The Internet. All together now.
When it came time today to register domain names the group became restless: hands went up, eyebrows rose, and fingers tapped the keyboard then stopped, then tapped again this time in a steady and receptive tap that could only be the delete key being pummeled. If the group shares an anxiety about doing digital humanities it seems to be the thought of creating an indelible mark on the Internet. For me, registering a domain at Reclaimhosting.com created a temporary state of delusion about the Internet. Despite the fact that my (this) domain will expire in a year if I do not renew it, I felt like I was creating a permanent reflection of myself for all the world to see. This is connected to a separate anxiety-inducing misconception about the Internet–namely that what we put out there will in fact be seen at all. I am not an Internet cynic, but I do know that if I do not take the appropriate measures to ensure that my content is shared and viewed, it will not reach anybody. This fact helped me escaped my delusion and quelled my anxiety about this domain situation. I reminded myself that I am not permanently bound to this domain and that by doing nothing to promote this post I will not experience the discomfort of the public eye.
My anxiety about putting anything on the Internet hinders my capacity to move forward with using digital tools in my work. Hopefully, the tools I am about to be introduced to will serve as buoys to keep me afloat when the Internet appears too dark, too choppy, or too vast to cast off into. In less metaphorical terms, I want to learn to use the community of scholars active online to improve my research. I know that people (in general) are a rich resource but as it stands I restrict my access to this resource; I forget that the Internet is not a soulless behemoth but a great big mass made up of lots of little human interactions.
Aside from working on changing my perspective of the Internet, I want to spend the next two weeks revisiting primary source materials that I have already assessed in a “traditional” way. To start, I need to organize these pages of PDFs in a way that makes them more accessible. Second, I would like to experiment with using their contents as data. My goal is to have a seed of a digital component to my research project that I can develop as a complement to the writing I have already done. I am working with letters from museum staff, artists, and chemical companies regarding the planning of a specific exhibition of plastic art in the late-1960s. One question I am attempting to answer in my research is if, and if so, how much, impact artists the plastics industry. This question, I think, lends itself to statistical analysis and visualizations.
Lastly, I am about to start teaching for the first time and hope to ground my approach to classroom work in digital methods. I am particularly interested in how to communicate with students better and to learn from the experiences of others who have already tried certain tools in the classroom.