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

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.