Matthew Woodbury
mwoodbury@stanford.edu
Senior, Department of History
Current Work, Reports, etc.
Term Project - Second Life: Gaming, Virtuality and Its Implications
Assignment 2: The Humanities Database
What is a database might be the first question to ask. What are the implications of making it a humanities database? Does it have to be interactive? Searchable? Here are some examples, the gentle reader might not agree with my interpretation, but I hope there is at least some truth to what follows.
From A Scholarly Perspective ...
- http://www.jstor.org This is well known for providing articles for the humanities, online copies of texts
- http://www.oxforddnb.com The trustworthy Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to look up all of those strange characters you run across in the history books
- http://shl.stanford.edu/ - The Stanford Humanities Lab has put together some amazing projects. Well worth checking out.
As a historian, I have found these to be very useful. The availibility of previously restricted information is incredible. I must admit to being relatively blinkered into what we would define as conventional media, but for me sometime holding and examining the original piece is as important as what it contains within.
But is that really all that defines digital humanities?...
- http://www.blogger.com/start - I'm not a blogger myself, but creating a digital environment, much like this one, where you can post your opinions and get feedback is certainly a marketplace of ideas. Sites like these can also usually be searched - making it a database
- http://groups.google.com/ - Google appears to be on a campaign to overrun the world, or alternatively link everything to everything. The Google(tm) groups site listed here, or the community maps feature might all be considered databases of digital humanities
- http://www.nytimes.com/pages/multimedia/ - The digital component of these databases allows an incredible variety of information - here is the photo and multimedia website from the New York Times. You can look up specific photos, listen to radio broadcasts all from one site.
Maybe something a little different?
- http://www.match.com - Match.com could be more of a database of humanity, rather than a humanities database. I suppose this is kind of like the Facebook reduced to its bare, animal elements. Not that dating is all about continuing the gene pool, but something to consider
Assignment 1: What is it to be Human
While it is true that other forms of life build habitations, structures like the Secession in Vienna represent an element that is uniquely human. Serving no essential biological purpose, and embellished to a degree unwarranted by "nature," fine architecture reveals the human possibility for abstraction and operating on a higher plane than the day-to-day. The bold statement on the building's facade, "To Time its Art, to Art Its Freedom" reveals that the inside space is used as an art gallery. While I am hesitant to label aestheticism an essential human quality, by containing objects valued mainly for their beauty or emotional power, as well as itself having a value greater than the sum of its material, the Secession is, in my opinion, something which captures humanity.
