Digital Humanities Blog

My 7th-grade physics teacher defined machines as “anything that makes our lives easier.” At the time, I believed it, and frankly, I didn’t have a choice—I had to regurgitate the same statement on an exam a week later. But now, looking back, I find myself opposing that statement. Machines don’t necessarily make our lives easier; rather, they change the trajectory of our lives, which may be easier, harder, or entirely different from our previous state. The fact that courses such as Computer Science Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Humanities, and so on would not have existed some decades ago shows that machines don’t instantly fix every predicament of the human condition. Instead, they bring about change and a continuation in our pursuit of goals, rather than providing a finial resolution. I no longer believe that machines fix things; instead, I think they create new problems—some easier to deal with, others immensely complicated. I grew up in 2000s Ethiopia, which, in American t...

AI and Art   Dead men tell no tales, but they do sing songs after 43 years of their passing, or so I thought when I received a notification on November 2, 2023, from Spotify announcing that The Beatles had released a new song. The Beatles officially broke up after 1974, and two of the four members passed away in the years that followed. Yes, there were songs and recordings that came out well into the '90s and early 2000s, but it was still a surprise to the world to get a new Beatles song in 2023. Was it a prank? A fluke? If not, then what sorcery was this? And that is when Artificial Intelligence and 'Lord of the Rings' director Peter Jackson come into the picture. In a nutshell, Peter Jackson, with the help of machine learning and AI, was able to retrieve and isolate John Lennon’s voice from an old cassette. They then proceeded to retrieve George’s old guitar riffs in the vault and recorded McCartney and Ringo in the studio, successfully creating a song with two living Bea...

Homework 2 Narrative 1: Oromay By Bealu Girma Why it’s interesting to me One of the most interesting narratives I’ve encountered in my life is an Amharic classic novel authored by Bealu Girma and published in 1983, titled Oromay . Oromay exists between fiction and nonfiction. Set during the tumultuous period of Ethiopia’s Derg regime in the late 1970s, it offers a vivid portrayal of a politically charged era. What captivates me most about its narrative is its unique structure and perspective. The narrator is an all-knowing, mysterious figure who is not confined by space or time, allowing the story to unfold in a way that transcends the usual limitations of a single viewpoint. This narration adds an element of intrigue, making the story feel expansive and almost mythical, despite being rooted in real historical events. To give a little background, Oromay follows the story of Tsegaye, a journalist working under the Derg (Communist Party) during the infamous Red Star Campaign. The missi...

  https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/jnn7to/distribution_of_snickers_letters_in_my_halloween/ This scratched an itch in my brain, and I have always wondered about doing this but was always too lazy or distracted by the candy. I assume the source came from a fun-sized candy bag, and the original source of the data is delicious chocolate (haha). I think the presentation is genius—it perfectly shows the misalignment and frequency of the letters in 'Snickers'. If I were to do the same thing, I would approach it a little differently. First, I wouldn’t just compare one bag. I’d increase the sample size to around 10 bags and try to find a pattern. I would also create a table, graph, or chart to compare the frequency of each bag and each letter. Based on the pattern I find, I’d move on to get bags from a different areas (out of state or even from different countries) and check if a similar pattern exists in places that get different shipments, or if the letter count chan...

The overall goal set for this class states: “ …By the end of this class, each student should be able to engage in their craft in new and digital ways…” It is a broad and bold goal, open to multiple interpretations. The interdisciplinary nature of this course allows it to flow and interact with various facets of life and innovation. However, one word stands out in this objective: craft. Merriam-Webster defines craft as “to make or produce with care, skill, or ingenuity.” In a broader interpretation, crafting involves planning, plotting, intentionality, and demonstrating cleverness and aptitude in how we approach things. The main buzzword people often associate with crafting is creativity. So naturally, the next important question is: what does it mean to merge crafting with the digital world? The same dictionary defines digital as “something characterized by electronic and especially computerized technology.” When defining digital, terms like electronics, computation, data, and patter...