The Digital Past Course Blog

Given the nature of research in the present day an age, and the nature of my undergraduate study in both Anthropology and History, I am by no means unfamiliar with digital sources, databases, and forms of digitized history. However, my deeper knowledge of digital history is pretty limited outside of finding and accessing different resources, and I’m excited to learn more in-depth about the creation and functionality of these digital sources, and again about historical project born digitally. I also am realizing that I’m not nearly as informed on the history of what is often considered “technology”, and I think it would be useful to learn more about this as well.

“Dash Amerikan” is an exhibit about the infamous Kardashian clan researched, compiled, and presented by authors Jordan Buysse, Alicia Caticha, Alyssa Collins, Justin Greenlee, Sarah Mceleney, and Joseph Thompson. The premise of the project is quite interesting- to dig deeper than the superficial nature and presentation of the Kardashians themselves, and to investigate the deeper impact of the family on the modern social climate, in terms of race, gender, family relations, ethnicity, sexuality, and social class, to name just a few impacts. The authors began by scanning and compiling a series of data from tweets, to elements and actions portrayed within the TV show, to the products which each individual Kardashian of Jenner has created. Other data used to support the project also began to range to studies conducted on the ‘consumer appeal of personalities, characters, licensed properties, programs and brands’, i.e. how the reach of the Kardashians has expanded from a soap-opera-like reality show, to an economic and media-based empire which has come to gain global attention and fame.
The degree to which this project reaches historical importance is rather small, given the presently evolving nature of the family and their relatively recent impact on modern culture and society, but would likely become more relevant within a historical lens (obviously) as time progresses. The tools and techniques which were employed to gather, analyze, and present data for the project though are well implemented and highly relevant to this topic of digital history. Data collected for this project were organized into categories based on their cultural relevance and which facet of influence they fell under (i.e. feminism, race, sexuality), and for the purpose of understanding the project’s purpose, were presented in a large body of text. The presentation of the project is what I think could be improved the most. While it’s not ineffective, the Kardashians are known for being a very animated group, and the digital project might be enhanced a bit with inclusions of the tweets they used as data, or images of the Kardashian clan outside of the site header, and the occasional graphic used to separate sections of the article.

Works Cited:

http://dashamerikan.scholarslab.org/

I learned a lot about the New Deal during the Great Depression and about information technology during that time period. What I did know/learned about the Great Depression was that the stock market crashed and that the unemployment rate was really high. Lots of people didn’t have a  job. Also the reading The American Yamp also says that “But just as the song was being recorded in 1929, the stock market reached the apex of its swift climb, crashed, and brought an abrupt end to the seeming prosperity of the Roaring Twenties”. The Great Depression had arrived. In my opinion, the main reason we got out of the Great Depression was because of World War II.  I learned more about information technology,from the powerpoint. We also talked during the class discussion about Alan Turing and how he cracked the Enigma code during World War II which contributed to the computer age. I learned that in the 1930’s, IBM was rescued by the Social Security Act. The punch card became the official computing device for the New Deal. As from the article “Fear itself” it says that “Sometimes the connections were relatively benign, like the New Deal’s brief flirtation with quasi-fascist economic planning in 1933”. Which means that Roosevelt started planning the new deal. From wikipedia I also found out that “The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1936. It responded to needs for relief, reform, and recovery from the Great Depression”. This was a stepping stone that helped the United States of America to get out of the Great Depression. Overall, in spite of the problems brought on during the depression, there was a lot of positive effects that came from the different eras that covered this time period.

I watched the video that was assigned to us called “How Did They Make That?”. It was about Miriam Posner’s framework on how  people contribute to a Digital Humanities (DH) project. The DH website that was given to me was Mapping the Republic of Letters. The website has different ways of showing its sources. There are three categories of analysis.  For example, there are pictures of famous philosophers among educators and historians. There are website links scattered throughout the website. The website is very organized and digitized. The DH website assigned to me was definitely made web accessible. For example, everything is laid out in an orderly fashioned and it isn’t that complicated to use. There are only four different categories that you need to choose from, so that makes the website easier to understand and accessible to almost everyone. The website has a lot of information that can help people learn about the purpose of the website which is the role letters played in history. The transformations that were added to this website are helpful and very interactive. The way that the website has pictures and different categories displayed makes it easy for people to use it.

