From what we’ve covered so far about the New Deal and the Great Depression in class, it seems to me that the era was really a culmination of technologies. I like the similarities between the silent raves we have today and the silent radio dances people would have back then. It shows how cyclical history can be and how ideas are often re-purposed for new generations. In a similar manner, we had computers back then that gathered information through punch cards. Now, we have workable interfaces and a screen which hides all the background information. I am really interested to learn about the different forms of entertainment employed during this time to increase morale and how people reacted to such productions. What songs people liked, favorite singers, movies and actors and actresses. Just like with the silent raves, I would like to see in a juxtaposition of the modern era to then just what has been re-purposed or modified and developed from the 30’s that we use today as entertainment. As for Digital Humanities, I also find it to be a very interesting field of study. I personally like how Digital Humanities makes access to previous cultures much more digestible. Like with the Negro’s Green Book, it was interesting to see what places were considered safe for black people to visit at the time. We have also brought using the Library of Congress’s information in our work, so I am greatly interested to see how that will turn out.
The project I was assigned to parse and study was The Berkeley Revolution. This site is effectively and exhibit that shows off primary sources which influenced the articles created and is termed as a digital archive, boasting a collection of clippings of articles from the seventies based in Berkeley, California. I think the benefit of using this sort of setup allows for information to be easily digested by someone who comes to the site and they have access to sources which each individual writer used to help the stories they wanted to share about how important this city was in the seventies. Their sources include many newspaper clippings, letters and various photos of events and accounts from that time period of the city. The diversity of the sources really helps paint a big picture. In the About Page of the site, the creators want to show a communication between the sources, which I feel further proves my point of using the sources to paint a big picture of how ideals from the sixties were brought to the forefront in the seventies. Similar to how Posner described in her video with the Negro’s Green Book, data can be digitized. In that project, the creators likely geo-coded the points to show their information. What the UC-Berkeley students worked on was digitizing the information they uncovered from what they describe as “official and unofficial” sources, which lead me to believe they covered a variety of databases and maybe were able to get in contact with families and information distributing companies in order to complete their research. Digitization leads me into my next point: Presentation. The students created a digital archive, making this information web accessible. By means of digitization and using this presentation option, the students were able to make this information accessible to a wide audience. This is great because the topic they are focusing on is seldom heard of or discussed, even for me. What the students did that I really liked is making articles and putting their sources below which shows credibility to the source and makes for an easily digestible interface. They even had graphic design contributions and used www.flaticon.com to generate icons through Google.
Sources
“About The Berkeley Revolution.” The Berkeley Revolution, revolution.berkeley.edu/about/.
Miriam. “How Did They Make That?” Miriam Posners Blog, 1 Feb. 2014, miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that/.
