Every incarnation of Cid is representative of humankind's relationship to technology in that world and acts as a mechanic, scientist, or inventor that (with the exception of two FF games where Cid plays the villain) champions technology as a way for humankind to reach new heights. Indeed, many Cids are obsessed with the dream of flight or even space travel and realize that dream through the course of their respective games (for an exploration of Cid's character and the power of this metaphor in Final Fantasy, see here). Cid incarnations are frequently at odds with characters of authority in the Final Fantasy universes and provide a moral and ethical point of view concerning the use of technology to benefit human beings. Even in those rare games where Cids act as villains, they are narrative devices employed to help us better understand the nature of the relationship between humans and technology. Thus the title of this blog: Cid's Directive is about exploring the relationship between 'technology' and the 'humanities,' and how technology can be used to further the goals of the 'humanities' in general.
This blog has been created to facilitate engagement with the discourse taking place in KU Leuven's Introduction to Digital Humanities course. As such, these posts represent a developing perception of the Digital Humanities. My conclusions in posts made at the end of the course may be (and indeed, I hope will be) radically different from the comparatively undeveloped understanding of DH that I am posting now.
I want to talk about something we didn’t get to in class, namely the Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 from UCLA and, to a lesser extent, Digital Humanities Manifestos more broadly. More specifically, I want to talk about the complications of hailing in an age of neo- or post-print with a work that is, more or less, a print document on the web with limited hypertext. Finally, I wish to explore the notion of entertainment and scholarship, the possible dangers of such a proposal, and my own biases towards print that I hope to work through a little more thoroughly over the course of the class.
I understand that media such as audio and video are just as conducive to the communication and interpretation of ideas. I am just not sure about some of these more complex forms. Clearly, data visualizations such as GIS mapping and text plots can reveal patterns that would take a lifetime to uncover in text. I am also aware that nobody is saying that we should only read books as text plots from now on.
My primary concern is with the expression of analysis. If we are truly moving into a neo or post-print age, what medium do we use to communicate the ideas retrieved from these methods of analysing a text? If, for example, scholarship is presented in the form of a game that requires a certain level of interpretation and ‘decoding,’ is it an effective medium through which to express scholarship? Are some media inherently more practical for the communication and interpretation of ideas than others? My instinct tells me no, but my mind still needs to work out some of the biases I carry with me. Part of the issue is negotiated in part 9 of UCLA's DH Manifesto 2.0:
Digital Humanities is not a unified field but an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which: a) print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated; instead, print finds itself absorbed into new, multimedia configurations; and b) digital tools, techniques, and media have altered the production and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, human and social sciences.
Perhaps the problem is that print has been the normalized standard for centuries. I have to keep reminding myself that I have been trained to decode the normative medium of print from infancy. Perhaps the next generation will be able to critically read data visualizations and games as easily as I can read a paragraph.
Video games and other digital media such as interactive fiction have already been deployed as teaching tools and a legitimate way of treating mental health issues, so why not use it as a means of expressing scholarship? We have only relatively recently accepted games and interactive fiction as content worth critically engaging with and it will take longer still to accept such media as a legitimate way to communicate scholarship on par with print.
methodology.
When you change media you necessarily change the way information is encoded. This is clear in simple examples: whether considering a description of the Sistine Chapel or a virtual representation of Borges' Garden of Forking Paths, either of these things will require a different approach to decoding information stored in them than the artifacts they are based on because they exist in different media than the originals. A traditional print-based description of the Sistine chapel will be linear and that linearity will force the writer to prioritize certain features of the chapel. A representation of Borges's concept within his short story will lose the linearity in which it is originally presented. The change in medium promotes a change in methodology because the information is encoded differently. A change in methodology invariably leads to new research questions and, more often than not, a fuller understanding of a subject.
Some might argue that print has advantages over other forms of media to communicate scholarship. In some cases, print can be the best way to express a concept. But it is overused because it has become normative. Some might argue that there are media that should not be connected to scholarship, forms that should be expressly saved for entertainment or art. On this point I wholeheartedly disagree:
Any medium can communicate scholarship.
Any medium can communicate art.
The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 is navigating dangerous waters when they state "Digital Humanities... gladly flirts with the scandal of entertainment as scholarship, scholarship as entertainment."
It is imperative that we be careful of the notion of scholarship as entertainment. This is not to state that scholarship cannot be entertaining, however, scholarship has as its core concern the clear communication of academic analysis.
Finally, for all the content within the DH Manifesto 2.0, even the pdf version, its authors use their neo-print age tools to little effect beyond snarky images and scarce hyperlinks of contemporary news. Their point might be taken more effectively if they had included substantial portions of their argument in any of the media that they purport to be defending.
These are my opening thoughts on DH, I hope to explore these ideas as the course continues. Feel free to comment!
I am wondering about your definition of "text" since it is not clear what you mean. From what you wrote, I think that I could argue that you are equating text with written text (print, to be more precise). I am not going to presume to know what you were thinking, so I will just ask: what is text (for you)?
ReplyDeleteYou raise a good point. I always feel that I should be cautious as to how to proceed when a textual editor asks me 'what is text?' In some parts of this post, (which I have now updated) I was equating print with text, which is problematic to say the least. As for an actual definition of text, apart from a simplified explanation of text as 'the intelligible symbols contained within a document,' I would have to defer to my MA thesis:
ReplyDeleteThe most important of these definitions is that of ‘text,’ a long-debated argument. This edition has opted for Paul Eggert’s understanding of text as an act of communication. ‘Human communicative intent’ is at the centre of text as Eggert perceives it (187-88). He makes his central point concerning ‘text’ with his examples of the Rosetta Stone and Scribbly Gum Tree: a text is only so when the artefact, understood as any physical object, even a sound wave, communicates an intended message to a receiver who interprets it, correctly or not (187-88).
In short, this definition understands ‘text’ as something that exists when a human being interacts with an artefact. This artefact is what we call the ‘document.’ (6)
Yes, you should be suspicious and careful when you answer that question... Quoting Paul is also a safe option, but you are telling me that texts only exists in the interaction of a human with it (by which I understand you mean reading it or attempting to read it). From that would follow that, if there were no more humans to read, texts would cease to exist. What do you think?
DeleteI think that it is a bit problematic to say that no more humans = no more texts. Eggert still refers to documents as textual carriers. What he is aiming at, I think, is that when a reader engages with a document, the perceptions he or she brings to that engagement create a specific instance of the text.
ReplyDeleteIn this way, the dormant faculty for text still exists in documents as 'textual carriers' even if all humans were gone and someone/thing else came along to read our documents. Of course, if nothing else is coming ever, it is kind of a moot point whether text exists or not without a reader to read them.