which have not received nearly as much attention from historians as the political disputes between the United States and Mexico during this period
This is a good example of how analyzing large amounts of data can give us insight we have not had before.
Thisdecisionallowstheinterfacetomaintainahighlevelofresponsetotheuser’squeriesandquestions,
It is important to keep this in mind when using massive amounts of data to an interface.
since these are eras that were targeted by the initial phases of the Chronicling America project, and therefore are most likely to be overrepresented in that dataset
This is a very important piece of information to know about the data. I wonder what would have happened if they did not know this.
“off the shelf” interface widgets
I wonder if the team considered creating their own widget and would it have been better for the project's goal of being used by outside sources or worse.
We chose not to ignore them because that seemed to artificially increase the level of noise in the corpus, and we wanted to represent as refined—and thus as accurate—a sense of the quality of the corpus as possible
This shows the integrity a digital historian needs to have. It would be easy in large data sets to cut corners.
Stanford’s computer science department)
I find it so interesting that a large number of people involved in the project are computer scientists.
NDNP’s Chronicling Americaprojec
These are the kinds of things we need to start seeing. A universal standard of digitizing will be incredibly useful in moving forward. However would this cause isolation of data that can't match the standard? Would some data be left out?
but at base they attemptto find—and often quantify—meaningful language patterns spread across large bodies of tex
I know that a goal of linguistics is to find all the quantifiable similarities across languages. Using data mining techniques seems like an incredibly useful tool for the field
The age of abundance
The age of abundance. It makes me question what is going to happen in this new age as all these new techniques are coming out. Myself I still find the most reliable sources are printed ones books and journals. Do you think that as we progress further and further into this age of technology in History will there be many who cling to the older methods or will historians and academics see the potentially paradigm shifting benefits of technology. Will we leave something behind moving to technology.
For most of the period the Telegraph and Texas Register was largely incapable of printing Anglo place-names in western Texas
This is an excellent opportunity for digital history. A program that can collect data for the same geographical site even though it has been called different names in the past.
The team’s lack of experience in using Adwords may account for this failure
I think this is a very important part to include in the article as user error in using a tool.
Occupations of Transcribe Bentham user survey respondents
It makes sense that the largest percentage of people are those in acedemia and students. It would be very difficult to make Bentham sexy to anyone not already interesting in history.
we are usually willing to share sources when we are finished with them
This plays well into our course where every final assignment will be a collection of everyones work and annotations the work of a community not a single person. Where in most other classes our work is individual like essays or tests we now are a class developing projects together while developing our individual understanding of digital history.
The instrument of the digital historian, a macroscope, is just as able to obscure the context of violence as it is to highlight that violence
This is something I mentioned in another annotation. I see the Macroscope as a very strong and powerful tool but it can also be dangerous in creating the wrong impressions or flat out being used to futher peoples own biases.
For myself, I will read anew, and use all the tools of big data, of ngrams and power laws; and I will publish the results with graphs, tables and GIS; but I refuse to forget that my object of study, my objective, is an emotional, imaginative and empathetic engagement with Sarah Durrant, and all the people like her.
A powerful conclusion. I think this post touches on many good points about not getting lost in the data and being both distant as millions of words and as close to moles on the skin to the history we are studying and using both to better understand the past
understanding of it was essentially unknowable
I have felt this way studying history for a long time.
that the technology is defining the questions we ask
I do not belive that it is the questions being asked but the way we can answer them. The biggest questions of history have alwasy been what happened followed by why did it happen. Technology helps us better answer those questions not ask new ones
to include other types of readings of other types of data - sound, objects, spaces
This is one of the most exciting things that digital history presents the ability to look at new avenues in history to better understand the past
digital simulcra
I do not know what this means
What this work did was help me balance the scales, help me move between close and far, macro and micro, print and print trade, give me confidence to make strong statements.
I like that he touches on the value of using both micro and macro to create the strongest statement possible.
History writing is concise, precise, and selective: not telling your reader everything you know is central to how we present interpretations of the past
This is a major problem to me for how digital history could be represented incorrectly either by fault or on purpose. Large data sets being broken down into easily understood snipits can lead to biases.
crucial realisation: that is, that the category ‘stationers’ was a big bucket that contained a diverse range of business practice
This is an example for our course about productive failing.
Here is a bigger version of the 1808 map without stationers.
As an Archeologist it is very interesting to create visual display from data sets on a mass scale which could be useful for predicting where artifacts or ruins could be uncovered.
This is the goal of the macroscope: to highlight immediately what often requires careful thought and calculation, sometimes more than is possible for a single person
I see a problem arising where data (which always has the risk of being misinterpreted or misrepresented) can be used incorrectly on a much larger scale.
mired in evidence or lost in the noise
Creating historians who are skilled in both Macro and Micro history is very useful and seems to me like the future of history.
macroscope offers a stark contrast to what has become standard historical practice
I am interested to see this idea expanded upon in this course. The difference between standard practise and our method of developing our understanding.
ANNOTATE THIS PHRASE
I agree to be a nice guy at all times
Shawville Equity
I am sure this will be an exciting read... being from the Ottawa region it will be fun studying something close to home.
updating Facebook, there are exercises designed to introduce you to computing
That would be me.
surveillance capitalism
Was unfamiliar with this term. Googled it and realized doing so is participating in digital history. Neat moment for me.
digital history, unlike ‘regular’ history, is in principle reproducible.
is 'regular' history not also in principle reproducible. There are mountains of reproduced textbooks and historical writings. Am I missing the definition of reproducible?
Value ‘fail’
I think this is an incredibly important part of history in general. Throughout the history of history there have been many failures. It seems to me that with such a grand scale as digital history can achieve the failures can be just as grand.
reading distantly thousands of documents at once
This idea both excites and terrifies me. Seems overwhelming to be able to read thousands of documents but am excited to learn how technology can help us do this.
Is Google changing our historical consciousness
I find this statement particularly interesting since google is such a powerful entity in the study of history.