"Like pyramid-building itself, the work of the humanities is to create the vessels that store our culture. In this sense, the digitization of archives and collections holds the promise of a grand conclusion: nothing less than the unification of the human cultural record online, representing, in theory, an unprecedented democratization of access to human knowledge. Equally profound is the way that technology could change the way knowledge is created in the humanities. These fields, encompassing the study of languages, literature, history, jurisprudence, philosophy, archaeology, religion, ethics, the arts, and arguably the social sciences, are entering an experimental period of inventiveness and imagination that involves the creation of new kinds of vessels—be they databases, books, exhibits, or works of art—to gather, store, interpret, and transmit culture. Pioneering scholars are engaged in knowledge design and new modes of research and expression, as well as fresh reflection and innovation in more traditional modes of scholarly communication: for example, works in print that are in dialogue with online resources." - Amira

"The ability to analyze a vast body of texts also implies a dramatic expansion of the field of questions humanities scholars can ask. (...) “Most literary historians work on a small corpus of texts where their expertise is manifest through the finesse with which they can demonstrate certain features of that corpus. Those noble skill sets are not about to disappear with a wave of the digital magic wand. On the other hand,” he explains, “there are really exciting research questions on the scale of, ‘How does the socioeconomic history of publishing as an industry relate to the production of certain literary genres?’ And when you start to operate on that scale, of course your data set has suddenly expanded: no human being can possibly read the one million books on the shelf that might document that history.” The use of computational and statistical methods becomes mandatory." - Amira

"“Where does that put us?” he asks. “Well, it puts us at a place where the boundary line between what we have traditionally called the humanities and what we have traditionally called the social sciences becomes awfully porous. For me that’s an expansion and enhancement of the humanities of the most creative and best sort.” (...) “I think the quality of scholarship that can be produced, working with vastly expanded cultural corpora, and speaking in contemporary language to expanded audiences, represents one of the great promises of our era. So for me, this is a uniquely exciting moment for the humanities, comparable to the Copernican revolution or the discovery of the New World.” - Amira