121239 10.5604/23920092.113479010.5604/01.3001.0014.4456 International Journal of Pedagogy Innovation and New Technologies journal homepage: http://www.ijpint.com ISSN: 2392-0092, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2020 Digital Knowledge Integration (DKI): When Transhumanism (H+) Meets Digital Humanities (DH) Waliya, Yohanna Joseph CONTACT: Waliya, Yohanna Joseph, Department of Modern Languages and Translation Studies, University of Calabar, Calabar-Nigeria, E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Keywords: Abstract: Digital Knowledge To a large extent, the world has come to embrace digitalization which currently permeates all Integration (DKI), human endeavors and life. However, the process of digitalizing human beings themselves, making Transhumanism (H+), them Transhuman and allowing the integration of the digital into every aspect of our daily life Digital Humanities (DH), has made life both paradoxically appreciative and problematic as it increases the global nature Big Data, Digitalization, of humanity and its endeavors, posing threats as well as benefits. Merging Transhumanism (H+) Society, Internet, Artificial with the Digital Humanities (DH) may minimize those threats but the dual evolving human- Intelligence (AI) technological thoughts have been hoofing at a distance to each other for decades whereas innately they share the same perceptions on the future of the digitalization and human beings. This paper is channeled towards breaking the barriers between the two through the help of the critical com- parative lens from the conceptual theoretical framework called Digital Knowledge Integration (DKI) using hypothetic-deductive method of reading two e-literatures: Digital_Humanities by Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner & Jef- frey Schnapp published in 2012 and The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science. Technology, and Philosophy of Human Future edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More in 2013 including other literatures as we need them. This research is also aimed at integrating knowledge into singular model and raising scholarly debates on the new development. 1. Introduction, Motivations and Goals In this digital era, Transhumanism and the Digital Humanities are the most pronounced aspect of the human- ities. Even though, the Transhumanism movement is older than the Digital humanities movement, both of them emanated from the twentieth century human-computational studies (i.e. the study of the interaction between human being and the computers). They are now at the verge of entering into their golden age. Digital knowledge Integration needs clarity to foster new perspectives on the merging of duo human-technological conceptions for its key roles—the innovation and social change which we are always yearning for (Ho, W.W.S., 2013). Uniting Transhumanism with Digital Humanities will answer the whole new socio-cultural and sci- 4.0) BY-NC 4.0 International (CC Attribution-NonCommercial Commons Creative entific research questions on all studies in the e-academia that may later be summed up into only single fac- ulty with diverse complex departments moving towards establishing the digital citizenship as Bearden (2016) called it for we ourselves have become digital native, Prensky (2001). Critical lens may begin to inquire into the roles of the Transhumanism (>H or H+) and the Digital Humanities (DH) as digital movements as well as the fields of studies which will influence the future of human beings as a whole. One may ask, what are their linking factors and divergences? As to what extent can they influence the human world using Big Data and other technologies? To answer these enigmatic questions, we have chosen two e-literatures, one for each under a is licensed work This of the H+ and the DH respectively to narrow our findings but not to stop within their circumferences alone. The cyber-literatures are thus:Digital_Humanities written by a team of contributors; Anne Burdick, Johanna DOI: 10.5604/01.3001.0014.4456 Vol. 7, No. 1, 2020, pp. 39-49 40 Waliya, Yohanna Joseph • Digital Knowledge Integration (DKI): When Transhumanism (H+) Meets Digital Humanities (DH) Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner and Jeffrey Schnapp from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published in 2012, in order to answer the role of humanities and creativities of human beings in the digital era. It comprises 153 pages (pp. xi, 142) whereas The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science. Technology, and Philosophy of Human Future is an e-book of 509 pages edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More and published in 2013 in Oxford by the Wiley Blackwell publisher. Its major purpose is tracing the history of the