Humanities is a discipline that takes into account the different aspects of society and culture. This educational discipline is concerned with human beings, their dependency, and their contributions to society. But in the fast-paced society, where everything is slowly becoming AI (Artificial Intelligence) based, will human beings devote their time to learning about their society?
Will humanities be left of any role to act as a guideline to society? Or will it die a slow and steady death? Or will it incarnate as Digital Humanities?
Digital Humanities Leading the Way to a New Future
Everything in humanities is based on a vast array of theories and interpretations making it cumbersome to grasp the entire knowledge. Therefore, as much as we read, it seems to be never-ending. Disciplines like history are never-ending because each previous day becomes the history of today and all the things get accumulated as history. Even the scope of literature is wide, and with people around the world expressing their new interpretations, it is providing a new spectrum to the discipline.
So, how do we control these vast records? Digital Humanities comes as a solution.
What is Digital Humanities?
To put it simply, digital humanities is the incorporation of information technology or computer in the discipline of humanities. It incorporates the subjects of humanities like literature, history, music, etc., with science-based subjects of communications and information studies to integrate as digital humanities. But more so, information technology aids the discipline of humanities to preserve, reconstruct, transmit and interpret the various human records.
Need for Digital Humanities - A Comparison Between the Past and Present
From time to time, everything needs to be updated. We cannot think of a moment without smartphones, whereas this indispensable thing was unknown to the world a few decades back. We cannot think of writing a message without emojis, because emojis have encoded our emotions. Similarly, we cannot think of humanities without the digital library.
Earlier, it was a hassle to do a research project, because one had to travel and spend endless time reading and researching for their thesis. The pages of the old books were sometimes tattered and it was very difficult to navigate the exact information, which needed to be searched for. However, these problems of distance and time have been solved with the help of a digital library.
Digital libraries have given a solution to access various books, and journals online in a format that can be easily flipped like a book. Most prominent examples can be given of the Google Books and the Internet Archive which has made books, articles, and even sometimes old newspapers accessible in the tip of a mouse click. The search has been made easier with the ‘find option’ that helps us to navigate the pages through keywords. Some chapters are also hyperlinked in the index, making it even more accessible.
Digital Humanities even has revolutionized the sphere of interviews, surveys, lecture notes, and seminars. All these can be done online, which interconnects people all over the world and makes the discipline more wide and accessible to people around the globe. Sitting in a remote corner of Sunderban, a person can easily attend the lecture of Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak at the University of Columbia. Similarly, an online survey can help the surveyor, to go beyond the physical boundaries and interrogate people around the world. This will lead to a diversified range of opinions that might have been skipped in their mind.
Moreover, with the help of a digital archive, people can know and learn about a place anywhere and anytime. The recorded lectures serve as an asset to future generations. Digitalization has helped researchers a lot and this in turn has increased the productivity level. The concept of McLuhan’s Global Village seems to have moved one step ahead with the aid of Digital Humanities.
But has Digital Humanities opened any new avenue for Humanities or any new scope of thinking about the existing pieces of work? Let’s find out.
Rethinking About Humanities With the Help of Digital Humanities
Have you ever wondered about how many times Shakespeare used the word sleep? It might be possible to do manual counting because sleep occurs in particular portions of certain passages. But suppose we have been asked how many archaic words Shakespeare used in all his tragedies? It is next to impossible to go on counting the words, of his best tragedies starting from Macbeth, Othello to King Lear.
But Digital Humanities has a solution for this too. With the help of certain data sets and codes, it can easily convert or recreate the texts to make them reader-centric; thus making it easier to know the number of archaic words used by Shakespeare in his tragedies or for that matter anything. This power of Digital Humanities indeed brings a new arena of research and thought processes, for scholars to delve into.
Digital Humanities scholars need to be technological masters to adapt to this new field. Moreover, it serves as a more distanced offshoot from the authorial intention, makes the discipline interesting, and enlarges the scope to relearn the learned texts differently than previously thought of.
But will Digital Humanities control the entire discipline of Humanities? Or will it remain as an aid?
Challenges of Digital Humanities
Nothing in this world can be accepted without knowing its challenges or obstacles. Although Digital Humanities gives a new and revolutionary spectrum, one cannot turn a blind eye to its multiple challenges. Firstly, it becomes a questionable factor, that whether humanities will completely change its orientation of reading, where scholars will become dependent on digital filtration. In that case, the subjective lens of reading between the lines will become rare.
Secondly, with the coming of Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT, people are becoming reliant on those sources. Starting from constructing a sentence, to doing homework and doing research papers, digital humanities is tampering creativity with the help of these technologies. The creativity of human beings has been put under question.
Blindly relying on Artificial Intelligence can be problematic in instances where words have dual meanings or have a symbolic undertone. There arises the need for human reading and not data reading.
Conclusion
Humanities have come a long way but it needs the aid of technology in the changing times. Digital Humanities is not only a shield but offers a new spectrum of thinking about this vast discipline. Nevertheless, Artificial Intelligence needs to be used cautiously so as not to erase subjectivity and turn everything mechanical and objective because it is the speciality of the Humanities to encompass multiple viewpoints and celebrate them at the same time.
But the pressing question remains. Will Digital Humanities completely revolutionize the existing discipline? Will the academicians of Humanities face the problem if inefficient researchers challenge them with AI-typed matter? Will people forget the requirement to read their primary books and solely depend on ChatGPT for answers?
What is your opinion about the same? Let us know what you feel in the comments section below. If you have an opinion to share, feel free to reach out to us at larra@globalindiannetwork.com.
