The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
8 — Wednesday, February 17, 2021 
statement

What is
digital 

studies?

BY ALEXANDER 

SATOLA, STATEMENT 

CORRESPONDENT

I

n January 2019, LSA announced the 
creation of a new Digital Studies In-
stitute that would support the study 

of digital technologies from a humanities and 
social science perspective. The establishment 
of a formal academic institute followed the cre-
ation of the LSA Digital Studies Program in 2014 
within the University’s Department of Ameri-
can Culture.

The DSI embraces an interdisciplinary ap-

proach, engaging different methodologies, 
frameworks and discourses from across a vari-
ety of academic fields. The particularity of DSI, 
however, lies in its singular focus on all things 
related to the phenomenon of digital technol-
ogy. “We are the nation’s first one-stop shop for 
all things digital,” claims the website’s “About” 
page, “including digital media studies, digital 
humanities, digital pedagogy, digital art, aes-
thetic practice and design, and critical thinking 
about our digital future.”

There is a question that remains unanswered, 

however, when we separate “the digital” from 
the more traditional concepts of the humanities, 
art and design: What are we studying when we 
study digital technology?

There are two immediate answers to this 

question. The first aims to explain what is dis-
tinctive about digital technology, namely its reli-
ance on binary numbers, Boolean logic and com-
puting. What differentiates digital from analog 
electronics is the capacity of digital electronics 
to process data in the form of digits, specifically 
zeroes and ones, and to display that information 
in a machine-readable format. Analog technol-
ogy, on the other hand, relies on representations 
or analogies of information collected through 
the continuous measurement of a natural signal, 
such as a sound wave.

The second answer to our question of what 

scholars of digital technology study, however, 
relates to examining the historical emergence 
of digital technologies and their impact on hu-
man affairs; to be sure, scholars in the DSI pro-
gram want to participate in the design of digital 
devices, but they also want to be more than just 
ethical consultants for engineers. With a vast 
field of inquiry in front of them, there are fresh 
opportunities to examine and understand the 
technologies that seem to pervade almost every 
aspect of our lives. What, then, is the role of this 
new discipline, and how does an organization 
like DSI push it forward?

***
Because digital studies cuts across so many 

academic disciplines, the minor in Digital Stud-
ies attracts students from the humanities, so-
cial sciences, physical and natural sciences and 
much more. With the growing salience of digital 
technology in the everyday lives of students, not 
to mention the general population, perhaps it 
was only a matter of time before the study of its 
relationship with art, society, ethics and politics 
became supported on an institutional level. 

To learn more about DSI on its own terms, I 

reached out to administrators, faculty and stu-
dents affiliated with it. My first conversation was 
with Lisa Nakamura, the director of the Digi-
tal Studies Institute and a Gwendolyn Calvert 
Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of 
American Cultures. Nakamura, a scholar with a 
breadth of experience on issues of race in digital 
media, arrived at the University in 2012 to coor-
dinate what was then the Digital Studies Pro-
gram. Starting with the design of a curriculum, 
she noticed that many students were drawn to 
humanities and social sciences courses that ad-
dressed the role of digital technologies in society.

“We had courses for programmers already,” 

Nakamura told me during our Zoom call. “But 
they were applied courses, and these were more 
(about) understanding how the digital world 
works. You know, what everyday life is like on 
social media, or why is it that women don’t feel 
comfortable playing games that men might feel 
comfortable playing?”

To meet this student de-

mand, Nakamura assembled a 
“cheat sheet” of courses from 
a variety of departments, in-
cluding Communication & 
Media Studies, American Cul-
ture, English and the School of 
Information. The courses were 
targeted both to students with technical expe-
rience as well as other students from non-tech-
nical backgrounds. Soon, there were enough 
students taking these courses to warrant going 
to the curriculum committee to suggest the cre-
ation of a five-course minor in Digital Studies.

“So if we can offer a five-course minor, stu-

dents who have already done these things could 
at least get some credit for it; it could be visible 
on their resume,” Nakamura said. “So an English 
student or an Art History student could say to a 
parent who’s nagging them about ‘well what are 
you gonna do with this degree’ and show them, 
‘well, I’m taking a minor in digital studies.’ And 
we made the argument that it would help stu-
dents show expertise and be more employable.”