Transhumanism philosophical development from the antiquities to present day and its influence on the future of the human beings. Having skimmed through many other transhuman- ist and digital humanist e-literatures. Curiosity must set in one’s heart to canvas for integrating all digital knowledge into a singular notion because of the enormous promising benefits they will offer to humanity but not without menaces. Transhumanism and Digital Humanities are grounded on the computational turn in regard to humanities and all that involves human findings. The preliminary aspect of this paper covers the characterization of the terms, literature review and proposed theoretical framework called Digital Knowledge Integration (DKI). Whilst our discussion deals with the comparative studies on Transhumanism (>H or H+) and the Digital Humanities (DH), the objective is to spurt out towards synthetizing the two thoughts as well as concluding with an open argument on the subject. 2. Characterisation of the Key terms Digital Knowledge Integration Knowledge Integration as it implies is not new for management, environmental, mathematics, computer, engineering and robotic scientists. In this study, it is not dealing with how to integrate technology into an environment in order to get maximum performance but bringing two digital knowledge sources together to form new knowledge in the digital planet which is called Digital Knowledge Integration. Nevertheless, Ho, W.W.S in the rich paper titled Tools and Methods: .Guidelines for knowledge integration: navigating a myriad of perspectives (2013) cited an international organization based in Netherlands called Hivos, defined Knowledge Integration (KI) as “a knowledge development methodology that integrates various forms of (new) knowledge – academic, practitioner, educational and cultural expressions of knowledge – from which new insights can be created and strategies formulated that contribute to the development of new policies and practices for the development sector (Hivos 2012, p.190).” Hivos is talking about the general knowledge integration but we are focusing on harmonizing the digital knowledge i.e. integrating knowledge into another knowledge. Transhumanism Transhumanism, at its development was called Eupraxsophy (More & Vita-More, 2013, p. 21). It is an interna- tional, political, intellectual, socio-cultural, philosophical, and scientific movement that establishes the pos- sibility and desirability of improving or enhancing the human race by technology to eliminate the ravages of aging and add superhuman abilities to the human body to function beyond biological abilities (idem; Bostrom, 2011; Marrs, 2013; Transhumanism, 2017; Ferrando, 2013; Coenen, 2014; Jousset-Couturier, 2016; Various, 2003; Baumann, 2010; Sirius & Cornell, 2015; Nedervelde, 2015). Transhumanists affirm in theTranshuman - ism Declaration 2.0 that “positive transhumanist ideas and ideals need to be infused into public life at all levels, from popular culture and art to politics and religion (Bruere, 2014).” An expert cited the Troy Anderson’s definition of Transhumanism by Istvans who defines it as literally meaning beyond human. Transhumanists Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) BY-NC 4.0 International (CC Attribution-NonCommercial Commons Creative consist of life extensionists, techno-optimists, Singularitarians, biohackers, roboticists, AI (Artificial Intelli- gence) proponents, and futurists who embrace radical science and technology to improve the human condi- tion. The most important aim for many transhumanists is to overcome human mortality, a goal some believe is achievable by 2045’ (Olago, 2016) . DH tools enhance human’s ability to analyze Big Data. Digital Humanities This work is licensed under a is licensed work This Before the Second World War in the 1940s to earliest 21st century, the Digital Humanities had many meta- phoric and substantive nomenclatures such as Humanities Computing, Humanist Informatics, Literary and Linguistic Computing and Digital Resources in the Humanities, Gates of Hell, eHumanities etc. (Nyhan, DOI: 10.5604/01.3001.0014.4456 Vol. 7, No. 1, 2020, pp. 39-49 Waliya, Yohanna Joseph • Digital Knowledge Integration (DKI): When Transhumanism (H+) Meets Digital Humanities (DH) 41 Terras, & Edward, 2013; Rockwell, 2013; Vanhoutte, 2013; Daniel, Claire, & Philippe, 2014; Dalbello, 2011). Ross sees DH as the field of studies that is “embracing all those scholarly activities in the humanities that involve writing about digital media and technology and being engaged in processes of digital media produc- tion, practice, and analysis (2009, p. 168).” Digital Humanities is viewed as “new modes of scholarship and institutional units for collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computationally