More Human Digital Tech: 3 Interesting Applications
Digital humanities is the application of digital tools and technology to humanities disciplines such as arts, music, literature, history, philosophy, and more. The scope of the field is so immense, with so much ongoing research, that it’s hard to arrive at one definition that encapsulates it.
Examples of this are the digital annotation of ancient texts, building digital libraries, digital mapping of areas of cultural or historical significance, data visualization in politics, etc.
Here are three high-impact digital humanities projects that are being used for practical research purposes.
1.NYU Smart cities
Constantine E. Kontokosta leads an initiative at NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) that aims to improve the quality of urban life by using the power of data collection and analysis. Called ‘Quantified Community‘, the initiative aims to use data analytics and the Internet of Things for improved neighbourhood planning and urban design, which will reflect positively on the quality of life for those who live in these cities. The initiative also involves ‘community data science’ – involving the local community, based on whose feedback the problems can then be resolved. This approach helps residents define their problems, so that the quality of data is more accurate and reliable.
2. Mapping Jewish LA
Mapping Jewish LAis a project that uses digital tools to enable users to experience Jewish LA through multimedia – sights and sounds of cafes and neighbourhoods, archives of writers and poets, interactive maps, curated photographs, and more.
Mapping Jewish LA is a great example of how digital humanities is being used to preserve history, study culture and evolution, and even improve community engagement.
3. Visualizing politics
The Visual Librarian used an interesting data visualization technique to help users understand how distorted (or not) their view of the 2016 Presidential Candidate was (and is). The interactive grid on Tableau Public prompts users to select how honest and consistent they thought the candidate was. The grid then tells you how accurate your guess was, along with a table of data that supports the result. The aim was to visualize the rhetoric aspects of politics, something that doesn’t lend itself to visualization easily.
Again, we see how digital tools can help simplify a complex topic, and make it easy for us to extract meaningful information, even in topics that might be ambiguous and subjective.
