Despite technology’s pervasive and growing relevance in today’s society, adult education remains solely focused on improving math and reading skills. Simultaneously, the digital humanities and related fields like human computer interaction and ethical computing all encourage a humanist approach to technology that doesn’t always reach technology’s most novice users because of the foundational knowledge required. Pursuing a digital humanities approach to adult education offers a solution that first, incorporates digital literacy into adult education, alongside math and reading, and secondly, offers a critical lens through which every learner can begin to examine the digital tools we are increasingly expected to use everyday.

My paper started with a foundational examination of adult education and digital literacy and then considered what a digital humanities approach in these areas might look like, arriving at three guiding principles, designed to be generative in nature:

• Personalize and Contextualize
• Dialogue Does It
• Practice Makes Progress

These principles are then used as a lens to explore the digital humanities in practice in settings like those commonly offering adult education and digital literacy (i.e. resource-constrained with populations of emerging technologists). Ultimately, a digital humanities approach to adult education and digital literacy is argued to be an opportunity to firmly make good on the intended promises of all of these disciplines, within the context of the increasingly digital age in which we live and for a growing population of new technologists, all of who are poised to assume the competencies and responsibilities of shaping that world.

One of my favorite parts of this course so far has been the exposure to so many incredible archival projects that have painstakingly, over time and with great care, curated materials to unearth and preserve knowledge, a particular viewpoint, or a cultural experience. I particularly respect this work as an active, visible, and tangible form of resistance to the power structures responsible for the pervasive, dominant narratives that often get recorded as history, simply by default.

I appreciated Stephen Brier and Joshua Brown detailing so much of their process in The September 11 Digital Archive: Saving the Histories of September 11, 2001. I hadn’t previously considered how September 11th’s status as the “first truly digital event of world historical importance” might have influenced its particular potency for so many of us, and I also hadn’t considered how academics, historians, librarians, and archivists respond to events like this that, in real time, we already know deserve remembering. While the resource itself is moving and impressive in its breadth, I finished the article also grieving the many other catastrophic events around the globe that do not receive the same level of care, intention, and investment in preserving the extent of their human impact.

When Brier and Brown described September 11th as the “first truly digital event of world historical importance,” I immediately reflected on the pervasive global structures that exist to dictate what does and does not qualify as an event of global or historical importance. I imagine that the COVID-19 pandemic or the invasion of Ukraine would meet the criteria, but not the recent environmental disasters in Morocco or Libya, or the ongoing genocide of indigenous and minoritized peoples worldwide, or the destruction of our major world forests, or even the international increase of refugees. This examination made me all the more grateful for the ways that humanists, and especially those in the digital humanities, leverage their expertise to preserve historical counter-narratives and force critique and dialogue of the prevailing ones. However, the pervasive imbalance of access to funding, resources, and majority public sentiment is not lost on me. It was heartening to hear the urgency and care so many people took to preserve the history around September 11th through Brier and Brown’s account, and I hope that the example of their process and product can contribute to preserving an increasingly expansive record of our global human experience.

I attended GCDI’s Intro to HTML/CSS workshop on September 26th. I was already a little familiar with the mechanics of HTML and CSS, but I wanted a refresher, especially as I am thinking about creating some websites in the near future. As someone who’s generally familiar with coding languages, I found the content accessible and well-organized. From the start, the facilitators did a good job of introducing the essence of HTML and of CSS.

They also introduced both a simple and more complex example of what the code looks like to make the connection between the simple examples we’d be working through that day and how these languages might be used to build to a live, existing website.

However, introducing both HTML and CSS was a lot to squeeze into an hour, especially with introductions and context setting at the beginning. So, I wasn’t surprised when the workshop went over time by at least 30mins! In the future, it might be helpful to schedule more time, especially to orient people to the code editor tool, and/or to send over some of the syntax in advance so that participants have a better sense of what they’ll see when they first encounter HTML and CSS. I’d also argue that some of the voiceover instruction to introduce each of the languages might be shortened with some structured exploration or exercises so that participants might create their own mental models and definitions of what various components mean.

For someone with existing context, this workshop moved along at a comfortable pace and was a helpful refresher. I enjoyed producing the website they coached us through using HTML and CSS!

However, I was curious about a true beginner’s experience being introduced to two languages, plus having to acclimate to the code editor. I was left wondering if potentially highlighting code libraries or common resources for supporting documentation or learning more might also be helpful considering the short timeframe.

As an added tip: they ask you to download VisualCode in advance for code editing but I used my Replit account and was able to follow-along just fine!

