[This post is the text of my final essay for UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar.] Not Looking Backwards: Understanding New Technology’s Transformative Power and its limitations For every study decrying technology’s negative societal impacts,1 a study detailing how it reinforces and improves society exists.2 The debate over digital technology is not whether or not it is [...]
Archive | December, 2011
Digital (Urban) History
by Brian Sarnacki on December 7, 2011 in Digital Humanities
[In lieu of readings for the final class meeting of UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar. Each student was to give a brief presentation on the digital humanities in their field.] As a field built around places, urban history has always been cognizant of space. Beginning with Phil Ethington’s Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical [...]
HASTAC V: DH Strikes Back
by Brian Sarnacki on December 4, 2011 in Digital Humanities
For my first “real” conference experience (read: first non-grad student conference as a grad student), HASTAC V was terrific. I met a ton of friendly, smart, and engaging people. I presented successfully (no major faux pas) and received many good questions, comments, and tips. I particularly enjoyed the format of the conference, which was essentially [...]
On #UNL_DHS & #hastac2011
by Brian Sarnacki on December 4, 2011 in Digital Humanities
Perhaps it was because I finished my reflection for Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together before hopping on my flight to Ann Arbor, but her argument and the UNL Digital Humanities Seminar was on my mind quite a bit during HASTAC V. Particularly Turkle’s argument that networked communication was making people isolated by distracting them from real [...]
Alone Together
by Brian Sarnacki on December 1, 2011 in Digital Humanities
[This is a post for UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar. The week's readings was Sherry Turkle's Alone Together.] In Alone Together, Sherry Turkle explores human interaction with technology, concluding that as technology provides companionship it also isolates individuals. Turkle presents this argument in two parts, first looking at “tomorrow’s story” of sociable robots and later examining [...]
