This was actually the most shocking because I really assumed that Romeo and Juliet would be number one in regards to the most times the word “love” appeared.
Aside from finding it shocking, I realized that maybe narrowing the search to just Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice I would be able to identify where in the plays the words peaked at the most in terms of identifying why The Merchant of Venice had more versus Romeo and Juliet. Narrowing my search was probably the most useful tool because I was not very familiar with the Merchant of Venice play compared to Romeo and Juliet. Right away, after looking at the results from the two I noticed that, for example in Romeo and Juliet although the theme of “love” is very apparent to us as readers, it does not necessarily mean that the word itself is going to show up in the play as often.
Overall Voyant is very helpful and can tell you about common words and even common concepts re-occurring throughout a piece of work. I learned that it’s better to compare two to three pieces but always start with one and identify the work in that single piece first so it’s easier.

—The graph below compares both plays, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet. You can tell that they both have peak moments but not around the same time within the play. Romeo and Juliet’s peak moment is towards the middle and end of the play compared to The Merchant of Venice where it’s towards the beginning middle of the play.

test post

After “revealing” the contents behind the Test Corpus dataset on Voyant, my eyes are immediately drawn to the cirrus.

Clearly, the most frequent word used in the corpus is said (312 times). Following, God (180), Christ (115), Time (105), Death (98), and Governor (95) are also prevalent, while words such as word (7), sacrifice(9), and endure(9) are small and not frequently included in the texts. Solely judging from the word bubble, one can determine that the texts are religious.

Clicking said causes a Word Trend graph to appear. Specifically, the word said is most frequently used in “Scillitan.” Being Catholic, I recognize this as a reference to the Scillitan Martyrs. Simultaneously, this sheds light as to why said is the most used word throughout the dataset; martyrs translates to witnesses, and witnesses are always speaking.

Playing with word trends, I plotted life and death against each other. Almost always, death is written more than life– with the exception of texts “Lyons-Vienne” and “Polycarp.” Looking further, In “Lyons-Vienne,” life is once used in this context:

“‘…being well pleased even to lay down his life in defense of the brethren. For he was and is a true disciple of Christ…’ Relevation 14:4″

Although life is used more frequently than death in this text, it is used to emphasize martyrdom.

I also found it interesting that despite the theme of the texts was Martyrs, the word martyr itself was not found in five out of the eleven texts. The Word Trend to the left displays the use of the word in “Ignatius,” where martyr was used the most, at a count of six times.

That being said, what I did not learn, or rather understand, was what exactly vocabulary density is and why words with notable peaks in frequency was important. On a separate note, I do not think that Voyant is a tool to closely interpret texts, rather it is most useful to compare texts, find prevalent topics, and filter through quotes for support on a large scale. All in all, using Voyant for the first time helped me understand how it is considered a breakthrough in Digital Humanities.

testing one two three

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testing

Yaaaaay, this seems to be working. lol

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(Not really though. There’s nothing to read. This is a test.)

Test Content

Test Post~

TESTING

ABC

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Test 1, Test 2, Test, Test…

Testing.

Test Post

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hello all it a start of a new week