I’ve been thinking the past few days about the “Digital Humanities” and about the way the academy has of twisting things all up so that they can leverage terminology.
Allow me to offer an example. I can write some code (some basic, lol– remember basic?, some proprietary game code systems, HTML 5, CSS, Javascript), but I would never, even in the most general sense, call myself a coder. I can hack things. I understand networking. I can make things in Flash. But I’m not a coder. I’m an autodidact when it comes to most things related to computers. I even taught myself to type so that I could stop handwriting things. I don’t type “correctly,” but I type like 140 words-per-minute, so I’m not all that offended by the fact that my right hand floats instead of staying on the home keys.
I’m pretty sure I’m the type of person who is supposed to be known as a digital humanities scholar: I study games and social media and identity on the internet, I know enough about various types of coding and different platforms that I can make stuff. Given a few days-weeks and the right set of links, I can learn to do just about anything digital. But I’m not a computer scientist. I’m not even sure you could call me a “soft skills” coder in the classic sense. When I show people how I code, it’s like when I show people how I solve math problems– it works, but I never do it “right” as far as the standard goes.
And I think that’s fine, really. The whole concept of digital humanities is a fusion of skill sets. What I’ve noticed, however, and what is deeply disconcerting is that people who are embedded in the humanities (let’s talk specifically English since that’s the world I come from) claim “coder” status and claim to be developers in addition to holding their position relative to the humanities.
Serious as cancer truth: I have met, in my time, four English Ph.Ds who have legitimate coding skills, like on par with someone I’d call a coder. FOUR. I have met, in my time, at least 300 people who claim to be DH scholars. It’s possible people are hiding the skills they claim to have in their back pocket and just not using them, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think that older scholars in English departments think that using the Adobe suite and coding a page in HTML in front of them is magic (in some cases, at least) and that allows for the perpetuation of the belief that there is a DH scholar who essentially could be a coder for a living but chooses instead to talk about Milton and Chaucer. I actually know a guy who chose that, essentially. He was capable of making mid-six-digits as a programmer but wanted to study critical theory. And more power to him. But he’s the anomaly.
Up until my arrival in my current department– even in the time before I joined my department and worked in the English department on my campus– I was always THE tech guy (or one of the tech guys). I was the one who fixed people’s computers, who helped install and utilize new software, who offered workshops for students, who made the broken tech thing work again. By English standards, I’m Dilbert. I know tech. I can grab a gizmo and start making it do things relatively quickly.
But when people from the humanities cheapen the value of coding skill and digital understanding so they can try to make their work seem new and fresh, they do a powerful disservice to the people who don’t see their thin-veil rhetorical move. Let me say it again: I’m not a coder. I can code. But I can code the same way I can play a game like DOTA 2 or can install a sink and garbage disposal. That is to say I can do it, for sure, but it’s not my wheelhouse. It would be inappropriate for me to claim such skills.
But so many people do. It’s in like every fifth cover letter, in every second-or-third job ad.
I’ve been on hiring committees, and I’ve spent a great deal of time working with people on the job market (as adviser, as peer, as friend, as “can you look at my friend’s materials” guy), and there are numerous people who claim to be coders who have PhDs in English and know HTML 5 and CSS. That doesn’t make you a coder. That’s like making a level in Mario Maker and claiming you are a level designer at Nintendo.
A point in case: my program is always on the lookout for people who can teach our intro coding classes. And sometimes someone will mention a new English hire and say “oh, so-and-so does all sorts of code work!” Only so-and-so doesn’t. So-and-so does HTML. Sometimes so-and-so has advanced javascript skills or experience with this-or-that API. In a really rare case, so-and-so knows a little bit of Unity. I know, because not too long ago I was so-and-so, and So-and-Me wanted to be super-clear about his skills so no one got the wrong impression. Also, So-and-Me had faith that his skill set was valuable without claiming he was a coder, too.
This isn’t meant to be an insult to anyone if it reads that way. What I’m trying to point out is how we abuse other disciplines and belittle what we do by trying to pretend that the Digital Humanities is the birth of the uber-coding humanities scholar. There isn’t a horde of Computer-Wizard Terminators with Moby Dick in one hand and a Raspberry Pi in the other.
I have a particular, unique, valuable set of skills. There are few, if any, people in the world who have the level of experience I have with the combination of online teaching, game studies, rhetoric of race, rhetoric of identity, streaming technologies, writing for games, etc. And I am completely competent in HTML5, in CSS, I know Javascript, and I know all sorts of specialized software. I can throw down and build some stuff like you wouldn’t believe. I shouldn’t feel like I need to pretend I’m as good at coding as someone who has a PhD in Computer Science simply because that’s how other people posture. I know the profile of the digital guy. I was the digital guy in lots of spaces.
The Digital Humanities could be an amazing field of study, but right now, it’s more of a rambling lie that attempts to reinvigorate areas of study that have gone cold. It’s gotten such that I am gun shy when I meet a new person who claims to to DH because I know we have to have the behind-a-closed-door talk where I tell them what I can do and they loosen up and reveal their actual skills. It’s never what they present it as. Other than that one guy. He was insanely talented and made me feel inadequate. But he also couldn’t do any coding for anyone but his employer. They even would have owned group projects in class. Because when you’re a genius coder who goes for a second PhD, that’s the value of your labor. You don’t have to take a job as an adjunct to survive. You have skills that are in tremendous demand. As scholars in fields that are struggling to survive the onslaught of Trump America, we shouldn’t try to steal the thunder of another discipline to prop up the arts. We just have to keep what we do relevant.