Originally, I only signed onto this course because I had little interest in programming classes, and this course seemed the least likely to make me design and program my own website. However, the more I read of the syllabus and course description, the more interested in the material I became. I have always been interested in history, usually the older the better. In high school, I took AP US History, but unfortunately, the class barely touched on the topic of the 1930’s and the New Deal. As such, I have very little in-depth knowledge of this time frame, but I am very curious to learn more. From what I have learned so far, the 1930’s were a time of major changes in technological advancements, and such advancements only continued as the years went by. I found it very interesting that companies such as IBM existed and utilized the punch card as early as the 1930’s.
I was assigned the digital project “Robots Reading Vogue”. This project consists of several collections of different types of data that has been compiled from every single Vogue magazine from the first until the most recent. Some of these data collections consist of the picture averages of all Vogue covers per decade, the types and frequency of words that appear in the magazines over time, the colors and hue types that were used in the magazines throughout the decades, and data related to the types of advertisements that have been published in each magazine over time.
This type of information can be highly valuable to anyone researching trends and patterns in a major magazine over time, especially to students in the digital humanities. There is even a collection of data in this project related to the number of students who have used the information in this project in the past. Overall, the project itself is very easy and intuitive to use, and if one has the interest and time to devote to analyzing the data themselves, the patterns and trends of Vogue magazine throughout the decades are very interesting. I would be very curious to learn if there are more digital projects provide similar information for other major magazines
Dauterive, Jessica. “What Is Digital Humanities?” Slides, https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/6.
King, Lindsay, and Peter Leonard. Robots Reading Vogue, http://dh.library.yale.edu/projects/vogue/.
Posner, Miriam. “How Did They Make That?” Miriam Posners Blog, 1 Feb. 2014, https://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that/.
