I am left with many thoughts after Tony Guidone’s presentation in class, mainly reminding me of one of our tasks for the class, to see history “in it’s context.” His example when giving tips about keyword searches, for example, stressed the importance of considering history this way. He showed us how crucial it can be to consider even the language of the time period we are researching in order to get accurate results. He did this by showing us that when he searched “China,” he was met with few results, but was very successful in finding relevant hits when searching “East Indies” instead. This reminded me as well of Ian Milligan’s point in explaining the illusion we are faced with when using keyword searches; we are under the impression that we are conduction an all-inclusive, all-encompassing, omnipotent search when in reality we are missing every resource that hasn’t been digitized, and more importantly we are inadvertently missing large portions of every resource that hasn’t been digitized to 100% accuracy. This made me aware of how my keyword searching, both academically and recreationally, is affected by that very illusion.
As Milligan pointed out, “false positives,” or hits that aren’t actually relevant but carry the searched keyword, are easily dismissed, but “false positives,” or resources that are relevant but for one of many possible reasons was not retrieved by the keyword search, could have been exactly what we were looking for and may have made a significant difference on our results and conclusions. It is obvious how this dilemma could have disastrous effects in academia, but I can see how it affects even my recreational use of digital engagement. For example, when I search on Instagram the first name of someone I recently met, I could be met with countless results of people with similar names and all combinations of various last names. This bounty of results is almost deceptive though- it’s relatively easy for me to select any result seemingly close and examine further, and it’s quite simple to just dismiss this result and move onto the next if it isn’t who I’m looking for. However, if they are known on Instagram by a nickname I’m not aware of, or if their Instagram username doesn’t include their name at all, my search may harvest an optimistic number of results, but in actuality could not be retrieving that one single person I went through the process to search for. In this instance, keyword searching will have failed me entirely if I haven’t considered various alternative keywords to search.
Tony Guidone showed us two examples in which digital media projects created the possibility for social change. Digital projects like Mason’s Legacies and the Enslaved Children of George Mason provide the necessary historical context behind primary resources that allow us to compare and contrast views that are controversial and problematic now, but at the time were widely accepted views. This can certainly alter our perspective on historical figures like George Mason, who is known for many accomplishments, but has and is himself a controversial past. Another example of a kind of digital project I’ve witnessed impact social change through providing historical context is a simple but meaningful one: a Twitter thread on the “Untold Stories of 9/11” from the perspectives of peoples of Middle Eastern descent living in the US who faced discrimination and mistreatment as a result of the generalized fear many Americans faced after September 11th. Projects like these enable us to reflect on history and see it from the perspective of individuals whose stories were overlooked at the time. They create social change by encouraging us to change our perspective now and put action into that cliché saying, “don’t let history repeat itself.”
On that note, digital media has the potential to provide significant detail and context, such as videos and pictures from September 11th that visually and audially portray the emotion of the historical event. In comparison, Tony Guidone showed us the sad reality of digitizing older resources, through the use of German coins. Digital renderings of the coins would not portray the physical observation necessary to realize the different weight of the coins due to the changes in metal uses during the war. This leaves us without crucial historical context in knowing how the German people must have felt using recently minted coins at the time and noticing the change in weight. This dilemma forces us to rely on the publisher of the source to provide minute, explicit details about the original source. Otherwise, we are literally losing parts of history.
Milligan, I. (2013). Illusionary Order: Online Databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian History, 1997–2010. The Canadian Historical Review 94(4), 540-569. University of Toronto Press. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from Project MUSE database.
Mason’s Legacies. Accessed September 9, 2019, from http://masonslegacies.org/
Enslaved Children of George Mason. Accessed September 9, 2019, from https://ecgm.omeka.net/
