History 513 2007-08 08. Links, Hypertext and Spidering

7 Nov 2007

Nothing could be more clear than the fact that the web is built from links, from “small pieces loosely joined” in David Weinberger’s phrase. This network structure has implications for the ways that we present history and cite sources, the ways others find and consume our historical work, and the ways that careers are made (or not).

Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail,” Wired 12, no. 10 (Oct 2004).

David, Shay and Trevor Pinch. “Six Degrees of Reputation: The Use and Abuse of Online Review and Recommendation Systems,” First Monday 11, no. 3 (Mar 2006).

Graham, Paul. “A Plan for Spam,” (Aug 2002).

Metamend. “Search Engine Bots,” (2007).

Robertson, Stephen. “Doing History in Hypertext,” Journal of the Association for History and Computing 7, no. 2 (Aug 2004).

Shirky, Clay. “Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality,” Clay Shirky’s Writings about the Internet (10 Feb 2003).

Barabási, A.-L. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002.

Loban, Bryn. “Between Rhizomes and Trees: P2P Information Systems,” First Monday 9, no. 10 (Oct 2004).

Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Multivariant Narratives,” in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Easy. Experiment with network interfaces. The McCord Museum uses a concept network interface designed by Thinkmap to allow users to explore related artifacts. Work with the interface for a while and then look at other examples of network visualizations on the Visual Complexity website. How might interfaces like these help us to understand the past in new ways? What might be some advantages or disadvantages to thinking in these terms?