No matter how imperiled by vocationalism, cost-cutting administrators, or the self-inflicted wounds of internecine battles, the humanities must survive because they embody distinctive modes of producing knowledge and distinctive models of knowledge itself
Burdick et al. “One: From Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 7.
This passage in the reading grabbed my attention because I’ve seen many people express that the humanities are not necessary or important in education, which has shaped their approach to education and their degree. Even though Carleton is a small liberal arts school that puts a lot of emphasis on the humanities, I have talked to many students who do not take humanities classes or seek humanities degrees because they do not think it is productive and won’t bring them as much success after college. In my opinion, and what this quote reaffirms, is that the humanities are the embodiment of knowledge itself, and the process of learning from literature and having scholarly conversation is fundamental to understanding the world around us and how we can interact with and learn from it outside of the “hard” sciences. Especially during a time when there is an abundance of physical technology like our cell phones that make it easier than ever to communicate with others, it feels like the humanities should be able to grow and succeed and include more diverse groups of people in conversations about knowledge and understanding. In the hope of taking advantage of this technology, I hope that I can pursue techniques this term that allow information to be displayed and distributed efficiently through the internet, whether that is through graphical or pictorial representations of data or ways to organize resources on the web so that they are more intuitive and are not all just contained within long-winded academic papers that many don’t have the motivation or background to understand. The resources that might help me accomplish this goal most efficiently are probably data visualization platforms and tools, and website building tools like WordPress where I can optimize the user’s interaction with the information that they are viewing.
