Digital Humanities at Geneseo

The massive wave of technological advancement within the last two decades has spurred more than just shifts in culture and social dynamics. The entirety of the modern world (more specifically, America, but generally and first world country will do) has morphed into a society that’s nearly unrecognizable from that of the beginning of the previous century. In 1920, the radio had just been invented. Now, 100 years later, students are finding the connections between literature and technology, and how both have an immense impact on our culture, our future, and the way we think. 

If I’m being totally honest, the premise of this class confused me just a bit. In registration and the first couple of weeks of classes, I wondered what exactly was the purpose of this class. Ask me two months ago, and I would have said I’m in this class to learn about technology and literature, and how they’re related to the world we live in. While this isn’t incorrect, I realize now that there’s an ulterior motive – to change the way we, as students in this ever-changing society, think. Coming into this class as a second-semester freshman, I still hadn’t really learned just how different college English classes are from that of the ones I took in high school. In my secondary education years, English class went a little like this: read some state-mandated classic novel, analyze the dickens out of it for two and a half months, and then write an essay on it, usually some form of rhetoric analysis. Maybe there would be a multiple-choice unit, filled with generic strategies on how to pass the state testing like the Regents exam, or get a 5 on the AP. Not entirely sure why, but everything I knew led me to believe that college is just going to be a more advanced version of this – reading harder books, and more in-depth and complex essay prompts. Nothing and no one told me otherwise. 

Needless to say, this semester has been a whirlwind for me. While my view on English as a discipline changed drastically over the course of the part of the semester that we had on campus, I now feel that it’s almost entirely changed since being home. Having to switch to online learning forced me to read and think in ways I hadn’t before. All my life, I have been a hands-on learner. The kind of person that needs to have a physical copy of the text in order to fully process, read, and analyze it. I prefer in-class discussions because it allows us to talk about our ideas and converse with each other informally.  Reading and discussing on a screen just doesn’t do it for me, however, that only puts me at a disadvantage in the current situation. 

Over the past couple of days I’ve been rereading certain chapters of Walden, and I notice that he consistently forces the reader to be self-aware of their consciousness, and of their thoughts and body. He wants us, as the readers, to not lose ourselves in everyday life, but rather go through life conscious of our choices and ability to affect others. Since quarantine has started, I’ve begun locking myself in my bedroom, not coming out for hours on end because I’m studying or doing homework. I barely talk to my siblings and only really stop to eat or dawdle. But in reading Walden, I realized that it’s so easy to lose yourself in front of a computer screen, and come out dazed, forgetting who and where you are. 

Taking this English class has more than changed my view of English as a discipline, but it’s changed my view on everyday life. I now walk through my house aware of every step I am taking, and everything I say. I sat down to reread one of my favorite fantasy novels the other night, and I was constantly reminded of Walden and Thoreau’s plea to have us find meaning in everything. In rereading that novel, I came out with an entirely different point of view on the characters and their actions – they are just as unselfaware as I was. 

Before this class, I had an immature and primitive view of English. The object was to read books, analyze, and write essays. What I didn’t realize, however, is just how immensely English can change the way you think – you don’t need a philosophy class for that.

When I first saw this question, I was having a bit of trouble understanding exactly what was being asked. After a long few minutes of really thinking to myself, I think in simpler terms, this question is asking me to think about whether or not the digital aspect of this class had an effect on the way that I read and understand literature. 

When I first decided to take on this class and saw that it was called “Literature in the Digital Age,” I thought we were just going to be discussing how literature has now changed in this time of advanced technology. Although this was partially correct for some of our assignments, I could not have been more wrong when we were studying Walden, the real heart of the class in my opinion. 

Throughout pretty much the entirety of the course, we were asked to read a select chapter or essays from Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden. He talks about living the simple life in the woods. How did this change my idea of studying literature? Well, the whole entire book was online, not in paper form. To add to this online experience, classmates comments could be seen throughout the “book” as you were reading the assigned section. 

Being a person who went to a high school where the curriculum was pretty much based around technology, this whole idea of doing stuff online was not a shock to me. However, we always read our books the traditional way. So reading Walden in a non tangible form was definitely an odd experience for me. The thing that really threw me off was the comments my classmates would make throughout the book. The way I usually read is that I do not like to get any outside ideas or opinions before forming my own. Reading other’s comments while I was reading the online text was distracting to me. I basically had to come up with a new way of reading, which for some might be cool but for me, I get the most out of reading when it is uninterrupted and while I value my classmate’s ideas, it would have been better for me if they were not there while I was reading. (Yes I know you can hide them while reading, but it still alerts you to their existence and I was tempted to look anyway). 

Also, although we had some discussion in class about the book, most of the conversations took place online prior to class. It made me realize something about myself. I enjoy in person discussion so much more than online discussion. To me, when a person speaks what they feel instead of writing it, it has more impact when engaging in a discussion or a debate. I really enjoy the natural flow of a conversation as opposed to the robotic way we all write. 

