• What we have now that we didn’t have before
Many of us, who are not part of the “digitally born” generation, still can remember the times when we used to write, draw, calculate, organize, etc. everything on paper. Real paper. White list and blue-link pen. But it’s time to face the fact that we no longer belong to those times, because now we are part of the so called “After the digital turn” period. Some of us still guard some nostalgic sentiments, regarding the previous “epoch” (recently I’ve noticed many facebook comments insisting on the fact that many people seem to miss their pre-facebook life!), but we keep on living the same computer-addicted life, no matter how, if, where or why we blame it for ruling over us. My personal experience shows that I can manage living without my laptop for a week or even more, if I am on a vacation. But if I need to work, study, write, learn, inform, it’s not possible.
What we have now that we didn’t have before?
First of all, we use technology much more than before. Personal computers were becoming smaller and smaller, lighter and lighter. Laptops were becoming better. No walkman or discman, but IPods. Very soon probably laptops will be replaced by IPads. Who knows about books? Maybe we’ll read only e-books. And second of all, the Digital turn is more than just a technology turn, because it’s based on the Internet and the possibilities it offers. So, what we have now is not just that we have one, two or twenty two new technical toys. We have all the advantages and new horizons, opened by the Internet. Every day, and after every single day our access to diverse kinds of information is increasing. More or less, being online gives you the opportunity to become part of one new cyber-space, full of information and different data. The opportunities to create, manage, organize, share, even sell information are probably one of the most important aspects of the phenomenon, called WEB. If we follow the ideas of Donald Schon, being online is a bizarre mixture of surprise, perplexity and confusion. The surprise comes from the fact that you never know what you could find online. It’s not a secret that for many people the Internet is like an open-access library (although the access is not always opened). They (we) look for various kinds of information and sometimes that vast range of possibilities can be quite surprising even for the most skeptical minds. On the other hand, this surprisingly huge diversity of data makes us addicted. When an abundance of information exists, perplexity appears. It’s getting more and more difficult to navigate in it, to look for the best results, to choose between the billions of pages that for example Google suggests you. Such a perplexity always leads to confusion. Is this the right site for me? Is it reliable? Does it say the “truth”? Can I use it in my essay, or presentation, or even diploma thesis? Can I cite it? And how should I cite it? The list of question that every user meets is endless. Just like all the opportunities the Internet gives you. It looks more or less like a vicious circle – ones you have all the information that the Web offers, you easily get lost in it.
What else has changed? Definitely our everyday life has become easier in many points. In the best and most optimistic cases, there are no physical boundaries, no territorial such also, communication is easy, sharing is easy, navigation and managing as well. But on the other hand, we need to admit that digital technology is not only a tool that makes our life less complicated, but is also a strong catalyst of changes. The way we accept, create, manage, develop, disseminate, learn and teach information is changed. Don’t technologies create a new type of “knowledge”? Let’s take one example – do we write one essay the same way on paper and online? On paper, we just write down the text. Online – we put the text, we design it, we add notes, footnotes, hyperlinks, we copy/paste, safe, delete, add, put pictures, delete pictures, we upload it, we download it, we send it through e-mails, we put it on our blog, we discuss it on facebook or twitter, we make it available, we can also make it profitable, selling it through Amazon. Not only the means that we use to write are changed, the whole logic of writing and creating is already changed. The way our brains work, perceiving all kind of information has also changed. And these are changes that we need to learn to live with, in order to be part of the ZeitGeist that we all share.
• Cyber-enthusiast or cyber-skeptic?
The question of the pessimistic or optimistic aspects of the Web for our understanding of learning and “producing” knowledge, will always be a mixture of enthusiasm and skepticism. For that reason it is important to gather all points of view, regarding them when constructing our own position, even though there can hardly exist one-sighted and narrow argumentation on the topic.
