The Digital Turn(s)
Rapid and extensive technological change in the twentieth century led to new questions about relationships between space, time, and society. The shift from analog (and other mechanical) to digital technologies between the 1950s-1970s (what is popularly known as the Digital Revolution) re-shaped disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. This occurred in all kinds of ways, including the topics, methods, and communication of research.
In geographical scholarship, the digital turn is often attributed to the advancements of digital geospatial technologies of the 1960s. Early engagements were rooted in quantitative methods of computing for statistical analysis and modeling. This was followed by digital developments in geographic information science (GIS), remote sensing, and photogrammetry. Critical GIS followed in the 1990s, drawing digital technologies to inform “feminist critiques of both science and (scientific) representation to challenge the supposed neutrality of GIS” (Ash, Kitchen, and Leszczynski, 2018: 27). However, a major challenge in writing about the turn seems to be that it is still occurring, taking on new shapes and questions.
Disciplines like history, previously (and perhaps unfairly) labeled as slow to adapt to technological change, have transformed considerably through an uptake in digital technologies and methods. The use of digital tools, such as GIS and geodatabases, has also shaped historians’ engagement withspatiality, further demonstrating how spatial and digital turns were connected in both interest and impact (Hillier and Knowles, 2008). As we discuss in the next module, related spaces and repositories of historical knowledge production, such as museums and archives, have also adapted considerably in the uptake of digital media for preservation, management, and sharing of collections.
In other areas across the digital humanities, digital imaging has particularly led to a re-imagining of what can be visualized and how, leading to enriched forms of research and storytelling. Gillian Rose (2016: 337) analyzes these changes:
Images, for example, from the very simple to the highly complex, can be created, copied, repurposed, shared and modified by anyone with a smartphone and a computer, while the comment box, the ‘like’ button, and the blog are distributing the role of the critic much more widely. Because of the high levels of participation that these various innovations have unleashed, few of the scholars who have followed these changes speak of ‘producers’ and ‘audiences’ as two distinct groups and activities: the preferred term is ‘user’ (Hartley, 2012; Jenkins, 2008; Livingstone, 2005).
The latter part of that quotation identifies another shift beyond thinking of the digital turn as technological change, but also changes in meanings around subjectivity. Shifts in terminology from ‘producers’ and ‘audiences’ to ‘users’ are worth considering further on your own time and are useful to