An observation: the digital humanities are more expensive, more time-consuming, more intensive, more bureaucratic, and more complex. They are also better than prior modes of research and teaching. They are better not because they replace the analog humanities, but rather because they extend, elaborate, deepen, and enrich the exploration of what it means to discover, invent, investigate, disseminate, share, critique, and grapple with knowledge and understanding. They do this by breaking through now-brittle boundaries between form and content, action and interaction, author and audience, code and word, appreciation and application, process and product, work and play, and between differing methodologies and goals and objectives.
The digital humanities create dissonances and conflicts, but they also offer the opportunity for more beautiful compositions and creations. And more of this kind of work is only a good thing to my mind. To quote the great humanist and humanities scholar Mae West, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”