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What Does “Born Digital” Mean?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2018

Elias Muhanna
Elias Muhanna*
Affiliation:
Department of Comparative Literature, Brown University, Providence, R.I.; e-mail: elias_muhanna@brown.edu
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Extract

When asked for a definition of the digital humanities, I often fall back on a crisp formula. Digital humanists use computation to generate, organize, publish, or interpret humanistic data. This covers most of the bases, but it's also a bit abstract. “What sort of computation?” a colleague sometimes asks. “I use a computer at work; why aren't I a digital humanist?” To this, I agree; there isn't much daylight between digital and analogue scholarship. Less interesting than what separates the two domains is the question of what unites them. In my view, the most significant shared ingredient is technology.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 110 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

1 See Kirschenbaum, Matthew, “The .txtual Condition: Digital Humanities, Born-Digital Archives, and the Future Literary,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 7 (2013)Google Scholar, accessed 13 September 2017, http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/7/1/000151/000151.html.

2 See Elias Muhanna, “Hacking the Humanities,” New Yorker, 7 July 2015, accessed 13 September 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/hacking-the-humanities.