Reading Reflections

I was intrigued by all of the readings this week. I started with The Beginning of the Road article. The story of bridging one person’s life-long interest and information gathering with another’s technology expertise was inspiring. Of course, Hawkins and Bailey are on the grand side of the scale in terms of resources, but our projects with our mobile devices are a start. I’m not as old as Hawkins, but I share some of his sense that there is a lot of story collecting to do and the people with those stories won’t be around forever.

The Shaping the West Project brought to mind a book I read recently called Wondrous Contrivances: Technology at the Threshold by Merritt Ierley. The author looked into how the telegraph, telephone, rail travel, bicycles and the automobile, etc. impacted and changed people’s sense of time. I’ve also been streaming on Netflix a newish BBC television series Downton Abbey thathas shown how the automobile and telephone changed the lives of the people in a small town in pre-WWI England.

I spent a lot of time looking around the site for the Center for History and New Media. Under the “research” tab I got caught up wanting to read the whole selection Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web because it started out with a great explanation of pros and cons of digital media. I stopped at the end of the introduction and realized I have to work on not getting so sucked in when I’m supposedly browsing. Then I jumped to the “exhibitions” tab and wandered around The Lost Museum, for way too long, which recreates P.T. Barnum’s museum in New York City that was lost in a fire in the 1800s.

On late Friday afternoon I went to hear two speakers brought in by the Boise State Group for Early Modern Studies. Both speakers had wonderful presentations about how knowledge was made public in the 17^thcentury. They both had really great images on Power Point to go with their talks. I found myself smiling and thinking how much their presentations would be enhanced if the images were 3D or more interactive.

History through the Back Door

Scott Berg and Richard White really expanded my perspective on the nature of history and how it is viewed, researched, evaluated, and discussed. Richard White made an interesting point about most of history involves tracking changes over time using chronology as the structure that conveys these changes. Using the new structure of spatial relationships to understand how humans’ relationships with each other and the landscape evolve through time added a whole new dimension to the study of history. Reading about all the work done by Dan Hawkins and his work to discover the original topography and layout of Washington, D.C. and then see it condensed and packaged in the video by Dan Bailey caused several reactions for me. At first I felt betrayed on behalf of Dan Hawkins to have his work distilled into a short interpretation of all his research into a short digital interpretation. However, after really getting into the video I saw how much value technology added to the historical research making it accessible, easy to understand, and useful. Reading and looking at all of Hawkins’ maps never would have conveyed what the video could; a visual document of changing spatial relationships. Although I consider myself somewhat of a Luddite, I am really getting excited about using technology to enhance our perception and understanding of the past.

Beginning of the Road—D.C.

I found this to be very interesting. I’ve always fascinated by the whole Washington D.C. process…how they decided where to build it, how they carved out a district from the states, how they drained the swamps and built this capital city….all very interesting. So this site that showed it all in 3D was simply awesome to me.

Spatial history and neat-o graphics

The spatial history site at stanford.edu was really interesting. The railroad project seemed like a huge undertaking when I first looked at the site, but then looking at other projects, it did not seem so daunting. The programs to look at the demography of a city, like they are working on with students in Sao Paulo, or the visual of prostitution arrests in Philadelphia during a specific time period, is not only beneficial to research, but is also pretty wicked awesome. The Washington Post site with the digital imaging and over-lays of past and present Washington, D.C. was incredible. I can’t even imagine the amount of work that went in to that project. I believe it is the same project we watched last semester, but for some reason it has more meaning this time. Perhaps it’s because I have a new found appreciation for the historically accurate AND tech savvy.
The mobile for museums site I remember seeing before as well, and is more useful for research than it may seem. The the mobile for museums project itself, of course, but the tools available on the homepage of the CHNM website.
Now I feel like whatever application I am involved in developing will obviosly pale in comparison to these projects, but they do give me a huge burst of inspiration, which is always nice when you’re pretty sure you forgot everything you knew how to do.

Changing the canvas on which we paint history.

The Spatial History Project at Stanford was fascinating. Reviewing the Shaping the West project was helpful in understanding what they are trying to do and how many avenues of history that can connect to the project. For example, while the project focused more so on California it leaves that possibility of other states adding to the model they have set up. In a sense, we could set up a transcontinental spatial history project. Furthermore, it can be linked to all other realms of history how the railroad were impacted socially, politically, and economically. I like the new use for primary sources, it made me question how accurate or available the Union Pacific railroad’s records are? Since the company is still in business, it would seem that many records may still be intact and available. If you have the time I would recommend reading Richard White’s What is Spatial History article. He gives examples of the other spatial history projects going on at the Stanford. He introduces how spatial history as different from “normal history.” The first of his five reasons mirrors the explanation of Landscapes “our projects are collaborative.” This project as whole reminds me of Jackson’s idea of landscapes; I think Jackson would have been supportive of their efforts.

