Felicity Howlett

Here we are at the end of our term, and we have never met in person. I feel comfortable and grateful for our online encounters. This digital era we live in—making it possible for us to share time together even when we have never been in the same room.

            I have contradictory feelings about digital life. Zoom has been a salvation, an opportunity to talk, listen, learn, visit, and continue relationships. But if my cell phone rings when I am walking along in silence, I feel I have been accosted and would rather jump on the thing than answer it. I cling to my landline. I’m probably clinging to its knees—or ankles. Most likely it is on its way out the door.  

            This class has been a wonderful and enlightening even if I encountered some rocky moments during my first dips into mapping, text mining and visualization. I hope I am beginning to understand something about what it means for us to have so much information available as well as so many ways to explore it! Just having online access to the libraries—having information downloadable at our fingertips and/or wandering around a subject with Zotero, netting the information like a butterfly chaser, is beyond compelling.  

            My final project aims at encouraging the stated interest of the digital humanities community to extend its reach beyond academy walls with a plan to activate the potential for electronic participation for people who are confined to their living quarters. Whether such isolation is caused by fragility, a specific handicap, or a chronic condition, such individuals are often overlooked as they are unable to enjoy in-person opportunities for social interaction. The hope is to create a website embedded with Zoom that will serve as the address for a weekly music program. In a Zoom room, people will meet one another, share in the music, participate by singing along and engaging in discussion.  Although I forgot to mention size in my final project, I imagine that a pilot program would not involve more than ten or twelve participants.

            I see three different areas that would benefit from digital community input:   

            1) Website design, program planning, and a pilot program.

            2) The “latency” issue (The time it takes from signals to travel from the sender to the receiver).  Latency problems create asynchrony, making it nearly impossible for people to sing together in an ensemble if they are not together in one location.  [Ways to get around this issue have been devised and are workable.]

            3) Creative design ideas and/or models for people who might need special assistance to participate such programs.  Siri, Alexa, and other virtual assistants have enabled some people with handicaps to operate independently in ways that that were not imagined possible not so long ago. Learning what other assistance people need will be discovered on an individual basis.

            The goal for next semester is to accomplish the plan as described in the first item, but you never know when knowledge and inspiration might spill into something beneficial for items 2 and 3. 

            With best wishes to all for a healthy, peaceful, happy, and fruitful new year!

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