Blanding, Michael. “Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays.” The New York Times, February 7, 2018, sec. Books. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/books/plagiarism-software-unveils-a-new-source-for-11-of-shakespeares-plays.html
This article demonstrates how technology allows scholars to come up with finds they never would have otherwise. Who would have thought that we could see what inspired Shakespeare to write the plays we did and that it was all from one source. I thought this was an amazing demonstration of the power of digital humanities and made me appreciate the field so much more.

Campbell-Dollaghan, Kelsey, Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, and Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan. “Designers, It’s Time To Move Slowly And Fix Things.” Co.Design, November 27, 2017. https://www.fastcodesign.com/90152218/designers-its-time-to-move-slowly-and-fix-things
The engineers who work at Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites have a huge weight on their shoulders. Their little changes to designs can potentially affect the whole world since world leaders, powerful CEOs, bullies, and trolls are using these designs. This problem extends to the rest of the internet as well because many things are designed, built, and released regardless of the consequences. This doesn’t make for a very responsible culture for designers, something also pointed out by Jade E. Davis. While this rule-free net offers numerous creative opportunities, designers have the authority and responsibility to prevent products from being needlessly invasive, addictive, dishonest, or harmful. However, the article points out that in many, many cases they’re failing at that right now. Their main message that “if the past 20 years of tech represent the Move Fast and Break Things era, now it’s time to slow down and take stock of what’s broken," teaches me that people’s lives and minds are at stake when designing a product and that when I’m building software, I need to make sure it’s done responsibly.

 “The Rise Of Green UX.” Co.Design, April 12, 2018. https://www.fastcodesign.com/90167803/the-rise-of-green-ux
It is fascinating and disheartening to think that the internet of things’ consumes vast amounts of energy by design. Before this I’d never heard about Green UX. It is good to hear though that user-centric design is good for the planet because that’s what we should all be aiming for anyways: negligence always creates many costs. It also makes me wonder whether I should delete all the digital clutter that I keep on Google Drive. I like having my old essays and files from high school there for me to access when I need it, particularly after I lost much of my data that I had left local on my laptop, but apparently it’s bad for the environment to adhere to such practices.

Chen, Sui-Lee Wee and Elsie. “Personal Data of 346,000 People, Hung on a Museum Wall in China,” April 13, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/technology/china-personal-data-museum.html
This is a striking article because it shows the many ways individuals can address the complex problem of data privacy. It is shocking how Mr. Deng bought so much information for only $800, with each person’s data being worth a tenth of a penny. Having our data worth that little shows how much our privacy is valued. It is also disturbing to hear how much individuals in China suffer from targeted calls with their data used so freely and opens my eyes to the potential consequences of what could happen if data privacy grows worse in the U.S.A.

Cohen, Patricia. “Humanities Scholars Embrace Digital Technology.” The New York Times, November 16, 2010, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html
This article defines “Digital humanities” as an umbrella term that covers activities, such as online preservation, digital mapping, data mining, and using geographic information systems. It shows the excitement and anxieties created by techies working with poets. Since the humanities studies the elusive topics of aesthetics, existence and meaning, many wonder whether one can measure qualities of language that moves us. Quantification has limits and may not be able to address the interpretation part of humanities. After all, digital media are a means and not an end. Lastly, the article brings up how this “methodological moment” we are experience is similar to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when scholars collated and cataloged the storm of information generated by revolutions in communication, transportation and science. The practical issues of standardising methodology and discipline and defining what generally it means to be a historian were the primary focus of a great number of scholars. This article taught more about the general ideas of what makes up the field of Digital Humanities and how this isn’t the first revolution where we’ve been overwhelmed by the job of processing the enormous amounts of information at our disposal.

“Five Years after Attack, Boston Marathon Digital Archivists Find Healing in Storytelling - News @ Northeastern.” Accessed May 30, 2018. https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/04/13/five-years-after-attack-boston-marathon-digital-archivists-find-healing-in-storytelling/
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, an English professor at Northeastern, was part of a team of students and faculty who collected and preserved the stories of the day the Boston Marthon Bombing occured in a project called “Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archive.” This archive was an important way to document the event and help the city work to recover from the trauma because sharing stories and memories is way to lighten of the individual burdan. This is important because it demonstrates the importance of recording a history in a way that accessible to an entire community in order for that community to remember and heal.

“‘Future Tripping.’” The UCSB Current. Accessed April 22, 2018. http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2018/018916/future-tripping
“Future Tripping” is a symposium to demonstrate the use of interdisiplinary work and empower faculty, students and the public to address anxieties they have about the future (usually over economic, political, and environmental futures) in creative ways so that they have control over their situation. It is described as an “unconference” in an effort to favor interactivity over papers, and demonstrates how digital humanities pushes for new ways of doing things.The description demonstrates the different ways, such as digital scholarship, one can interact with information.

