The book is dead. It is a heavy physical object that is not doing well to keep up with the changing times. The death of the book is thanks in part to the birth of the internet. E-books on sites like Amazon are taking over and growing in numbers. Kindles and other similar devices are beginning to rule the literary world. While even the word "book" has a sense of drabness to it, the author's point in this article is to conclude that the Book is not a tangible thing but instead is the idea of life outside of our own. It is something constantly eluding us.
This article focuses on Arc - an attempt to talk about the future through an e-quarterly. This will talk about the future in old and new ways. It discusses how the future is always the winner because it "holds all the jokers."
A typical day as a digital humanist includes a variety of things such as time spent researching, experimentations with teaching, and changing the face of research. Liminality of people in the digital humanities allows people a degree of freedom. This article talks about how skills developed and different uses of technology create a unique, creative free flowing space for imagination and new ideas to be born.
This coming January (2013) will be the Digital Humanities Winter Institute (DHWI). As a companion to the summer institute (DHSI) which takes place annually. This is a week-long training opportunity that includes a range of topics in the digital humanities. There are core courses for the beginner and more advanced courses.
March of 2012 was this year's Day of Digital Humanities, an event that blogs the experiences of digital humanities by individuals who feel they identify with the field. One page of the project included answering the question "How do you define DH?" Some answers are funny and others meant to be profound or speculative about the future. 328 people offered insight into their routines and lives living with the digital humanities.
Daniel Cohen is doing his fair share to advance the digital humanities. He started at George Mason University more than 10 years ago, where he officed from a trailer. Today, he and his team reach more than 16 million people and have developed countless resources. They started camps for those interested in mixing digital tools and humanities scholarship. They built PressForward to publish online works and they created Zotero, to help scholars gather resources. He has also helped on projects such as the September 11 Digital Archive and other science-history projects with Mr. Rosenzweig. He too is a supporter of distant reading.
Broadening the way that teachers interact with their students and covering a larger range of sensory techniques (such as responding with digital audio to a student's paper) is becoming a more diverse way to teach. It changes up the way students learn and is a way for students to increase their technological capabilities. Teachers can use recorded talks, audio essays, playlists, mashups and interviews to teach their students in a new way. Students learn to stay engaged, different ways to communicate, and a variety of ways to express themselves along with many other things.
People all around the developing world are anxious to participate in the global economy, but have no way to gain access. Impact sourcing is an attempt to fix this problem, and idea to make it attractive to businesses to outsource processes to people in the developing world. Companies are looking to hire less-educated and more remote workers because they will accept a smaller paycheck. However, there is concern that this will lead to digital sweatshops. The good side of this opportunity, though is that for the first time in history we are able to maximize the social impact of those at the bottom of the pyramid and give them financial stability.