Digital humanities as a gentrifying small town

To many, the dig­i­tal human­i­ties feels like a small town that has recently been rated as a great place to raise a fam­ily. It is now inun­dated by devel­op­ers who want to build con­dos for new­com­ers who are com­pet­ing for resources and who may not under­stand local cus­toms. Iden­tity crises emerge when tacit, unspo­ken under­stand­ings and modes of inter­ac­tion are dis­rupted by exter­nal con­tact and demo­graphic shifts. In the quest to defend old ways and invent new ones, in-groups are defined, prophets emerge, witch­craft accu­sa­tions are made, and peo­ple gen­er­ally lose what com­mu­nal sol­i­dar­ity they once had. The dig­i­tal human­i­ties com­mu­nity has not gone this far, but one can­not help but notice the dis­par­ity between the Wood­stock feel­ing of THAT­Camp events and what appears to be the Alta­mont of DH 2011.

Saved 26 February 2013 / transducer.ontoligent.com ↗

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