2017 Closing Keynote: What Happens When the Internet of Things Meets the Humanities?

Andrew Prescott, University of Glasgow and AHRC Theme Leader Fellow
for Digital Transformations, gives the closing keynote for the 2017
DHOXSS. We think of digital humanities as being chiefly concerned
with abstract data, tagging and quantitative techniques, but it
also has roots in a long tradition of using a variety of
technological aids to examine the physical characteristics of
objects such as manuscripts, paintings or pots. As new materials
and technologies such as conductive ink or ultra-thin transistors
develop, they offer humanities scholars different perspectives in
exploring and presenting primary materials. This lecture will
discuss some projects (mostly by other people) which illustrate
some of the emerging possibilities of the Internet of Things for
the humanities. These include paper headphones, a guitar that
documents its performance history, tattoos that control your
smartphone, and a book cover that speaks.