The future of History

When looking into the future of any discipline, questions about how that genre will change and adapt inevitably come up. Even questions about whether that discipline will be necessary are viable; except when dealing with the discipline of history. History is the one pursuit that is absolutely "future-proof". We will always be interested in what came before, to inform where we are, to inform where we're going. The only thing that will definitely change about the way we practice history is the method. Even now, internet technologies are having more and more of an effect on our methods. Any question about history? Wikipedia. Looking to do some quick yet completely credible research? Zotero or JStor.  Looking for an accurate map of any area on the globe from hundreds to even thousands of years ago? GoogleEarth has just developed a software that allows you to go back in time and see London how it would really have looked (based on on-site research by historians) in Shakespeare's day. The blogs that I'm following span the gamut from amateur to professional, providing valuable information at instant access. Almost gone are the days of poring over dusty tomes in some off-the-path library. The only thing that remains to be seen is how this new level of accessibility affects the study of history by people other than professionals. Now that it's easier, and more electronic, is it cooler? History will always be around. The question is in what form? 

Paper #4: The tool in Total

Part One:
Hey there folks.

I have found a fun new tool that I'd like to share with you, pretty much because I am very excited about it. It's called VoiceThread, and it's quite a unique website in terms of what it allows you to do. It allows users to post photos, or groups of photos, videos, mp3's, songs etc and then allows other users to comment on those posts in one or many of five different methods. You can use a microphone, you can type, you can call in, you can record your own audio file or you can use a webcam. You can make your threads public or private, restricting access to a certain group of your friends or family, or it applicable, students. It is extremely cool, and very hands on. Unlike sites like YouTube that also support video uploads and commenting, VoiceThread is specifically designed to support collaboration, sharing and awareness of the fact that the project you're working on is a group effort.

It was created in 2005 by two guys, Steve Muth and Ben Papell, and according to an interview conducted by a blogger who calls himself Mr. Media, the idea was very different when it first sprang to their heads. A few of my favorite highlights from that interview (which unlike your traditional radio interview was quite long) had to do with their original intentions for VoiceThread. They were not trying to make money. To that end, a very useful version of their service is available for absolutely no money. They wanted to create something that would actually be useful and fun to use, rather than something that would get them notoriety and prove a distraction for people using it. They also wanted to be of most use to educators, a characteristic that seems to be lacking in modern commercial production.

My most favorite feature of VoiceThread, though, is that it really is fun to use. The ability to doodle right on the image, as well as comment on it through text and voice makes it interactive, irreverent and very memorable.

Part Two:
I just realized that it my zeal over VoiceThread I totally forgot to mention how it has any applicability to you guys. We are pretty fortunate in that respect, though, because VoiceThread just happens to be a tool that might be quite useful to the professional or amateur historian or the teacher. The site was mostly designed with teachers in mind, actually. Steve Muth, one of the creators said in an interview about the site that the question creators must pose when they have a new idea on their hands is "Whose life does it change?" On whom will it have the most palpable and lasting effect? For VoiceThread, the answer turns out to be educators.

Even if you aren't a teacher, though, VoiceThread can be helpful. One of the most important elements of any historical analysis is examination of physical evidence, like photographs, documents, etc. With VoiceThread, not only can you put these items in a forum that makes it easy to access and store them, but you can invite peers and fellow practitioners to comment on them with ideas, critiques and interpretations. You can create a community of peers simply by uploading your content and making it available to those people. The myriad number of ways to interact with the material helps ensure that everyone will find a medium conducive to expressing their views. Even the visual format of the site supports collaboration. Comments aren't posted simply as a vertical list, but instead in a circle around the item being examined, enhancing the feel of a roundtable discussion or forum rather than a lecture hall where there is only one right answer.

To come back, VoiceThread effectively opens up the historical community to itself, helping to decrease the isolation and the occasional bookworm-ishness we are all subject to.

Part Three:
A new tool is rather useless without some sense of it's current place in the Web 2.0 world. This post will hopefully give you some kind of insight into who is using VoiceThread, what they're doing with it, what people think of it, some of it's limitations (of which, honestly, I can't find many) and then an example of a VoiceThread in action.

In terms of who has already found VoiceThread, the company seems to be very good. They have been featured in a few national newspapers, including the St. Petersburg Times in Russia earlier this year. They won an annual Webware award in 2008 for one of the 100 best apps. Their category was video uploading/sharing/editing/animation. The site has also received nothing but rave reviews from educational sites as well as business sites hoping to help their clients rev up presentations. I have to make a presentation in just a few days here, and I've hit upon the rather obvious idea to use VoiceThread to create my presentation and then just let it play itself when the time comes. I'm especially excited about this idea because VoiceThread can create so much more than a PowerPoint kind of slide reel. The site is capable of creating animations. Since it records every action that you take, you can choose to play back a series of actions in order while the thread is running underneath them as it had been. You can then watch a short movie almost of what you've done over that past however many minutes of interaction with the thread. This is going to make for a different, almost character driven presentation that will much more effectively hold my audience's attention.

Steve Muth and Ben Papell said themselves, though, that VoiceThread is far more of a hands on tool than something you can just be told about. So in the next post is a link to my very own VoiceThread on Shakespeare... please feel free to comment on it, doodle, and record laughter and questions. That is, after all, the whole point. :-)

My VoiceThread

Here it is! 

