One of the least helpful constructs of our “digital humanities” moment has been a supposed active opposition, drawn out over the course of years in publications, presentations, and social media conversation, between two inane-sounding concepts: “hack” and “yack.” The heralding of DH as the academy’s “next big thing” has been (depending on whom you ask) over-due or overblown, unexpected or contrived, refreshing or retrograde—but one thing is clear: everyone has a rhetorical use for it. The uses of “hack vs. yack,” on the other hand, rapidly became so one-sided that I find it odd the phrase retains any currency for critique.
