• Contact
  • Helpdesk
DARIAHDARIAHDARIAHDARIAH
  • About
    • DARIAH in a Nutshell
    • Mission & Vision
    • Organisation and Governance
    • Join DARIAH
    • History of DARIAH
    • Documents
    • Publications
  • Network
    • Members and Partners
    • Regional Hubs
    • People
  • Activities
    • Working Groups
    • Training and Education
    • Open Science
      • DARIAH Open
      • OpenMethods
      • Heritage Data Reuse Charter
    • Projects
    • DARIAH Theme
  • Tools & Services
    • Tools and Services
    • Contributions
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events Calendar
    • Annual Events
    • Newsletters

Future skills and the Pandemic: The Post-COVID Era

Home News
NextPrevious

Future skills and the Pandemic: The Post-COVID Era

By Eliza Papaki | News | December 9, 2020

By Professor Jennifer Edmond, President of the Board of Directors for DARIAH-EU and Co-Director of the Trinity Centre for Digital Humanities, Trinity College Dublin

This post is republished from the COVID-19 Crisis Blog, an initiative of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute featuring weekly posts on the new societal challenges emerging as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

…there are a lot of problems we will face that science and technology can’t fix.

My research sits at the intersection of culture and technology, and this means that I may have a slightly different perspective on how we might think through the question of what skills and competencies we are going to need in the post-COVID era. For example: when we consider what we’re going to need and what growth areas there will be after COVID-19, we might first think of bio-engineering. The vaccine is the thing we are all looking forward to, and the thing that will let us go back out into our communities without fear. We also might be thinking about ICT because of the fact that platforms such as Zoom, Google and Facebook have become so important to us in this time.

With my humanities hat on, however, I am very aware of the fact that there are a lot of problems we will face that science and technology can’t fix. What if a vaccine is developed and people won’t take it? That’s a cultural problem, one of trust and information flows. Similarly, I see how our growing use of on-line communications tools is becoming something we are dependent on, like electricity or roads.  But unlike these public infrastructures, our on-line technology platforms are run by private companies without any public oversight.  Indeed, anyone who has experienced the creeping incursions of platform lock-in (where one piece of software starts to nudge you in the direction of the company’s other products) or had their productivity derailed by an unexpected software update recognises that this is a different sort of user relationship.  That’s also a cultural and communications problem.

In this context, when I think about the competencies that have really come to the fore in the COVID era, the things that come most prominently to mind for me are from the humanities, rather than STEM, toolkit, such as:

Critical and contextual thinking: Critical thinking allows us to question whether the news we hear is telling us what we really need to know, rather than what they think we want to hear, or what will make our behaviour easier to control.   Similarly, contextual thinking allows us to bring in historical lessons to solve the problems of our modern times. These skills allow us to have both an active filter for information and a maximally informed perspective: after all, in an unprecedented health crisis, it was the lessons of the 1918 flu pandemic and the polio vaccine rollout that became our touchstones for decision-making.

Empathy: I think about empathy and the way in which connecting with people has become a key challenge.  This is true not just in our established networks but within the local groups we are now reminded of our interdependence with.  This may include not just people who are like us or people who are presented to us algorithmically because we display similar online behaviours, but people who are just living around the corner from us and who may need our help (and vice versa), our food producers, healthcare workers, and even people in other countries struggling against the same challenges. COVID has made our local and global  community ties starkly clear, but we cannot do anything with much of this perspective until and unless we can see these ‘others’ as like ourselves.

This skill set will also give us the ability to make ethical decisions about technology.

Resilience: The interesting thing about resilience is that avoiding hardship does not allow us to develop this skill for when we really need it. The more we work for our knowledge, and the more we have to come through certain kinds of experiences, the more resilience we will have. Oftentimes, the paradigm within technology development is to make things easy for the user, but there are some things that should actually be left a challenge, because otherwise we lose out on the opportunity to understand the complexity of a situation, to work through a problem and to face challenges that we can learn to resolve.  These kinds of frustrations can help us build resilience in relatively ‘safe’ contexts, so that when we do face greater challenges, we will be prepared.

Creativity: Creativity has been something that has gotten many of us through this pandemic, allowing us to connect in creative ways with our family or community, to invest time during lockdown in creating or building something that we could pass on, or maybe to experience the transcendent artistry of a performer on a stage in an empty theatre or perhaps even their own living room.  This has been very important for many people. I think as we move towards technology platforms driven by artificial intelligence (AI), we need to make sure that we hold on to these kinds things not just for the goods they produce, but for their process benefits, for the connections and emotional strength they facilitate.  Just because an AI can write music doesn’t mean that we humans can stop doing so.

So what I see isn’t a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skill set, though it is a STEM-related one.  Rather than calling it a scientific or computer science skill set, then let’s call it a computational and scientific thinking skill set. It’s not the skill set that will let you build the COVID-19 app, but it will let you understand the app enough to make an educated and informed decision as to whether or not you want to put it on to your own device; whether it has been developed responsibly or whether it’s going to be a threat to your own personal information. This skill set will also give us the ability to make ethical decisions about technology. There are strong impulses within technology companies to build things that people will buy or indeed what the engineers feel they can build – where the technical cutting edge is. This is very exciting but we also need these companies to build what communities need more than just what people will buy. We need technology to drive the economy, of course, but without letting economic imperatives overtake human needs.

Enabling every citizen to develop this kind of skill set would be a big challenge, but an important one to face.  The post-COVID world will not be without new difficulties to present us with, not just due to the economic and social rebuilding processes we know we must expect, but also as a result of the other social and environmental pressures that continue to build in the background.  

