On realizing you can’t do everything by yourself and that that’s okay

Part I – The Idea

A while ago in my post about edutainment I wondered to myself what kind of video game I would like to play.  In thinking about this I realized that the games that I would most enjoy would play upon imagination and games I played as a child, namely playing pioneers with my sisters and best friend.  A game that would allow me to feel that I was back in time, with realistic circumstances founded in historical research would play upon those simpler games of imagination of my childhood.

For my Digital History course we were given the task of creating some sort of digital history project where the ideas were more important that the outcome.  I eventually returned to this idea of a game that would allow me to relive even a small piece of someone from the past’s life.

I knew from the outset that I would not be doing any animation or 3D world building.  I did not have the skills, time, or desire to do this.  But, I wasn’t letting go of the idea of creating some sort of game.  I hummed and hawed about an app for a while, but ultimately decided on a text based game a la choose your own adventure.  And I wanted the subject matter to be about the language of the fan in Victorian times.

While there is debate over how widely accepted a standard series fan motions to communicate words or phrases is, it is an interesting jumping off point to discuss the rigid social structure and rules of engagement that were Victorian life for the rising middle class and beyond.

Part II – The Ambition

How would I go about making this a reality? Of course that would be simple, I would program it.  Throwing caution to the wind I decided that it really couldn’t be that difficult to learn a new programming language (or really any programming language given that basic html in grade 9 really hadn’t stuck).

The approach seemed simple enough.  The game would be set in the Victorian period and the main character would be the daughter of an aristocrat.  The character would employ some language of the fan to attempt to win over the heart of one of three men at a ball.  The game might not do anything for feminism, but it seemed like good harmless fun and besides, it was set in the Victorian period and I take huge issues with presentism.

There was a catch, I am not a computer programmer.

Part III – The Realization

Time passed an I got a book on the programming language of my choice …For Dummies.  I worked my way through a chunk of it but didn’t see how I could take what I was learning in the book and turn it into the finished project that I was envisioning.  Some things I realized during this process

1. Computers and only intuitive because people have dedicated their lives, or at least significant parts of their lives to writing codes and programming anticipating what humans will want to do/know and presenting it to the computer in a way that it can understand.
2. I probably should have taken a computer science course or two in my undergrad (but English electives were so much more appealing).
3. I am very stubborn.

I knew that there were programs that other people had created that would allow me to plug in my information and create a game, but I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

Part IV – Regrouping

In a class we learned about processing.org.  It describes itself as:

“a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts. Since 2001, Processing has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. There are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning and prototyping.”

Through Processing I could take existing codes that people had put out into the world as open source and adapt them to my needs.  This was a good compromise! I would still be doing some coding, which was my main goal of the project but would actually be able to present a functioning project. Low and behold I found a code that would work, an old Atari code that someone else had altered, and who knows who else had altered it before that.

Some more things I learned:

1. There is no spell check and when I type I tend to mix up letters resulting in nonsense in the text of my game.
2. I wish I had a bigger computer screen, coding in the program was an incredibly small font.
3. Existing codes are somewhat limiting, at least for a novice like me, but I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did without it.

But I did it and it worked.  It may not be super sleek, but it works. I’m still trying to figure out how to get images to properly display but it is a labour of love.

Part V – I Made a Thing

I am proud of my game, but more importantly I am proud of me.  I committed to something challenging and tried to lean a new skill when I could have done something that came more naturally to me.  I realized that I would not be able to do it all on my own and that that was okay. I re-grouped and found a way to make something that would work while still trying something new.

This project ultimately served as a lesson that public history cannot happen in a bubble.  Public Historians need to work with all kinds of people with different skills and talents to bring history to life.  There are some things that we can do by ourselves, and it is good to challenge ourselves to try and learn new things, but we are not and should not be experts in everything.  Knowing when to ask for help or find a new way to accomplish an idea or goal is part of being successful in anything.

I Recorded a Podcast Episode!