No matter how various are the opinions, regarding those questions, one is definitely true – the Web gives us an easy and fast access to all kind of (the existing) information in limitless size. Such a worldwide connectivity gives diverse opportunities for “launching” something new and innovative online. When we talk about learning, teaching or even producing “knowledge”, the advantages to stay connected, to stay updated, to be able to share and also to be able to receive what the others have shared are more than priceless. Thus, your own work becomes not only a mean for teaching, but also a way of creating important relationships. The question now is how to process these relationships. With all the possibilities that the Web offers, it especially becomes an open and interactive arena of scholarly production and communication. Most importantly, regarding the fact that we understand the Web as an important tool for producing “knowledge”, it has to be admitted that it is more than an open and free library, collecting all the memory of the world, but it offers a new kind of learning – an active one, thanks to the possibilities for collaboration and constructivist understanding.
If we focus our attention now on scholarly produced knowledge, we will probably agree that for such kind of knowledge (especially the one in the humanities field) we need a deep research, a various corpus of primary sources, some methodological approaches and a well constructed final text, published in a book. If we accept the humanities knowledge like that, we can say that perhaps we don’t need so much the help of the Web. But on the other hand, it’s important to stress on the fact that the Internet doesn’t give us just an easy access to information, it opens some very powerful prospects for presenting that information and the ideas that will appear in way, which can be called valuable and unique. It doesn’t eradicate the old means of analyzing and creating information, it just compliments them.
On the other hand, we also need to face some other aspects of the phenomenon Web. It’s more than clear that the Web is a huge “receptacle” of information. But isn’t that “abundance” of quantity on the account of a high quality of reliable websites? The Web is a democratized “place”, where every user can be a creator. But where is the criteria, regarding the critical perspective and the depth of the researches? This is probably one of the main issues, when we talk about “scholarly knowledge” online. The threats might be various. The Web “offers” the possibilities for every user to “get lost” easily, to stay non-concentrated, to find unreliable information, to meet the scarcity of professional texts, or just to experience the offline penumbra, like Patrick Leary says – that if something is not online, it just cease to exist. At that moment is good to ask the important question, is the Web eligible for researches or it’s only a good tool for teaching?
• A new stake for humanities
The most important question that comes to mind to every researcher is can we make efficient scholarship on the Web? If no, what does disturb us? If yes, until what limits? Before answering the question, we need to underline that there is a great difference between scholarship and just seeking information online. Many people of all over the world use the Internet as an open-access and free library to gather all kind of information. But scholarship is not a simple storage of various kinds of information. For a good scholarship research we need to see beyond the gathered information, to create links, connections, relationships, ideas. It’s important that these ideas and relationships we have are contextualized and after that analyzed. The difficulties to create scholarship online become even bigger when we talk about the scholarship in the humanities. Although the Web, thanks to the technological opportunities it offers, overflows with a huge amount of researches, those in humanities still lack. Most of the technological innovations, software programs, even search engines are made of people, coming from different kind of science – they are computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists etc., that’s why those innovations don’t work sufficiently with humanities. But still the battle hasn’t finished. The opportunities that electronic media suggest to humanities researchers are countless. It’s not only about the digitally born text, it’s about the mixture of texts, tables, brain mapping, hyperlinks, visualized primary sources, images, sounds, records, videos, 3D maps etc. All these create the new image of humanities online. For that reason it is crucially important to connect the talent of humanists with innovative professional computer scientists. On the other hand, it’s also obligatory to start educating scholars how to use these technologies in order to achieve positive results and the approval of the academia. Let’s concentrate on history, for example. The digital history now is becoming more important and puts on speed. Is digital history extremely different from the literary kind of history that we all know? On one hand, it is also an approach to analyzing and representing the past (just like the previous one), but using new technologies, Internet, software programs, etc. But on the other, aren’t we facing a new kind of history? Does the digital history create a new historical canon? I definitely agree that it does. Our understanding of information has already changed. The Web makes you from “user” a “creator”, a ‘co-author”. And that will be the biggest challenge for scholars in history and in any other humanities field. The best way to learn history is to do history.
• “In development we trust”
One is definitely true. There is a long way for scholars in digital history to go before they are admitted as serious historians on the Web. Perplexities and obstacles are always present. Funding for new projects is not always available. Approval is not so easy. It’s important to start accepting the presence of new technologies and their (hopefully positive) influence on humanities. Digitization can be not only a catalyst but also a tool for creating a new kind of history. One should always trust in the development, because like Carl Smith says: “The only way to see to it that there is serious history on the web is to put it there ourselves.”