“The American Yawp.” THE AMERICAN YAWP, www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/.

Boyle, Kevin. “The President Proposes . . .” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/books/review/fear-itself-by-ira-katznelson.html.

“New Deal.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Aug. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal.

I learned a lot from our first week of class discussions. I think one of the most interesting things that stuck out to me was the Radiophone Dance in 1920 because I always heard of Silent Disco, but knowing that the general idea of that goes all the way back to the 20’s was very interesting to me. Another thing that was really interesting to me was people’s amazement at the very first Mac computer. The reaction people had to something so simple was insane. Looking at the old Mac gave me a bit anxiety because I feel like I wouldn’t know how to use it compared to what Macs are currently. Nowadays, Macs are so easy to use vs. the way computers used to be. I never knew about all the commands people had to put into their computers to make it do specific tasks. I must say I am very relieved those coding/commands don’t exist anymore. Comparing digital technology back then to what it is today is mind blowing. I’m sure the people alive in the 20’s would have never dreamed of something such as “facebook” or “twitter” to take over their lives. I really hope to learn more about social media’s role with digital humanities along with cell phones such as iPhones. There’s so much to discuss when it comes to the cellphone, especially iPhones and Samsungs, etc. Learning how apps came to be would also be something I hope to learn this semester as well.

My project I was assigned was “Virtual St. Paul’s Cross Project” by NC State University. It will allow people to experience events that happened in London during the early seventeenth century. As of now, there’s only one phase completed for the project, which allows people to hear John Donne’s sermon for Gunpowder Day on November 5th, 1622 in the courtyard of St. Paul. The main goal behind this project is to show people how preaching used to be in London during the seventeenth century. As described by NC State, this project is”enabling us to experience a Paul’s Cross sermon as a performance, as an event unfolding in real time in the context of an interactive and collaborative occasion”.

The project was created by using architectural modeling software and acoustic simulation software, two kinds of software I’ve never heard of. Using Miriam Posner’s framework of sources, the way it’s processed, and presented, I was able to identify that the main sources of this project was using pictures from the seventeenth century of St. Paul’s Cathedral and also looking at the old documents of the specific sermons/events that happened there. The way this project was processed was it was very organized because of the many sections the website had along with many explanations. Finally, the project was presented by being web-accessible along with maps. My thoughts on this project is I think it’s an excellent way to engage people in history especially with the very interactive/realistic tools.

Works Cited:

“Virtual Paul’s Cross Website.” Virtual Pauls Cross Website, vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/. Date Accessed, 3rd September 2019.

Posner, Miriam. “ How did they make that?” Miriam Posner’s Blog.Wordpress. Date Accessed, 3rd September 2019.

During this first week of class, I have learned many useful and interesting topics surrounding digital Humanities. First, many ideas surrounding technology are just copied from previous ideas in history. For example, in the 1920s, the radiophone dance centered around people surrounding a radiophone and listening to music or speeches. They were required to wear headsets because it was too loud to be able to hear from the radiophone. In class, we discussed the photo about the radiophone in which the dance was held at an Atlanta social club in May 1920 to listen to a band that was playing across town (Dancing by Radiophone). This idea has been carried on in recent years through the new phenomenon known as silent discos. This requires people to gather together and each person has an individual radio and headset. They all dance together, but each person is listening to different genres of music, so the idea is that they are together but each person is happy because they are listening to what they like. Additionally, another interesting topic is in the 1950s when Alan Turing cracks the enigma code and designs the Turing Test. This ultimately leads to the end of World War II, because we were now able to break the German code and understand their movements and goals. Lastly, I find it quite interesting that the New Deal saved IBM from going bankrupt and made the company millions of dollars because now all government jobs were using their products. 