I'm still messing around with the website, but take a look. :-) 

It was a lot of fun to make. You should try it! 

The cool new tool... reviewed

A new tool is rather useless without some sense of it's current place in the Web 2.0 world. This post will hopefully give you some kind of insight into who is using VoiceThread, what they're doing with it, what people think of it, some of it's limitations (of which, honestly, I can't find many) and then an example of a VoiceThread in action. 

In terms of who has already found VoiceThread, the company seems to be very good. They have been featured in a few national newspapers, including the St. Petersburg Times in Russia earlier this year. They won an annual Webware award in 2008 for one of the 100 best apps. Their category was video uploading/sharing/editing/animation.  The site has also received nothing but rave reviews from educational sites as well as business sites hoping to help their clients rev up presentations. I have to make a presentation in just a few days here, and I've hit upon the rather obvious idea to use VoiceThread to create my presentation and then just let it play itself when the time comes. I'm especially excited about this idea because VoiceThread can create so much more than a PowerPoint kind of slide reel. The site is capable of creating animations. Since it records every action that you take, you can choose to play back a series of actions in order while the thread is running underneath them as it had been. You can then watch a short movie almost of what you've done over that past however many minutes of interaction with the thread. This is going to make for a different, almost character driven presentation that will much more effectively hold my audience's attention. 

Steve Muth and Ben Papell said themselves, though, that VoiceThread is far more of a hands on tool than something you can just be told about. So in the next post is a link to my very own VoiceThread on Shakespeare... please feel free to comment on it, doodle, and record laughter and questions. That is, after all, the whole point. :-) 

A cool new tool... and you...

I just realized that it my zeal over VoiceThread I totally forgot to mention how it has any applicability to you guys. We are pretty fortunate in that respect, though, because VoiceThread just happens to be a tool that might be quite useful to the professional or amateur historian or the teacher. The site was mostly designed with teachers in mind, actually. Steve Muth, one of the creators said in an interview about the site that the question creators must pose when they have a new idea on their hands is "Whose life does it change?" On whom will it have the most palpable and lasting effect? For VoiceThread, the answer turns out to be educators. 

Even if you aren't a teacher, though, VoiceThread can be helpful. One of the most important elements of any historical analysis is examination of physical evidence, like photographs, documents, etc. With VoiceThread, not only can you put these items in a forum that makes it easy to access and store them, but you can invite peers and fellow practitioners to comment on them with ideas, critiques and interpretations. You can create a community of peers simply by uploading your content and making it available to those people. The myriad number of ways to interact with the material helps ensure that everyone will find a medium conducive to expressing their views. Even the visual format of the site supports collaboration. Comments aren't posted simply as a vertical list, but instead in a circle around the item being examined, enhancing the feel of a roundtable discussion or forum rather than a lecture hall where there is only one right answer. 

To come back, VoiceThread effectively opens up the historical community to itself, helping to decrease the isolation and the occasional bookworm-ishness we are all subject to. 

A cool new tool... hey that rhymes...

Hey there folks. 

I have found a fun new tool that I'd like to share with you, pretty much because I am very excited about it. It's called VoiceThread, and it's quite a unique website in terms of what it allows you to do. It allows users to post photos, or groups of photos, videos, mp3's, songs etc and then allows other users to comment on those posts in one or many of five different methods. You can use a microphone, you can type, you can call in, you can record your own audio file or you can use a webcam. You can make your threads public or private, restricting access to a certain group of your friends or family, or it applicable, students. It is extremely cool, and very hands on. Unlike sites like YouTube that also support video uploads and commenting, VoiceThread is specifically designed to support collaboration, sharing and awareness of the fact that the project you're working on is a group effort. 

It was created in 2005 by two guys, Steve Muth and Ben Papell, and according to an interview conducted by a blogger who calls himself Mr. Media, the idea was very different when it first sprang to their heads. A few of my favorite highlights from that interview (which unlike your traditional radio interview was quite long) had to do with their original intentions for VoiceThread. They were not trying to make money. To that end, a very useful version of their service is available for absolutely no money. They wanted to create something that would actually be useful and fun to use, rather than something that would get them notoriety and prove a distraction for people using it. They also wanted to be of most use to educators, a characteristic that seems to be lacking in modern commercial production. 

My most favorite feature of VoiceThread, though, is that it really is fun to use. The ability to doodle right on the image, as well as comment on it through text and voice makes it interactive, irreverent and very memorable. 

Great Britain and Our Civil War!

The history of the Civil War is one that most Americans can pretty much get in a basic sketch. The South had multiple reasons for secession and formation of the Confederacy, most notable among them being the lifestyle and the income afforded by that "peculiar institution" of slavery. The North, wanting to do away with slavery but more importantly to preserve the Union of the States intact, took up arms and the War began. Most Americans also know that the war had a few twists and turns, a few close calls and very frightening "as ifs." Somewhere in the middle, the tide finally turned towards the favor of the North, Jefferson Davis' Confederacy was defeated and the rest is history. But there was a third party involved in the American Civil War: The British. The English government, still sore over losing the United States as a colony less than 100 years ago remained interested in regaining whatever influence and revenue possible for them. So, when the Confederate government approached them asking for naval, economic and materiale assistance against the North, it was a hard time for the spies and diplomats of the North to dissuade the British from entering the war on the side of the slave-holders. We came very close to that eventuality. It was only Lincoln's skilled diplomacy and some very lucky wins for the Union that kept us from being a slave nation to this day. Interesting fact, huh? 