So here’s a funny thing.  Last week I sat in a small enclosed space and talked to myself for 35 minutes.  The results of these efforts is a 21 minute podcast episode on the Walt Disney Company in the 1940s and you get to listen to it.

The episode was for part of the course requirements for by Digital History course.  Everyone in the course will be producing, editing, and uploading an episode for our podcast; Hearty History, and the topics are as varied as the people in Digital History (way more diverse than you might think).

Enjoy!

 

Adam Ruins Everything (except maybe history)

Spend more than 10 minutes on Facebook and you will be familiar with CollegeHumor.   CollegeHumor is pretty much your run of the mill clickbait entertainment news site specializing in 1990s nostalgia.  On any given log-in to Facebook I will be bombarded with likes and shares of CollegeHumor content on my newsfeed.

Click-bait and I have a love hate relationship.  My lofty 2015 New Years goal; #noclickbait2015 has largely failed.

Most of what CollegeHumor and similar sites like Upworthy and Dose do is attempt to create viral content.  This means that the articles and quizzes that they make are specifically designed to make you click on them.  If you have ever clicked on an article that read “10 reasons to never buy lettuce again”, “She went into the attic, what happened next will…”, or anything similar you have proven that clickbait works.

Scanning through my newsfeed finding out who had gotten engaged, broken up, got pregnant, had a baby, was backpacking through South East Asia, etc… I was surprised to see a CollegeHumor link to a video released by their sub-section Adam Ruins Everything.  Note that Adam Ruins Everything also appears on truTV.

This was the video: How Listerine Created Bad Breath.

Now, I happened to already know the story of Listerine and the invention of halitosis.  Regardless, it was a well informed and engaging video and if you didn’t know the history of the Listerine company this would be a perfectly acceptable way of learning it.  What was most impressive to me is what happens in the top right hand corner of the screen.  If you weren’t looking you wouldn’t notice it, but for every fact that Adam tells us about Listerine a citation appears stating his source.

Throughout my University education I have come across some people who say that history related content created on YouTube and through clickbait articles etc… is not real history.  There seems to be this belief that the public is unable to determine what is true from what is false when it comes to history.  And for some people this is probably true.  However, if historians want people to be interested in history I think that they need to meet people where they are.  Academic Journals are all fine and dandy but they do not have a wide readership.  The same goes for books published by university presses.

Public History as a discipline would not exist if we did not want the public to engage with and question history.  The challenge with history is getting people interested enough to go into the museum, click on the article, watch the video, or read the interpretive plaque.  None of these mediums is the be all and end all of history.  A good public historian finds ways to present the history that they are passionate about, or that they have been hired to present in ways that are entertaining and engaging for people.

If I were to sit you down and say, “I’d like to talk to you about the history of Listerine” you probably wouldn’t be very interested.  However, if I showed you this video you would probably find it funny, entertaining, and informative.  THAT’S THE POINT OF PUBLIC HISTORY, and that is the point of Adam Ruins Everything.

If you enjoyed the Listerine video check out this one on engagement rings.

So no one told you life was gonna be this way…Friends and 9/11

Over the past few weeks I have been marathoning the sitcom Friends.  Unlike many people this was my first time watching the show.  Watching the 10 seasons, over ten years after the final season aired, I wonder about my reaction compared to someone watching it during its initial run.

Because of Netflix, in a matter of weeks I was watched a television show in its entirety that captured its demographic for 10 years.  While I can watch this material I will never have the same experience with it as those who followed the show while it was still on the air.  Not only is there the waiting each week and in-between seasons, and mid season breaks, but there is also the context under which the viewers were watching Friends.  

http://giphy.com/search/friends-turkey

This was particularly apparent to me during the season which aired in 2001.  In the Friends theme song and scene cuts the New York cityscape is heavily featured, as were the World Trade Centres.

