Digital Humanity

This edition of ACJ challenges us to contemplate Michael Hiem’s questions, “Will we in our lifetimes see the Internet blossom with a new humanism? Be a giant incubator for another Renaissance? Or, is humanity simply feeding machines that are ultimately serving themselves rather than our humanity?”

Hopefully, this edition will help guide the discussion as we attempt to define “Digital Humanity.” In Richard Emanuels’ work, Communication: Humanities Core Discipline the argument is made that today’s college students do not receive the kind of communication education prescribed by business and industry leaders necessary to be successful. He also advocates for large organizations to “step up” in efforts to strengthen the curricula and provide for a stronger future. In Dimitrova and Bugeja’s article, Raising the Dead: Recovery of Decayed On-line Citations, we explore ways of regaining access to lost materials as a method for preserving a record for future exploration and scholarship. The three remaining articles, Cooper’s A Concise History of the Fauxtography Blogstorm in the 2006 Lebanon War, Maresh and William’s Responding to Oil Industry Crisis while Almiron and Reig’s article The Communications Research in Spain: the Political Economy Epistemological Approach provides approaches to creating and shaping meaning in a digital humanity.  The three books reviewed for this edition help to broaden the discussion by providing methods of defining and exploring the world around us. 

 I would like to close with a statement by Richard Thieme, CMC Magazine, “as digital humanity hungers for wholeness and meaning, redemption, deliverance and healing, in short, for spiritual transformation, digital constructs will evolve to mediate those possibilities in new ways, including and transcending all that has gone before.” Please enjoy the edition.                                                                                                                                                      ~Debbi Hatton~