in the author's words
a reflection on the project & why it's important to me
why i chose this project
I've always loved creating things. The satisfaction I get from producing something tangible makes my heart soar; homemade pom-poms, hodge-podge bracelets, and painstakingly illustrated (but impulsively written) stories littered the floors and shelves of my room from elementary onward. As an avid reader, another favorite pastime of mine was hiding in worlds crafted by carefully constructed words. Consequently, as time passed, the pom-poms and bracelets were buried under more stories, whether ones I collected or ones I created. I've never ceased to be awed by the power of language: its ability to erect bridges, to serve as a record of history. How malleable yet enduring this form of communication is, despite never seeming to encompass the entire realm of emotions and behaviors, seems to me like magic. In reshaping language, we reshape ourselves.
Reshaping is exactly what happens to your character in NetHack, a single-player game similar to Dungeons & Dragons rendered in black and white. It can be accessed from any Unix system, but my first time accessing it, I had no idea what a Unix system was. I had only a vague interest in computers, cataloguing them as "the machines my dad worked on", but seeing my dad play NetHack sparked my interest in computers as a vehicle for entertainment. The choose-your-own-adventure storyline, the character development, the minimalistic interface -- each of those aspects I saw in NetHack, I appreciated, and saw what is possibly the clearest example of digital humanities: a video game. I established a home in some of nooks & crannies of the Internet, as much a frequent visitor of Neopets and chickensmoothie as I was of Fanfiction.net and Wattpad. However, my interest in computers remained topical. I had no deep interest in the underlying infrastructure of web pages, sprites, and machine learning (among other things) until I took my first programming class.
Incidentally, my first quarter in college happened to be formative for two reasons: the aforementioned programming class, which left me starry-eyed, thirsting to discover how to create worlds in a language unlike any I'd ever used, and my Calc 2 class, taught by Tav. Tav hits the teacher trifecta: he's good at communicating his knowledge, he cares about his students and what he teaches, and he knows his subject . (Bonus points for being relatable: he includes memes in his assignment packets and tests.) I'm fortunate to be at a college where I've had multiple professors who fit into those criteria. However, Tav stood out largely because of how he encouraged his students to reevaluate their relationship with an oft-misunderstood subject: math. Our final project for that class was completely open-ended. The only stipulation: we had to examine math's role in some field.
Seeking to combine my burgeoning interest in AI, Twitter bots, and computer programming with my long-standing love of writing and words, I racked my brain for an association. I didn't want to do a project I didn't believe in: I wanted to do something that screamed "me." I stumbled upon computer-generated poetry, and learned about the algorithms, the numerical constancy that governs some of the most popular poetic forms (the sonnet, the sestina, the villanelle). I learned about computers beginning to imitate -- although how successfully is up for debate -- human-made art, in this instance poetry and literature. That project found me asking myself "What is art? Is it intrinsically human-made, and because computers are human-built and human-programmed, is their output still the realm of human creation?".
My interest in digital humanities stems mainly from that question: how do we define art and how does the role machines play in making it redefine it? And by extension, how does that impact culture and society? How can we use technology ethically to ensure that the linkage between us and machines -- and between each other -- remains equitable? Consequently, I made this website to investigate, first and foremost, what the digital humanities are, and hope that it may provide a more than adequate introduction to this blossoming field and possibly inspire others to ask their own questions, too.
*
career goals
It took a tear-laden listen of In the Heights and the unrelenting pressure of college application season for me to realize I wanted to be a writer. Not just a writer, but one with a strong grounding in her cultural history. "No history, no self. Know history, know self." is a saying frequently heard in the Fil-Am communities at UC Davis, and not only do I admire the use of homophones, but the underlying sentiment. Growing up, I eschewed opportunities to learn Visaya and Filipinx history because I wanted to fit in: I didn't want to accentuate any parts of myself that could be perceived as "other." Going into college, I resolved to learn, because I wanted to embrace all parts of myself. Thus, I made it a point to involve myself in Fil-Am community. I believe questions of identity and self are important to confront, and I aim one day to write young adult or middle grade fiction exploring the questions I continue to ask myself about my place in the world and my connection to my culture.
However, I expanded my definition of writer to include programmer after I began taking computer science courses. Computer science's interdisciplinary possibilities excite me -- programming feels like a superpower, a way to connect people and machines by serving as a translator, and using that capacity to create technologies that can transform the world. Additionally, I hope to serve as an advocate for Fil-Am students in the humanities and for women in computer science, as the current demographics of computer science skew white and male. Because the demographics of coders affect the technologies they make, I believe it's important to have a variety of perspectives contributing to future technological creation.
That being said, I don't have a specific job I'm aiming for: I find that, though I gravitate to the practice of writing and programming, both can be very solitary disciplines. Yet I cannot compromise my need to interact with other people: having conversations with others, whether thoughtful, routine, or humorous (or all three), energizes me. The ability to learn from and bounce ideas off of others is one of the things that makes me feel most alive. As of now, I'm still searching for a way to combine my personality and my aspirations.
*
some favorite projects / weird internet things
Project Magenta (Can AI make art?)
bot or not (A Turing test for poetry.)
NaNoGenMo (Can you code a novel-generating bot in one month? A spin-off of NaNoWriMo.)
The Pudding (Visual essays on anything from Hamilton to gender discrimination.)
*
a (non-exhaustive) list of people who've inspired me (digital humanities or not)
Jonathan Sun
Darius Kazemi
Rainbow Rowell
Amy Tan
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Robyn Rodriguez
Philip Pullman
Eve L. Ewing
William Tavernetti
*
if you've made it this far: thank you. thank you for your interest in this project, in this field bursting with possibilities.