            I hope to learn more about the unique technological ideas that we copy and reuse from our history. For example, the idea of silent discos and eBooks. Secondly, I would like to learn about the effects that Bonnie and Clyde had on the government during the Great Depression and if the people saw them as role models or criminals.

            For this project, I was assigned “Historypin: Connecting communities with local history”. This project focuses on storytelling by partnering with organizations and sharing over 365,951 stories across 2,600 cities (About). They pride themselves in bring people and communities together through the stories and shared experiences of people. I followed Miriam Posner’s philosophy and started at the “about” page to understand the website and ideas it is trying to create. Personally, I feel this project focuses on the map aspect in which people can enter their address and find out the stories about the area and connect to their community or other people. Their process is connecting, equipping, and measuring. First, they use cultural heritage institutions, civic organizations, and community groups to connect people and communities. Secondly, they equip organizations to increase their impact by knowing their area and people. Lastly, they measure and keep statistics for their partners, so they can gain support and knowledge about their project.

(n.d.). About. Retrieved from https://about.historypin.org/about/

(n.d.). “Dancing by Radiophone”. Retrieved from 

            &profile=default&search=1920s+radio&advancedSearch-

            current={}&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&ns100=1&ns106=1#/media/File:Club_

            holds_radio_dance_wearing_earphones_1920.jpg

In class I learned that there is no direct consensus as to what digital history is. There are many definitions, however through the course we will be developing our own definition to better understand. Moving on to technology, digital technology is always referential to something else. For instance, present day silent discos can be traced back to the Radiophone Dance in 1920 where teenagers set up a radiophone to listen to a nearby concert that they could not attend. Information technology can be traced all the way back to the codex, a bound handwritten book which was a revolution to bind information together and preserve it. The codex the moved onto a printed book which can be seen through the invention of the printing press. Finally in our present day, we see information technology in the forms of eBooks. In this class, I hope to learn more about the tools that have digitized history. The concept of them is very foreign to me as I don’t use technology to access history often. I am interested to learn more about the different cultures that have shaped these technologies and what is to come in the future for us.

The project I have been assigned to focus on is “Freedom Ring: King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech”. At first, I listened to it as a background noise because I was confused on how everything worked at first. When I listened a second time, I watched the animation and was blown away. Miriam Posner would most likely describe this project as a multimedia narrative as it uses a multimedia design along with text to illustrate Martin Luther King’s speech. With the design of the website you can see both the written and spoken speech, explore multimedia images, listen to movement activists, and uncover the historical context of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I found the set up of the website helpful in the sense that you could visualize and listen to the historical context. I think it helped me to visualize as it brought me to have a better understanding of the meaning of his speech.

Posner, Miriam, director. How Did They Make That?How Did They Make That, UCLA Digital Humanities, 4 Apr. 2014, archive.org/details/howdidtheymakethat.

Dauterive, Jessica. “What is Digital Humanities?” https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/1 . Date Accessed 3rd September 2019.

Bissel, Evan. “Freedom’s Ring.” Edited by Andrea Spero, Freedom’s Ring: King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech, freedomsring.stanford.edu/?view=Speech.

One tends to categorise the Internet– and on a broader scale, technology– as an innovation of recent memory. In the history of technology as in conventional history, it’s customary to attribute sweeping innovations with the works of one man (like Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell) and their teams and predecessors are left by the wayside. The history of the Internet as we’ve been covering in our class was not the result of the Great Man high school history covets. When we covered the manifold players in the creation of the Web, it was a refreshing reminder that innovation– like the Internet– is long, complex, collaborative, messy– and beautiful. I look forward to gaining the tools to become a better scholar and process history more thoroughly.

