Digital Humanities: Does it mean technology marauding humanities?

Asoke K Laha, President & MD, Interra Information Technologies

I often wonder whether digital concepts are blurring the firewall between science and humanities. Here, I am talking from the perspective of a student, who is trying to decide which stream he or she should pursue after basic education after say 10th standard. Beyond that, a student has to decide whether he or she would like to pursue the science or humanities stream. In our days, the thumb rule was that those who are proficient in math or science in the lower classes would opt for the science stream, and those who fear Math or getting jittery to understand the rationale of gravitational theorem or theory of force may opt for humanities. 

My hypothesis is that the gap between humanities and science is gradually closing because of two things. First, there is an increasing spillover of science, aka technology into humanities and humanities into science. I was surprised though pleasantly, my alma mater, Jadavpur University is running a course on Digital Humanities. Although I had to look at Google to understand the nuances of the term, I felt no one can keep off from technology these days.  They can do that at their own peril of their profession. That was not the case earlier for certain. I am aware of a person, who after pursuing his science stream till his graduation, because of the disgust he developed for the subject, switched over to English literature, since he wanted to be away from the world of science and was eager to pursue something which he thought he could be passionate about.   But his love for English literature landed him in serious trouble. He did not have the cut-off mark of 45% in English at the graduate level. He had to go out of state to seek the post-graduation course in literature, where there were no criteria for cut-off marks for post-graduation and later got qualified for IAS with high ranks.  

Now let me come to what is digital humanities. Google has taught me that this branch of humanities is an interplay of computing and humanities so as to support each other. Some refer to as human language technologies, which can be deployed for handling semantics, style, and content. I am still not clear whether I have explained the conundrum to my esteemed readers for their understanding. Let me take the liberty of what I have understood about the concept, without invoking jargon and terminologies that are commonly used.  It is a way of supporting the study of humanities with the support of information technology.  

How does it work? One can easily find out by a clique in computer any information that is stored in the computer or digital networks like Wikipedia or similar systems. There can be other applications, which would have revolutionized literature with the application of technology. For example, in the earlier days, for a book publishing, there used to be a chain of processes involved, which were laborious and time-consuming. With the advent of technologies and the evolution of in-built facilities, there have been many shortcuts in the printing technology, pre-empting the intermediary processes.  Also, if the author wants to publish digitally and not in the form of a printed book, he can immediately do that in the required format be it through blog, Facebook, Linked- in and what have you. That is the level of technological revolution that has taken place. Interestingly, technology does not stop there. It can take various forms and hues in the future. Presently, the author can do away with keying the content and can use the voice format, so that the computer can convert speech into written script by the use of installed software. I foresee the wide use of the brain net in the coming days so that the thought process of an author is taken directly to the digital format by using EEC. I recall that I explained this breakthrough in the last month’s column that I had written.   

I still believe media, which can be categorized among humanities because of its very nature, since it is not riddled with theories and complex equations, has witnessed the most powerful presence of technology. Earlier, we thought television media only had an interface with the technology, because of the costly equipment and other types of technologies involved in telecasting. Over the last few years, television technologies have undergone a transformation. I remember huge equipment used by Doordarshan for beaming live telecasts deploying a number of skilled technicians, cameramen, and other staff. Now, if you have a small smartphone, you can make a film single-handedly and even telecast it far and wide. The advent of social media further liberalized the flow of information. The information explosion has not taken place in a vacuum. It was scripted by the whopping development of technology. One important aspect of such technologies is that they are utmost user friendly. The user of an equipment is hardly aware of the dynamics of the device that is being used. Does it mean, that technology is getting more and more and more alienated from the user? For instance, if one knows how to handle a smartphone and its multifarious uses, he or she can download AI-created images and voiceovers to sync with the content created by downloading from established networks for a price or in certain cases free of cost.   

Let me deal with another factor. As the use of technology including computing is growing more in humanities, it is important for the users of technology to adhere to certain dictum. For instance, those who are using twitter have to adhere to the word count. So is the case with Instagram, where one has to express the idea in the shortest possible words and time. The other day, I was attending a conference, which was attended by a large contingent of media from print, electronic and social media. What I observed there was that none of the scribes whom I know were not taking notes as used to be the case earlier. They were either punching the words into their smartphone or recording the deliberations. Some were beaming the deliberations concurrently possibly to their respective offices. Those who were keying in the story on their smartphones were transmitting to their office what was happening so that the internet edition of the media house can put out in the news at the earliest. This throws up two main issues. One relates to proficiency in crafting content and subsuming the ideas in the least number of words. My hunch is that not many are equipped to do so. That necessitates a greater degree of training for journalists. The second issue is the handling of technology. Look at the multiple uses the smartphone is put to use. It has to record both audio and video proceedings simultaneously and then be used as a typewriter to key in words, later to be used as a medium for transmitting the content. It is a task that requires a lot of training and orientation to synchronize all these activities in one device.  

The flip side of this swiftness is the possibility of content going wrong driven by the urgency of first the first to break the news. I have seen many breaking news going wrong and not backed by proper follow-up of the story, where exactly the story had happened, and other details of the story. With the language becoming telegraphic, particularly in social media, it is a different take whether a reader like me who has grown up reading erstwhile top newspapers is missing out on the details since the print version, for various reasons, have become abridged avoiding some of the salacious features and humane stories.  Many say, the trend is to copy social media where the economy of words is the dictum, no matter the extent of damage it can cause to the content. The moot point is how many do care for that!!