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/ss/friends-at-20-20-incredibly-dated-things-1411089132-slideshow/photo-friends-at-20-20-incredibly-dated-things-photo-1411089115132.html#

Season 8 of Friends aired in the aftermath of 9/11.  The first episode; “The one after ‘I do'” there is a dedication at the end of the episode “To the People of New York”.  In addition to this, from season 8 onward different areas of the New York cityscape are featured.Watching the series I was interested in seeing how the characters would react to 9/11 and their life in the aftermath, especially as the show is set in New York.  When season 8 finally rolled around I was surprised to find out that it was not addressed by the characters at all.  I am not sure exactly what I was expecting but at the very least I expected the characters to have some reaction to the events of 9/11.  Watching this 14 years after 9/11 I really expected that they would, but maybe I shouldn’t have.

I was placing by 2015 lens on a television show from 2001.  I was expecting the show to address the events of 9/11 in a thoughtful and gentle manner through its characters who were do doubt affected by it and the show didn’t do that.  Friends carried on it’s characters day to day lives as if everything was normal.  In the aftermath of 9/11 Friends provided an escape from its viewers current reality.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200892/How-9-11-memorial-cost-700million-build-needs-1million-week-run.html

9-11 had prominent effects across television.  Broadcasting the World Trade Centres and the aftermath of 9/11 was the longest uninterrupted news broadcast in US history, lasting 93 hours.  In film and television numerous projects were put on hold, delayed and many were altered either by removing reference to the World Trade Centres and the events of 9/11 or directly addressing it.

In season 8, episode 3 of Friends, which aired two weeks after 9/11, a scene was removed and re-written.  *SPOILER ALERT* In the original scene Chandler makes a joke about a sign regarding bombs in airports.  The re-written scene features Monica and Chandler in competition with another couple.  

Was it Friends’ job to address 9/11?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that while television and film offer insight into what interested and entertained people in the past, what they address is just as interesting as what they do not address, whether that be politics, world events, or social reform, etc…

Why I’m not ready for Augmented Reality

For a while now I have felt like I am becoming a part of a futuristic society.  October 21, 2015, the day that Marty McFly traveled into the future has now come and gone.  During this time the internet was flooded with clickbait and other articles about how right or wrong “Back to The Future II” was.  Nike is releasing self lacing shoes and video conferencing and Skype are not new to us, and it seems like there are more 3-D movies out there than non 3-D movies.  The future is as exciting as it is scary to me.

http://screenfish.net/back-to-the-future-2015-the-future-is-history/

Granted, I am not aware of all of the technological advancements and experimentation that is happening in the world, nor do I want to be.  For myself, ignorance is bliss.  It is one thing to read about the future, it is quite another to watch it happen around you.  I think where my main fears of the future come from is wrapped up in dystopian novels and films.  I have long been a fan of the dystopian genre, from Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Huxley’s Brave New World and of course Orwell’s 1984.  Dystopian novels have seen a recent resurgence in popularity, especially among young adult authors with The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Maze Runner series by James Dashner, and the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth to name a few.

http://librarianwhodoesntsayshhh.com/2014/07/05/extra-credit-dystopian-novels/

The thing about dystopian novels is that they represent a fallen society.  They are intended to illustrate that idea that there can never be a perfect world or utopia.  This is because utopia is in the eye of the beholder.  Thus, one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.  They are intended to be a commentary on then contemporary issues.  What is most worrisome for me about the dystopian genre is that the more recent additions, such as the Hunger Games have been marketed as post apocalyptic fiction.  While this may seem like merely an issue of semantics, for me it represents something much more serious.  The term post-apocalyptic suggests that the novel takes place in our world, but in a version of our world created after some type of disaster that it is distinctly ‘other’ than the world that we live in.  While dystopia is the antonym to utopia, meaning an ideal or perfect society, as coined by Sir. Thomas Moore in his political treatise “Utopia”.  Thus, dystopia is a flawed utopia or imperfect society.  By it’s definition it is inherently closer related to the real world (not that I think we live in a utopia) than the post apocalyptic genre.

