Digital Lexicon
Upon using this tool I find it helpful that we can work as a group and collaborate to come up with precise decisions and examples regarding the words assigned. I defined the word quality and used an example of a falsified picture from the article we read. I am looking forward to being able to collaborate with classmates to come up with new ideas and ways to look at digital history.
Collaborating on the buddy press doc can help facilitate students arriving at the best final product for an assignment. The Professor’s can jump in and give advice if the project seems to be going in the wrong direction. For example, when I initially defined capacity and accessibility from the Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig article Professor Waltzer illustrated the correct way to respond. Innovations in technology have contributed to the changes in digital history over the years by developing tools which increased our ability to access, store and interactively manipulate data. Anyone can easily become an author by creating a web page, blogging, tweeting or commenting on a person’s webpage. However, with new digital medium tools various problems arise for instance, quality and veracity of information being place on web pages that allow interactive collaboration where you can edit the text such as, Wikipedia.
I could not word it well, but right on.
I believe the reason why new media is so great is because of its collaborative spirit which feeds our limitless need for data, and allows us to come up with statistics and answer questions and find solutions to needs in the most diverse fields. From Economics to Medicine, to History.
Thanks for this Robert, (and for your comments to Robert’s post, Brenda and Pablo). You’re absolutely correct to note the challenges to “quality” of historical work on the web that have arisen as a result of increased “accessibility.” How, though, do the pieces by Roy Rozensweig and Bill Cronon about Wikipedia that we read for today’s class address these concerns? I’d suggest that there is an alternative reading of George Mahlberg’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Oswald” that holds that he didn’t actually falsify the image, but instead altered it in a satirical way. Is that really a threat to “quality”? Is there historical analysis in the manner in which he altered the image?
These are not necessarily questions to anser now (though you’re welcome to try!), but rather to keep in mind as we continue to explore these themes this semester.