The argument up until me...

The argument about the effect of the atomic bomb on American culture in the early years of the Cold War is something that has been extensively written on. I think one of the reasons for that is that the effects are so far-reaching and so obvious that they should be simple to dissect. But they aren't. The atomic bomb affected us in every way we could imagine, and some that we haven't imagined yet, necessitating a continual production of literature and research on the topic. There is a political pool of research, culminating in work like that of Spencer Weart and Allan Winkler. These two men have taken very different views of the possibilities of the atom. Weart's book, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images takes a negative view, looking at nuclear secrecy and visual representations of the bomb and nuclear energy as dangerous things. Allan Winkler takes the opposite view, looking at peaceful applications of the atom and nuclear energy. Each one of these authors makes valid points, and there is no reason that both of them can't be seriously considered. That would be the root of the problem, though. There is no one answer, no right path to pursue when questioning the effect of the atomic bomb. Elaine Tyler May has gone in yet another direction by connecting the bomb to an increase in the sexualization and objectification of American women in her book Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era.  She has one illustration that was published in a nuclear safety handbook illustrating the three deadly types of radiation given off by a nuclear blast. They are alpha, beta and gamma and in the illustration, they all appear as drunken prom queens with the name of their radiation type printed on wilted sashes across their chests. Her book also connects effectively with the intense standardization we see in gender roles in this period; at least the gender roles that were distributed through propagandist media sources. John Hersey' s book Hiroshima is also an excellent place to look for the elements of guilt and the Japanese perspective on the bomb. 

Back to nuclear history ...

So. In comparing the book and the movie versions of Nevil Shute's On The Beach, I realized that I was making some pretty interesting implications about American culture in general and the way we deal with conflict. If we say that conflict results in several cultural symptoms like presentation of a united front and psychosocial standardization, then the American past becomes unbelievably checkered with mini-wars. The Cold War was only cold in the sense that it didn't involve smoking gun barrels. The distribution of propaganda, as we can see through the changes made to Shute's novel in the movie version, absolutely insisted on a closed cultural front presented to anyone watching from the outside. This mini-war, this cultural war, was just as damaging to healthy national growth as any hot war would have been, but in ways that are harder to pinpoint as bad. It would be an interesting line of research to see how these mini-wars have carried through our culture. I think we might find that we still act as though we're in one. 

Mighty Mo!

Ok, ladies and gents. Here is one of my all-time favorite history stories, and it just so happens that it happened to me. I was in Hawaii presenting a paper I wrote at a history conference in Waikiki. I got to the island a little early and stayed a little after my presentation to do some sightseeing, namely to the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor and the USS Missouri. The USS Missouri was by far the more fun (if not the more affecting) of the two. Our tour guide had brought us around the whole ship in fine style, making jokes, making us all comfortable and generally having a really wonderful time. We finally arrived at le piece de resistance, a gold medallion set into the deck that marked the exact spot where the Emperor of Japan signed the surrender after the Second World War. So here we are, reveling in the history, having our first moment of silence and solemnity in an hour and a half of touring and we all hear this voice. A tiny, screechy voice with a heavy New York accent saying, "Excuse me, mister tour guide, why is there a TV in the captain's room? I am absolutely sure they didn't have THOSE things back in 1945! This boat isn't even right!" I turned around slowly, on behalf of my whole tour group. Our guide was a little too dumbfounded to respond. "Actually, miss," I started, "the TV was probably added in the 1980's when Reagan had the ship refitted as part of his 600-ship navy plan. It was added. It wasn't here originally. So...yeah." She just stood there staring at me. And the approval of my tour group, and my tour guide was palpable. Good times aboard shit, mateys. :-)  

The TOPOI

Ok, I have a confession to make. 

The topic I wrote about in my previous post was not quite so simply arrived at as it may have seemed. In fact, i struggled for a while to figure out how exactly i wanted to attack the cultural issues I was seeing, wondering how I was going to unpack them and make them accessible to people who weren't necessarily thinking the way i was. 

So I used a tool that I just recently learned about called the Topoi. Topos is Greek for place, and basically the topoi is a set of tools that allow you to take your argument to different places, to look at it through different lenses until you find one that is the clearest, the most interesting and the most relevant for you and your audience. The topoi helped me get specific, and helped me narrow down my examples to the On The Beach ones I mentioned before. I was on Leave it to Beaver, The Honeymooners, academic discourse on family structure and partridges in a pear tree before that. And if nothing else, the topoi is just fun. It's a really enjoyable mental exercise, almost like a game to tease out a concept and just see what you can do with it. 

I'm having a thought...

Just recently, I have become extremely interested in nuclear history. Not just the science end of it, but the cultural effects of the bomb, especially in the United States and the way it's mere existence impacted our foreign and domestic policy. And what I'm finding is very interesting. I'm actually using this information or at least this line of argument in 2 separate papers I'm writing this semester. 

The atomic bomb created an incredibly deep seated atmosphere of guilt, suspicion and fear. So powerful were these emotions that they actually managed to culturally convince this country that we were still in a state of active warfare. The Cold War, like the twenty years between world wars I and II may not have been a war with explosions and fire, but it was a war nonetheless, and it's effect on American culture was palpable. 