“I’m Being Stalked by Web Designers.” Pasadena Star News (blog), April 6, 2018. https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2018/04/06/im-being-stalked-by-web-designers/
This article shows us the international role that web design companies and web designers play. It’s a marketable field and as we usually do in the U.S., when we find that other countries offer less expensive services than the ones in our own, we pay them instead. It is not surprising that the global economy affects the digital world. This teaches me that I should think about how the international community of web developments.

“Innovative Education: Language Learning and the Digital Humanities |.” Accessed March 25, 2018. http://www.thesandb.com/features/innovative-education-language-learning-and-the-digital-humanities.html
Associate Professor Felix Kronenberg defines maker spaces as “spaces in which humans can create things.” This spaces include designing videogames to writing an essay to constructing Ikea furniture. He emphasized the importance of using digital tools to merge that gap between the different maker spaces around us and different concentrations of study, primarily business, arts and science. Bridging this gap will allow scholars’ projects to become more accessible to people in different academic fields. This made me see design and creation in a more abstract way.

Jensen, Kara. “A Behind the Scenes Look at Web Design for B2B Companies.” Bop Design, February 14, 2018. https://www.bopdesign.com/bop-blog/2018/02/behind-scenes-b2b-web-design/
This article taught me the process which companies use for web development. First, just like writing an essay, when you design a website, you have an audience in mind that you’re appealing to. Thus, while the website’s functionality is important, the target market, business objectives, resources, and B2B website goals are all things that take high priority as well. In addition, to have your audience see your website, you must use Search Engine Optimization. This simple idea of including enough key words and phrases to make your website pop up in the search domain seems almost a little sneaky to me. Moreover, fast page speed is an important factor for a better ranking of your website on google in addition to a good user’s experience. I like the idea that “in order to be effective, a website design must be viewed holistically and to meet the end goal of the company and its clients.” Overall, this article gave me an idea of how to design a website, one must first step back and think about the approach before diving into the code, an important thing to keep in mind if I want to become a better web developer.

Long, Sarah E. Bond, Hoyt, and Ted Underwood. “‘Digital’ Is Not the Opposite of ‘Humanities.’” The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1, 2017. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Digital-Is-Not-the/241634
In this article, we learn about the statements critics are making about digital humanities and how many of them understand the purpose of digital humanities and what they can acheive. I found this to be interesting because counterarguments tell us a great deal about why people are skeptical in the first place and why that skepticism needs to be addressed. Furthermore, we see that a  program that simply detects for syllables in a haiku can be used to trace and movement and patterns. By reading this article, I have learned more abou the subtle power of Digital Humanities.

“National Forum on Ethics and Archiving the Web | March 22-24 2018.” Accessed March 25, 2018. http://eaw.rhizome.org
This post explains how useful web archives can be legally: they can serve document criminal activity, corruption, and abuse and act as  powerful advocacy tools for individuals. They can also support community memory and record societies responses to occurances of political change, cultural expression, and tragedy. To address the ethical risks and opportunities brought about by technologies such as Rhizome’s Webrecorder software, this article suggests that it will take a group of different individuals: activists, librarians, journalists, archivists, scholars, developers, and designers. This demonstrates how these issues are relevant to people of many different fields and showed me the importance of recording, collecting, and storing data in digital archives.

“Raising Good ‘digital Citizens’ - News - Milford Daily News - Milford, MA.” Accessed February 13, 2018. http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/20180211/raising-good-digital-citizens
It’s important to teach ethics in school. Even though children have familiarity on how to use the internet, they don’t necessarily know the best and safest way of using it. And since children can’t be monitored by their parents very well when online, it’s important that they can take care of themselves, staying free from negative influences and dangerous people. It’s also important that they’re taught the importance of copyrights  since piracy has become a norm nowadays, and checking whether a source is authentic in this world of fake news. I agree with the importance of this and as someone who wants to work in technology, learning how to teach others to be responsible digital citizens it a neccessity.

Schuessler, Jennifer. “Reading by the Numbers: When Big Data Meets Literature.” The New York Times, October 30, 2017, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/arts/franco-moretti-stanford-literary-lab-big-data.html
This article showed me the tension between traditional scholars who prefer close readings of only exceptional works and digital humanities scholars include all the forgotten books. It’s interesting to see how what we consider the normal approach to a field may change over time and how individuals in the field react to that change. Some, like Mr. Moretti, are deeply taken by it. He makes statements such as “Reading is one of life’s greatest pleasures,” which we “would be insane” to give up, [Mr. Moretti] said. “But the question is whether reading and knowledge are continuous with each other.” I believe that generally in life, it is best to take a moderate approach, but I appreciate his belief that “I’d rather be a failed revolutionary,” [Mr. Moretti] said, “than someone who never tried to do a revolution in the first place.” Still, we are uncovering interesting discoveries, such as that “we tend to see literary history as a story of movements, periods, sudden revolutions,” Mr. Underwood said. “There are also these really broad, slow, massive changes that we haven’t described before.”

