Conclusion

To summarize, mathematical and computational knowledge may be as (if not more) important as user friendliness for tools used in the digital humanities.   Methodological development must therefore be prioritized so that software platforms that serve the needs of humanistic scholarship can be properly developed.  Through computation and data, many disciplines have been brought together, enabling the flourishing of more multi- and interdisciplinary work.  The digital humanities can contribute the interdisciplinary endeavor if the field follows the correct path in the development of its tools.  An important goal of these tools is time-effectiveness, ease of use (to encourage adoption), and the gaining of new insights.  However, these benefits cannot be gained at the expense of shielding users from the hard work of understanding how the tools work in order to interpret their outputs.  Tenen says this in conclusion: “Working as a digital humanist or a new media scholar means taking on extra responsibilities: to do well by history when writing history, to do good science when doing science, and to engineer things that last when making things” (Tenen, 2016).

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Contemporary Digital Humanities Copyright © 2022 by Mark P. Wachowiak is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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