I've been finding a bifurcation in culture after the dropping of the bomb. The dominant culture became a "Leave it to Beaver" crowd, white, middle class, clean cut, with no problems with drugs, sex, confusion, doubts or broken families. It was the perfect united front; like a never-ending Coke commercial. The other half were the rebels, the questioners, who rather than defend themselves against the fear, coped by exploring and probing it. These were often the people who were blacklisted, labeled as lunatics or traitors to America. Even in cultural products there is a distinction. I'm currently comparing the Nevil Shute's counterculture novel On The Beach to the movie version of it made in 1959. The movie was a dominant cultural product, and the differences are vast. 

The implications of this argument for our own time are also interesting to consider. We are in the middle of a recession. We are fighting an expensive war against an abstract concept that we'll never really be able to destroy. And yet, we project our image to the world as clean, vital, prosperous and capable of caring not only for ourselves, but for anyone in the world who needs or wants our help... even some that don't yet know they need it, or just forgot to ask. Are we still at war, then? Have we really not matured beyond this intense fear, self-suspicion and squeaky clean defense?

Check out my Pageflake!

My technological education continues, folks... now I'm onto a content aggregator site known as Pageflakes. And trust me, that's a lot simpler than it sounds. A content aggregator just takes information from many different sites and gives you access to it from a single location, in this case, Pageflakes.com.
I just completed building my own page, filling it with very specific things that interested me. That's the single greatest thing about the site. There is an almost unlimited number of flakes, more commonly known as widgets to choose from and they range all over the map. In addition to the flakes that are tied to the site, though, you can add RSS feeds from any other website that has the capability. So while there isn't a New York Times flake on Pageflakes, nytimes.com has RSS capability, and by clicking on the RSS icon, you can add that URL to your page and have access to it every time you log in (By the way, the mere fact that I'm using all this jargon and understanding it is a huge step for me. So huge it's almost frightening... any thoughts?).
My Pageflake is therefore tailored to the kind of stuff that I want access to. The most prominent thing you see when you first log in is a game based on Tetris. I am (more than) a little obsessed with this game, and I think it gives the page a nice break from the pattern of small information boxes. Just down from that is a Webpage flake that I've set to give me Wikipedia, because I use that resource a lot more than I should. Under that I've got another Webpage flake to an annotated bibliography I've created on Citeline.com. I am currently working on some papers, and having access to my bibliographic materials from any computer has been a huge help. Under that, I've got a tool that one of my professors introduced me to, the Topoi. I know that I'll forget how to use it if I don't have it to hand... so there it is. :-)
The other two columns are filled mostly with RSS feeds that I want to have access to. I included my bookmarks from Diigo, and those of my social bookmarking soulmate Elsamary. The New York Times is there, along with The Onion... one does need a balanced perspective on the news. I have Epicurious, which is one of the greatest recipe websites ever. If you're ever hungry, check it out. Trust me. Then I have some helpful career feeds like Variety, and Playbill. And naturally, some of the blogs I follow from Blogger are on there. Finally, I included an online poetry archive that I have been visiting and really enjoying for years. If I'm ever at loose ends, bored, tired, I can go there and just cruise the poetry for as long as I want. I encourage you, perhaps above all the other widgets on the page, to check out this one.
Finally, at the top right of the page I have the Universal Blogsearch and Universal Newssearch flakes from the Pageflakes arsenal. Now, I don't even have to go to Google to search for things I'm looking for. There is a definite question about whether this almost horrifying level of convenience is a good thing or not, but I'm at least oing to learn how to use it. Take a look at my page. Maybe you can build one of your own!

2 More Cool Sources

A couple other fun sources I've found in my hunt... 

"Please Don't Steal The Atomic Bomb," by Alan Adelson-  “The most powerful club in the Universe”- that’s the marketing of possession of the atom bomb in this primary source article. The article then goes on to detail just how easy it is to come into possession of all the different elements necessary to make an atom bomb. There is a simple description of how an atomic explosion works, and a good set of descriptions about how the AEC and the media were dealing with the knowledge of how unsecured their intelligence was at that time. The article approachably discusses nuclear secrecy, legal enforcement, and the dark possibilities of a proliferated nuclear world. 

The History of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes-  Richard Rhodes is one of the foremost historians on the history, implementation and ramifications of the atomic bomb. This book is one of if not the definitive volume on the history of the bomb, written like a detailed character study of every major figure involved it it’s research, construction and use. The book is huge, but very well-researched in terms of pscychology and science. 

It's difficult to choose which sources to tell you about... there are so many wonderful books out there about the making, the history, the science, the politics and even the culture of the atomic bomb. One, Hiroshima by John Hersey, was originally published as a series of articles in The New Yorker very shortly after the bombs were dropped on Japan. It's a fabulous read, and very quick. 

Another interesting angle is to look at the leisure culture surrounding the time of the bomb. David Hogan does this in his book Science Fiction America: Essays on SciFi Cinema. With a chapter on Flash Gordon and his role in the propaganda of World War II, Walt Disney and even the sexuality of nuclear science as portrayed through the media, Hogan approaches his topic humorously but with a high level of credibility and interest. 

The more you look, the more you find, it seems. :-) 

Happy hunting! Again...

