Day of Digital Humanities

por Leandro Oliveira

Hoje celebra-se em todo o mundo o "Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities". É claro que ninguém no Brasil ouviu falar do assunto, mas cá estamos.

Dois universos não tão distantes: scholars das humanidades e a produção digital. A web tem mais de vinte anos e não há dúvida que os estudos humanísticos tomaram para si muitas vantagens do potencial da tecnologia; infelizmente, nós estamos ainda relativamente tímidos - mesmo quando estamos na internet, preferimos o encastelamento tradicional, a conversa entre iniciados ou membros do clube, às plataformas abertas, colaborativas e de feedback imediato.

Um exemplo: ainda hoje, é mais fácil entendermos o uso da internet pela digitalização de nossos jornais e revistas que a criação de teias de retroalimentação de conteúdo (como, aliás, experimenta Ocidentalismo.org e seus blogs convidados). O "Dia" celebra exatamente iniciativas como a nossa, que buscam explorar como blogs e a mídia social suplementa, muda e seleciona nossas referências culturais.

Uma conferência - bem acadêmica, diga-se de passagem - acontece na Universidade de Alberta, no Canadá. Como nos anos anteriores, os participantes são convidados a definir o que seria "Digital Humanities". Algumas possibilidades selecionadas:

Digital Humanities is in its simplest form conducting humanities research with the help of a computer whether it is visualizations or text analysis. Digital Humanities can also include combining our expertise of computing and programming with the humanities to complete web based projects or other projects that require some programming knowledge.
Ashley Moroz, University of Alberta, Canada

A 'community of practice' (to borrow Etienne Wenger's phrase) whereby the learning, construction and sharing of humanities knowledge is undertaken with the application of digital technologies in a reflexive, theoretically-informed, and collaborative manner.
Kathryn E. Piquette, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Germany

Using computational tools to do the work of the humanities.
John Unsworth, University of Illinois, USA

I do my small part to define it through my work as a humanist--by bringing traditional questions about values, norms, and the role of education to bear on the changing landscape of human expression, communication, and production.
Mark Fisher, Penn State b, USA

Production of knowledge in forms not limited to traditional (e.g. pre-electronic) media.
Trysh Travis, University of Florida, USA

Humanities is humanities, digital or not -- the study of literature, fine arts, history, language, and philosophy. We don't distinguish digital sociology or digital astronomy, so why digital humanities? Just because computers are involved doesn't mean the basic nature of the subject area is any different than it has been been traditionally. Computers allow for doing things with texts and other cultural artifacts that could not be done feasibly without the computational power and storage modern computers provide. Computers should be considered an extension of the scholar's mind -- very useful tools indeed.
Philip R. Pib Burns, Northwestern University, USA

The digital humanities, quite simply, is doing humanities work with digital media. Though much has been made about digital media, like video games, threatening the kind of book learning that humanists do, many of the same critical problems and questions we have been working on for centuries still apply and can be used to read these new media forms. Furthermore, these digital tools can be leveraged to help us do this kind of intellectual labor. So digital humanities includes both doing humanities on digital objects and using digital objects to do humanities.
Timothy Welsh, University of Washington, USA

It is the use of digital technologies to assist people working in the Humanities in ways unimaginable to re-discover the meaning of life (!) in this digital age.
Vu Thi Phuong Anh, CETQA, Vietnam National University , Vietnam

Digital Humanities is, increasingly, just Humanities - as far as I'm concerned. New tools lead to new methodologies, new perspectives, and new questions that all humanists should be aware of and concerned with.
Benjamin Albritton, Stanford University, USA