Digital Humanities is humanities using digital methods. This is not just writing digitally. This is more. We are studying how technology influences people. A video is not just a bunch of morphing images and sound waves. An advertisement is more than an annoying television interruption. A forum is not just a place to circlejerk. A facebook feed is more than just trivial life events from acquaintances. Each of these is some way intending to give you a message. A video can make you feel pleasured, or can give you more information. An advertisement can show you just what exactly could be a new trend. A forum can connect you with a person of similar interests, and allow you to express feelings without being too direct. A Facebook feed can reignite emotions between 2 people. Finally, we are in a digital realm.
What we are specifically learning about is the way technology can help us tell an enhanced story. A person can make a program that randomly generates a poem that uses a very basic skeleton, but use a pool of words in the style of a Mad-Libs activity book. A social networking site can give you a chance to listen to stories from all of your friends without having each of them trying to scream their stories louder and causing massive confusion. A map with interactive pins can tell the story of a journey in an engaging manner as compared to just typing several confusing paragraphs. A video game such as Call of Duty can give a person the idea of what war is like without putting them in danger, stress, or through several chapters of a memoir.
While I have just provided several examples that take advantage of digital means of writing, a misconception you might have is that if it was not digital to begin with, it is not contributing to digital humanities. This is in no way the case. We can take analogue works and enhance them via digital means. No matter how it is written, if it is in some measure considered digital, then it still contributes to digital humanities. Digital humanities might not be something that you want to accept into your curriculum, but just by reading this post you are acknowledging the presence of a digital work. Even though you can attempt a futile argument such as claiming I wrote this on pen and paper first, it still appears using digital methods. Reading this post means you have just seen one of my (earliest) contributions to digital humanities.
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