Fun new sources!

My recent blossoming love affair with internet technology has led me to absolutely ransack the online resources available through my university. And I have found some truly cool stuff, along with some truly cool Web 2.0 applications to make the whole thing work! 

I found these through the library, I bookmarked them using Diigo, and then I saved and annotated my bookmarks through Zotero, a website I (can't believe I'm admitting this) have become addicted to. Take a look at the sources, and happy hunting yourself! 

Atomic Power Leads

 This source is a primary source, a science newsletter from December 1945. The title “Atomic Power Leads” refers to the fact that atomic power was the single most important scientific advance of the year 1945; not only a scientific but a political and social advance as well, with the power to shorten or even prevent future war. Also, the authors mention that earlier issues of the newsletter would have to be amended and expanded because of some pertinent atomic information that had recently been released or declassified. Useful to establish the multidimensional nature of atomic power… it’s almost treated as a deitical panacea here. It’s like a miracle.

Triangular Mutual Security-

not primary, a fundamentally academic document detailing through the study of the triangular nature of the Cuban Missile Crisis the potential dangers and harms of a bipolar post-Cold War system. They’re trying to show the need for a triangular system where each party has a check and balance as well as a possible ally, so that each alliance undergoes some kind of scrutiny. Relates to atomic power in that the atom bomb is the foundation of the arms race that produced the cold war and the missile crisis, the atom bomb is what created the american superpower at all. Fear of losing that power and uniqueness is what drove the arms race. 

American Interests: Really interesting perspective

I've been following a blog called American Interests, published by a man named Ottavio who calls himself Al. His stance is unlike most that I have found in the blogosphere, especially when I'm doing searches driven by history rather than politics. He believes in the necessary and healthy primacy of the American superpower. His most recent post actually talks about threats to that primacy as presented by cultural opposition from around the world, a really interesting way of looking at how exactly a nation maintains hegemony. This is what I said to say to that post... maybe you should go check him out, too!

What you say about the primacy of american culture is fascinating. I have been lately researching the development of American culture as implicitly tied into the changing nature of power in this country. Most recently, the power that we've come to rely on is a cultural power, supported by economic, military and diplomatic powers, etc. But now that we're in a depression, our military is overextended and unpopular and our government has some serious recovering to do, what chance does culture, does propaganda have on its own? It is just propaganda without the genuine nature of a superpower behind that culture.

Some other blogs around here

There are a lot of history blogs out there... which, I know, I've said before. What's so interesting to me is how differently all these other bloggers approach discussing history. In looking around, I've found a few that take a very academic bent; the American Historical Society being the clearest one there. I enjoy reading this blog because even though they could potentially sound esoteric or unaccessible, they somehow manage to avoid both of those things and instead just give a real impression of credibility and knowledge. Maybe this is my inner student coming out, but I always feel just a little smarter after I've read a post. :-) Rod Adam's Atomic Insights blog is another pretty academic one, but sometimes with him I feel a bit lost. That academic voice is a tough line to walk between clarity and authority.
Then there are the blogs that take a more personal approach. One of the blogs I follow on Abraham Lincoln falls into this category, with a voice so casual you almost feel that the poster, brdirck, has had face-to-face conversations with the man. The interesting part there, I guess, is that the author is a professor of history. Talk about academic.
The last type of blog I've found (if we're talking in terms of categories) is the type without a single poster, but more where the blog serves as a forum for posting articles, paper abstracts etc and opening them up for peer review. Religion in American History is one such blog, where people who really study this stuff, or people who are really curious can post their information and have it commented on by a like-minded community. I personally like getting to know one author, but an occasional guest poster is a nice way to shake things up. Maybe I'll have a friend write something for me someday. :-)

Victory for History! (Social Bookmarking Soulmates)

I have mentioned more than once how upsetting it is for people who like history to constantly run into that "Oh my god, I HATED history in high school!! You're studying that? Voluntarily?!" attitude. Sometimes I feel like rallying my spirits and spouting off an inspiring speech from Lincoln's oratory, but other times I want to put on my glasses and crawl into the bookstacks at some remote library and lick my wounds.

Recently, though, I have discovered a weapon for the book worms of the world. It is called Diigo. It's a social bookmarking site, allowing users to surf the internet and not only keep track of pages they want to remember, but also to highlight and make comments on these pages. The tool bar that Diigo installs when you sign up for an account will remember you and your highlights, in a very real way personalizing the big bad Net and making it a tool rather than a vast expanse of non-navigable information.

I was sort of forced to join. I mentioned in an earlier post that advanced technology (like blogging, though given my recent forays blogging seems downright simplistic) is not really my bag. Of my own volition, I would never have even gone onto Diigo's homepage. But my arm was twisted, and on a whim today I used some of Diigo's impressive people-searching tools to see if anyone else out there was still interested in history. (I mean to sound only a little melodramatic... the number of wonderfully competent history bloggers that I with even a modest effort have found is impressively high). And lo and behold, with each set of tags that I entered into the search bar, from American History to War to Culture to Depression to Cold War, I got a new crop of people. Lots and lots of teachers. I'm ok with that. One anarchist. Interesting development. So ha! Not only do I voluntarily study history in school, so all these people study history with their free time, in the real world, in real life. :-) So satisfying.

