Blog Post #1 – Project 33

I really enjoyed our brief dive into how we define technology. I thought it was really interesting to look at how our modern digital tools, such as hard drive folders or ebooks, can be traced back to concrete versions, and their entire history. I think that it is easy to forget the histories of the technology and objects that we use every day. I’m hope to learn more about the history objects in this class, and to redefine my understanding of technology.

I felt like Project #33, which discusses while streamlined and visually appealing, was not terribly engaging. The writing in the front summary/abstract paragraph was written in opaque in a manner that lacked appeal to viewers outside of the historical field who might not be accustomed to reading denser texts, and yet the text in the topics page was almost oversimplified. I think that a stronger introduction and images beyond graphs and charts be utilized to build interest and humanize the hard statistical data. Furthermore, the front webpage appears at first to be the introduction page, but only after reading through the entire study did I realize that a lengthy and detailed introduction existed separately. The webpage would benefit from better organization. I do, however, think that this study was very interesting—one point in particular that stood out to me was the fact that even though fugitive slave advertisements in Richmond rose during the Civil War, hiring and wanted advertisements remained at a fairly separate level. This indicates that even as the war continued and more and more slaves managed to escape to the north, people were still unwilling to hire replacements, rather choosing to continue endorsing the institution of slavery.

Nelson, Robert K. “Mining the Dispatch.” Mining the Dispatch. The University of Richmond. Accessed September 2, 2019.