Game Changer & Make Some Noise
gracie abrams
if i look back, i am lost
Sade Olutola
$LAYYYTER
noise dept.
Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
Interview Vampire Daily
Product Placement
ellievsbear
taylor price
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Discoholic 🪩
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Origami Around
KIROKAZE
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pixel skylines
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official daine visual archive
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@historywithsarahp
The world’s oldest sunglasses were, in fact, snowglasses. This pair was discovered on Baffin Island, in Canada and dates between 1200 and 1600 CE. Their slits reduce the glare of sunlight reflecting off the snow. This was a serious problem, which could over a long time make hunters blind and unable to feed their families. We know this because snowglasses are still used today, by some Inuit.
The Location of Academic Knowledge
A poster at Camp Hood in Texas. “If you talk too much, this man may die.” January, 1943.
via reddit
Recently, our specialists at smithsonian3d stopped by the whitehouse to scan President Obama in 3-D for the first ever presidential portrait created using 3-D technology. Watch the video to see how they did it.
More details on their blog
Final tumblr Response
The Thomas/ Johnson and Weller concluding chapters succeeded in synthesizing the course’s contents for me, thus far. For one, the former’s emphasis upon the maintenance and preservation of digital resources truly is the overwhelming anxiety now associated with the admittedly fragile and complicated resources of the digital age. This issue, along with the rigorous categorization, interpretation, and communication of such information, will be the pressing concern for historians and other scholars of the digital age. Overall, it is the human element, ironically, that will remain of the utmost importance. Scholars cannot lapse into laziness given the accessibility and ease that digital resources now facilitate. If anything, we must be even more diligent and critical than ever before in that such materials now present issues surrounding information provenance that can be easily obscured by the convenience and seeming holistic nature of data presented in digital formats. Scholars must continue to use their fundamental skills, questioning motivations, methodologies, context, and content. Their diligence will ensure quality resources and their dogged pursuit of such excellence will encourage meaningful and continued digitization and preservation. The impetus is upon those versed in the intricate processes behind the selection, presentation, and organization of digital materials to ensure that Thomas and Johnson’s “planetary systems of digitization” are generated and used.
Perhaps the most fitting representation of the topics discussed above was our Wikipedia project. My group succeeded in preserving and publicizing information that had previously lurked in the “invisible mass of un-digitized resources.” No one visited the Fort Malden page because, indeed, it was a veritable dead-zone for those upon the web. Finding information on Fort Malden, without living in close proximity to the structure or having access to databases through an institution such as Leddy Library, was nigh impossible. Even if individuals wanted to learn about the fort, they could not; hence the page’s dismal state before we arrived. However, without our maintenance of the page into the future, it could very well fall into disarray. All it would take would be one malicious edit or the Wikipedians’ strange compulsion to tamper with legitimate resources, for Wikipedians are those, according to groups’ discussions of their experiences in class, who neglect fundamental research skills in favor of consulting what is easy and available.
The only point within the readings that challenged my knowledge up until this point was one made within the Thomas/Johnson chapter. I found it very interesting that the pair proposed that the digital age was not, necessarily, the jagged break from the past that so many envision. Humanity’s introduction to the digital age is often portrayed as this moment of enlightenment, as if the time before the genesis of the Internet and its host digital technology was akin to the Dark Ages. Indeed, those born within this age of rampant digitization and technological developments will be baffled by the prospect of not being able to Facetime family members across oceans or Google the answer to a debate they are having with a friend. To them, our dial-up Internet and pre-iPad days will seem barbaric. As Thomas and Johnson argued, it is entirely true that technologies of the present and past have merely mimicked those that came before them. Or, if there exists no prior technology, they often seek to imitate ingrained human behaviours or associations. For example, when I think of the digital resources that I am most comfortable with, they are those that emulate the turning pages of a book, etc. for they are not alienating in their “newness.” Thus, our attitudes surrounding the digital revolution are entirely misguided. The new always builds upon the structures or knowledge of old. In that sense, these technologies seem a lot more accessible and those that came before them are not so much “obsolete” as reasonable fall-back options should the “new” not pan out.
Finally, my tumblr experience was, overall, a positive one. I enjoy the visual element of Tumblr and found it very easy to get caught up scrolling through a dashboard of images. I did find it difficult to find history accounts that were both consistent in updating their pages and scholarly in their methodology. Those that did take history seriously were often fellow history students in the Western world. There were many funny or whimsical history accounts but they were of little scholarly value. In addition, many accounts would provide images that were out of context, posted with an extremely short or entirely absent caption. I even reblogged a couple of said posts, commenting that further research would need to be done to validate their claims. I can therefore see how easy it would be to propagate misinformation (ala Wikipedia) on tumblr, for it is so easy to simply reblog something of interest without looking into it or questioning the subject matter beyond face value.
Overall, the history tumblr community is a quiet one. I say this being a casual tumblr user who is used to a flood of posts on popular media or social justice issues. The pages that seemed to generate the most interest among those not exclusively devoted to the study of history were those that posted gripping images of war or conflict, or those with a compelling artistic composition. As mentioned before, this is the content that can spark conversation, the public history that is shocking or significant in a way that will prompt others to blindly share its contents.