“The Computer Ate My Homework - DML Central.” Accessed May 30, 2018. https://dmlcentral.net/the-computer-ate-my-homework/
After seeing Jade E. Davis speak at MinneWebCon, I decided to read about some of her work on the dmlcentral.net blog In this post, she brings up the important point that we have to be careful as we integrate technology into the classroom because of the privacy, security, and then digital divide. Teachers may require children to use applications that track and record their information even if those children–or the parents of those children–do not want to. In addition, if a young child is at the reading level and their are not native English speakers, it may be difficult for the family to navigate teaching apps or websites. Finally, if a family cannot afford a computer or tablet for the child to complete the homework, the child will be at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the class: either they will have to complete it at their school or a public library, or if they complete it on paper, teaching algorithms won’t take them into account even if they start to struggle with the material. This post has generated much food for thought.

“Universities Rush to Roll Out Computer Science Ethics Courses - The New York Times.” Accessed February 13, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/computer-science-ethics-courses.html
As someone is working with technology and web design, this article made me think about various ethical questions and helped me understand big questions I need to consider. It is also inspiring to see that these large institutions are taking steps to help developers in the future focus on these questions so that they will build their projects in an ethical way. While the idea that “technology is not neutral…[that] the choices that get made in building technology then have social ramifications”, mainly points at the fact that moving fast and breaking things can harm people, it has a positive side to my work since positive social change can come out of enhancing the accessibility of technology.

University, Michigan State. “Digital Scholarship Lab First of Its Kind in U.S.” MSUToday, n.d. http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2018/digital-scholarship-lab-first-of-its-kind-in-us/
This seems like a useful tool and exemplifies the application of digital scholarship to different fields. I now understand how digital scholarship can be applied to game development, art and archeology classes, and humanities classes, as well as many more. It also seems to emphasize how much focus on VR and AR there is in the digital scholarship field.

Ward, Mark. “Bug Hunters: The Hackers Earning Big Bucks... Ethically.” BBC News, April 13, 2018, sec. Technology. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43581624
A fellow Carleton student talked to me about cybersecurity and how one becomes involved in the field. Often they are self-taught, such as James Kettle in this article. This fellow student also spent time during college analyzing code and learning how to hack. It’s good that individuals who enjoy finding weaknesses in software and websites can use their talent to help companies and protect people’s information and be payed well for it. Cybersecurity is something I definately want to explore. It’s relevant to the work I’m doing because I need to ensure that the plugins and programs I build do not have possible vunreabilities in them.

“What Is Sustainable Web Design?” Accessed April 14, 2018. https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
It’s nice how sustainable practices actually benefit your website because your making your website run faster, act smoother, and be easier for users. This reminds me of how jobs and environmental practices also go hand in hand despite the fact people often see them as opposing. Doing the right thing–being sustainable–doesn’t have to be a burdan: it can actually act as a guiding tool to improve your design. Knowing of these practices and understanding taking the time to build a better UX is worthwhile for both users and the environment is good to keep in mind as I continue web development.

“What Next-Gen Digital Humanities Looks Like - EdSurge News.” EdSurge, February 13, 2018. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-02-13-what-next-gen-digital-humanities-looks-like
This article gives me a glimpse into the community of digital humanities. Until now, I wasn’t even aware of an Office of Digital Humanities for that matter. It’s strange how unheard of digital humanities is and disappointing how little money is invested in it. However, it is gaining more support and funding with time and it only takes some small funding, innovation, and creativity for historians and scholars to uncover valuable discoveries. Overall, this article helps me understand the community of the field that I am currently working in.

“Why Does Great Web Design Take So Long?” Business 2 Community. Accessed April 15, 2018. https://www.business2community.com/web-design/great-web-design-take-long-02041850
This article helped me understand the difference in time needed to design an effective website from scratch that balances content, user experience, audience, and search priority versus quickly make a website using a template versus. The former has a slow development process that uses a deliberate thoughtful process that focuses on the end goals of the website. You cannot expect a rushed result to build a custom website since the more time and effort that goes into it, the better the finished product will look. This is a valuable take-away and teaches me to be careful, deliberate, and patient when doing web development work.

“Wond’ry Exhibit Takes Digital Humanities into Three Dimensions | Vanderbilt News | Vanderbilt University.” Accessed March 25, 2018. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2018/03/23/jane-landers-3d-printing/
I find this exciting because it shows that we can transport a physical object into the digital realm and bring it back into the material world. Its smudging the boundaries between the real and virtual–an idea that is both scary and exciting because we’re pushing the bounds of human technology. Maybe one day, someone can send their friend an object by 3D scanning it and then their friend can print it out, the same way we do with text and books. This makes me further appreciate what we can do in the field of digital humanities.