What happens when knowledge moves from books and archives into digital systems? How do technologies shape the way we create, organize, and interpret information? And what can the humanities teach us about the increasingly technological world we inhabit?

Johanna Drucker is the Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and one of the leading scholars in the fields of digital humanities, media studies, and information design. Her work explores the relationship between technology, knowledge, visual representation, and human interpretation. Through decades of research, she has challenged assumptions about data, objectivity, and the ways information is presented in both digital and physical environments.

Her scholarship bridges the humanities and technology, offering new ways to think about how people create meaning in an increasingly data-driven world.

In this episode, we explore Johanna’s argument that information is never neutral. The way knowledge is organized, visualized, and presented always reflects underlying assumptions about what matters and how understanding is produced. We discuss the rise of digital technologies and how they have transformed scholarship, communication, and public access to information.

Our conversation also examines the distinction between data and interpretation. Johanna challenges the belief that technological systems simply reveal reality, arguing instead that all representations involve human choices and values. This perspective has profound implications for education, particularly as schools increasingly rely on digital tools and data analytics to guide decision-making.

This episode invites listeners to rethink the relationship between technology and knowledge. It asks how we can preserve critical thinking, interpretation, and human judgment in an age increasingly defined by information systems, and why the humanities remain essential for understanding the world we are building.