Wiki and the Web

The readings this week brought on further anxiety for me about creating a web site.  It seems that every week I grow more concerned about where my interests and the “new media” meet.  Certainly, it is unlikely to come this week as I am required to use my lack of artistic skills and visual imagination to begin the process of creating a web page. 

My research interests seem to be outside of where the internet wants to go.  In doing research for a paper during my Masters program, I developed an interest in free persons of color in Virginia during the antebellum era.  What intrigued me about the topic is the extent to which Virginia government went to discourage these people from having a family, and the resistance by free blacks to this government intervention into their private lives.  I hope to create a site that can explain the issues involved with free blacks and family life in  antebellum Virginia with the idea that feedback may give me some leads into other stories of free black family life in that era.

So far I have not found any sites that appear to have the same purpose.  But, I am not really surprised given our classroom discussion last Monday.  I was interested that most of the sites we reviewed concern events of the recent past.  I believe that is because our understanding of a good site requires visuals such as photographs which is primarily a phenomenon of the twentieth century and beyond.  The two sites that we reviewed from the nineteenth century were fascinating in their contrast.  The class was clearly bored with the UNC site and struggled with anything positive to say about it.  It reminded everyone of a library, and libraries are usually perceived as exciting places.  In contrast, you could see the excitement on the collective faces of the class as the Ox Hill battlefield site was put on the screen.  Professor Cohen’s busy fingers could not wait to make the little rectangles move over Fair Oaks Mall and vicinity.  People could not wait to talk about the site.  All I could think about was what a piece of crap this whole site is, and I am not talking about the characteristics of a good web site.  For me this site brought about a visceral reaction from my childhood when I was force-fed the Civil War from the Southern perspective.  As we learned about the battles of 1862, little rectangles represented the brave Confederate soldiers who were always positioned to show Southern superiority over the damn Yankees.  Of course, our side was defending the Constitutional principle of states’ rights while the Yankees were trying to destroy our genteel lifestyle.  What was missing then, as well as now with the web site with little rectangular armies moving over Fair Oaks Mall, was any sense of the brutality or any context about why this brutality was occurring.  This takes me back to the boring UNC site.  Much of life of common people in the nineteenth century has to be recreated through the painstaking tasks of searching for clues where often there is not much information.  It takes many visits to the library or courthouse.  It is hardly ever a mouse click away.

This rant brings me to Wikipedia.  As Roy Rosenzweig describes, Wikipedia is an electronic encyclopedia.  What Rosenzweig did not say (at least as I skimmed the article–it is hard to truly read on a computer screen) is that this encyclopedia is skewed towards the twentieth century.  American history is divided in nine periods according to Wikipedia.  Four of those periods are before 1918; five periods occur after 1918.  Undaunted, I read about Millard Fillmore, our last Whig president.  Good ole Millard was president during the compromise of 1850.  His biography included listing the major provisions of the compromise two of which were the admission of California as a state and the Fugitive Slave Act.  As presented, it was as boring as eighth grade history.  There was no context presented and Wikepedia did not offer any explanation of how people may have been affected by the compromise and Fillmore’s support of it.  But as stated by Rosenzweig, it appeared to me to be factually correct.

It seems to me that whether we get our crap right (by this I mean good web design principles) is not nearly as important as how we make history come alive for people who are looking at the site.  Yes, that requires more innovation than the library approach at the UNC site, but it should never be simplified into moving rectangles over Fair Oaks Mall.

As a last chuckle about last week’s class, our model for a good web site was Steve Barnes’ Soviet Gulag site.  I am no expert about Soviet history, but weren’t Gulags used to punish people who did not go along with the twentieth century brave new world of Communism.  Now we are in class talking about the twenty-first century brave new world of the new media.  I still have a vision of the screen shaking as Professor Cohen emphatically says, “Gulag, Gulag, Gulag.”  Repetition is a principle of good web design.  Was there a message there for anyone who is not fully on board?

Thinking about good and bad web pages

Posted by Curtis Vaughn.

http://wwwbalchfriends.org/Glimpse/JPetersIntroBkLaws.htm

http://docsouth.unc.edu/global/result.htm?1csh+Free%20African%20Americans%20–%20…

People who live in glass houses should not throw rocks.  Therefore, I am very reluctant to go on a hunt for a bad web site.  My search focused instead on web sites that address the general topic that I would like to explore, free persons of color in antebellum Virginia. 

The web sites that I listed above follow generally the principles of good web design offered by Williams and Tollett.  Both sites use appropriate repetition throughout their sites, are easy to navigate, have appropriate linking, and fit well on the computer screen.  The UNC site is striking in its simplicity.  The Carolina blue print is not my taste, but it is readable.  The Thomas Balch library site requires scrolling down each page to completely read the information presented.  The colors are consistent but the red print seems to be more for style than ease of reading.  The UNC site uses left justification with indented bullet points.  The Balch site combines left justification with centered headings, a practice that Williams and Tollett discourage.  After looking a both sites, I could not call either site bad.

The difficulty for me in this exercise of finding a bad web site is that I am not a visual person.  When I look at a site, I am looking for information and pay no attention to the logos, color schemes, pictures, or any other visuals.  I simply do not learn by looking.  I learn by reading and practicing.  I will leave the criticism of web sites to those who learn visually.

Local Community Websites

By:  Curtis L. Vaughn

http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/

http://bedfordvamuseum.org/

I have chosen two local history websites to make a very unfair, but important, comparison.  The two sites show two entirely different concepts of local history.  The comparison is unfair because the Valley of the Shadow site was developed by Edward Ayers and his UVa colleagues for Augusta County, VA and Franklin County, PA and is familiar to many historians.  The Bedford, VA site was chosen because it is my hometown.  The site was locally developed and reflects no real understanding of the power of the new media.

