Given that the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that occured on 9/11 is just a couple days away, I thought I’d check the databases for information on what I could find.

My first thoughts on the website was the simplicity of it. There was a list of newspapers to choose from, you click on one, and then you’re given a simple search box. I searched “September 11” and got a plethora of results, dating from 1924 (the earliest I noticed) till the mid 2000’s. Since my goal was to discover what I could about the terrorist attacks, I decided to refine my search. However, I thought that I should stick with the same search term. Conveniently, there is an “advanced search” button hyperlinked nearby. Upon clicking on the hyperlink, I was taken to a page that offered several options: whether I look at only editorials, ads, etc. (or all of them), what dates would I like to look for, and cross referencing three search terms. Thus to get very specific, I could have searched for “September 11, AND 9/11, AND terrorist attacks”. The AND can be replaced with OR, possibly giving even more specific results. But what was most helpful for my search of the generic term “September 11” was the use of a date range. I searched for “September 11” between the dates of September 12, 2001 and September 20, 2001. As expected, most of my results corresponded with the terrorist attacks. As I included every type of article in my search, I found ads, editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries – even an amusing review on Cabaret’s in New York (which politely reminded it’s readership that some Cabaret’s shows may be cancelled in light of the recent attacks; but who would actually read such a review after an even like 9/11?). Overall, I found the database and its search tool simple and easy to use.

Nevertheless, there is one major complaint. Several of the results have very generic terms, such as “Display Ad 17 – No Title”. There are dozens of “display ads” and articles with vague titles, such as “Invest in Global Policing” or “Financial Aid”. It’s difficult to judge what the contents of these articles are. Is “Invest in Global Policing” an ad, or is it an article discussing how the terrorist attacks may open new investment oppertunities? Then there’s these display ads. Some of them are relatively meaningless, such as “normal” ads discussing car shop deals, plumbers, or other technicians. Others, such as this one by the Consulate General of Brazil in New York may have important relevance to the way other nations viewed the attacks – yet it is still given the aweful “Display Ad # – No Title” format. Still others, such as an ad by ExxonMobil exclaiming their sadness and support, can not be differentiated from less relevant articles. Some ways to help these situations could be: a brief description of an article, either with a short summary or a list of tags, a word count, and a “quick view” that allowed you to see a little snap shot of the article in question. Regardless, There should be a better way to diferentiate articles.

The past was analog. The future is digital. Tomorrow’s historians will glory in a largely digital historical record, which will transform the way they research, present, and even preserve the past. But what can today’s historians do with the massive analog historical record of the past millennia?

• Up until now we have primarily focused on the digitization of texts. Nearly everyone in class has proclaimed the virtues of increased accessibility, the democratization of the web, and the manipulability of sources. Yet this will not be the case for everything. Archaeology, for example, will likely never become as heavily digitized as journals and other first person texts we historians love so much. Both in practical terms (you can’t dig for ancient ruins with a computer monitor) and in terms of quality, “analog history” has it’s merits when out in the field. Many objects can only be fully appreciated when being seen, even if it’s in a museum. This includes artwork (from stone age beads to impressionism), bones, pottery, byproducts of industry, swords, suits of armor, musket balls, etc. The level of detail that you can see in these is important. If it is allowed, being able to feel them can have quite an impact. For example, the weight of a musket or a sword, or the subtlty of the brush strokes in a painting. Much of the texture that exists in these objects can be described, but only by seeing it in person can you fully appreciate it.
• With that being said, there are some good things the digital revolution can assist with. For example, archaeologist can use computers to recreated a 3D scale model of Rome, which can help people understand the scale of the city.

But with 24 bits , you would have millions of colors at your disposal and could thus better approximate, though never fully match, the rich rainbow hues of Monet’s Water Lilies.

• This is precisely the point I was making.

What about handwritten notes? Novelist Nicholson Baker blasted libraries for digitizing (and then disposing of) their card catalogs, thereby losing valuable information in the knowing marginalia scribbled over the years

• This is a good point. Imagine if we didn’t have Da Vinci’s original journals. Some of his most compelling inventions and observations were small, crude drawings or scribbled notes on the margins of a page discussing or describing seemingly more important topics.

So, why not just stick to page images? As mere visual representations of text, page images cannot be searched or manipulated in the same ways as machine-readable text. A student looking for Truman’s views on the Japanese and the atomic bomb in a series of page images from his diary would need to read every page, just as with the analog originals.

• I’d hope that one day software would be released that would allow for searching through page images. If computers can learn to recognize faces, finger prints, etc. they should be able to learn to recognize hand written letters and words.

