In 2012 Tom Scheinfeldt argued that the Digital Humanities field did not need to answer questions, but should be allowed to “experiment, and to play”. Now a decade later, has Digital Humanities moved past the play of childhood into a young adult that seeks meaning and definition?
There is no question that the Digital Humanities has grown exponentially in recent years, no longer in its infancy, it is teetering between its founding ideas of unbounded openness and the desire to solidify into a defined field of study. As all revolutionaries discover, there is a difference between overthrowing a system and creating one. The central conflict of creating guidelines and the ideals of openness is one that is evident in the articles we studied and by necessity, creates an exclusionary world that is an anathema to so many in the Digital Humanities. Though much of the field already share the ideals of Openness, Collaboration, and Diversity, the challenges ahead are reconciling these with a world that is becoming increasingly polarized. Certainly, the freedom found in “The Big Tent” view of the Digital Humanities has enabled a diversity of research, inclusion across multiple disciplines, and new researchers to chart their course in the digital realm. Lisa Spiro in her article “This Is Why We Fight: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities,” attempts to bring order to the chaos by implementing business fundamentals of a mission statement and core values into the conversation. If one were to judge many of our largest companies solely by their core values and nothing else, one would imagine we are living in a utopia. As an I/O Psychologist, and someone who has helped write core values for companies, I can attest to how they are used in strategic ways, even as they espouse diversity of thought. Many corporations establish Core Values as a tactic to build cohesion, increase engagement, modify behavior, promote a company brand and build a unified culture. Employees are hired, rewarded, promoted, and fired based on “fit” to these values. In a corporate setting, a commitment to openness can be used to negate an argument when it is polarizing or inconvenient. Rather than focus on the ideological definition, a focus on process and creation should be the guiding principle of the Digital Humanities.
Sites such as the “Torn Apart / Separados” are a mesmerizing display of the capabilities of mapping and data visualization to demonstrate how the Digital Humanities can approach an important social issue. Digital Humanities should be leveraging these interactive capabilities to create something greater than a dataset, to break free of the spreadsheet, and create content that is engaging. Increasingly it is becoming obvious that the public often fails to connect to data no matter how clear the correlation may be. We see a hesitancy to trust data sources but this can be overcome through presentation. Projects in the Digital Humanities which include digitized versions of archives, exhibits, and journals to fully-realized interactive digital models, do not necessarily change content but rather make it more digestible. Conversely, our minds evolved to recognize patterns, but it seems we engage most with those that are narrative in structure and not just quantitative.
This is not to say that there is no space for traditional methods. “Reviews in Digital Humanities”, is an accessible website without elaborate infographics with the goal to capture the expansive and ever-evolving landscape of current Digital Humanities scholarship. Published monthly, the archive collects reviews of new projects including notable achievements pertaining to Digital Humanities methodology. Though the timeliness of the publication is a distinct feature of the Digital Humanities field as a whole, what is most compelling about this platform is its restrained simplicity and approach to democracy. Projects are reviewed with equal weight from soundscapes to a massive transcription project of the “Scribes of the Cairo Geniza.” Even projects that do not pass the peer-review board still appear in the registry. “Reviews in Digital Humanities” is inclusive and unapologetically “in pilot mode” with an unspoken glimmer of hope of surviving (unlike its failed precursors mentioned on the About page). Openness should refer not to an ideological purity but rather an acceptance of all sources as potentially relevant.
In short, the central tenant of the Digital Humanities should not be an idea, but rather ideas as a whole. While the loft declarations of a manifesto may be comforting, if we truly believe in the supremacy of diversity of thought and openness, then we must by necessity know that even in the cacophony that creation ring loudest. The most telling readings we did were less about what the digital humanities should be, and more about how effective digital humanities projects (no matter how flawed) like “Torn Apart / Seperados” are.

