Digital Theory Is Not Neutral

November 14, 2021 / 2 Comments

Throughout the first week of this course, I have learnt numerous valuable things. To begin, I learnt about the principles of learning in the digital age. This was the first time l was introduced to the principles and I found them to be fundamental. The two rights that were the most appealing to me were the right to own one’s personal data and intellectual property and the right to have great teachers. These stood out to me because in my opinion students oftentimes do not receive the acknowledgement that they deserve for their work. With this right, it makes it better for students as they will feel confident and satisfied that their work will be associated with them. In addition to that, students should have good teachers so that they feel motivated and inspired to be and do the best they can. Secondly, after reading an article about infrastructure and algorithms by Emily Drabinski i learnt that infrastructure is created by people therefore all the things we do is as a result of their work. I also understood that technology has greatly improved from when it was first introduced to now. Lastly, with the aid of a YouTube video by Elijah Meeks and Ms. Esprit’s lecture, I now know what digital humanities is, the work digital humanists do and some of their characteristics. Digital humanities is bringing computational methods to bear on traditional humanities. Digital humanists use this to do things such as studying impacts of technology on culture, learn coding and explore humanist inquiries. Digital humanists work is often collaborative and stable; meaning they use a number of tools and applications and their work is capable of changing due to aspects such as hurricanes etc.