“The Beginning of the Road” illustrated how technology has made projects, such as Alexander Hawkins idea, much easier to visualize and understand. While Scott Berg’s article was interesting, at times it was hard follow and understand what was Hawkins’ project. I watched the Visualizing Early Washington clip and it helped me to finally “see” what Hawkins wanted to do. This article brought up several good points. First of those points was: I was a shocked as Dan Bailey that the library would not have any books on the Washington D.C. landscape. It made me question how many other pieces of “expected history” are missing. I have run into this problem with my own master’s thesis. I had expected books and articles to be written about the Merci Train and have yet to find a legitimate book. The second point brought to light, again by Bailey, was the history drives technology. I have never thought of it this way. However, his point is valid. Projects such as Hawkins’ are able to literally come to life and be presented to a wider audience.

I was excited to look at the findings for the CHNM labs. The website is helpful in making these free and all already created data bases for museum use. But it was not what I expected. I thought it was similar to the “7 Way Mobile Apps are Enriching Historical Tourism.” I understand that these apps and sites are available, but are they being used? I want numbers! I want to be able to see that people are using these available digital histories. I think it would be extremely helpful to rate these program on their popularity and, if possible, who is using them? Are they being used by the general public, in classrooms, or in museums? That being said, the website is an invaluable as a tool to those teaching history. I was drawn to the link “digital campus” where bi-weekly discussions about technology and history are recorded and open to comments. I was disappointed to see that the discussions do not appear as frequent as displayed and only one or two people have contributed to the discussions. This website has great potential to assist in several venues on history and that are overlooked. On an end note I really enjoyed exploring the “Lost Musuem.”

Reading Reflections 2-27

I enjoyed reading about Shaping the West project in which the area of study is the growth and influence of the railroads on the Western United States. Some of the study topics include; railroad rates, safety, and how railroads affected the travel/moving of the population. I think it would be interesting to also study the improved technology, for example, improvement in brakes, refrigerated railroad cars, passenger cars, and luxury sleeper cars. You may also learn a great deal about Railroads of the West at the Sacramento Railroad Museum. http://www.csrmf.org/ You may choose to learn more about the Big Four, the building of the transcontinental railroad, or look at some trains. There are also a lot of cool shops and historic buildings in Old Sacramento. Do you like train rides? On weekends there are steam-powered train rides!

I also found the Mobile for Museums site interesting because it provided a list of several museums that use mobile devices to tour their museum. The San Jose Museum of Art was one of the first museums to include the use of iPhone/ipod touch apps in their museum tour. I also experimented with the Art in the City app, in which you may explore by places, tags, and art. It is a great app to use when traveling, or if you want to learn more about your own area.

The last site, Center for History and New Media, is a digital archive that includes a variety of topics. One I took a look at was the September 11^th Digital Archive. This site also relates to my public history career introduction, because I interviewed a person who worked for The Shoah Foundation, which is a digital archive of Holocaust survivor interviews. Here is their website http://college.usc.edu/vhi/

Technology and the Historian’s Function

I was fascinated by the Spatial History Project’s website that was assigned for our exploration this week. I suppose it was only a matter of time before technology was joined with landscape studies to reconstruct cultural landscapes of the past. My one hesitation about this new field, however, stems from an uncertainty about how exactly “spatial” history differs from other fields. The endeavor of Richard White to technologically trace how railroads affected the landscape of the American West is enthralling and pedagogically valuable, but is it not just environmental history studied with the aid of technology? Why create a new term to monopolize a method of study that could be applied by all fields?

I also found it interesting how modern technology is changing the role of the historian. Presenting historical data through visual charts and graphs (such as Don Hawkins’ “digital renderings” of D.C.), with little to no written interpretation accompanying it, leaves the intended audience of the project to interpret the data on their own. This seems to be minimizing the historian’s function while granting more agency to the public audience. This is a good thing, in my opinion, because it makes history more accessible and relevant to the general public, and will allow them to become more intellectually involved with subjects they might find inaccessible and irrelevant if only presented through a textbook. However, this inevitably brings up the issue of how to maintain historical validity in information interpreted by an untrained public. Is historical interpretation a science—like the practice of medicine—that should be done by trained professionals only? Or is it an art that everyone should have the chance to experiment with?

Technology is our friend!?!?

Ever evolving technogy holds great promise not only for academic historians, but also for society as a whole. The promise of technology to assist historians in their research and published works has never been greater. The ability of technology to assist historians can be seen into two current public history projects. The first the indomitable Richard White’s “Shaping the West” project which examines how railroads created new spatial patterns and experiences in the American West. This project uses a computer program to represent and manipulate maps and graphs.

Another public history project which utilizes technology is currently being implented by Don Alexander Hawkins. The aim of the project is to digitally recreate the capital at various periods in the 18th century. Ultimately a “video game” will be created that will allow the player to take a stroll through Washington during the 1790s.