According to Nakamura, big companies like 

Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft have indeed hired 
students with the minor for their expertise on 
digital culture and issues of representation in 
digital media. It is not hard to see why; in recent 
years the shiny veneer of the tech industry has 
given way to a somewhat more complicated im-
age. A recent article from the Pew Research Cen-
ter summarizing current public opinion studies 
claimed that 64% of Americans believed that 
“social media have a mostly negative effect on the 
way things are going in the country today.” There 
have been numerous influential books published 
on the impact of algorithms on income inequality, 
as well as the pernicious role of digital technology 
in perpetuating racial discrimination. Largely due 
to this shift of public awareness, tech companies 
have come under increasing scrutiny for their im-
pacts on conflicts of class, race and gender, as well 
as their role in spreading misinformation and 
normalizing hate speech online.

While the minor in Digital Studies is de-

signed to look good on a resume, in the midst of 
this recent shift DSI also promises something 
else to its students. Throughout the curriculum, 
there is a focus on fostering a critical approach 
towards new technologies.

What is criticism, though and why is it neces-

sary to critique technology? First, it is essential to 
note the vocabulary of critique that professors in 
the humanities and social sciences employ. Cri-
tique is not the same as criticism, the latter mean-
ing the negative judgment of something. There is 
a relationship between the two words, however: 
Critique, in the sense of systematic examination 
or analysis, can help us arrive at better-informed 
judgments. The corollary of the critical attitude 
is the evasion of dogmatism, which is the unin-
formed acceptance of an idea. The 18th-century 
philosopher Immanuel Kant was instrumental 
in working out the foundations of modern criti-
cism and rejection of dogmatism, having written 
three major critiques in his lifetime. In his short 
essay “What is Enlightenment,” he implores his 
readers, “Sapere Aude! (Dare to know!) ‘Have 
the courage to use your own reason’ — that is the 
motto of enlightenment.”

The critique of technology, however, can be 

particularly frustrating because of the extreme 
positions taken either in support of or against 
it. Technophiles are especially dogmatic in their 
defense of permitting new technological inno-
vations in the name of freedom, no matter the 
social cost. Conversely, technophobic, modern-
day Luddites are no less dogmatic in their de-
nunciation of technology, advocating radical 
reconstruction of the existing means of trans-
portation, communication and distribution of 
technologies in society.

Between these two extremes, there is a mid-

dle ground which neither categorically fetishiz-
es nor denounces technological innovations. 

It seems to me that this is the kind of attitude 
found at DSI.

Marisa Olson, the executive coordinator of 

DSI, said she joined the Institute out of admi-
ration for the kind of critical work the students 
and faculty are pursuing. Olson worked with a 
number of other organizations investigating the 
relationship between technology and culture 
before arriving at the University, though she af-
firmed the unique approach she thinks the In-
stitute brings to the table.

“There’s fun stuff like playing video games 

and the things that Lisa (Nakamura) is talking 
about,” Olson said during our Zoom call. “But a 
lot of it is really specifically thinking about tech-
nology in relation to race, gender, disability class 
and access. That’s really our primary focus.”

Turning to a real-world application, Olson ex-

plained how the awareness of multiple approach-
es to the implementation of technology might 
help students make a positive impact throughout 
their careers. “The world tends to think about 
technology as a straight thing, even in relation 
to disability,” Olson said. “People might say, ‘let’s 
make this great technical object that’s going to 
really help disabled people’ and they don’t really 
know what they’re talking about.” 

Technological solutionism, a term coined by 

the philosopher Evgeny Morozov, describes this 
tendency of well-intentioned technical profes-
sionals to place their full faith in tech, thus ignor-
ing the perspectives of the people they are try-
ing to help. More than due diligence, interacting 
with communities on the ground is an effective 
means of ensuring that a proposed “solution” 
will not create new problems of its own. When 
dealing with humans, as much as with technol-
ogy, appreciating the nuances is key.

As an artist who creates work exploring the 

impact of digital technology on society, Olson 
often encounters an oversimplified, binary ap-
proach to judging the digital world. 

