This is so important, especially in this age of fake news and misinformation. It's easy to skew statistical messages such as if your data says 1 out of every 10 million people will die from a drug and then new data says it is now 2 people. This is not significant statistically speaking but if one says, over the last year deaths have doubled with this medication, that sounds very alarming; it really misconstrues the meaning of the data, thus being able to look at raw data is crucial.

I love the use of colour in graphics as it simplifies the information, allowing me to process it quickly and meaningfully.

It isn't just a matter of if the data is accurate because how you present the data can completely skew the message accuracy. For example if you change the range of interval numbers on a bar graph you can make the bars look very different from each other to just a little different. You haven't falsified the data and yet the message looks more or less extreme because of how you presented it.

What about the black strip on your driver's license, bank card, health care card? Isn't metadata embedded in these strips and what information is embedded? I asked my bank that question once and they said they had no idea. Who has access to this information and is anyone regulating what information can be encoded on these strips?

Until this week, I had no idea what metadata was. I have friend who is an expert in DAM, digital asset management and I had no idea what he did in his work. I like the simplicity of realizing that metadata is akin to the Dewey decimal system and the library borrowing cards that used to be found in books.

Geolocation should be something one has to opt in for as opposed to know they must turn off that setting. Minors that end up in internet chats where they share pics that they think are innocent and safe to share ie. they are using a fake name, don't realize that their location can be detected in their photo. This is makes kids are greater target for pedophiles. Many parents are not knowledgeable enough about technology to realize the risk their children may be exposed to.

China has facial recognition everywhere and it is even designed to detect the faces of Uyghurs, which are a Muslim people currently being persecuted and tortured by the government. Facial recognition is being used more and more everywhere and it is scary to me. Also, few people think twice about having smart homes that do what you tell them to while recording everything you say and do! The consequences of our lack of foresight and interest in our rights and privacy could one day spell serious problems for us.... ask the Uyghurs.

This is such a good point. We have turned google into a verb, not just a noun and we trust that verb to provide us with truth and good information. Even as a parent, I have often said to my kids to "just google it" when I don't know the answer to something and it doesn't occur to me to check the information they find from the search engine. There is just enough truth and accuracy to make us complacent in critical thinking.

I find it interesting that the word beautiful primarily brings up images of scantily clad Caucasian women. This speaks so loudly about racism, the fact that a woman's worth is still seen as being her body (not mind etc.) and sexually available. Whether this is due to the design of the algorithm or the popularity of searches, it is disturbing.

I did a google search of words like "women should" or should not and found that google seems to have cleaned up their algorithm as it is far less derogatory. Interestingly, men should' had more female dominance associated with it. Also I did the same searches on duck duck go and found all of the discrimination and sexism that used to be on google. One link that came up consistently was for debate.org and have archived posts about women being slaves, beneath men etc. which was shocking and upsetting.

How can we tell what software or platform is used such as for this historical site? https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/secret-annex/

What an excellent tool for changing how we educate children. Communicating information with various forms of media is so much more interesting than just having students read a textbook or text only essay. When kids are engaged in learning they perform so much better and learn more, which ultimately benefits society since one day they will be in charge.

This is absolutely fascinating. Being able to use statistics to analyze the trajectory of one's life through topic modelling. Martha's workload and emotions graphically increase through the years and I can envision using this type of tool in my future work as a therapist in evaluating the client's progress or helping them to see their progress based on their change in language over time in their journals. It could also be used to alert of downward trends in one's mental health that might otherwise be subtle or even help a client to visually recognize their greatest challenges so they can use that info. to focus their therapy and assist with life choices.

This Gallery is fantastic! I love how it is organized by themes and interests and there is so much information within each level. I was in grade 12 when the Berlin Wall fell so I remember watching it on the news. At that time my knowledge of the event was the 5 minute news feed and all that stands out to me now is the image of all the young people cheering and celebrating. It's amazing how much more knowledge all of us can access now about important events. Unless a person has no computer/ internet access we have such rich opportunities to learn, as never before in history.