What, if anything, does this have to do with Augmented Reality?  I think that the language that we use to describe alternate/futuristic realities affects how we view our own world.  Time and time again we have seen technology develop faster than the ethics, laws, and best practices around it can, thereby alienating certain rights and freedoms.  I guess that the long and short of it is that I am scared of the potential that augmented reality has without regulated checks and balances to support it.

http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/google-glass.jpeg

I do not want people to be able to walk down the street, look at me and have a piece of technology bring up a search results of everything that I have posted online (not that i’m a cyber bully or anything) or view my criminal record (not that I have one of those either).  The failure of google glasses suggests that I am not the only one.  I also don’t feel like the government or any other organization should have the right to record my every move, who I talk to, what I say, and where I go.  It is way to Stasi in East Germany but with better technology for me.

Records of the Stasi found after the fall of communism in East Germany. http://www.shardcore.org/shardpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/gdr-stasi-museum-leipzig-2010-10.jpg

Former Stasi headquarters, now Stasi Museum in Berlin, Germany. http://berlin-germany.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/stasi-headquarters-berlin1.jpg

I know that I am being paranoid, and that augmented reality is quickly entering the trough of disillusionment when it comes to its support.  It is a classic case of “if this technology falls into the wrong hands…”.  When we read dystopian literature, the comfort is that it is not your world and has one of two effects;

1) It enables you to view your world with a refreshed perspective realizing that things are not as dire as you perhaps thought,

2) You see elements of the dystopian world in your own world.

Augmented reality does not have to be a terrifying and scary thing.  It has some incredible applications that I would suggest are on the whole positive, preserving or recreating un-savable historic buildings and sites for example.  It can have positive impact in various fields; mechanics, construction, medicine, and military.  Because of this, I think that we cannot underestimate the power that this technology has.  I’m probably imagining an impossible future, that would predict the legal issues of technology and solve them without impeding technological development.  However, in a world where these intuitive legal solutions and regulations do not exist, I am very cautious of technology like Augmented Reality.

I know that it is not necessarily logical to suggest that I can be concerned about the future based on what I read in dystopian literature.  I realize that that is quite non-sensical, however, this post is about why I am not ready for augmented reality, and it is the elements of dystopian literature that I see reflected in our past and present that make me question the future of augmented reality.

Edutainment

As children my sisters and I spent our summers playing pioneers.  We dressed in prairie dresses and moccasins or bare feet and ran around our backyard.  Our log cabin was our tree house.  The “historical” nature of our play was largely informed through the Little House book series written by Laura Ingalls Wilder which served as our source material.

I have been thinking a lot over the past two weeks about edutainment.  Incase you are unaware, edutainment is a combination of the words education and entertainment.  Thus, the word edutainment means, entertainment, such as through games, films, or shows that is designed to teach you something.  Recently in Digital History we have been discussing history games, specifically computer and video games.

I did not grow up playing video games.  The first gaming console (and only) that my family ever owned was a Wii.  My interactions with it are largely limited to Mariokart, WiiSports, Just Dance, and Guitar Hero.  I have never played a war themed game and probably never will.  However, I do see the value of teaching/introducing history and historic themes through video games.  This is mainly because I am a huge proponent of meeting people where their interests lay when it comes to history.

I am interested in the idea of digital games.  Even though the majority of games with a historical foundation are war games I think that there is opportunity for non-war games.

While we did not have video games growing up, we did play computer games.  My favorites included; the Harry Potter series, Nancy Drew mysteries, Sim Farm, and Theme Hospital.  If there were history based games set in worlds like this, those would be the games I would be interested in playing.  A series of mysteries/tasks as a servant of King Louis XVI in which you get to wander through a digital Versailles, or other games along this vein would be of interest, at least to me.  One of the things that I liked the most about the later Harry Potter games was that they recreated the world of Harry Potter in the films.  You were able to explore this place in the virtual world, and it was almost as if you were really there.  This is what would attract me to a history game, the ability to wander through a world such as Versailles that you may or may not have visited before.