• The idea that webpages are indistinguishable is interesting. I suppose distinguishing one history page from another could be hard, but distinguishing a scholarly website from an entertainment website is easy. Take this gaming news website for an example, and compare it to the Library of Congress. They clearly have a different feel to them – one to offer entertainment, the other to offer scholarly works.

Or so it appears. The truth about these “pages” is that they involve just as much human input as a papyrus or pamphlet, even if they can be reproduced virtually without limit or cost once created.

• Obviously, webpages take plenty of effort and can be made to be clearly distinguishable.
• One issue when creating new pages is keeping it relavent.

A web page, on the other hand, can fall prey to unique electronic fates: it can be deleted, altered, or corrupted, or become technologically obsolete.

• Sometimes a webpage isn’t just technologically obsolete, but is the victim of archaic design. This can make the website as equally unusable as if the software required to run it was no longer widely available.
• I appreciate the emphasis that people who write history on the web only need to have as much expertise, or utilize as much capability, as is appropriate for their goal. For example, a site designed for teaching children the history of the Roman empire would probably benefit from interactive activities and lots of pictures, while another one that was disertation on Julius Caesar’s rise to power would probably be more formal.
• The simplicity of a website, as well as it’s “open code” is something that’s very interesting, especially as it is relatable to historians work. Websites aren’t initimidating. That’s the point.
• The next page just reemphasizes that websites shouldn’t intimidate you. As such, rather than focusing on the technical aspects of a website, focus more on its genre and focus – what you’re going to write about, in what manner, etc.
• Essentially, most history web pages are simple to compose, but if you need help, there is a myriad of programs you can purchase to assist you.
• While it is nice to know that running your own website is not such a daunting task as it may seem, my only question about this reading assignment is one of relavence. It is nice to know about XML, the different types of software such as dreamweaver, Windows Media, etc., but outside of having a passive understand that this is how many sites run, what relevance does it have to this course? Are we going to learn how to use these programs? Perhaps we won’t learn how to use them, but instead understand how to acquire them and ways we can learn to use them in the future. Either way, the chapter itself does not delve into such questions, but they’re natural questions that need answering.

• On the one hand it’s very intriguing that, as the internet was first coming forth, there was such great hope.

Wired publisher Louis Rossetto links the digital revolution to “social changes so profound that their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire.”

• While I’m not sure if I’d agree it’s as important as the invention of fire, it certainly has become one of the most profound inventions in human history. What’s more intriguing is Gertrude Himmelfarb’s warning.

“Like postmodernism,” she complained, “the Internet does not distinguish between the true and the false, the important and the trivial, the enduring and the ephemeral. . . . Every source appearing on the screen has the same weight and credibility as every other; no authority is ‘privileged’ over any other.”

• This is a real concern, even today, that the internet gives forum for incredulous groups and people to propagate unfound claims and assertions. But, as a historian (and perhaps as an anthropologist), part of the question isn’t just discovering what’s credible and what’s not, but also why non-credible sources arise, and how they get such a big following. Such insights could have deep social and political ramifactions, shedding light on cultures and subcultures within nations and social groups. Thus, for however bad the indistinguishable internet may be, it has the potential to offer a lot of good to scholars.
• The idea that the digital revolution has changed the way we do our daily routines is very true, especially in reference to history. I couldn’t imagine going to school such a couple of decades ago, when I’d have to laboriously search for book upon book in a library instead of doing a google search or a academic database search for content. Libraries seem archaic in comparison. I can honestly say that I can count the number of times I’ve utilized a libraries resource for school on one hand – and each of those times I was forced to search for books by teachers who claimed we’d have to learn because in college we’ll need books (a prophecy that, after 3 full years of school, has not proven true).

This introduction briefly sketches seven qualities of digital media and networks that potentially allow us to do things better: capacity, accessibility, flexibility, diversity, manipulability, interactivity, and hypertextuality (or nonlinearity). We also talk about five dangers or hazards on the information superhighway: quality, durability, readability, passivity, and inaccessibility.

• For the rest of this course, while considering any digital history, I will remember these 12 aspects and weigh them myself.
• Unfortunately, I had a 954 word post taht was lost because of a faulty internet connection. Well, lesson learned for the future. At any rate, this is a concise version of what I concluded:
• The first 7 positive aspects of digital history allow for history to be studied and understood by a much broader audience, with must greater depth, than ever before. This is good.
• the 5 negative aspects present a problem with the individual/self.