100 years of beauty in 1 minute proves how little beauty standards matter
Trying to fit in with the haircut or makeup everyone has? Take heart — fitting today’s beauty standards is overrated because the trends definitely don’t last.
If we needed any more proof of beauty’s fleeting norms, the dizzyingly cool clip by Cut Video makes it clear. Entitled “100 Years of Beauty in 1 Minute,” the video cycles a single model though a century of looks
Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963), was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War, was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and...
*raises page url like Simba on Pride Rock*
Behold...the new and improved Wikipage for Fort Malden.
Enjoy! :)
November 19th 1703: Man in the Iron Mask dies On this day in 1703 the French prisoner known as the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’ died. He was arrested under the name Eustache Dauger in 1669/70 and was in prison until his death, and died under the name Marchioly. He was in the custody of one jailer, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, for his whole imprisonment. The prison official at the Bastille, where the man was held, Lieutenant Etienne du Junca, recorded on November 19th 1703 the death of an "unknown prisoner, who has worn a black velvet mask since his arrival here in 1698." Many theories exist as to his identity, including that he was an illegitimate brother of King Louis XIV, the son of King Charles II of England, an Italian diplomat, and a French general, but none have ever been confirmed.
Happy GIS DAY!
It’s our one special day of the year to celebrate maps, mapping technology, and the people behind them that make our lives easier.
Let see how much we can get this shared across tumblr today!
cc: staff tumblrbot david support
woohoo! reblog my people!
Long before the internet and cable tv, millions of people got their entertainment from radio and...
An archive of old radio programs. So cool to sit and listen to them - all programs are 30 minutes or less.
Also a funny disclaimer that not all contents will be "politically correct" given the cultural context in which the programs originally aired. Weird to think that this was the form of entertainment for families back in the day. It's hard for us to imagine that such media could be compelling but the original "War of the Worlds" broadcast, or even Roosevelt's "fireside chats" were a testament to how powerful radio could be. (Had no luck searching the WotW broadcast. Still haven't listened to that one in its entirety.)
GUYS!
Look at this video game!
I think this is genius. This is how historians can engage the younger generations who will grow up with a controller in one hand and an iPhone in the other.
Plus, the style of it calls back to the history of video games themselves (Final Fantasy, anyone?), which I think is a cute nod.
1396 points and 2202 comments so far on reddit
Also got some pretty good laughs reading this reddit page.
Now, reddit is sometimes a mix of genius or utter ridiculousness so take all these stories with a grain of salt. Some of them are so interesting that I would definitely want to follow up with some fact checking if I ever had the time.
Pretty incredible that there is a thread dedicated to this subject regardless. Even if some stories are fabricated, this speaks back to us discussing the hacker cultures and forums (in Ryan's monograph) in which people first got to open up and discuss topics of interest with people from all over the world.
As reddit has proven many a time, the results can be veeeery interesting.
Earlier today, we ran a story about video games that replicate historical moments — from OG educational hits like Oregon Trail to bloody, controversial reenactments like JFK: Reloaded. As we spoke...
A mixture of me laughing and shaking my head while reading this.
Did you know:
LES MISÈRABLES has a 3-page, 823-word sentence which is divided by 93 commas, 51 semicolons, and 4 dashes? Rumor has it that someone suffocated from lack of oxygen in the 1940′s just short of the 73rd comma while giving a dramatic reading from the work.
Crazy French literature facts from Your Mind University!
I don't know if this is true but, if it is, the English and History nerds within me are so fascinated.
Making Connections: Topics Throughout History on the Web
In completing this small assignment, it does become readily apparent just how connected everything is in relation to digital history. Seemingly disparate topics have overarching themes at their core or share many similar concerns or accomplishments.
The Turkel, Kee, and Roberts article discusses the issue of traditional research methods and processes and their obsolete nature. As historians ourselves, we have frequently discussed the anxieties of “traditional” researchers in adapting to the digital age. In fact, in assembling information for my Spatial History Project, I found what would be considered “traditional” methods extremely arduous and thereby daunting. Historians of the past, according to Turkel et al., were accustomed to a “scarcity of information,” conducting extensive and time-consuming research and performing “human labour” in order to glean information and follow information trails. I, on the other hand, am used to sitting at home or in the library in relative comfort, clicking through a series of hyperlinks in order to efficiently gather and organize information. The only chase I give is through virtual rabbit holes and any resources I encounter can be easily saved and organized or their use and worth evaluated using a couple strategic word searches. I am so used to the convenience and speed that digital resources afford that having to do grunt work and actively seek out physical resources for examination proved very frustrating. The “scarcity of information” that I faced was an entirely new and uncomfortable phenomenon and it was the first time that I gave real thought to the struggles that those traditional academics must have faced before me. The rigor and dedication with which they must have approached their studies is truly lost on my generation as we can never fully appreciate the demands of such circumstances until we are “unplugged,” as it were.