I've always loved creating things. The satisfaction I get from producing something tangible makes my heart soar; homemade pom-poms, hodge-podge bracelets, and painstakingly illustrated (but impulsively written) stories littered the floors and shelves of my room from elementary onward. As an avid reader, another favorite pastime of mine was hiding in worlds crafted by carefully constructed words. Consequently, as time passed, the pom-poms and bracelets were buried under more stories, whether ones I collected or ones I created. I've never ceased to be awed by the power of language: its ability to erect bridges, to serve as a record of history. How malleable yet enduring this form of communication is, despite never seeming to encompass the entire realm of emotions and behaviors, seems to me like magic. In reshaping language, we reshape ourselves.
Reshaping is exactly what happens to your character in NetHack, a single-player game similar to Dungeons & Dragons rendered in black and white. It can be accessed from any Unix system, but my first time accessing it, I had no idea what a Unix system was. I had only a vague interest in computers, cataloguing them as "the machines my dad worked on", but seeing my dad play NetHack sparked my interest in computers as a vehicle for entertainment. The choose-your-own-adventure storyline, the character development, the minimalistic interface -- each of those aspects I saw in NetHack, I appreciated, and saw what is possibly the clearest example of digital humanities: a video game. I established a home in some of nooks & crannies of the Internet, as much a frequent visitor of Neopets and chickensmoothie as I was of Fanfiction.net and Wattpad. However, my interest in computers remained topical. I had no deep interest in the underlying infrastructure of web pages, sprites, and machine learning (among other things) until I took my first programming class.
Incidentally, my first quarter in college happened to be formative for two reasons: the aforementioned programming class, which left me starry-eyed, thirsting to discover how to create worlds in a language unlike any I'd ever used, and my Calc 2 class, taught by Tav. Tav hits the teacher trifecta: he's good at communicating his knowledge, he cares about his students and what he teaches, and he knows his subject . (Bonus points for being relatable: he includes memes in his assignment packets and tests.) I'm fortunate to be at a college where I've had multiple professors who fit into those criteria. However, Tav stood out largely because of how he encouraged his students to reevaluate their relationship with an oft-misunderstood subject: math. Our final project for that class was completely open-ended. The only stipulation: we had to examine math's role in some field.
Seeking to combine my burgeoning interest in AI, Twitter bots, and computer programming with my long-standing love of writing and words, I racked my brain for an association. I didn't want to do a project I didn't believe in: I wanted to do something that screamed "me." I stumbled upon computer-generated poetry, and learned about the algorithms, the numerical constancy that governs some of the most popular poetic forms (the sonnet, the sestina, the villanelle). I learned about computers beginning to imitate -- although how successfully is up for debate -- human-made art, in this instance poetry and literature. That project found me asking myself "What is art? Is it intrinsically human-made, and because computers are human-built and human-programmed, is their output still the realm of human creation?".
My interest in digital humanities stems mainly from that question: how do we define art and how does the role machines play in making it redefine it? And by extension, how does that impact culture and society? How can we use technology ethically to ensure that the linkage between us and machines -- and between each other -- remains equitable? Consequently, I made this website to investigate, first and foremost, what the digital humanities are, and hope that it may provide a more than adequate introduction to this blossoming field and possibly inspire others to ask their own questions, too.
*
career goals
It took a tear-laden listen of In the Heights and the unrelenting pressure of college application season for me to realize I wanted to be a writer. Not just a writer, but one with a strong grounding in her cultural history. "No history, no self. Know history, know self." is a saying frequently heard in the Fil-Am communities at UC Davis, and not only do I admire the use of homophones, but the underlying sentiment. Growing up, I eschewed opportunities to learn Visaya and Filipinx history because I wanted to fit in: I didn't want to accentuate any parts of myself that could be perceived as "other." Going into college, I resolved to learn, because I wanted to embrace all parts of myself. Thus, I made it a point to involve myself in Fil-Am community. I believe questions of identity and self are important to confront, and I aim one day to write young adult or middle grade fiction exploring the questions I continue to ask myself about my place in the world and my connection to my culture.
However, I expanded my definition of writer to include programmer after I began taking computer science courses. Computer science's interdisciplinary possibilities excite me -- programming feels like a superpower, a way to connect people and machines by serving as a translator, and using that capacity to create technologies that can transform the world. Additionally, I hope to serve as an advocate for Fil-Am students in the humanities and for women in computer science, as the current demographics of computer science skew white and male. Because the demographics of coders affect the technologies they make, I believe it's important to have a variety of perspectives contributing to future technological creation.
That being said, I don't have a specific job I'm aiming for: I find that, though I gravitate to the practice of writing and programming, both can be very solitary disciplines. Yet I cannot compromise my need to interact with other people: having conversations with others, whether thoughtful, routine, or humorous (or all three), energizes me. The ability to learn from and bounce ideas off of others is one of the things that makes me feel most alive. As of now, I'm still searching for a way to combine my personality and my aspirations.
*
some favorite projects / weird internet things
Project Magenta (Can AI make art?)
bot or not (A Turing test for poetry.)
NaNoGenMo (Can you code a novel-generating bot in one month? A spin-off of NaNoWriMo.)
The Pudding (Visual essays on anything from Hamilton to gender discrimination.)
*
a (non-exhaustive) list of people who've inspired me (digital humanities or not)
Jonathan Sun
Darius Kazemi
Rainbow Rowell
Amy Tan
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Robyn Rodriguez
Philip Pullman
Eve L. Ewing
William Tavernetti
*
if you've made it this far: thank you. thank you for your interest in this project, in this field bursting with possibilities.