I suppose that what I am really wanting here is google streetview to the next level, inside buildings, and with quests.  I am sure that this type of video game would not attract everyone, but neither do first person shooter games.  As we get older, unfortunately, our imagination is not as good as it used to be.  Those pioneer worlds that I created with my sisters in our backyard in the summer and our basement in the winter are more difficult to render.  However, a video game that imitated play and the real world would be something that I would like to see.

A prime example of imagination at work

Active and Activist History; Using History to Inform Change

This past weekend I attended the New Directions in Active History conference at Huron College in London, Ontario.  A few take-aways from that conference include understanding that the best way to engage people in history is to start where they are.  Start with the things that they are interested in, then, and only then, will you have a hope of taking the public and wider communities to a place of deeper meaning and discovery within history.  Another thing that struck me was the idea that history can be used to evoke social change.

Hands down, my favorite panel was titled “Government, Policy, and Active History”.  Some key understandings from this panel were that history can help to inform change in public policy, however the way that history is written and used within Government is inherently different than ‘history for history’s sake’ as is often the case with academic history.  Another key understanding is the difference between historical research done to explore a broad theme and historical research done to answer specific questions, and to support a specific desired change.

An example that was provided was inspired off of a recent Maclean’s article “A real nation would not let this happen” by Scott Gilmore @Scott_Gilmore.  It was suggested that often within the public space we identify a desired solution without fully taking the time to understand, as fully as we are able, those things in the past that have lead us to identify a current situation as problematic.  What I mean to say is that we may have a desired solution, for example, to lower the poverty rate in Canada by X%.  However, it is impossible to find solutions and develop policy and programs to enable this desired change without first understanding the multifaceted issues that have led to the rate of Canadians living in poverty in the first place.  I will note that this is not a critique on Gilmore’s work, but rather an observation on how pervasive history is in all of our lives and the responsibility that we have to all of our histories.

As I sit here reflecting on the conference I find myself really focusing on different reasons why history is used, or why it should be used.  Can history answer a specific question that has already been identified?  What will the reaction be if the historical conclusions to not support a desired outcome?  Can we make a promise, for example, campaigning to decrease national debt by X% over 4 years, without determining those factors that have led to increased national debt, past efforts that were taken to decrease national debt, whether or not they worked, and the circumstances around these efforts that may have led to their success or failure?  History, of course, is not an exact science, and we should not try to make it one.  However, it seems that history can and should play an important role in evoking social and political change.

For our course on Digital History this past week we were challenged to work with OMECA website building or developing timelines.  Without any real purpose I began a timeline on the history of orca whale captivity.  Now I am wondering whether active history has a role in activism.  Will my timeline, which is still a work in progress, end orca whale captivity? Of course not.  If countless OSHA reports, research, and the film “Blackfish” which reached an unprecedented viewership, my little timeline won’t.  However, that does not mean that my timeline was not worthwhile.

It looks all the way back to the 8th century and attempts to inform how humans created a world that would allow and support orca captivity in the first place.  Coming off of the Active History conference, I have a new found understanding of the potential value of history for everyone and everything on this earth and beyond.  Only by understanding the historical framework that led to a current state (and of course a lot of other things that other professions do have an essential role to play too), can we hope to fully and permanently solve problems, right wrongs, and undo injustices.

Millennials in Museums?

Museums and historic sites are challenged with bringing in new visitors, new visitor demographics, and return visitors (especially through subscriptions).  The desire to access a younger demographic, millennials, as patronage to replace aging baby boomers is at the forefront of staff meetings and board meetings in many museums and historic sites.  However, as a millennial myself I can say that many of  the tactics currently being employed aren’t really working.

It is not just museums and historic sites hitting this stumbling block, corporations everywhere are challenged by this.  Millennials like myself may not be able to tell you what works, but they will be quick to tell you what doesn’t work.   For example the twitter handle @brandssayingbae is dedicated to posting the fails of organizations and corporations attempting to reach the millennial demographic.

