“What is less-often noted is that computational methods have been altered in significant ways by humanist approaches. Indeed, this is a challenge for the development of the Digital Humanities, namely the ways in which ambiguity, interpretation, contingency, positionality, and differential approaches can be embodied in computation.”
Burdick et al. “One: From Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 17.
The ways in which creativity is used in computer science and the various ways in which computer science can be applied to different fields and adapted for different purposes has interested me since I began taking computer science classes. In fact, one of the reasons I decided to study CS in college was the broad range of ways in which it can be used. This quote both touches on that interest and brings a different question to light. In what ways will computer science have to bend to be used in more traditionally “creative” fields? In what ways can a level of flexibility be introduced into computer science? I’m incredibly excited that Digital Humanities asks these questions and I want to spend more time thinking about them as I continue to take more computer science classes and learn more of the methods of computer science. While I have formerly thought about how the digital will affect humanities, I hadn’t previously seen it framed as or thought about how the humanities will affect the digital.
There are many things that I am excited to learn about within Digital Humanities. The problems that combine English and Computer Science are probably the most interesting to me, because those are the fields I am most naturally interested in. However, I am also interested in user interfaces. Which interface is chosen for a given project and what designs can best impart certain types of knowledge are both questions that I am eager to talk about and learn about in class. Designing user interfaces is a topic I have thought about some from a strictly computer science perspective, but I think it will be fun to add to that the questions of how humanities data is best presented.
