“The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home.”
Chachra, D. (2015, January 23). Why I am not a Maker. The Atlantic. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/why-i-am-not-a-maker/384767/
This passage jumped out to me as I was reading Chachra’s article because it is something that I have noticed already in our society, but I had not initially connected it to the way in which we value certain practices based on their gendered history. Having a very humanities centered major, the idea of making enough money to be able to have a secure lifestyle has been on my mind. Many people say today that one of the only sure ways to make a living wage right after college is to go into the technology industry and have a background in computer science. As the quote states, it seems as though our society assigns much more value to writing a code for the sake of producing something than to taking care of people or providing for the community. This is a bit of a disheartening revelation and makes me wonder how this can be addressed to bring more value to the ‘not-making’ that Chachra discusses. Initially, I would have thought that trying to frame every action into a ‘making’ action would be the best way to bring value to other practices, but after reading all of this article, I realize that just avoids the real problem. Instead of trying to make other practices fit the maker mold, we need to bring value to “repair, analysis, [and] caregiving.” This is where I think digital humanities can come in. I think it can be a common ground where ‘not-making’ practices can be valued in a maker’s world. Using DH as a common ground can potentially bring together these two spaces and create a a field where the strengths of each practice can coexist and be viewed as equally essential.
Personally, the more I learn about digital humanities, the more excited I am to dive deeper in to it. Because I know I will be having to do Sociology and Anthropology research at some point, I would really like to learn more about tools to analyze data, along with data presentation tools that can help making data more engaging. I also think the creative side of digital humanities is something I would love to learn more about. I was not really aware that it existed until our 3-D modeling project, so I would love to explore how to creativity pieces in to the digital humanities world.