{"id":95,"date":"2014-08-27T15:54:08","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/seminar-digitalhumanities\/?page_id=95"},"modified":"2014-10-31T19:37:03","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T19:37:03","slug":"topic-10-truth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/seminar-digitalhumanities\/reading-topics-2\/topic-10-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Topic 10: Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding and presenting truth is even more complicated in the digital age than ever before. \u00a0The tools of this era provide unprecedented resources for scholars who seek truth (or at least greater knowledge) within their disciplines but the multiplicity (as Henry Adams might term it) of information and platforms\u00a0also creates confusion. \u00a0Some of this debate in recent years has erupted out of the concept of “big data,” and what it means to the future of scholarship. \u00a0Seminar participants should be able to define the term and should also be able to explain its pros and cons. \u00a0A recent column from the\u00a0<\/a>New York Times<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by professors Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis offers one useful introduction to this important topic. \u00a0There is also a fear over the future of artificial intelligence and its potential role as “our machine master,”<\/a> as columnist David Brooks put it recently. \u00a0The debate over big data and artificial intelligence has mostly focused on\u00a0research, but the presentation of data through infographics is also a subject of immense importance to any digital humanist. \u00a0The skills required to create multi-media data-driven presentations are currently at a premium. \u00a0This recent blog post<\/a> offers some advice about infographics from Nate Silver, one of the leading practitioners in this field today.<\/p>\n

From “big data” to “big history is a leap, but not as large as one might imagine. \u00a0There has been an explosion of interest recently in the presentation of world history as a way to focus student minds on the larger forces of history. \u00a0This is a trend driven in part by the\u00a0philathropy\u00a0of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, whose devotion to big history was recently the subject of a long, fascinating essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.<\/a>\u00a0 In that essay, students will learn about the work of an Australian academic named David Christian. \u00a0Check out an example of his approach, here in this video from TED Talks, that features what he labels an “18-minute history of the world.”
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