While technology is helping historians recreate the past the most interesting developments are occuring in the field of cognitive science. While this may not interest public historians, historians of science may find it interesting. New technology will likely unravel the mysteries of human consciousness during my lifetime. One product of this is that the human mind and human consciencness will be able to be objectively studies. The subjective realm will be destroyed. One project going a long in doing this is at MIT where researches are mapping the human nervous system. Actually its not so much human scientist that are doing this but a computer program that is being developed. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/brain-mapping.html Its not as exciting as mapping railroads or old capitals, but it’s still interesting (and might be more important).

Not only are scientist able to increasingly explain thoughts, emotions, intentions, and mental states, they are also increasingly able to manipulate the mind (by manipulating brain activity). The means to destroy selfishness, and ensure peace and equality are no longer an unrealizable dream, they will be achievable through technological advancement. A description of Rebecca Saxe’s work –who is creating what might be termed a physiological theory of mind–follows: “MIT scientists in Rebecca Saxe’s “Saxelab”—officially the Social Cognitivie Neuroscience Laboratory—already had techniques to identify the source of judgments and intentions in the brain. Now they have the power, via magnetic interference, to alter those ideas. Saxe’s earlier studies show a particular section of the brain is highly active when a person thinks about someone’s intentions, thoughts and beliefs. By disrupting activity there—with a magnetic zap applied through a device attached to the scalp—you can alter the process of judgment. Rather then intuition or personal bias, the judger must now rely more on facts and outcomes.” (http://www.improper.com/features/the-big-picture/); http://saxelab.mit.edu/index.php

Love the Center for History and New Media!

I found the Center for History and New Media very interesting, engaging, and inspiring. Let me explain first why I am writing primarily about the Center for History and New Media. After reading and exploring The Spatial History Project and the work being done on 3D modeling of Washington, D.C. in the “The Beginning of the Road,” I was beginning to be discouraged. These two projects have so many awesome attributes, and they make you think, “oh, wow, how come no one else has looked at it this way yet?” The integration of GIS and other visual-oriented aspects of history is, in my opinion, the best way to engage a large audience in learning about history. But, who has the budget and the resources to make projects like the Spatial History Project happen? Not very many institutions within the State of Idaho do. I believe Idaho State University is the best poised to make it happen since they have a Master’s in History that is partnered with GIS. Other than this, who has the time, the staff, and most importantly, the money to make it happen? History has often been reduced to people working on it in their spare time, and this can be seen particularly in “The Beginning of the Road.” Maybe I am frustrated at this since our Public History Career interviews, and I am trying to come to terms with how much history gets done because people care enough to give their free time over to it, and the larger population expects it to be done for free or very little money. This dynamic is frustrating.

Anyways, back to the Center for History and New Media. It cheered me up to see the varied ways that museums (and by extension other history-related organizations), can use existing technologies to engage their audiences. This is partly exciting because of our mobile project for the class. It shows that there are a multitude of platforms that can be used, and perhaps the best is creating a website that is mobile friendly. I really liked the online archives and exhibits—what a great way to create content that can live on even when the exhibit moves. After this reading I am really excited about Omeka, and plan to bring it into my work as the City Historian. I’m also going to look more into the book Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. I think that it will be extremely helpful in my work.

The Beginning of the Road

The beginning of my road in respect to the readings this week began with Stanford’s “The Spatial History Project.” Without a shadow of doubt the Project, specifically “Shaping the West,” is an innovative and inventive public history project. The theoretical underpinnings of spatial history are fascinating and the methods they employ in their research are fresh and interdisciplinary. That being said, I couldn’t help but be annoyed. Perhaps it was the BSU chip on my shoulder reading about Sanford research and becoming green in the face with funding envy. But more likely it was passages like “We can use sources that historians would normally pass over as too dense and opaque or as too hard to merge with more literary data” that made me want to send a copy of Resurrecting the Granary of Rome to the “lab.” (For those of you who were not in History 500 last semester the author coupled “literary data” with cultural landscape paintings as source material.) In a field where thesis and dissertation topics are becoming more obscure the use of dense and opaque source material is not an option, it is essential.

If the beginning of the road was like heartburn, the end of the road with Scott W. Berg’s Washington Post article was the Prilosec antidote. What was so refreshing about this piece was the idea that historical scholarship and methods were the driving force instead of technology. The StarTrek emulating Bailey said it well, “it isn’t the technology that’s driving the history, but the other way around.” After exploring apps and brainstorming platforms for the public history project I was beginning to get bogged down in the technological aspects and paying less attention to the historical research. This article helped me realize there are endless technological platforms for a history project but the content of the material is the most important factor. In a word the article grounded me. For the last five years of my higher education I’ve been trained to be a historian. I sleuth, I write, I rewrite, I cite and I cite some more. Technology is a means to convey to a larger audience what I find mind-blowingly fascinating. Public history is still history, perhaps just with an edge.