I see digital humanities as how the humanities engage digitally with the world, not just using data to acquire information about the humanities. In today’s Big Data world, medicine, health, and wellness often come to you. Tailored ads on Facebook display pages devoted to in-home workouts. A plethora of apps exist that paradoxically allow you to use your phone to escape the ubiquity of technology’s demands, such as Calm and InsightTimer; the former features soothing images and mantras, and the latter provides meditations tailored to specific needs, including “dealing with addiction” and “emotional healing.”[1] Many hospitals now allow VirtualVisits, wherein patients and providers can essentially FaceTime appointments. While all of these applications are useful for parents of young children, people with disabilities, people with off-hour or overloaded schedules, usw., they all also lack the sensorily rich aspect of in-person, in-nature experience.

My research focuses on digital social capital, specifically, how diasporas digitally maintain connections with their culture via Facebook, YouTube, and other social media and videosharing platforms. At the core of such research is emotional and cultural sustainability and wellness. People want to know that there are others like them, others who sing, dance, laugh, act in the way that they do, even if the culture is geographically and chronologically distant. However, the methodology can be applied to – and seen in – more broad examinations of the Internet’s role in daily life. The United Kingdom announced in January 2018 that a new Minister of Loneliness would be appointed to help combat an epidemic of staggering proportions. Ceylan Yeginzu writes, “Government research has found that about 200,000 older people in Britain had not had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month.”[2] As an example, Yeginzu cites Briton Carol Jenkins’ use of a loneliness-themed Facebook group that provides support, encouragement, and coping mechanisms to members of various ages across the U.K.; ironically, participation in said group has encouraged Jenkins to go outside their home more. The maintenance of social clubs, bowling alleys, and board game nights are a large part of whole-person healthcare, for loneliness can have wide-ranging affects. As the minister’s position develops, social media initiatives should serve as an adjunct to in-person opportunities.

Lastly, Sherry Turkle, in Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (2015), decries the deleterious effects that digital omnipresence can have on various aspects of human interactions. In one instance, she details the societal benefits achieved as a result of recent technological developments, yet cautions that the rising generation of medical professionals, as digital natives, does not know a world where an answer is not Googleable. She cites instructors’ concerns that residents are frequently not adept in interpersonal relations that allow the whole patient to be studied and seen. The book jacket to Reclaiming Conversation notes, “We are forever elsewhere. But to empathize, to grow, to love and be loved, to take the measure of ourselves or another, to fully understand and engage with the world around us, we must be in conversation.” We live in a hybrid world, a world in which life is simultaneously lived and performed online and in person. We must work to maintain homeostasis between today’s way of life and the way that life is when no technology is available.