The literary critic Harold Bloom, for example, argues that whereas linear fiction allows us to experience more by granting us access to the lives and thoughts of those different from ourselves, interactivity only permits us to experience more of ourselves.

• Between poor quality (where a reader might choose to only accept sources that are continuous with his beliefs), passivity, and inaccessibility in particular can alienate individuals, allowing them to have a limited understanding of history.
• The idea of establishing a cohesive, online community where amateurs, enthusiasts, museum curators, and scholars can all get together to discuss ideas and benefit from one another critiques is an inspiring idea, of which I may become apart of.

I’ve decided to add my thoughts for every section/chapter I read, instead of writing out a traditional paper.

• Dr. Bush makes a very good point that there is too much information out there on any particular field to adequately be articulated by a single person. This is an increasingly problematic situation, especially in the medical field. Doctor’s have to go through too much school to make sure they know everything. Conversely, a doctor in another country, where information is more limited, might only have to go to school for half a decade to open his own practice. While the thoroughness of American doctor’s education may ultimately be for the greater good, it’s only good if people can get to the doctor at all. Unfortunately, there is a drastic shortage of doctors in America, and as healthcare reform takes effect, there is a serious concern of whether or not people will have adequate access to healthcare thanks to the difficulty and time it takes to become a doctor. Yet Dr. Bush brings up another good point: There’s hope on the horizon. At no point in history have we had such advanced machines capable of processing as much information as now. Perhaps, utilizing these machines, we can change the way we dissenimate information, easing the burden professionals have on their road of understanding ever increasing amounts of knowledge.
• Dr. Bush takes an awfully long time to explain that, to make communication more effective among professionals, information must be easily accessible. This happens two ways: compression (including how to make it easily transportable) and allowing it to be easily consulted.
• Explaining that the time of writing down information can be costly, Dr. Bush hopes for machines to come where you could speak and the machines will record what you speak. While he understands that creative writing/record keeping may be beyond the scope of a machine, he believes that machines could help with repetitive calculations. Unfortunately, Dr. Bush’s ideas are still overly laborious, requiring entire roomfuls of girls to operate these machines:

“Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.”

• Dr. Bush seems to stress that new machines will, and must, continue to develop. Otherwise knowledge of advanced mathematics will be limited to an incredibly small number of people; indeed, according to Dr. Bush, certain issues may be unsolvable without the aid of machines (or at the very least, the use of machines will enhance the time it takes to solve such issues).

” All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in bringing the growing knowledge of atomistics to the useful solution of the advanced problems of chemistry, metallurgy, and biology. For this reason there still come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist.”

• Machines could also be developed to help in logical problems, whether mathematical analysis or practical uses such as organization of reciepts at stores.
• Using the help of machines in organization, it could be possible for a person to use a machine to hold an entire library of information, and using words associated with a particular topic, said person could quickly snap back and forth, find information.
• Here, Bush simply details how such a machine, deemed the “memex” would work, and how it would be used in practicum

Where Bush ultimately ends up is with a description of a readily available “encyclopedia”, which would contain all knowledge, offering assistance to physicians who are treating a peculiar case, or historians who must cope with studying the breadth of human experiences that is history. What’s remarkable about Dr. Bush’s predictions/hopes is how spot on he is. Of course it’s easy to relate Bush’s predictions with the internet and web, but I think it’s important to take it even further and realize how much modern wiki’s resemble Bush’s dream. How often have we been on wikipedia, looking up some nonchalant fact, only to be wisked away on a meandering trail of knowledge, most of it completely irrelevant, yet no less interesting, simply because each article on wikipedia is associated with any number of other articles, all interrelated, yet each totally unique in the subjects covered.  Bush’s dream is so incredible that it wasn’t until he started discussing “world fairs” (of which there hasn’t been one for decades) that I realized he wasn’t a contemporary author.

Still, as my first point stated, sometimes there is too much information, and some sort of simplified communication should be created. I feel as though we still have a ways to go before information becomes so easily accessible that it truly revolutionizes the way we educate, diagnose, study, etc.

Certainly it already has, but the last revolution in communication was also responsible for increasing the amount of knowledge a professional must know by making it easier to access such knowledge. The next revolution should make knowledge so easily accessible, so thoroughly understandable, and so easily appliable that a professional will only be required to know what’s needed at any given moment. Imagine a doctor who never studied the heart until one of his patients has a heart problem. Upon pulling up a professional wiki article, he is able to easily diagnose the problem and treat it effectively, with little worry of error. That’s the future we need to strive for.