[Paper Review] Post-Digital Humanities: Computation and Cultural Critique in the Arts and Humanities

David M. Berry|arXiv (Cornell University)|May 1, 2024

Digital Humanities and Scholarship31 citations

TL;DR

The paper argues that the digital/non-digital distinction is blurred in contemporary culture due to pervasive computation, proposing a post-digital humanities perspective that foregrounds computation as embedded in everyday material life and cultural critique.

ABSTRACT

Today we live in computational abundance whereby our everyday lives and the environment that surrounds us are suffused with digital technologies. This is a world of anticipatory technology and contextual computing that uses smart diffused computational processing to create a fine web of computational resources that are embedded into the material world. Thus, the historical distinction between the digital and the non-digital becomes increasingly blurred, to the extent that to talk about the digital presupposes an experiential disjuncture that makes less and less sense. Indeed, just as the ideas of online or being online have become anachronistic as a result of our always-on smartphones and tablets and widespread wireless networking technologies, so too the term digital perhaps assumes a world of the past.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate a shift beyond the traditional digital humanities by recognizing computation as embedded in everyday life and material environments.
• Explain how anticipatory technology and contextual computing create a pervasive web of computational resources.
• Argue that talking about the 'digital' becomes increasingly anachronistic in an always-on, embedded technology landscape.

Proposed method

• Conceptual analysis of the relationship between computation, culture, and daily life.
• Argumentation for redefining the humanities through a post-digital lens that integrates computation with material culture.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How does pervasive computation blur the traditional boundary between digital and non-digital in contemporary culture?
• RQ2 What does a post-digital humanities imply for cultural critique and scholarly practice in the arts and humanities?

Key findings

• Computation is increasingly embedded in the material world via anticipatory technology and contextual computing.
• The historical distinction between the digital and the non-digital is becoming less meaningful as technologies become a pervasive backdrop of everyday life.
• The notion of being 'online' and the term 'digital' may be outmoded in light of ubiquitous, always-on computing.