It’s not that millennials couldn’t like museums, rather museums are losing the fight vying for millennials valuable free time. In this fight the digital world with all its instant gratification is currently the frontrunner.   However, reducing the digital space to a place for sharing cat videos and prank videos is seriously underestimating its power.  Museums and the digital space do not have to be separate, rather they must become intertwined.  I don’t exactly know what that would look like, but I have a few ideas.

If we buy into the belief that millennials have incredibly short attention spans, that they cannot be bothered to pay attention to things that really matter, are too absorbed in “Big Brother and “Keeping Up With The Kardashians”, and whose social and political outrage is little more than slacktivism, can we not also believe this?  Millennials are a generation that is increasingly overeducated for the jobs that they are performing.  In seeking out the education that they need for competitive edge in the job market millennials have incurred incredible debt.

Allow me to make a generalization here.  Museums, your next generation of patrons have crippling student debt.  Hand in hand with this debt comes perhaps numerous degrees, diplomas, and certificates.  If we are to generalize and say that education, as proved by a piece of paper, coincides with intellect, then this generation is largely unfulfilled with their 9-5’s.

Perhaps museums could access the millennial demographic not by pandering to cheap social media tricks like cat videos, memes, and clickbait, but by challenging the unharnessed intellect of these individuals. Why not create spaces for millennials to come together to think, learn, question, and engage in meaningful ways?  Create spaces, whether physical or digital, for millennials (and anyone else) to contribute to the future of museums in ways that they can and you may be surprised with what they come up with.  A space where people are accepted as they are and are welcome to explore, ask questions, and share ideas without feeling intimidated by the assumed exclusive nature of the museum space.  Ask the right questions and you may come away from a ‘millennials in the museum’ experience having learned as much as they have.   The best way to know a millennial is to meet a millennial.

Art and the content of museums was once reserved for the upper class intellectuals of the world.  However, as time has passed education has spread to the masses and this is no longer the case.  What was once intellectual salon culture must become popular culture and must be explained in ways that millennials will be able to identify with and draw comparisons to what they see in their own world today.

I’ll wrap up this post saying that I think that there are some great things happening in the museum world, like MuseumHack and many other initiatives.  However, millennials, like the generations before them, are a force to be reckoned with.  Just as generations before the millennials resisted the ways of previous generations millennials too are resistant to the older generations telling them how to visit museums.

To give you one idea of accessing millennials on their own terms, check out this video about MuseumHack.

An Introduction

A little about myself.  My name is Alison Nagy (pronounced NUDGE, hence the user name), I was awarded a BA in History, minor in English from the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, in 2014.  I am now a graduate student at Western University in London, Ontario in the Public History program.  This blog has initially been started to fulfill a component for one of my classes, 9808a; Digital History.  Here I will muse upon various topics in the Digital History and Public History worlds. I’m keeping that direction pretty open at this point as only time will tell what roads, highways, and dark alleys my brain will lead us down.

You should probably know that I love to travel, and backpacking across Europe, the United Kingdom, and Ireland has been one of the highlights of the past year for me.  As a side note to these adventures I did kiss that Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle (as pictured) so I have officially been bestowed with the gift of eloquence (though we will call it the gift of the gab so that I am not creating too high expectations).

I decided to apply into the Public History program at Western University after stumbling across the page while trying to navigate to the Masters of Library and Information Studies webpage, and what a happy day that was.  Since realizing that Public History was ‘a thing’, everything that I had been doing with my life seemed to make sense and fall into place, almost as if I had been subconsciously preparing myself for Public History for years, which, I suppose, I was.

My personal experience and work within Public History has mainly been in museums and historic parks and within this mainly on the interpretation and management of interpretation side of things through Saskatchewan Parks, specifically Cannington Manor Provincial Historic Park.  As for digital history, I have had some experience with this, mainly through creating a couple short documentaries from start to finish for Saskatchewan’s Historic Parks including Cannington Manor and Wood Mountain Post Provincial Historic Parks.  I had access to some pretty basic equipment for these projects so I am quite looking forward to the opportunities we have to work with a variety of technologies in this course.