I am not a maker. In a value system that is about creating artifacts, specifically ones you can sell, I am a less valuable human.
Debbie Chachra, “Beyond Making,” in Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities, ed. Jentry Sayers, Debates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
This passage caught my attention because it presents a hierarchy in human value based on if someone is a “maker”. While society generally holds a moral obligation to view every human as equal, Chachra claims that “makers” are not only financially prioritized over others, but also historically prioritized when their artifacts can be preserved. In America’s market economy, I have recognized that our society holds a hierarchy of value based on riches or profitability, which is often tied to making a product. Jobs that depend on social connection (teachers, waiters, cashiers) are often less valued for their social labor compared to a “maker” (software development, engineer) who is paid for physical or digital creations. However, “maker” is a broad term, and some jobs like factory workers are not prioritized above CEOs who determine what is made. This argues that we do not value simply making things, but also how material goods can be controlled and distributed. Similarly, history will not remember individual amazon factory workers as much as Jeff Bezos, and while he does not physically make his goods, digitization has helped him “make” an online shopping monopoly.
In my own life, I have recognized that I often feel an obligation to prioritize material goods and “making” over other aspects of life. Specifically, growing up with a single, low-income mother who didn’t receive much education pushed me to focus on ways to “make something of myself” in college. I have felt an obligation to focus more on STEM fields for careers like software development or engineering, rather than humanities fields which I perceive as harder careers to make money in due to their theoretical or social focuses.
This term I am most eager to learn about the blending of the humanities and the digital world. I have always felt a passion for humanistic areas of thinking, but I also feel obligated to recognize the growing digitization of society. Merging digitalization and the humanities through 3d modeling, data collections, and web development is a way for me to preserve the sparks I feel for the humanities in a growing digital world. I am also excited to learn how to create easier and more efficient ways of navigating the humanities using computers.