Many of us, who are not part of the “digitally born” generation, still can remember the times when we used to write, draw, calculate, organize, etc. everything on paper. Real paper. White list and blue-link pen. But it’s time to face the fact that we no longer belong to those times, because now we are part of the so called “After the digital turn” period. Some of us still guard some nostalgic sentiments, regarding the previous “epoch” (recently I’ve noticed many facebook comments insisting on the fact that many people seem to miss their pre-facebook life!), but we keep on living the same computer-addicted life, no matter how, if, where or why we blame it for ruling over us. My personal experience shows that I can manage living without my laptop for a week or even more, if I am on a vacation. But if I need to work, study, write, learn, inform, it’s not possible.
What we have now that we didn’t have before?
First of all, we use technology much more than before. Personal computers were becoming smaller and smaller, lighter and lighter. Laptops were becoming better. No walkman or discman, but IPods. Very soon probably laptops will be replaced by IPads. Who knows about books? Maybe we’ll read only e-books. And second of all, the Digital turn is more than just a technology turn, because it’s based on the Internet and the possibilities it offers. So, what we have now is not just that we have one, two or twenty two new technical toys. We have all the advantages and new horizons, opened by the Internet. Every day, and after every single day our access to diverse kinds of information is increasing. More or less, being online gives you the opportunity to become part of one new cyber-space, full of information and different data. The opportunities to create, manage, organize, share, even sell information are probably one of the most important aspects of the phenomenon, called WEB. If we follow the ideas of Donald Schon, being online is a bizarre mixture of surprise, perplexity and confusion. The surprise comes from the fact that you never know what you could find online. It’s not a secret that for many people the Internet is like an open-access library (although the access is not always opened). They (we) look for various kinds of information and sometimes that vast range of possibilities can be quite surprising even for the most skeptical minds. On the other hand, this surprisingly huge diversity of data makes us addicted. When an abundance of information exists, perplexity appears. It’s getting more and more difficult to navigate in it, to look for the best results, to choose between the billions of pages that for example Google suggests you. Such a perplexity always leads to confusion. Is this the right site for me? Is it reliable? Does it say the “truth”? Can I use it in my essay, or presentation, or even diploma thesis? Can I cite it? And how should I cite it? The list of question that every user meets is endless. Just like all the opportunities the Internet gives you. It looks more or less like a vicious circle – ones you have all the information that the Web offers, you easily get lost in it.
What else has changed? Definitely our everyday life has become easier in many points. In the best and most optimistic cases, there are no physical boundaries, no territorial such also, communication is easy, sharing is easy, navigation and managing as well. But on the other hand, we need to admit that digital technology is not only a tool that makes our life less complicated, but is also a strong catalyst of changes. The way we accept, create, manage, develop, disseminate, learn and teach information is changed. Don’t technologies create a new type of “knowledge”? Let’s take one example – do we write one essay the same way on paper and online? On paper, we just write down the text. Online – we put the text, we design it, we add notes, footnotes, hyperlinks, we copy/paste, safe, delete, add, put pictures, delete pictures, we upload it, we download it, we send it through e-mails, we put it on our blog, we discuss it on facebook or twitter, we make it available, we can also make it profitable, selling it through Amazon. Not only the means that we use to write are changed, the whole logic of writing and creating is already changed. The way our brains work, perceiving all kind of information has also changed. And these are changes that we need to learn to live with, in order to be part of the ZeitGeist that we all share.
• Cyber-enthusiast or cyber-skeptic?
The question of the pessimistic or optimistic aspects of the Web for our understanding of learning and “producing” knowledge, will always be a mixture of enthusiasm and skepticism. For that reason it is important to gather all points of view, regarding them when constructing our own position, even though there can hardly exist one-sighted and narrow argumentation on the topic.
