Workshop of Education on Digital Humanities Innovative Application in the Big Data Era (WEDHIA)

The advancements in information and communications technology have led the global economy into the era of Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution. Big data, blockchain, FinTech, Internet of Everything, and other cutting-edge ICT terminologies, however, are not enough to describe the digital economy. The features of a digital economy lie on the concepts of interdisciplinarity, modularity, and customization, which implies that the information of heterogeneous individual characteristics is critical to business innovation. To “decode” such information in big data depends on the knowledge in humanities and social sciences, including psychology, linguistics, literature, history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, religious study, cultural study, and arts. As quoted by Peter Salovey, President of Yale University, Lei Zhang, a Yale alumnus, once said “The humanities are fundamental to reason. Isolating data and technology from the humanities is like trying to swim without water; you can have all the moves of Michael Phelps, but you still won’t end up getting anywhere” (as cited in Salovey, 2017, para. 6).

That being said, students majored in humanities and social sciences who desire to participate in the decoding business and succeed in the digital economy need to be familiar with big data analytics. Although more and more digital humanities courses have been offered in universities, most of them focus on the application of digital technologies to traditional humanities. Few emphasize the application of digital humanities to solving the practical problems in the new digital economy. Lacking applied education in digital humanities may result in a gap between the labor demand and supply in digital economies.

WEDHIA, of which two sessions will be held on the third day of DADH 2018, is to investigate the new trend in the development of digital humanities applications and new pedagogical methods to teach digital humanities applications. We invite those having experiences or interest in this field to participate in WEDHIA to exchange knowledge and stimulate new ideas.

References

Salovey, P. (2017, March 23). Why we need the humanities more than ever. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/the-key-to-responsible-and-responsive-leadership-the-humanities?utm_content=buffer1f27f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

WEDHIA Session