Particularly with the Hayles reading, I found myself examining how the highlighted manners of reading affected my own comprehension and reading style between various modes. Especially with hyperreading, I found myself exhibiting the ‘f pattern’ of reading in real time with the article itself, forcing me to confront how deeply I was actually comprehending the material, subsequently returning and re-reading sections I had not paid attention to. Similarly, the practice of following nested trees of hyperlinks is something I do often, particularly within self-contained communities of short stories that draw upon one another to flesh out and create a consistent world. This practice is at once frustrating as it can lead to forgetting the original text, but can also provide entirely new modes of reading in the digital landscape, similarly to the blocks of text being revealed in Hayles’ example of The Patchwork Girl to simulate a fractured nature. Close reading, meanwhile, is something that never really seems to leave my conception of what it means to read a text, being constantly reinforced as the literary ‘gold standard’ by wider academia. It finds its place as central to the digital sphere too dues to its close synergies with machne reading. This confluence of both machine and close reading can elevate our literary analysis within the modern age to include pattern recognition and highlight trends that may otherwise be entirely missed, representing the fusion of human and digital perspectives that so characterises Digital humanities.
Author: Jacob (they/them) :)
An Initial, Uninformed View on Digital Humanities
Although it is as yet rather surface-level, my understanding of Digital Humanities is the manner in which the intersection of the digital revolution and the tools it affords us can change and assist our studies of the humanities.
I find its chronological scope in particular to be fascinating, as its nature allows for both a refreshing perspective on pre-digital works with entirely new tools (such as computational language analysis), alongside a more integrated philosophy of examining newer works released within digital infrastructure.
I am also appriciative of its meta-analysis capabilities, such as its scrutiny of the accessibility and functionality standards of academic circles. It encourages freer and more accessible knowledge sharing and support for those either in need or without access, and presents a framework through which disciplines can work to deconstruct the ‘ivory tower’ of academic resource and understanding. It also has the potential to provide accomodations for those who are disabled or otherwise require further infrastructure to participate, both widening access and the perspectives entering the field.
As also discussed briefly in the seminar (and relating somewhat to the broad temporality of the field), another point of interest is the incredible speed with which the discipline evolves alongside the medium. Particularly within the last half-decade or so, the conflict between Digital Humanities’ focus on freedom of knowledge and publication and ethical questions around data harvesting and misinformation provide even a possible avenue for philosophical discussion. At the risk of abstracting a legitimately pressing issue of legitimacy versus freedom, the ethical conundrums of implementing academic standards and frameworks within such a free field of study can encourage further questions of value and accessibility from an entirely different lens.