The Valley of the Shadow homepage is powerful in its simplicity.  Over a panoramic view of the Shenandoah Valley are imposed three pictures.  One is a white man, one is a white woman, and one is a black man.  Following is a brief explanation of the purpose of the site.  Finally there is an invitation to enter the site.  This site is meant for research.  The explanation limits the contents of the site to the Civil War era, but the pictures clearly indicate that those interested in women’s issues or the black experience will find information along with documents relating to white males.  The most powerful part of the homepage is that it does not attempt to offer any narrative of the history contained therein.  Therefore, the visitor is able to go to the site to interact with the documents in a way the reader sees fit.

In contrast, the Bedford City/County Museum site is cluttered in an attempt to lure visitors to the museum.  Information about the museum’s services and how to become a member are displayed before any mention of history.  Then, mention of a new museum exhibit is offered followed by background about the museum building itself.  Finally, the visitor is told what he/she can find upon visiting the museum.

The Bedford site clearly uses a traditional approach in which the museum operators have determined what the history of Bedford is and has displayed it for the visitor to consume.  The museum site is not inviting to researchers and is designed to encourage visitors to see relics of the area’s past.  Also, included is mention of a Black history room and Indian relics.  No mention is made specifically of the history of area women.

If Roy Rosenzweig and Dan Thelen are correct in their assertion the people like have a say in how their past is represented, the Bedford museum site limits these opportunities while the Valley of the Shadow site encourages an individual to engage with the past.  I believe that people often most identify with their local communities.  The challenge for those communities is to encourage local citizens to engage, not just observe, the past.

Manovich Wired

Synthetic computer generated imagery is not an inferior representation of our reality, but a realistic representation of a different reality.  Manovich, P. 202.

The result: a new kind of realism, which can be described as “something which looks exactly as if it could have happened, although it really could not.”  Manovich, P. 301.

Just before starting this semester, I decided to sow grass seeds in my lawn for the fall.  I had to water daily and within a week the new seed began to sprout.  Since, rains have come and the lawn is now transforming itself from summer brown into a nice green for the remainder of the growing season.  Of course, this new growth will mean continual mowing until frost turns the lawn dormant.  It is at this point that the typical suburbanite usually talks about installing artificial turf so that lawn care does not interfere with football season.

After reading Manovich, I realize that artificial turf would not be as bad as I once thought.  It is just a different kind of reality that would free me from the seasonal loop of lawn care and free me to choose whatever I like from the database of life.  Whatever I choose will form a narrative of my life without the constraints of grammar.

I find this concept to be interesting because I am a child of the twentieth century who is having difficulty with the realities of the new millenium.  I was discussing just recently with one of my cousins our perceptions of life 50 years ago.  We both grew up on subsistence farms.  Our parents grew what we ate, built their own houses and barns, and worked according to the demands of each season.  We were all captives of Manovich’s twentieth century loop, but I am hard pressed to remember anyone who was unhappy with their lives.

As I turn to life in Northern Virginia with its perfectly manicured lawns, I have been struck by how many people have turned their lawn care needs over to professionals who chemically kill weeds and fertilize according to an exact schedule and who use their powerful mowers to cut the grass in about 15 minutes before heading to another lawn.  Homeowners have been liberated from the seasonal requirements of lawn care and are in the twenty-first century navigable space to “do their own thing.”  The interesting thing is trying to find one of these freed persons who is not constantly complaining about their lives.

While I was sitting on the front porch reading Manovich last Friday, a neighbor walked by who had just gotten back from a job interview.  He has just turned 50 and has spent a career in the new media.  He is one of those persons who Professor Cohen described as self-taught, but he has been very successful in marketing his talent to some of the better companies in New York and the DC area.  He is proud of all the companies that have hired him over the years and his ability to meet his salary requirements.  Since I am a retired federal employee with a defined benefit pension, I asked him if all his different jobs meant that he has to self-fund his retirement.  He looked a little puzzled and replied that he and his wife would have to work on retirement after they paid for their son’s college.

Suddenly Manovich was beginning to make more sense to me.  My neighbor has been living in navigable space while I have been caught up in life as a loop.  He chooses data as he sees fit, and I keep worrying about the linear progression of life’s loop from birth to death.

So now I am really confused.  I see the syllabus as a linear progression towards completion of the course and Professor Cohen sees it as a dynamic product that will change as the semester progresses.  Yet, I am still stuck to the calendar.  I know that I will be raking leaves at the same time I am doing my final paper thinking about how to use this navigable space to create a new reality.

My worry is that I will be happier in the old reality of raking leaves while smelling the mustiness of fall and feeling the chill of the air than I will be trying to create a new reality.  Besides, my dog will happily play in the leaves while I am raking, but will sit and look at me with boredom while I am creating the new reality.  Maybe, I should try to create a virtual dog, who would not be caught in the old loop of eating and pooping.  With the virtual dog, no neighbors would be mad that their perfectly manicured lawns had been soiled with dog poop.  Of course, if they put in artificial turf, maybe poop would miraculously disappear and I can keep my twentieth century dog.  But as Manovich says, in the new reality that could seem to happen even though we know it cannot.  Therefore, the virtual dog seems to be the answer.  Now, all I have to do is break the news to my twentieth century dog that there is a new reality that has made him obsolete.

Curtis