Dartmouth Events

“The Human and the Digital: Extending the Dialogue”

Digital technology promises to remove many barriers and inequalities in the search for knowledge, but it creates others covered by the shorthand term “digital divide.” Some of the issues are economic and socio-political; others epistemological and methodological, or related to the physical form of the knowledge material. Such challenges are routinely faced by workers outside the Western cultural and technological metropolis, or even within its “suburbs” given over to non-Latin fonts and underprojected cultures. This paper will look at a range of such challenges, with actual or potential solutions. They extend from the mechanics of digitization (fonts) to epistemological issues (grammar, semantics, discourse structure) to economic and cultural factors (the material medium, conditions of preservation and access). Illustrations will be drawn, inter alia, from the author’s experience at the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, India. The aim will be to suggest effective means of extending the linguistic, cultural and material reach of digital humanities in a diverse world.