Turkel, Kee, and Roberts also express anxieties that surround writing upon topics such as digital history for, given Moore’s Law, technology is increasing at an exponential rate, its capabilities constantly surpassing those years prior. This was an element at play that many of us noticed when reading and reviewing Ryan’s A History of the Internet and the Digital Future. The book, despite its titular assertion, seemed hesitant to delve into the future of the digital age, the author’s predictions only really materializing within the book’s final chapters. The rest of the monograph’s contents were dedicated to a lengthy and detailed historical overview of the Internet for there is comfort in retrospection, in the known facts. The future of digital history is rendered so complex by the medium’s constant shifts and developments that its discussion seems futile and is constantly frustrated. Herein lies many of the concerns for those seeking to engage the subject. Rather than see the possibility that such mutability engenders, historians, often rooted in tradition and with their noses buried in books, find the prospect of constant learning and adaptability daunting. We loudly proclaim that “we are computer illiterate” and therefore helpless in the face of the many digital tools at our disposal and are altogether reluctant to “embrace alternatives.” However, we would not have to face such novelty alone for, as per our discussions surrounding GIS systems, historians could work in tandem with those specializing in technology, coding, etc. in order to create a collaborative and successful enterprise. Through such interactions, we may also learn and grow as researchers and historians, incorporating different techniques into our arsenal of tools and techniques.
Both Turkel et al. and Maidment discuss the impossibility of a total, comprehensive history. In this age of ever-increasing information available at one’s fingertips, one may never conduct a holistic literature review or tackle every document or treatise upon their subject of study. Any attempt to do so would be continuous and unconducive to any publications. Turkel et al. propose instead that researchers maintain a sense of “humility” while not allowing this understanding to deter their constant “curiosity.” As a historian of the digital age, I know that I can relate to this struggle. I have conducted research for many a paper and have been simply overwhelmed by the search results that pertain to my subject matter. It is impossible to read all these sources given time constraints and other demands but selectively choosing a handful feels like missing out on crucial information and thus composing a lackluster paper. The potential is there for more and it is extremely frustrating. I think Wikipedia is a testament to the fluid nature of information. Its constant edits and impassioned discussions prove that one can be constantly learning if not due to an influx of new information than as a result of being exposed to different interpretations of the same events or circumstances.
Maidment explores the concept a total history further, stating that, conversely, “plenitude” can be “mistak[en] for comprehensiveness, or even representativeness. Oftentimes, we take what we read to be fact on the internet, simply because one has amassed a great amount of information or is acting as the sole source of interpretation within the digital realm. This is often the case with web collections. As a class, we questioned the motives behind those sites sponsored by organizations or individuals. We recognized that information can be selectively presented to suit certain needs and that the absent facts, unless their lack is questioned, can remain forever obscured.
Turkel et al. also allude to the necessity of working with others and sharing information, central tenets of the Digital Humanities Manifesto. Interestingly enough, these authors introduce the concept of Alternate Reality Games (ARG) in relation to digital learning and collaboration. It is interesting that, despite the prevalence of online gaming in the digital age, this seems to be the first reference made to the popular media’s potential in relation to digital history and future studies in the humanities (beyond, perhaps, Ryan’s reference to the hackers within the hacker culture that helped found the internet and its principles) within our course’s discussions.
Maidment explores the notion of images comprising their own history and constructing historical meaning. Images are themselves mediated and highly nuanced resources yet they are often delegated to “supplementary” status rather than worthy of study in their own right. When we took the time in class to view different research websites, the most popular one, by far, was that which relied heavily upon visual elements. If anything, this is a testament to the power that visual resources possess for they engage a learning style that historians are often unaware that they highly enjoy, given their often strict focus upon purely textual works.
Conversely, images can lose their “aura” when digitized, paratextual materials ignored or overlooked due to specific research needs or simply a lack of appreciation of their worth. I noticed that Salvy Trojman was very emphatic in his insistence that every page of the texts digitized for the Gale Digital Collections was included, be it blank or containing illegible chicken scratch. Unless all companies and organizations are as diligent in their digitizations and subsequent tagging, important information can be lost or overlooked and the essence of the text compromised.
Both chapters also discuss the importance of metadata in helping to sort and make accessible digital information to those perusing digital contents. While the digitization of resources tackles issues such as preservation, a great concern with regard to those texts composed upon fragile and old paper, Maidment fails to address the future ramifications of such digitization. As discussed within the readings on digital curation, these digital copies require similar maintenance into the future else they too fade into obscurity or disrepair. Thus, they are vulnerable as well.
In closing, as proven by this course, historians are capable of negotiating the digital landscape. Yes, there were a fair share of trials and tribulations (I’m looking at you buildingstories.co), but the students in this class ultimately navigated and often embraced new media and methodologies. I find the future of digital humanities to be very exciting and I know that the skills that I learned or am still working to develop in this class will be invaluable to my future studies as well as my intended career, if only by offering me a new perspective and showing me the possibilities that the digital world has to offer.
If US Presidents Were Pokemon
Artist Brandon Dayton has the perfect gift to the internet - Pokemon Presidents. Even better - they’re all pun-based. So, technically, it’s Pokemon President Puns. Either way, they’re Croconaw-esome.