A really excellent example of a digital representation of a place that allows viewers to travel through a space as if they were there is https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/secret-annex/. I was able to use this with my student to give him a glimpse into the experience of Anne Frank but also the furnishings and technology of the 40's.

I don't entirely agree with this part of the statement because the digital tools we have allow us to both view information in an entirely new way and to see connections that we couldn't have seen very readily. For example, the ability to take any written work and create a concordance of words can give us great insight that just reading the work would not have. If we wanted to see to what degree society is viewed from a male vs. female perspective between 1920 and 2020 we could analyze specific words in several pieces of literature from those time periods to see how significantly each gender is represented. If not impossible to do before digital tools, it would certainly be so laborious as to render it an insignificant goal in the scheme of humanistic inquiry. Thus we there is a basis for discovery within digital tools.

This definition of the work of the humanist is interesting to me. The question it creates for me is how the tools themselves dictate or influence the humanists' 'interpretation of human lives, thoughts and actions'? There are so many digital tools and and platforms that allow for expression of ideas but inherently must limit this expression based on their design. As well the tools the humanist chooses are also an expression of their personal bias potentially affecting what they communicate to the reader/viewer.

This is such an important point. Donald Trump did such an excellent job speaking at a level a lay person could understand when downplaying the seriousness of the Covid-19 virus thus undermining the scientific and medical community voices, that many Americans are refusing to vaccinate. This puts the world at risk for future variants that might be much worse than the ones we have now. More academics simplifying knowledge will help stem the tide of fake news, political propaganda and truly harmful misinformation.

I agree with this. Understanding academic research can be very difficult, especially those that include statistical analysis and if you aren't a student or working in academia it is nearly impossible to access academic information since many academic writings require an expensive purchase or subscription to access the information.

This is an excellent idea and in fact I took this course to learn new computing skills that I can apply to my future scientific work. However, I did find making the beginning of my blog to be frustrating and confusing and had it not been a course requirement I probably would have abandoned it. It was far less inuitive than I expected and at one point I deleted everything and started over. Thankfully high schools are teaching more of these skills now, but I think there should be more basic computing courses in university aimed at those not studying computer science but requiring computing skills to enhance their contribution to academia.

I agree wholeheartedly and I think one of the greatest impacts is in developing countries. Free academia in humanities, science, math and computing is readily accessible to billions of people. Kahn Academy is one such resource. Access to education around the world where illiteracy was often the only option will serve all of us as we go forward into the future.

As one who went to high school prior to the internet I can attest to how much it has changed all aspects of education and life. When we did research and wrote papers we were limited by whatever the local library had in stock and it took hours to sift through books to find the information one was looking for. Now, anyone with an internet connection and a computer can learn about anything. The downside to this change is of course fake news and information that is fabricated, taken from incorrect or non-academic sources. In the days before the world wide web, you could trust the sources you found in books at the library, as they were often vetted by academics and publishers. We now live in an age, I'd describe as, society knowing the most in history about nothing, since not everyone can assess and think critically about the information they find. This is evidenced by how many people get there news from forwarded posts on Facebook.

It may be of interest to some that the first 'computer' used punch cards and tape; it was the Jacquard loom. Here is a link to information about the Jacquard loom and it's influence on computing. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/jacquard.html

I agree with this comment however, the article doesn't take into account the risk that data could be misconstrued or misrepresented. Just like the media can use statistics to highlight parts that support one's view or how science generally only has successful experiments published, there is room in DH for some level of bias in how information is presented.

I suspect that many professors don't have the technological skills to delve into digital humanities. Many professors may have went to university at the dawn of the internet and haven't acquired the skills that easily come through exposure to younger generations. I wonder how many training/ upgrading digital humanities courses are made available and encouraged by the universities that employ them.