No matter how various are the opinions, regarding those questions, one is definitely true – the Web gives us an easy and fast access to all kind of (the existing) information in limitless size. Such a worldwide connectivity gives diverse opportunities for “launching” something new and innovative online. When we talk about learning, teaching or even producing “knowledge”, the advantages to stay connected, to stay updated, to be able to share and also to be able to receive what the others have shared are more than priceless. Thus, your own work becomes not only a mean for teaching, but also a way of creating important relationships. The question now is how to process these relationships. With all the possibilities that the Web offers, it especially becomes an open and interactive arena of scholarly production and communication. Most importantly, regarding the fact that we understand the Web as an important tool for producing “knowledge”, it has to be admitted that it is more than an open and free library, collecting all the memory of the world, but it offers a new kind of learning – an active one, thanks to the possibilities for collaboration and constructivist understanding.
If we focus our attention now on scholarly produced knowledge, we will probably agree that for such kind of knowledge (especially the one in the humanities field) we need a deep research, a various corpus of primary sources, some methodological approaches and a well constructed final text, published in a book. If we accept the humanities knowledge like that, we can say that perhaps we don’t need so much the help of the Web. But on the other hand, it’s important to stress on the fact that the Internet doesn’t give us just an easy access to information, it opens some very powerful prospects for presenting that information and the ideas that will appear in way, which can be called valuable and unique. It doesn’t eradicate the old means of analyzing and creating information, it just compliments them.
On the other hand, we also need to face some other aspects of the phenomenon Web. It’s more than clear that the Web is a huge “receptacle” of information. But isn’t that “abundance” of quantity on the account of a high quality of reliable websites? The Web is a democratized “place”, where every user can be a creator. But where is the criteria, regarding the critical perspective and the depth of the researches? This is probably one of the main issues, when we talk about “scholarly knowledge” online. The threats might be various. The Web “offers” the possibilities for every user to “get lost” easily, to stay non-concentrated, to find unreliable information, to meet the scarcity of professional texts, or just to experience the offline penumbra, like Patrick Leary says – that if something is not online, it just cease to exist. At that moment is good to ask the important question, is the Web eligible for researches or it’s only a good tool for teaching?
• A new stake for humanities
The most important question that comes to mind to every researcher is can we make efficient scholarship on the Web? If no, what does disturb us? If yes, until what limits? Before answering the question, we need to underline that there is a great difference between scholarship and just seeking information online. Many people of all over the world use the Internet as an open-access and free library to gather all kind of information. But scholarship is not a simple storage of various kinds of information. For a good scholarship research we need to see beyond the gathered information, to create links, connections, relationships, ideas. It’s important that these ideas and relationships we have are contextualized and after that analyzed. The difficulties to create scholarship online become even bigger when we talk about the scholarship in the humanities. Although the Web, thanks to the technological opportunities it offers, overflows with a huge amount of researches, those in humanities still lack. Most of the technological innovations, software programs, even search engines are made of people, coming from different kind of science – they are computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists etc., that’s why those innovations don’t work sufficiently with humanities. But still the battle hasn’t finished. The opportunities that electronic media suggest to humanities researchers are countless. It’s not only about the digitally born text, it’s about the mixture of texts, tables, brain mapping, hyperlinks, visualized primary sources, images, sounds, records, videos, 3D maps etc. All these create the new image of humanities online. For that reason it is crucially important to connect the talent of humanists with innovative professional computer scientists. On the other hand, it’s also obligatory to start educating scholars how to use these technologies in order to achieve positive results and the approval of the academia. Let’s concentrate on history, for example. The digital history now is becoming more important and puts on speed. Is digital history extremely different from the literary kind of history that we all know? On one hand, it is also an approach to analyzing and representing the past (just like the previous one), but using new technologies, Internet, software programs, etc. But on the other, aren’t we facing a new kind of history? Does the digital history create a new historical canon? I definitely agree that it does. Our understanding of information has already changed. The Web makes you from “user” a “creator”, a ‘co-author”. And that will be the biggest challenge for scholars in history and in any other humanities field. The best way to learn history is to do history.
• “In development we trust”
One is definitely true. There is a long way for scholars in digital history to go before they are admitted as serious historians on the Web. Perplexities and obstacles are always present. Funding for new projects is not always available. Approval is not so easy. It’s important to start accepting the presence of new technologies and their (hopefully positive) influence on humanities. Digitization can be not only a catalyst but also a tool for creating a new kind of history. One should always trust in the development, because like Carl Smith says: “The only way to see to it that there is serious history on the web is to put it there ourselves.”
