As a 21-year-old university student, I enrolled in a new and interesting course this semester that I hoped will introduce me to the Digital Humanities. Having reached the halfway point in the semester, my aspirations to transform the way I perceive, interact with, and create content digitally has grown tremendously through the course material. This narrative explores my evolving understanding of digital literacy, the strategies I employ in my personal and academic life, and my aspirations for what lies ahead.

My Digital Starting Point


Before enrolling in this course, my digital literacy skills were primarily centred around the basics. I know how to use social media platforms, Google and Microsoft suites, as well as some basic code and web development. My content creation process revolves around simple tools available on my iPhone and Macbook, and I hardly ever venture beyond that comfort zone unrelated to classes I am enrolled in. Socially, I interact with friends and family on Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, and Whatsapp, and I tend to stay away from delving into the deeper aspects of online communities or digital communication.

In my day-to-day life, I rely on digital spaces on the web such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Notion to organise my documents and manage my time, but I never truly explored the wealth of digital tools available for research, data management, and analysis. Frankly, I was swimming in the shallow end of the digital pool, unaware of the vast ocean of possibilities that awaited.

Aspiration For This Course


At the start, I had hoped that enrolling in the Digital Humanities course would be a pivotal step. The course aims to expose us to a plethora of digital tools and concepts around data research, analysis, and management. Such as in this assignment, languages like Markdown become my go-to for formatting text on platforms like GitHub which allow me to create and collaborate with others on coding projects. I began to see how online communities on unconventional social platforms formed around shared interests, and I realised the potential for networking and learning from experts in various fields.

However, the true eye-opener was when we delved into research data management and analysis. We explored data manipulation with Posit Cloud and data visualisation with tools like Voyant and Antconc, illuminating the power of data-driven insights.

What I Have Learned So Far


Having worked on two assignments addressing large data analysis methodologies, I find that my current abilities to navigate the digital have grown significantly. The course has not only taught me to parse through documents and analyse their differences and similarities, but to ask more nuanced questions that can only be solved digitally. As humans our ability to consume data is mind blowing, however it is also time consuming. Computers are more capable of reading millions of documents much faster than we’ll ever be able to. What I found to be the most interesting were the digital maps, and using data to be reflected on an interactive site that can be continuously updated with new information.

Digital mapping excited me because I was able to use the same visualisation method for another course I am enrolled in. I am currently working on a project related to the sounds of home for my Music and Identity in Trade class with Professor Ghazi AlMulaifi, hoping to generate a map that lives on the web and can be updated with new data without manual intervention.

Currently, I find myself greatly enjoying the photographic analysis we are using with Orange Data Mining. I do understand the shortcomings of machine learning to analyse photographs like humans by attributing intangible meaning such as emotion to images, however, seeing the ways in which the software connects and organises photographs can introduce a new pattern of understanding to the data. The example of Monet and Manet shows exactly that.

However, I am keenly aware of how much more there is to learn. The course has ignited a passion for digital humanities, pushing me to seek further knowledge independently. I now understand that digital literacy is not a static skill but a constantly evolving journey. I aspire to become proficient in data analysis, mastering statistical techniques and data visualisation tools to unlock the potential of big data in humanities research.

Future Aims and Exploring the Ethical


Furthermore, I am intrigued by the ethical implications of digital humanities. As we navigate the digital landscape, questions about data privacy, biases in algorithms, and the accessibility of digital content are more relevant than ever. I hope to explore these issues deeply and contribute to discussions on responsible and equitable digital practices.

In the Ted talk given by Fei Fei Lee, one of the implications of digital humanities becomes apparent. The dependence on a large and widespread community of people that were tagging photographs to be fed into the machine learning algorithm can have differences in understanding of certain vocabulary. I find that the probability of wrongful bias or a language barrier of these freelance recruits to be a point of complication for certain data collection types.

Another shortcoming was with the data from the UFO Kaggle set, people’s ability to input data that to them is seen as a fact can be complicated. When creating the website for my other course, I find that my use of relative and personal data instead of seen and physical to be more solid and trustworthy than what we have seen with the UFO dataset.

Regardless of that, through my courses in Interactive Media, I only see an upwards move towards more ethical and inclusive data and digital use to happen with time. As more people are exposed to such software and algorithms, their feedback will continually be used to update and upgrade these programs to fit into the best and most useful ethical narrative out there.

In conclusion, I hope my journey into digital humanities will be a transformative experience. While my current abilities have grown, I am acutely aware of the vast expanse of knowledge yet to be explored. My aspirations include mastering data analysis, understanding the ethical complexities of the digital world, and continuing to adapt and evolve as a digital citizen. This course has opened my eyes to the possibilities and responsibilities that come with digital literacy, and I am excited to continue my journey in this ever-evolving digital wilderness.