Many of this week’s readings resonated with my experience and concerns working with and adjacent to “tech” over the past few years. I actually decided on CUNY’s quantitative methods masters program specifically because it was grounded in the social sciences and intentionally offered the flexibility to combine quantitative courses with more theory-driven learning. I’d become increasingly concerned with the lack of inquiry and critique being applied to data usage and other quantitative processes.

For this reason, I especially appreciated Johanna Drucker’s argument that everything we know as data should actually be called “capta” to more accurately reflect the ways in which we “take” information, as opposed to “data” indicating that this information is given for our presumably neutral observation and analysis (Humanities Approaches to Graphic Display, 2011). As Jennifer Guiliano and Carolyn Heitman detail, “data in the humanities are always subject to the systems of knowledge that were used to capture, represent, and disseminate them” (Difficult Heritage and the Complexities of Indigenous Data, 2019). I think a humanist and/or ethical lense is exactly what’s missing from so many of the conversations around the today’s technology and that of the future. I also recognize that this is not a new perspective or a new challenge for systems of power, as indigenous peoples and other systemically oppressed populations can attest to. The danger of tech and data, as all the articles explain, is that they are often presumed to be neutral and even helpful tools instead of agents of surveillance and exploitation.

As recent efforts have exposed, there’s always been a lack of transparency regarding how much of the technology we use works. My own journey learning some coding languages has revealed to me how accessible the underpinnings of technology are, when the time is taken to explain and explore them. For this reason, I especially liked Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s explanation of her process for analyzing a seemingly simple question through text analysis as she illuminated a number of junctures where intentional decisions and/or assumptions were made in order to facilitate an analysis (More Scale, More Questions: Observations from Sociology, 2016).  This level of transparency and intention applied to things we use every day like Google’s search engine or Google maps or an Apple phone might create a more expansive and accessible world of technology for all its users. This leaves me asking questions like: where are there more examples of what this could look like in common practice? What leverage do we have beyond advocacy and organization to make some of these changes happen?

After comparing the tools described in “Finding the Right Tools for Mapping,” I opted to try mapping with Carto because its interface seemed relatively intuitive, and I was able to get started with a free two-week trial. I’m also looking forward to experimenting with QGIS in the future and appreciated learning how transferable its interface is to ArcGIS (which I decided to hold off on experimenting with because of the associated costs).

While getting familiar with Carto, I reflected on our readings and felt particularly inspired by Mayukh’s “Dividing Lines” and Brown’s “Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative.” Both of these pieces/projects highlight the ways in which maps (and their creators) selectively place value on places and spaces, and they can both enhance and limit our understanding. A map is not neutral and technology is not foolproof, as Mayukh details:

Brierley’s return to home may well have been impossible without Google Earth. But “Lion” represents this process as a one-way transaction between an error-prone, sleepless human and an intelligent device, rather than as a human’s struggle to overcome a potentially useful technology’s limitations and biases. In the process, the film flattens the inherently complicated relationship we all have to such platforms, the ways they do not meet our expectations, the ways they occasionally disappoint us, the ways they are inflected by our socioeconomic status and the assumptions and stereotypes that can guide corporate strategies.

https://reallifemag.com/dividing-lines/

This reminded me of some of my own frustrations over the years with Google Maps. When I used Google Maps in San Francisco, I realized quickly that it didn’t note topography. What might be a flat, easy ten minute walk in NYC can actually be a strenuous climb in a city of hills. Similarly, in parts of Morocco and Barbados, Google Maps often failed to accurately represent the walkable pathways commonly used throughout their cities, rendering it almost useless for navigation. This prompted my thinking of the other ways Google Maps may be limiting my experience of space and navigation. For example, Google Maps currently lets me label places like “home” and “work,” and I can save locations in lists, but I have little flexibility beyond that to mark places of personal importance. I became inspired to try.

I decided to attempt to map “something that is not necessarily (or traditionally thought of as) mappable” and was curious as to whether I could map something like the human emotions I might experience on one of my regular walking routes. I realized that in my daily walks to and from the train, I might experience a number of fleeting emotions, prompted by the space I was traversing. For example, I might leave home content and then get annoyed with pedestrian traffic at a certain intersection or feel nostalgic while passing by a certain location that sparks a fond memory. You can check out my attempt here.

Carto made it relatively easy to upload an excel document with latitudes and longitudes associated with categorized emotional experiences. With more time and experience in Carto, I’d be interested in being more diligent about exploring how my emotions respond to mappable places and/or building a heat map of the sentimental value I (and others) attach to places as a complimentary piece of information to attach to existing and future listings.