If we can take steps to encourage resilience, critical thinking, empathy and creativity now, they will serve us very well in the future.


Visit the COVID-19 Crisis Blog of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute for more posts.

No tags.

Related Post

  • Visual Media and Interactivity: DARIAH Working Group Started a Platform to Collect and Discuss Tools

    By dariah

    The DARIAH working group on Visual Media and Interactivity builds a contact point for DARIAH members that are interested in visual media and interactivity. The working group intents to stimulate the exchange of best practicesRead more

  • DARIAH-EU Coordination Office Completed

    By dariah

    With the appointment of Mike Mertens as chief executive officer (CEO) the DARIAH Coordination Office (DCO) is now complete. DARIAH-EU’s new DCO With the appointment  of Mike Mertens as chief executive officer (CEO) the DARIAHRead more

  • DARIAH Theme 2015: DARIAH-BE “Open History – Sustainable Digital Publishing of Archival Catalogues of Twentieth-Century History Archives

    By dariah

    by Veerle Van den Daelen (DARIAH-BE) As contemporary historians start to investigate the possibilities and opportunities that digital humanities can offer, a major obstacle for them to do so is that the collection-holding institutions faceRead more

  • DCDC15: DARIAH-EU’s CEO Mike Mertens speaks on „Heritage Collections and the Sustainability of the Digital Humanities“

    By dariah

    DARIAH-EU’s CEO Mike Mertens is part of a pannel on „Digital Humanities“ at RLUK’s DCDC Conference. DARIAH-EU’s CEO Mike Mertens is part of panel 9 „Digital Humanities“ at Research Libraries UK’s (RLUK) DCDC 15 Conference.Read more

  • European Commission Validated an Amendment to the DARIAH-ERIC Statutes

    By dariah

    The European Commission validated an amendment to Annex II, paragraph 2 of the DARIAH-ERIC Statutes. The European Commission validated an amendment to Annex II, paragraph 2 of the DARIAH-ERIC Statutes. The changes concern contributions asRead more

  • „The Emergence of the Digital Humanities in Ireland“

    By dariah

    James O’Sullivan, Órla Murphy and Shawn Day published a paper on DH in Ireland, in which they also write about the role of DARIAH. James O’Sullivan, Órla Murphy and Shawn Day published a paper onRead more

  • DARIAH-RS Launch: The Talks are Online

    By dariah

    Last month DARIAH-RS was launched in Belgrade. The talks can be watched online. Last month DARIAH-RS was launched in Belgrade. The talks can be watched online. Most of them are in Serbian. But central messagesRead more

  • Important DARIAH and Humanities at Scale (HaS) Meetings This Week

    By dariah

    This Week sees three important DARIAH-ERIC meetings and a first Humanities at Scale (HaS) gathering. All four meetings will take place in Berlin. This Week sees three important DARIAH-ERIC meetings and a first Humanities atRead more

NextPrevious

RECENT POSTS

  • #TrainingTuesday: What is a Formal Ontology?

    This week’s #TrainingTuesday highlights a resource by the PARTHENOS project on Ontologies. The video

    3 March, 2021
  • DARIAH Annual Event 2021: Interfaces

    Online Event | September 7-9, 2021 Save the date for the DARIAH Annual

    26 February, 2021
  • Two DARIAH resources among the nominations for the DH Awards 2020

    Voting is now open for the DH Awards 2020. Among the nominations,

    25 February, 2021
  • #TrainingTuesday: My Digital Humanities: Visualising Text

    This week’s #TrainingTuesday highlights a resource by the #dariahTeach project on Visualising Text. The

    23 February, 2021
  • #TrainingTuesday: Make It Happen – Carrying Out Research and Analysing Data

    This week’s #TrainingTuesday highlights a webinar on “Make It Happen – Carrying Out Research

    16 February, 2021

TWITTER UPDATES

  • Are you into digitality & music editions? Then register to the online #ACDHCHLecture on “Digitality and Music Editi… https://t.co/lNFgP1JZwa14 hours ago
  • If you are into #interdisciplinary research, check the new @shapeID_eu results: reports and recommendations from pa… https://t.co/IIlbNLCtDI16 hours ago
  • RT @IcdiData: Parte #opensciencecafé una serie di webinar sui temi #OpenScience organizzata da ICDI, @CNRsocial_ e @ReteGARR primo appunt…18 hours ago

Tags

ADHO DARIAH Annual Event DARIAH Annual Event 2017 DARIAH Theme DESIR DH H2020 project SSH Open Marketplace Training
Logo of DARIAH
Follow us on:  twitter   youtube   flickr

Contact DARIAH

Email DARIAHinfo@dariah.eu

Privacy and Legal

  • Legal Notice
  • Privacy Notice

Quick Menu

  • DARIAH in a Nutshell
  • Members and Cooperating Partners
  • Projects
  • Events Calendar
  • Helpdesk

Subscribe to our mailing list and newsletter

* = required field
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence
  • About
    • DARIAH in a Nutshell
    • Mission & Vision
    • Organisation and Governance
    • Join DARIAH
    • History of DARIAH
    • Documents
    • Publications
  • Network
    • Members and Partners
    • Regional Hubs
    • People
  • Activities
    • Working Groups
    • Training and Education
    • Open Science
      • DARIAH Open
      • OpenMethods
      • Heritage Data Reuse Charter
    • Projects
    • DARIAH Theme
  • Tools & Services
    • Tools and Services
    • Contributions
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events Calendar
    • Annual Events
    • Newsletters
DARIAH
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Find out more.