But which one, I wondered, was most like me? And there I ran into a problem. The man who, based on tagging and websites visited most closely fits my set of interests.... is Russian. I would love to tell you all about him, the kinds of things he comments about and how his visited site history would be useful to other history buffs out there, but his profile and all his comments are written in.... Russian. So. A bit out of luck with that one. But there was one who showed up just as much as my Russian friend Pandarra did. Her name , or username is Elsamary.

One of my favorite things about her is that not only does she tag the sort of stuff I do, but she also has libraries for shopping, for cooking, for sewing. Her hobbies all come through, making her approachable and even more fully outlining the everyday usefulness of Diigo. My absolutely favorite thing about her, though, is that in going through some of her tag history I discovered that she does not limit herself to a time period. Rather than looking only at The Depression, or the Civil War of the 1860's, she seems to surf the internet conceptually. When she finds social or cultural conditions caused by economic depression, she goes in search of other sites, facts, histories that elucidate that concept. It seems that this style would allow the searcher to understand patterns in history, and allow both the searcher and the reader to expand their ideas of what the search concept entails.

Thus, it probably goes without saying that her tags are organized conceptually, too. Sometimes they do wander a big... from Chicago history to Obama's election to art auctions in San Francisco, and they aren't super thorough. There are twenty tags for each idea or concept, for instance, but there are enough there to get your own mind going which is the exciting part of finding someone like you, anyway.

In conclusion, even a "second best" was exciting and stimulating. At long last, a victory for the bookworms. Go, Elsamary. :-)

Blog-o-rama!!

Part One: Hello Post

Like so many people, I took history in elementary school. I learned about the founding fathers, Washington’s wooden teeth, the Revolutionary War. Like so many people, I took history in high school, too. I learned about the Civil War, the 20th century of war, the Great Depression. Like a smaller number of people, I took history in college. There, I learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall. And like the smallest number of people yet, I chose history as my major. And finally, four years later, I’m getting to the good stuff. 

 My focus within that major is American History - a subject that, to some, may seem to be already overdone, already overstudied, somewhat like kicking a long-dead horse. But the academic study of American History is currently turning over a new leaf. Over (thank god) are the days of just names, dates, and the heroification of individuals.  Scholars like Lawrence L. Levine are beginning to integrate the study of culture, the study of entertainment and leisure with traditional realms like politics, military history and the great documents. What is emerging is a fantastic blend of the stuff you thought you’d never touch again (Jefferson did this, Kennedy did that, that first Thanksgiving was really special…) with the stuff that is inextricably tied in to the way you live your everyday life (”300”, Phantom of the Opera, Sox in the series). 

This isn’t history the way it has been taught. This is history the way it should be explored, debated, questioned, doubted, probed and ENJOYED. This blog is my way of giving you access to the questions we should have been asking since day one; the fun ones. Let me give you an example. In 19th century America, the plays of William Shakespeare, that oh-so-esoteric and high-falutin’ playwright, were the single hottest and  most popular ticket in town. People who could barely read flocked to his plays, people who had put up the money to support the whole production showing up in numbers just as great. Shakespeare was parodied, included in all kinds of pop culture references, in advertisements, in other plays. Most often, performances of his plays were accompanied by food, lots of noise, talking to the actors on the stage, vocal reactions to what was happening, drinking, songs in between the scenes, acrobatic acts, cutting scenes that seemed too long, etc. Shakespeare was a part of the popular culture, exactly as he was when his work was first published in 17th century England. Shakespeare was The Man. Literally. Bet nobody ever told you that, huh? 

That’s the kind of question I hope to be writing about on this blog. The ones you haven’t heard, didn’t know, never got to talk about. My focus will be mainly on the 20th century, will some spillover to the 19th and our own, the 21st. I will address issues of history, culture, the role of sports, of movies, of Six Flags, I hope to humanize and make more accessible things like military history, strategy and moments in our past that seem to have defined us in some way. And my name…well. That’s not really important, is it? Call me Wishbone.  

Part Two - Profile Post

  Maybe I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am to report that there are quite a few blogs out there that talk about US History. I suppose I’m not surprised that many of them are quite academic and professional, functioning mostly as forums for writers, editors, researchers etc to pre-publish their work or pieces of it and get feedback. It seems as though the internet has become a sort of international gathering ground for professionals and amateur buffs alike to come together and exchange ideas and information.

            One of these blogs that I came across is entitled Today’s History Lesson, produced by a user named Joel Mundt. His personal profile is relatively limited. He seems to prefer to keep most of that information anonymous, but his posts speak for themselves. He is prolific, posting almost every day and thoroughly on topics as wide ranging as the Rape of Nanking before the Second World War, to one of his personal favorite stories of the close call atmosphere that absolutely pervaded the era of the Cold War.

These posts were also two of my favorites of his. His writing style really draws the reader in, allowing them to participate in what’s being said without sounding preachy. He also manages to give a lot of information in his posts, as well as draw the interest of the reader. After I read his post on the Rape of Nanking, I was definitely curious to know more; not necessarily of the atrocities themselves, but of the differences between Japanese and Chinese military culture, the involvement of Hitler in actually stopping these human rights offenses, etc. I was also, however, quite keen on following his advice about reading the book; “Today, I use the word “recommended” loosely,” he says. “There is incredible courage and strength detailed in this book, but also unbelievable suffering and awful violence.” Maybe I’ll save this book for another day.