Let me make this very clear, I am not trashing the convenience and luxury of doing things online. Look at what’s happening in the world right now. The fact that we are able to finish the semester online is remarkable and I am grateful for having the ability to complete my studies and not fall behind. In my opinion though, some things should be left to be done in person. 

So, how has this class changed my view of studying literature? It made me realize how much I love the feel of turning the page of a book, and the voices of others around me.

The point of this blog post is to discuss how I view “English,” as a discipline, differently as a result of my work in this course. I can safely say that this class has definitely changed how I view aspects of this discipline. Yet I would be remiss if I didn’t state that some of these views changed after confronting the reality of our situation as a result of COVID-19. This class. To me, this class and this situation has allowed me to understand the importance of being able to adapt.

Early on in this class, adapting was very clearly important with the introduction of GitHub, Visual Studio Code, and the other tools we had to learn how to use. At first, I thought that these tools were just harder ways to do various tasks with the computer, as evidenced with opening my file explorer through the command line. But as time went on, I started realizing how these tools were enhancing the experience. Understanding my computer better has allowed me to review how I tackled aspects of this discipline. It has allowed me to open my eyes to how this discipline adapts. By looking at our laptops in a new way, it allowed me to see how the rest of the “English” discipline adapts in many new ways.

That changed, initially, when COVID-19 became a global pandemic and we were all sent home to wait it out. Because of this, I found myself looking at works like “Walden” deeper and really coming to understand how “English” as a discipline can adapt. I bring up “Walden” because it makes me reflect on my views of the English canon. I always used to think that the works in the canon were there because people forced them to change with the times. But looking at my situation, I found that “Walden” lends itself naturally to the changing times. Because of this new view on “Walden,” I find myself thinking this must be the case with most of the canon. But even with that, “Walden” wasn’t static, Henry David Thoreau revised and edited it several times, changing it over the course of a few years. This discipline is all about adaptation, just as we adapted to light levels of coding, authors and their works adapt to the times they are written in, as well as the changes of time. Even Gleick touched on adaptation as he went through the evolution of communication; from talking drums to the telegraph to the transistor. All around us is adaptation.

Because of our situation, adaptation is all that is on my mind. This view has allowed me to look back on what we have looked at in this class and has also allowed me to look at the discipline as a whole. All we can do is adapt, so it is always good to get the practice and come to the realization that we should. By having us look at our laptops in new ways, this class has allowed me to see how we adapt constantly to new situations. Through the command line, GitHub, Visual Studio Code, the English canon, communication, and more, we are surrounded by adaptation.

To be honest, it has been difficult for me to connect the digital work we have been doing throughout this course to the concepts of literature and “English” as a whole. While I have learned something entirely different from what I was expecting to in an English course, I was unable to see where our work connected to the concepts of English. Since moving to online learning, this connection has been made easier for me to see as my reliance and relationship with technology has changed so dramatically in the span of a couple of weeks. 

Prior to distance learning, I couldn’t understand how the uses of Github, Voyant Tools, Visual Studio Code, and the other programs we have been using throughout the semester connected to my general concept of English and Literature. I was glad to be learning something I never imagined myself doing: coding (on a small level).  At the beginning of the course, I reorganized my documents folder to better fit this course, and this is something that has aided me in all other aspects of my life. Now, after learning online for about four weeks, my understanding of this course has changed dramatically and how I view work in my other courses has changed as a result of this. I find myself constantly thinking how any of this would be possible without “English,” reading, and literature. Knowledge and information, as cited in Gleick’s novel, has been passed down for centuries through literature and language itself. At some point in time, the idea for the internet must have been drawn out and described upon paper, into some form of literature. With every new technological advancement, for example any of Tesla’s recent releases, will be reported on and written about for the rest of the world to know. Many of Tesla’s innovations have changed how many people view electrical power and will surely be something people read about and reference in years to come. None of this would be possible without “English.” In my work for other classes, I am more aware of my word choices, specifically the repetition of words in my papers. I have caught myself thinking about imputing my essays into VoyantTools to track the frequency of certain words and phrases, to then go back and revise. When revising my work, I have begun to use Review/Tracking/Track Changes in Microsoft Word to analyze my revisions and watch how my own understanding of my work can change as I revise. Like Thoreau, I change words, phrases, and grammar in my writing which then go onto to change the overall meaning of that sentence and finally can change the overall meaning of that work. Our work in terminal and VSC, has led me to prefer typing in plain text (although, I wish there was a spell check feature!) and the simple format it provides. I find myself becoming frustrated with formatting issues in other classes and am better able to understand why author’s and online writers choose to prefer plain text, instead of another program. Being able to spend more time, and the majority of my day on my laptop has been able to see how the coursework throughout this semester has affected my daily life and my own meaning of “English” and literature. 

