The New Deal, Great Depression, Stock Market Crash, etc. have always been huge topics in history, I have heard a lot about them before this class. Originally when hearing we were going to go over them again, I wasn’t very enthused about it. However, hearing about these events from a Digital History aspect instead of the usual History aspect was way more intriguing than what I thought it would be. For instance, I found it especially fascinating how things back then are actually “ideas borrowed and reused” from the past. How music was originally hard for everyone to hear through a radiophone so they wore headphones and now there are events such as silent discos where everyone wears headphones and listens to a DJ play music. I also think it was interesting how symbols on computers now were everyday things we used to use in the past. Instead of changing them we just implemented them onto technology ie. The save icon, the search icon, and folders. Another thing I connected to was how the Turning Test was a human and a computer both “trying” to be humans and the Evaluator had to determine which was the real human. In today’s world we have to compete a series of tests to tell the computer that we aren’t a computer. I think that is a crazy example to show how technology has evolved and taken over in our lives. This test was also the start of AI’s which have advanced so much already. Although they have yet to fully be able to replace humans we have things like Google Home, Alexa, and such where they can speak clearly and have responses like normal humans; but that’s just the baseline! There are still many different types of technology that can do more things like humans all because of Alan Turning cracking the Enigma Code and then creating things such as the Turning Test.
I was assigned to analyze Virtual Tourisms. In this the writer, Megan Kendrick, describes a virtual tour through Los Angles in the 1880’s-1890’s. She is trying to reconstruct Los Angeles during this time frame to give the viewer a real-life experience of what someone would be experiencing this time. Her main focus is the landmark hotels. How this project is displayed uses the mapping concept according to Miriam Posner’s Framework. Although in the video Posner states that the 3D imaging would take place on an artifact, I feel for this project would be better fully comprehended as multiple 3D images put together seamlessly for the viewer to experience these hotels like they are walking though the buildings. In the writing of how Kendrick explains the project it would be better than a map, I feel the 3D concept would be a full on virtual step into the past. However; from viewing the project there are pinpoints on the map as to where the popular hotels are. In each pinpoint you can view documents of that explains the history of that landmark hotel.
Sources:
Dauterive, Jessica. What is Digital Humanities? Retrieved from https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/1.
Kendrick, Megan. Virtual Tourisms. Retrieved from http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/index.php?project=94&thread=AuthorsStatement#
Posner, Miriam. “How did they make that?” UCLA Digital Humanities.Retrieved from http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/fall-2019/dh
You said that you thought the site would be better if it included some sort of 3D digital tour of the hotels, did the site creators give any reason for setting it up the way they did? Maybe they had some sort of reason behind making it the way that they did.