In terms of how this blog relates to the blog I’m hoping to produce here, the model is almost perfect. Joel addresses lots of different questions, confining himself to loose parameters and boundaries that allow him free range over the realm of American diplomatic and political history, as well as questions of culture and international relationships. It is exciting to be able to click onto his blog and know that I’m going to get something different each time, something that really excited him enough to provoke him to write rather than just something that fit into a narrowly prescribed theme. I think this broadness of topic also helps ensure a broadness of audience. Because his posts are well-thought out and well-researched, he appeals to an academic or professional audience. Because his tone is casual and conversational, he appeals also to a more amateur or popular audience as well. And because he writes on many different topics rather than going very deeply into a single one, many different fields can find something to relate to in what he writes.

I have to admit that before I created this site, I was highly skeptical of the role of blogs, their usefullness or even the level of enjoyment possible for a reader or a writer. It was basically an online diary. I was not impressed. But I may be on my way to becoming a convert. The ease of the medium is hugely seductive. The ability to respond so quickly necessitates your involvement. But it’s more than that. In a class of mine today, we were having a discussion on the importance of the free flow of ideas between scientists regarding the development of the atomic bomb. After having done even this cursory research, I wonder if the internet, and the forum that it provides to those willing to look for it, may one day provide that kind of saving-grace tool for thinkers around the world.

 Part Three: Voice Post 

The voice of a writer may seem at first glance a very simple concept. Whatever you write is whatever you think, you just create the idea in your head and then you type or you pick up your pencil and voila, the writer's voice. I have come to realize, though, through studying writers in high school and college and through writing my own stuff and having it (sometimes brutally) critiqued, that the voice of a writer is a carefully thought out, crafted and marketed commodity. The voice comes from the thought of the writer, his or her perspective on the world, their history and past, their feelings about their topic and their level of familiarity with it. It also includes some respect paid to the audience they are writing to and the effect they hope to have on that audience. A writer hoping to interest teenagers in the latest vampire romance novel would quite obviously have a very different voice than an author writing an article on Franz Marc for the art issue of the Atlantic Monthly; but that difference comes from conscious choice and careful editing.

With these ideas in mind, I had been reading some of Rod Adam's latest postings on his blog "Atomic Insights." He is writing for an educated audience, an audience interested in a pretty specific set of issues, namely those of nuclear energy and application of nuclear science. He is also writing for a group of people who already have some kind of exposure to this material. He especially depends on exposure in a current events context. He writes not necessarily about nuclear history, but about modern-day dilemmas and uses of nuclear research. While I am educated and can keep up with him in an academic sense, I am not very plugged in to that last criteria. But it says a lot for his voice as a writer that he manages to make himself understood. He writes clearly and passionately, showing some penchant for the run-on sentence but making his points nonetheless.

He also talks as though he is with you in your home, with a good fire going, with a good beer, having these conversations. In one post, he writes about the nuclear energy company Exelon. He divulges the information in the post like it's something that's been bothering him for a long time and he just has to tell someone. He uses pop culture references, opening the post with a small introduction to the concept of "friending" on Facebook, which helps to make his posts current, and keep them out of the realm of "boring" academia. Even though this particular post was a little on the long side, he stayed cleanly on point and provided strong evidence for all the claims he made.

In an interesting counterpoint to this post, was his post about Sweden's efforts to step up their nuclear energy program. This post is quite short, gives only one link as support for his information, and otherwise relies wholly on his own personal knowledge and his persona as a writer. An interesting addition to that persona (the educated yet friendly and approachable upper middle class nuclear energy guy) is an almost teenaged attitude. Even the title of the post, "Sweden may finally acknowledge what many observers have known for years," betrays a flippant personality that only someone who is intimately connected with his subject could get away with. I think that this is interesting and funny, but also potentially dangerous as it could intimidate shy readers and irritate others. Perhaps others who happen to be from Sweden.

In conclusion, though, Mr. Adams does a very effective job. While his blog is clearly marketed for a specific audience, he reaches out to that group -  through his intelligence and knowledge, but also through the way he presents his information; his voice as a writer.

A blog I've found

Should Auschwitz Be Left to Waste Away?

Tuesday February 10, 2009

As the decades pass, the grass grows high and the stones have begun to crumble at Auschwitz. With the Nazi death and concentration camp falling into disrepair, the future of Auschwitz is in question. While many believe that it is imperative to keep Auschwitz as a reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust no matter what the cost, others think that the sprawling fields and rusted barbed wire do not accurately portray the truth, so recommend that Auschwitz be left to decay. In an article by the BBC, historian Robert Jan Van Pelt and former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski (also a former Auschwitz prisoner) debate the issue. What do you think should happen to Auschwitz?

