Failing machines: Applied rhetorics for scalability, continuity, and sustainability of digital projects in the humanities

Abstract

Current approaches to questions regarding the lifespan of digital projects are overly materialistic and insufficiently describe important factors of survivability, especially for those in the humanities. Rather than employing such a naïve approach, the author illustrates the primarily discursive issues of ambiguity, representation, and flexibility by examining key time periods in the lifespans of six digital humanities projects: periods of growth, of decline, and of stagnancy. The author develops a framework for better considering issues of scalability, continuity and sustainability in digital projects by applying the concepts of responsible rhetoric and emergent agency (Cooper, 2011), arguing that such rhetorically informed understandings are vital for maintaining digital projects in the humanities.