I had the pleasure to peruse the Mapping Inequality Project this week. Never has the systemic racism of 20th-century America been so fun to scroll through. The entire project comes chiefly from primary sources: the records of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. The authors of the site optimise HOLC reports to their localities in an organic way, compiling the data from the reports into visual and textual media. The quantification of the data is simple; HOLC officials divided their cities into neighbourhoods with letter grades, so the authors translated the letter grades into concentric rings of colours representing each city. It’s difficult to discern the significance of these rings even after becoming acquainted with the legend, but they do the job and you’ll never have to stare at many numbers or percentages. The presentation of the visuals is clean and easy to grasp most of the time– though the site’s zoom tool is obscenely laggy.

The Mapping Inequality Project is a fascinating glimpse into what exactly segregation means and its forms. The authors endeavour to show that the poisonous racism so talked about in public discourse, so devastating to communities, manifests itself as a calm, calculated banker’s lexicon. The loan evaluators use code words such as ‘blighted’, ‘infiltration’, ‘heterogenous’, or ‘subversive elements’ to express their prejudices; an evaluator derides an East Los Angeles neighbourhood as ‘a “melting pot” area… literally honeycombed with diverse and subversive racial elements’ and thus grades it poorly, excluding the area from much-needed loans. HOLC was a success, ‘seen as both a savior to the housing sector and a force for racial segregation’ (Nelson et al).

One extrapolates from this that a generation is made from their weakest moments, and because the Great Depression was such a low point for that generation, the New Deal’s weaknesses reverberated all the stronger. Because housing loan appraisers deemed certain neighbourhoods certain letter grades, those neighbourhoods were not eligible for the redemption of the New Deal, precluded from prosperity.

Sources:

Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al., “Mapping Inequality,” American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, accessed September 2, 2019, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining//#loc=13/32.067/-81.105&maps=0&city=savannah-ga&area=C12&text=intro&adviewer=sidebar.

Posner, Miriam, director. How Did They Make That? How Did They Make That, UCLA Digital Humanities, 4 Apr. 2014, archive.org/details/howdidtheymakethat.

What I’ve learned thus far is that all forms of technology roughly improve but are always aiming to do the same thing. Virtually, all of the inventions we discussed over the 40 year span have had the goal of allowing users to explore the interface they’ve created, and to keep a digital record for the future or to preserve what has already been created. Overall, we know that technology is almost always working to make life more efficient and easier for the entire human population and preserve the past. But, similar to a lot of things, people have though that they could do it better than the last person. In the future of the class, I hope that we learn more about how these old pieces of technology worked or what they morphed into today. For example, something we discussed in class was the ability to “control F” to find whatever you needed in a digital document and that that tool wasn’t available for many documents so they began to try to create something like that. I always took “control F” to be like an added bonus and I had no clue people had started working on that before the first computer was produced. I also hope we learn about the people behind these projects, their motivations, and how they succeeded/failed to complete what they wanted. 

My project was Mapping Early American Elections (MEAE). Their goal was to take the First Party System’s election returns and make them accessible as a history source in a digital form. Their website allows people to interact with maps, documents and other primary sources that they have scanned in order to understand what the early American people did in order to vote. They took the source: 1788-1825 election returns collected by Phillip Lampi for their parent organization called A New Nation Votes (NNV), and processed them by transcribing them into a dataset that presented from an Excel spreadsheet into a program called GIS. Similar to Green Book, it allows people to see what opinions were held in which regions of America. It also attempts to educate people beyond what their primary sources dictate. I think Mapping Early American Elections adds to scholarship because it is something that didn’t previously exist and NNV is parented by Tufts University. So, if people wanted to know about the first elections, they would have to go to Massachusetts and sift through NNV’s data. This website makes it universally accessible for anyone who has a link to the source. 

Sources: 

Mullen, Lincoln A. “Introduction: Mapping the First Party System.” Mapping Early American Elections, National Endowment for the Humanities, George Mason University, 2019, earlyamericanelections.org/essays/01-mullen-introduction.html.

Posner, Miriam, director. How Did They Make That? How Did They Make That, UCLA Digital Humanities, 4 Apr. 2014, archive.org/details/howdidtheymakethat.