In 2011, the New York Public Library (NYPL) released its iPad app, Biblion: “The Boundless Library,” in an attempt to create an immersive, expansive, and self-directed digital experience for users, akin to browsing the library stacks. The app was also released, in part, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the opening of the NYPL’s main branch.

Described as both magazine-like and a research archive, the initial release of the app organized numerous documents (e.g. press releases, letters, and periodicals), stories, and images all relating to the 1939-40 World’s Fair. The archived material was also paired with contemporary essays and media providing current context for the Fair’s happenings. While all materials are associated and organized, as they would be in a library or a museum exhibit, the user is also free to explore at-will, clipping-to-clipping, image-to-image, following their own curiosity, in a way entirely unique to them. As one contributor noted, Biblion aimed to translate research into a “less intensive activity… [and] is based on the premise that once original sources are given shape, infinite narratives emerge.” The library’s collection of World’s Fair material was thus made accessible to all users through their intentional choices regarding digital tool/medium, curation, and narration.

The result, while not without criticism, was widely celebrated as bridging a traditional library experience with a rapidly evolving digital world. At the time, digital humanities (“DH”) was also emerging, and in retrospect, Biblion might serve as a foundational example as to how digital tools can be used to augment access to and the experience of the humanities. As a 2011 Atlantic Article noted, NYPL realized a few important things as a precursor to their launch of Biblion: “One, the New York Public Library is a social network with three million active users and two, the New York Public Library is a media outfit.” Building upon these existing, foundational strengths, NYPL was able to create one of the “most innovative online projects in the country even with budget cuts.” Conversely, critics of Biblion largely pointed to a clunky and confusing interface that was prone to crashing and a feeling of too much information being jammed together–which is how I feel when physically entering most libraries. Even in the criticism, there was a recognition of how Biblion served to digitally reimagine and recreate qualities of the NYPL that are foundational to its mission and existence.

Since 2011, Biblion had at least one additional release offering a similar degree of discovery through digitally curated content related to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel. The project seems to have since been abandoned, but it undoubtedly inspired digital curation, the digital humanities, and NYPL’s digital offerings for years to come.

If you were to center an understanding about what DH is around one of these projects/sites, how would DH be defined (or redefined)?

In reviewing Northeastern University’s Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA), I was struck by how many of the themes used to present the project remained consistent with themes from our readings–and, how many of those themes were immediately made clear in the archive’s introduction and brought to life throughout the website.

If I were basing my understanding of the Digital Humanities (DH) on my exploration and experience of ECDA’s project and site, I would extract the following:

1. Open access: the site is designed to be accessed freely through the internet and intentionally designed with the user experience in mind. This is evidenced in the clean layout and clear navigational cues and explanations, as well as the incorporation of visuals and overall site and material organization.
2. A commitment to expansive and evolving curation: The ECDA describes their project as “re-archiving (remixing and reassembling) materials from existing archives as well as archiving new materials,” clearly indicating their ongoing work to evolve their materials, tools, and systems alongside the evolution of the project. There are several prompts and buttons throughout the site that encourage users to suggest materials and/or contact the organizers to get involved as a teacher or collaborator. Additionally, while the archive is currently document-heavy, their expansive approach to curating is also evidenced in their stated desire to incorporate and draw connections between a variety of material types.
3. Archiving and/or organizing information in a way that centers marginalized experiences: ECDA’s archival process is both intentionally sourcing new, previously unarchived materials, as well as citing contributors of narratives that have previously been (or are currently) incorrectly archived under others’ works. For example, they have been extracting slaves’ narratives from slave-owners’ publications in order to appropriately credit the material’s source and establish rightful ownership of that knowledge and perspective.
4. Offers pedagogical tools to make use of materials: Beyond enabling open access, ECDA also offers a growing section of pedagogical support for those looking to share the archive’s materials with others, especially in a classroom or educational setting. In the world of academia, where research is often riddled with jargon and predominantly presented in a long-form written format, the accompaniment of pedagogical guidance can help researchers engage a broader audience in understanding and actually using their work. Through this effort, ECDA remains in alignment with its stated objective while offering a solution for a classic challenge within academia. 

As mentioned, each of these themes were also present in our readings this week and can be found consistently across many of the sites we explored. While not an entirely comprehensive description, using ECDA’s archive to construct a definition of DH might sound something like: DH is characterized by principles of open access; expansive and evolving curation; archiving and/or organizing information in a way that centers marginalized experiences; and offering pedagogical tools to make use of the material.