The Evolution of Technology

While reading through the articles for this week, I couldn't help but think about how technology is evolving, as well as how humans evolve with it. It is almost safe to say that technological advancement has a life. The transition between data sharing in the past century and in this century is quite significant. You can see children interact with their gadgets rather than humans these days.

One of the ways technology has advanced, which humans are quickly catching up to is through social media. Facebook and Twitter used to be the main social media platforms where people air out their views, but a few years later, other platforms began to emerge. e.g. Instagram, Snapchat. These new platforms challenged the previously existing ones by creating features which were quite appealing. In order to gain ground, these platforms updated their apps by applying some of the features of the new apps to their platforms. Does this make sense? The point of this argument is to prove that both contemporary humanities and digital humanities can both adapt concepts from each other to take a unique form. This is because it is important for scholarly works to evolve in order to capture the attention of the new generation.

Burdick presented the idea of open source which allows for the participation of people for a study. A typical example of open source is the Wikipedia. Even though it's not recognized by scholars, it serves the purpose of giving general information to the public about a topic. However, lots of thoughts should be put in place as to who can collaborate on a study because it could impact the next generation negatively. Duke University Law School's James Boyle posits that, "The real danger to the commons of the mind is not unauthorized file sharing but failed sharing". This is true up to the point where it allows people to properly express their opinion and encourages creativity. However, proper dissemination of knowledge should not be faulted.

Bush shows the significance of the use of technology by arguing that collaboration helps in increasing participation and reaching a wider range of audience. He does this by citing the example of Kendel who's study did not quickly reach its target audience on time. Have you ever considered how you know abot some things which are not related to your fields with just one button? Those Facebook videos or photos that just seem to capture your interest and you find yourself immersed in that subject........ I know I've had my share of those.

Burdick posed the question of the kind of students this new change in the humanities can produce. The main problem the contemporary humanists have is their fear that there would no longer be students who would be interested in scholarly work but just showing their creativity.

The representation of the fox and the hedgehog in Burdick's article made me realize that the hedgefox is really a good compromise in the humanities. A contemporary humanist would think of writing an article on a subject and driving home the point of the topic while a digital humanists could look for ways to express the same thoughts. The hedgefox however could use both an article and other creative ideas to buttress the points.

P.P.S: A good example of the social interaction between humans and technology is the movie 'Her'.