When we consider the future of the humanities, to what extent do we imagine it to resemble the present? I suppose that’s a question that can be posed on an individual level. As a humanities professor (if you are one), in five years, do you imagine yourself doing the same work in the same way as you do now? 10 years? How different will the courses you teach then be from what you do now?

I would guess that for most humanities faculty who became assistant professors in the 20th century, the answers to these questions have always been yes, mostly yes, and very little. And those answers have been correct. While theories/methods come and go, the objects of study have remained largely the same and the output of scholars has remained largely the same (e.g., journal articles, monographs, etc.). Similarly the course titles and teaching methods have not changed. Some of the content has changed to represent more diverse people in various ways, but in other ways the content is the same: a diverse range of films, but still films, for example.

Digital rhetoric doesn’t exactly work that way, as those in my field know well, but we’re an outlier, and a small one. Except for a few outliers, I’d say at least 80% of humanities faculty had that experience of being able to remain in a field that continued to do largely the same things for decades, with some variation for methods. And I see that in myself as well. Though technological churn has taken me from HTML 1.0 to LLM and AGI over 30 years, in many respects things haven’t changed. The topics have shifted but journal articles are the same length, even if they are published online. The classrooms look exactly the same.

Except now everyone has a device in their hands that connects them to an AI that connects them to the greatest collection of information and knowledge ever amassed by humans.

Right. So it’s exactly the same, except for the giant AI in the room. The same thing with research. It’s exactly the same, except for the giant AI in the room.

Suddenly it doesn’t seem so likely that the pat answers about the future that we’ve always given will play out. So, what if, in a decade, these longstanding practices represented 20% of what the humanities did rather than 80%?

Then you’d have a rose of a different scent.