What I have realized is that this all relates back to communication as a whole. Literature was born from verbal communication, and communication has been strengthened by literature. Distanced based learning has taught me how vital communication is to learning, and how much I rely on in person communication to thrive. I have now adapted this need and have learned to work with my technology to best suit me, and I think that being in this course has better prepared me to do so. Ironically, I think that I took this course at the perfect moment and our current circumstances has taught me the real value in literature and “English.” Every day, we (the human race) use “English” to stay connected, and gain information about the state of the world. In doing this, we are a part of history, and this recording of history was made possible by the changed definition of communication and the innovations in “English.” 

Until spring break, I never fully appreciated how communication links to learning. Living and learning on campus, everything is how it should be. I go to class and we all discuss what we’ve learned for homework and how to move forward. Now that there’s a pandemic and classes have shut down, it becomes a little bit more difficult to learn, for a reason I never saw coming; a lack of mass communication.

Now, of course there is still communication. The professors will always have time to meet with the students and discuss any issues. In fact, this class has a two hour period to chat with the professor during the scheduled class hours, a help page to write to the professor for help, a fill-out sheet to request a one on one video chat with the professor, and ti’s willing to help as well. However, there is still a missing out on general communication with everybody. Being on campus, you can talk with other students outside of class, study together, even just try to further understand what was discussed in class. If somebody missed a day, they can still get notes from a friend in the class. Now, you can’t really do that.

Communication is central to learning, but it is central to everything else too. James Gleick compares the telegraph to biological wiring. He says “…comparing cables to nerves; the nation, or the whole earth, to the human body”. Without communication, there wouldn’t be life as we know it. Communication expanded society at a much quicker rate. Instead of multiple nations trying to come up with something while having minimal communication, most of that being a messenger that can take weeks to months to arrive somewhere, communication began to be almost immediate. Telegraph stations were set up everywhere to quicken the time it takes for information to spread. Then the telephone got involved, having a voice transmitted across the world within a second like it’s nothing. Gleick describes this as ‘…begin to turn society, for the first time, into something like a coherent organism”. People can work together on the same projects around the world, at the same time, at a pace they’ve never been able to before.

Now that I am stuck with remote learning, it becomes difficult for me to learn, because i cannot communicate with everybody in a real time, class setting. I would love to join the scheduled class time video sessions, but unfortunately I have to work during the week now that I am home. It is not only this class that has gotten more difficult. Every class requires a scheduled class time because communication is a key to learning, so every class is becoming more challenging to learn in. However, every obstacle is something that can and should be overcome. We are still learning how to adapt to remote learning, but the more we do it, the more we find a way or a time to communicate with the right people, and still get the information that is needed to pass the class. After all, we have real time communication methods that are way more advanced than the telegraph.

When coming across the chapter in Gleick titled “Into the Meme Pool,” my mind immediately jumped to the captioned photos and videos blasted across the internet in succession, each changing slightly in form to the next. I did not expect the term “meme” that we commonly use now in pop culture to have first been coined by a biologist. According to Gleick, Richard Dawkins defined a meme as “‘a bodiless replicator'” (312). Dawkins considered memes to be catchphrases, tunes, ideas and images. The memes we see today fit well into this definition crafted in 1976, typically taking the form of a formatted image or video with captioning that is changed to the discretion of each repeater. According to an MIT Technology Review, the modern meme is “a variant of an image based on a common theme that has spread widely on the internet.”

Dawkins described the journey of memes as the replication of “themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain, via a process which, in the broad sense, is called imitation” (312). However, this form of imitation didn’t have the negative connotation of cheap copying — it is instead viewed as a collaboration. With each imitation, the meme evolves. As with the genes that form our lives, memes seek to repeat and evolve, stretching through the human story. The internet memes that have become so integrated into our culture (to the point where they reached the clutches of Facebook moms) are an example of how information and communication has evolved with technology.

Memes are comedic in nature, an inside joke for the internet. Some jokes are more exclusive than others. All memes are built upon a common understanding of the internet community. Memes are a testament to the strange culture and humor that has developed mainly with the younger generations that grew parallel to the internet itself.

According to this article by Brady Gavin, the first meme was a dancing baby used to demonstrate the impressive movement of a new software.

The MIT Technology Review describes how Gianluca Stringhini and colleagues at the University College London developed an algorithm to track how memes go viral across the internet. Their algorithm used perceptual hashing or pHashing to identify similar images: memes. The group found that for a meme to be most successful, one must mass produce various forms of the meme — similar to how genes “evolve through mutation, reproduction, and selection.”

However, not all memes are innocent jokes. As the article discusses, some memes are used to perpetuate racism, and these memes can go horribly viral — as a virus does. These memes seem to act more like a vicious virus, seeking to harm for the sake of its continuity.

In retrospect, it is unsurprising that the pop culture concept of “meme” derived from the observation of a biologist. Internet memes seek to replicate and evolve as genes do. Memes thrive from their replication and evolution, and they have the best rate of survival when mass produced with a spectrum of competitive variants. Memes may be the expression of the internet’s genes, in a constant state of modification, adapting to the ever-changing terrain of the web.