Comments on: Eco-Critical DH Discussion Ideas

By: Michael Newton

Michael Newton — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 12:57:16 +0000

Digital Humanities projects by definition represent things, especially things that have materiality, and the humanities are largely the product of institutions established by industrialized empires and nation-states. This causes a particular bias in representation and privilege in that cultures that produce more stuff and hence greater environmental impact (monumental architecture, restructuring the landscape, the resource extraction necessary to produce these things …) have greater prestige and visibility. Is there some way in which technology can be used to “write back” against these biases and provide a counter-weight using the intangible cultural heritage of peoples of non-industrial societies and more environmentally sustainable lifestyles?

By: Michael Newton

Michael Newton — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 12:51:06 +0000

Social network graphs are enjoying popularity at present. Would it be possible to model at least some of the interdependencies of particular ecosystems in a network graph, making visible what some of these interdependencies are and then ask what would happen if that network were disrupted in some way? What would happen to other dependent species if the mosquito that carries Zika were eliminated, for example?

By: Michael Newton

Michael Newton — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 01:05:14 +0000

Another topic. It has been argued that environmental sustainability requires a much stronger, deeper and meaningful commitment to place/location than has been facilitated by the commodification of land as real estate and extractable resources. Rather than the use of technology for “virtual reality” — taking us away from the place and time in which we are actually alive — could technology be used to augment our sense of rootedness to a place, to allow us to dig deeper into the ecological vitality and potentiality of it, and become more invested in all of the types of community (biological, cultural and spiritual) that are connected to and imbued with that place?

By: Michael Newton

Michael Newton — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 01:00:04 +0000

Imagine, for example, that goods can not only be assigned “carbon units” (to represent their costs), but that you can visualize a map of the locations from which their components were harvested, a timeline of the time needed to (re)generate their base substances, see a graph of the amount of energy needed to extract, process and manufacture it, the type and cost of travel needed for all of the constituent components, etc.

By: Michael Newton

Michael Newton — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 21:52:10 +0000

Some more brainstorming ideas: People generally have no way of seeing or understanding the repercussions of their habits and consumptions on places and things beyond their individual and immediate space and perception, despite the global reach and impact of the processes that go into producing the goods of our daily lives. One of the ways in which environmentalists have conceptualized measuring human and individual impact is by measuring or estimating our “ecological footprint”. There are a few apps which attempt to provide some measure of ecological footprint based on individual purchases how might these initial efforts be improved? What else might be done or measured or represented?