Bridging the Divide: "Doing the Risky Thing"

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Even emerging forms like video games have the potential to

engage audiences in meaningful ways and contribute to a

contemporary understanding of art and literacy.

Screenshot from The Last of Us, by Naughty Dog, Inc.

Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic

The reality is that the Internet is not really a new form or an aberration within the spectrum of human interaction--it's just the next phase in a progression of human communication and thought. Writing has served as the dominant form of communication for thousands of years, but it is not the first mode of communication nor the last. Modern, digital paradigms are providing means for integrating a variety of engaging and instructive media resources into writing, and many scholars anticipate the day when such resources will find their place within the broad body of formal academic writing as well. In "Digital Media Studies Futures,"Ben Aslinger and Nina Huntemann suggest that the future will increasingly require writers to bridge disciplinary gaps and rethink literacy to incorporate non-textual formats like video games and film. Sally Pryor offers a similar evaluation of "integrationism" in her article, "Who’s Afraid of Integrationist Signs?" (651). Assessing the historically oral nature of early communication and the visual nature of early writing systems, Pryor suggests that audiovisual and written forms ought to be treated as “complementary facets of one integrated form of communication” (650). In the future it will be harder to define oneself as a scholar of film or writing or music because the concepts are converging, and only those who are able to adapt to these new media formats and writing styles will be in a position to promote the usefulness and relevance of the humanities in our age. We are, in some sense, entering into a new Renaissance, and those who neglect to take advantage of modern forms of digital writing will increasingly find themselves cast into a self-inflicted Dark Age. The world is changing, and with it, scholars and academics must likewise change, adapting to new circumstances and making use of new tools. 

In the end, it comes down to this: scholars young and old need to be willing to take risks on behalf of the digital humanities. In an age dominated by economic concerns and shifting educational paradigms, this prospect can be somewhat daunting, especially in light of prevailing scholarly attitudes toward popular media. Prominent thinkers like Adorno and Horkheimer or Benjamin have, after all, warned us against the "mass deception" of modern media and the contaminating effects of highly reproducible forms ("viral" content does, admittedly, often have the taint of sickness about it). But rather than anathematize these new forms, we need scholars and innovators who are willing to make meaningful use of them--to take what is good from digital scholarship and integrate it into more traditional modes of inquiry. Our universities need scholars who are willing to investigate and implement new forms within humanities scholarship; we need people who are ready to engage real audiences and implement sociality into their work as they attempt to 'civilize the digital wilds' bridge the gap between the humanities and modern culture. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick puts it, "Junior scholars with truly innovative projects need to do the risky thing. But they need to know that someone's got their backs, and that their senior colleagues will learn to evaluate new kinds of work on its own merits and will insist upon the value of such innovation for the field and for the institution." There are amazing things ahead for the humanities and for digital scholarship, and as we learn to use them in conjunction--as we implement digital tools and ways of thinking into our scholarship--we will begin to realize the true potential of the humanities to influence and elevate society as a whole. So do the risky thing. And don't look back.

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