“A lot of my artwork is about technology’s 

impact on the environment,” Olson explained. 
“And I would say, you know, we may have new 
tools now to combat climate change like elec-
tric vehicles. But some of that is because of what 
technology already did to the environment. 
We may now have new ways to protest things, 
but we may be protesting things that were also 
caused by technology, so it’s a kind of a cyclical 
sort of situation.”

At this point, it is clear that, in typical human-

ities fashion, members of our community who 
affiliate themselves with DSI are interested in 
critiquing actually-existing technology. Nothing 
is safe from examination under the microscope 
of the Institute’s various instruments of investi-
gation, synthesis and analysis; not even itself.

***
When the critical lens is suddenly turned 

onto the critical theorists, there begins a mo-
ment of sobering reflection. The mission of the 
Digital Studies Institute is to connect a broad 
coalition of scholars and practitioners to study 
the relationship between technology and cul-
ture, but to what extent is this merely an orga-
nizational myth? DSI, after all, exists within the 
economic and bureaucratic constraints of the 
university. How can we understand its forma-
tion within this institutional context?

The recent creation of DSI fits into a longer 

historical trend of centers, programs and insti-
tutes. Especially among large public research 
universities, such as the University of Michigan, 
the University of California, Berkeley and the 
University of California, Los Angeles, and elite 
private universities such as Harvard University 

and Stanford University, the 1960s and 1970s 
saw a rise in funding for specialized centers, 
programs and institutes associated with the ex-
plosive growth of university enrollment in the 
post-War era.

Somewhat ironically, most of the research on 

centers and institutes as a new organizational 
form has come from the relatively new, inter-
disciplinary field of organizational studies, now 
offered as an undergraduate major at the Uni-
versity. In 1972, the American academic Stanley 
Ikenberry published “Beyond Academic Depart-
ments: The Story of Institutions and Centers,” in 
which he recounts the results of an extensive sur-
vey on the origins, structure, functions and issues 
surrounding institutions and centers. These new 
kinds of academic institutions formed, accord-
ing to Ikenberry’s account, to conduct research 
on specific social problems and thus to carve out 
sub-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary niches for 
their graduate students and faculty.

Central to the story of institutions and cen-

ters is the friction between these organizations 
and traditional academic departments. The 
perception that institutes and centers are “cash 
cows” that drain funding from academic depart-
ments became widespread in their period of 
early growth. Additionally, Ikenberry recounts 
the frustrations of some faculty and administra-
tors who believed the university was too eagerly 
“trying to be all things to all people,” indicating a 
general misalignment of the mission of the uni-
versity and the various aims of its institutes and 
departments.

Similarly, Jerry Stahler and William Tash, 

in their 1994 paper, describe different types of 
institutes in the modern university, contrasting 
“paper institutions” that have no staff, no budget 
and only exist in the minds of their members 
to these new well-funded monolithic research 
institutes. Especially among the more influen-
tial institutes, conflict and institutional gridlock 
can arise when institutes compete with depart-
ments for faculty time, internal funding support, 
research infrastructures like laboratories and 
spaces and prestige.

How does DSI fit within these organiza-

tional frameworks? First, it is important to note 
that DSI receives all of its funding from internal 
sources; however, that does not mean it will not 
apply for grants in the future. Second, the central 
justifications for the creation of DSI are its inter-
disciplinary and flexible nature. It is an institute 
that primarily serves undergraduates, graduate 
students and faculty in their pursuit of research 
pertaining to the digital world — research that 
is almost certainly going to involve some level 
of collaboration across disciplines. Third, DSI 
is still quite small, so it is likely not yet drawing 
money away from other similar programs, nor 
will it necessarily need to in order to grow.

When I thought about what other programs 

might be in competition with DSI, however, the 
University’s Science, Technology and Society 
Program immediately came to mind. Like DSI, 
the STS program offers an undergraduate minor 
and a graduate certificate to students who com-
plete the requisite courses. STS holds events on 
topics of interest in the field and supports its 
graduate students through workshops, reading 
groups and small grants. On the level of meth-
odology and approach, both programs teach 
students a number of critical frameworks and 
methods to examine the interactions between 
technology, science, biology and human society.

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