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Ten Things 2006: Pr...HUMNTIES 198S, CLASSART 198S
Tuesday and Thursday 9.00 - 9.50 am Archaeology Center, Building 500
First class Tuesday April 4
A core component of the Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities Program [link], this course is a broad introduction to key issues in the contemporary Humanities, in the light of digital culture.
But this is not a class about technology in the Humanities. This is not a class about humanists learning how to run statistical tests on digitized text, of setting up web sites, of debating metadata standards in a digital library.
Instead, this class takes a critical look at digital culture. Are information technology and digital media fundamentally changing the Humanities? I argue that the changes we are seeing in Humanities disciplines are not about new technologies, as conventionally understood. The quantititive expansion of information technology in contemporary society is precipitating reflection upon some age old questions in the humanities - the distinctiveness of the human, the role of science and technology in cultural production, authorship and creativity, the sharing of knowledge, the conservation of cultural resources for the future, the character of a community's public sphere, the propagation of a community's memory. Digital and analog media both prompt such questions. The questions sometimes historically become more urgent, but this is not because of technology.
The class is organized as a thematic menu of such topics.
One
The Humanities and concepts of the human The impossibility of Cartesian dualisms (separating mind and body, for example). Cognitive evolution and humanity as unique species - long term perspectives on people, materiality, things, nature.
Two
Digital and analog media. The IT industry. Historical and sociological perspectives on information society. A history of the senses. A history of located media. Media as material modes of engagement. The Document.
Three
Communication and information theory. Digital fungibility. Intermedia. The materiality of information. The digital artefact.
Four
Computation and the humanities. Data design and management. Databases, complexity, neural networks. Why these are crucial concepts - and always have been for the Humanities.
Five
Authorship, ownership, authenticity and aura. New media, new genres (hypertext and beyond). The public sphere and its changes. Collaboration, co-creation, creative commons, smart mobs. Digital citizenship. Cultural property.
Personhood and authenticity, senses of self and worth.
Six
Discourse and contexts. Infrastructures, standards and categories. Politics and the culture industry; ownership of the means of cultural production. The political economy of media.
Seven
Archives - documentation, record, media archaeology. Curation, cultural conservation and information as a verb. Notions of cultural heritage.
[Notes 7]
Eight
New perspectives on science and technology. Histories and sociologies of science and technology. Scientific knowledge as cultural achievement. The concept of cultural ecology and heterogeneous engineering. Determinism, agency and free will.
[Notes 8]
Nine
The cyborg - human-machine hybridity, techno-humanities, artificial intelligence, expert systems, mixed and augmented realities.
VR and simulated worlds.
[Notes 9]
Ten
The culture factor in contemporary society. Identity and community - networks, globalization and the individual. Implications and agendas in the new Humanities.
[Notes 10]
Class members are asked to identify and critically analyse a project in the Digital Humanities - a hypertext novel, an archive, a web site, a multimedia performance, a work of "net art" ... whatever. The objective will be to apply, in a particular case study, the concepts and perspectives developed through the course. This case study is to be presented online, here in this wiki web site - in an example of what is often taken as a defining characteristic of the digital humanities - new media technologies.
