A Personal Exploration of Digital History

I went into the reading assignment this week expecting the fairly typical explanation of different ways of presenting digital media and a specific list of concerns. Instead, I got this (PowerPoint is Evil) and this (The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation). While both are humorous, they do make good points on how slideware programs more frequently than not create a presentation that is distracting, misleading, and even irrelevant. With all the talk how “how could we live without this?” few people actually consider what the actual answer to that question is.

Image used by Tufte to drive his points about PowerPoint home.

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Edit: I have since noticed you can click on various parts of the form. Extremely bad internet connections do not help in the full exploration of a web site.

When I first learned that my assignment was to peruse my way through a few Feltron Reports I was thrilled. These reports provide an absolutely ridiculous amount information in the form of graphs and charts on the life of Nicholas Feltron or New York for really little other than personal curiosity and mild amusement. This initial excitement and curiosity continued as I examined the earliest available report I could find from the year 2005. Flipping through the pages, I found the juxtaposition of the photographs and blocks of color both interesting and aesthetically pleasing. As far as statistics go, this was much closer to the painless reading of a children’s illustrated book versus a text laden, small print textbook. The orange, grey, and white scheme and the simplicity of the pages kept the graphics easy to read and the information behind them easy to deciphers. As time moved on, however, I became less and less impressed and more and more frustrated trying to decipher the reports.

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Since I don’t yet know how to do this in an interactive format, I figured I would share this little story with you via screenshots. Below is an ariel image of some property my grandmother’s brother-in-law’s family used to own as it looked in 1937, courtesy of this website for the City of Newport News. You can clearly see their prized James River facing property and the row of cedar tress lining their driveway.

I was able to stretch this over a satellite view of the same exact area taken in 2010 on Google Earth. You can see how houses have developed around the property, but that the cedar trees remained. This is because when the family sold the property, the stipulated that the cedar trees must be kept intact as long as they remained healthy.

You can see  how the ariel photograph was situated in the screenshot below:

Hope you enjoyed this little piece of my family’s history!

This week I was assigned to read over this project entitled The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities by William G. Thomas III and Edward L. Ayers. While the article provides fascinating insight into a variety of aspects causing the division of North and South in the American Civil War, what I find perhaps the most fascinating is the section on how the pair decided to present their data. Though I was pleasantly surprised to see the familiar name of Vannevar Bush (which you may remember from this post), I was even more overjoyed to have the chance to look into the thought process of digital historians when it comes to the actual digitization process. As a student delving deeper and deeper into the realm of hands on digitization every week, this sort of a “behind the scenes” look into such an interesting project is absolutely invaluable.

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I couldn’t help but to share this with you guys after all I have said about my fear of losing important files. I hope you at least get  a chuckle out of it.

If you’re interested in more nerdy comics, visit XKCD – a personal favorite of mine.

The map below displays the variance in minimum wage across the 50 states. The darker the green indicates the higher the minimum wage salary. States with little or no color have no set minimum wage. The data used to form this chart is from January 2012 and can be found here.

Note: I apologize for any quality issues – I could not get the link for the image or the img tag for this chart to work so I had to resort to a screen shot.

In an effort to get to know how to create a customized map, I created the map below of my favorite places to go in my hometown. If you are interested in doing this for yourself, be sure to log onto a Google account and get started through the My Places option on Google Maps, which comes complete with a highly informative interactive tutorial.

View Favorite Places in Newport News in a larger map

As most of you should remember, my post last week was a little piece entitled Hacking: It Could Happen to You. Little did I know it would happen to me just over a week later. On the list of compromised accounts is my favorite social media site, a few student accounts, and an email account. I have always tried to use strong passwords and minimize the amount to daisychaining I do to my accounts. With my complicated passwords in play and the lack of connection between a few o the aforementioned accounts, this leads me to wonder “Where did I get complacent with my digital security?” As you could tell last week, I was fearful after reading Mat Honan’s story, but now I am downright shaken that someone somewhere was able to access all of this information about me. Just as I said last week, it really could happen to you. Don’t wait until tomorrow to ramp up your security measures – do it now! My story should just be more proof of the necessity for great preventative action. Don’t wait until its your turn.

And more easily than you might think. Take this guy’s story. He took the normal precautions and set security questions. He backed up his phone to his computer. He trusted that the companies responsible for customer support. Just like you and me. Not five minutes ago was I on Amazon, casually browsing through my iTunes on my MacBook with my smart phone lying next to me…apparently all just waiting to be hacked. In just over ten minutes, Honan’s entire digital world- entertainment, communication, personal photos, everything- was shattered.

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On occasion I will run across a website that makes me pause for a moment and think, “what the heck are they thinking?” This is one of those sites. These guys are the historian version of the hacktivist Anonymous. They go into various websites, both ones that are in danger of shutting down for good and ones that simply seem like a strong candidate in preserving the climate of this time period with their content, and archive them. And by archive I totally mean straight up copy and save. Is what these guys are doing for the common good, or is a it a gross violation of the rights of authors and creators of the work they are storing?

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