Stanley Fish cites the GeoHumanities as a new field that might shed light on towns that were force-flooded to build reservoirs, and in so doing, might bring back the history of these places forever lost. He extends the idea of interpretive methods in geography to the digital humanities, a controversial prospect.
With the recent release of web 3.0, it’s important to understand its predecessor, web 2.0, which itself abandoned the static, unidirectional model of web 1.0 in favor for a more dynamic and democratic online experience. Web 3.0 reintroduces the boundary-keeping functions of specialists and experts, while maintaining the values of ‘openness’ and accessibility that animated the previous generation of IT.
Amazon's attempts to compete with both publishing houses and bookstores via its Kindle raises many questions about the future of digital publishing. Will we have equal access to books on our iPads, Kindles, etc., or will we have various tablet technologies offering competing, exclusively licensed and/or produced content? Is this a new form of digital vertical integration?
The meeting of the Internet's expert-led knowledge base and democratic, anonymous voices can best be summed up in Web 3.0's emphasis on pseudonymity, reputation and semanticity. The latter two, however, seem to boldly conflict with the priority Web 2.0 gave to anonymity, indicating that internet users may have to face a value shift before the web can continue to develop in the direction it's presently headed.
Some argue that academic publishing, a low-cost, high-premium industry dominated by only three for-profit companies, is the worst scam in the free market today, requiring immediate reform.
Web Mining utilizes new technologies, data strategies, and communication flows, presenting an exciting opportunity for scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences—both quantitative and qualitative in orientation—who wish to harness the power of the web.
"Writing History in the Digital Age," takes peer review to a new level, democratizing information and opening the mystery of the editing process in the online context.
Educational tools for children are becoming more interactive and widely available at a low cost, through efforts made by companies like McGraw-Hill and nonprofits like Khan Academy.
Not only have major news publications embraced the blog in ways that trouble the very distinction between news and blog itself, but universities, too, have entered the blogging business. “Respectable” blogs such as The Immanent Frame and Five Thirty Eight demonstrate that the concern over vitriolic blogs confuses form with content.
The Stop Online Piracy Act and its counterpart, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, may have been conceived with good intentions, but their overall effect may be quite chilling to the democratic, free speech-powered Internet we have today.