This is one blog post on an About.com blog kept by a woman named Jennifer Rosenberg, who has (according to the site) been the guide to 20th century US history since 1997. It seems to me that's pretty impressive longevity given the turn-over rate and overall rapid pace at which things seem to move in this virtual world. I've been keeping tabs on her site since I started this blog, and I keep going back to it for three simple reasons. 1) her posts are extremely short. They are at most a paragraph each, very quick and easy to read. Rather than giving all the information about her selected topic in her own post, she usually provides links to articles and pertinent sites. 2) she chooses varied topics, not confining herself to one area or subject. This post was about Auschwitz. The last one was about Dr. Death, a Nazi doctor who experimented on prisoners. Before that she posted on FDR and Obama, the siege of Leningrad, the first animal in space, and a yo-yo museum. Yeah. :-) And they were all interesting. 3) She always encourages the reader to get involved, to ask questions, follow the links she provides. The one about Dr. Death actually led me (in class, I confess) on a long virtual hunt through news articles about where Nazis had fled  after the end of WWII and Hitler's suicide. These three qualities are all part of her voice as a writer. She is open, energetic, non-threatening and interested, but somehow very casual and easy. Though my posts are a bit longer, I hope I can pick up some of her ability to be engaging. 

In regards to the actual question she asked, I think it's an important one. Auschwitz is a place of memory. Yes, they are terrible memories. But they are memories, they exist now to remind us of where we have been, what we have done and been responsible for, what we have experienced. The human race has a nasty habit of forgetting these moments, and most especially the lessons learned from them, and repeating them over and over. I don't think that Auschwitz should be left as an open scar on the land, to fester and rust and be a terrestrial poison. Neither should it become a developer's playground or the site of a condominium development. That idea is just as dumb to me as trying to raise the Titanic. The first idea that came to my mind when I read the question actually, was allowing people who had been imprisoned there, or who had been in other concentration, death or work camps under the Nazis to take the place apart stone by stone. Allow them to see it, to walk it, to confront it, and then to dismantle it. And the most important part comes after that. When they have taken it down, they must build something new, something beautiful and simple and strong. They must build something where people will come, where they will fill it up with happy energy and new memories, allowing the old to take their place as memories and not as present facts. What they would build I don't know. But that was my idea. Any construction suggestions? 

A Voice Post on Rod Adams of Nuclear Insights

The voice of a writer may seem at first glance a very simple concept. Whatever you write is whatever you think, you just create the idea in your head and then you type or you pick up your pencil and voila, the writer's voice. I have come to realize, though, through studying writers in high school and college and through writing my own stuff and having it (sometimes brutally :)) critiqued, that the voice of a writer is a carefully thought out, crafted and marketed commodity. The voice comes from the thought of the writer, his or her perspective on the world, their history and past, their feelings about their topic and their level of familiarity with it. It also includes some respect paid to the audience they are writing to and the effect they hope to have on that audience. A writer hoping to interest teenagers in the latest vampire romance novel would quite obviously have a very different voice than an author writing an article on Franz Marc for the art issue of the Atlantic Monthly; but that difference comes from conscious choice and careful editing.
With these ideas in mind, I had been reading some of Rod Adam's latest postings on his blog "Atomic Insights." He is writing for an educated audience, an audience interested in a pretty specific set of issues, namely those of nuclear energy and application of nuclear science. He is also writing for a group of people who already have some kind of exposure to this material. He especially depends on exposure in a current events context. He writes not necessarily about nuclear history, but about modern-day dilemmas and uses of nuclear research. While I am educated and can keep up with him in an academic sense, I am not very plugged in to that last criteria. But it says a lot for his voice as a writer that he manages to make himself understood. He writes clearly and passionately, showing some penchant for the run-on sentence but making his points nonetheless.
He also talks as though he is with you in your home, with a good fire going, with a good beer, having these conversations. In one post he writes about the nuclear energy company Exelon, he divulges the information in the post like it's something that's been bothering him for a long time and he just has to tell someone. He uses pop culture references, opening the post with a small introduction to the concept of "friending" on Facebook, which helps to make his posts current, and keep them out of the realm of "boring" academia. Even though this particular post was a little on the long side, he stayed cleanly on point and provided strong evidence for all the claims he made.
In an interesting counterpoint to this post, was his post about Sweden's efforts to step up their nuclear energy program. This post is quite short, gives only one link as support for his information, and otherwise relies wholly on his own personal knowledge and his persona as a writer. An interesting addition to that persona (the educated yet friendly and approachable upper middle class nuclear energy guy) is an almost teenaged attitude. Even the title of the post, "Sweden may finally acknowledge what many observers have known for years," betrays a flippant personality that only someone who is intimately connected with his subject could get away with. I think that this is interesting and funny, but also potentially dangerous as it could intimidate shier readers or anger others. Perhaps others who happen to be from Sweden.
In conclusion, though, Mr. Adam's blog is clearly marketed for a specific audience, but he does an effective job of reaching out to that group, largely through his intelligence and knowledge, but also through the way he presents his information; his voice as a writer.

Welcome to American History Z!

Like so many people, I took history in elementary school. I learned about the founding fathers, Washington’s wooden teeth, the Revolutionary War. Like so many people, I took history in high school, too. I learned about the Civil War, the 20th century of war, the Great Depression. Like a smaller number of people, I took history in college. There, I learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall. And like the smallest number of people yet, I chose history as my major. And finally, four years later, I’m getting to the good stuff. 

 My focus within that major is American History; a subject that, to some, may seem to be already overdone, already overstudied, somewhat like kicking a long-dead horse. But the academic study of American History is currently turning over a new leaf. Over (thank god) are the days of just names, dates, and the heroification of individuals.  Scholars like Lawrence L. Levine are beginning to integrate the study of culture, the study of entertainment and leisure with traditional realms like politics, military history and the great documents. What is emerging is a fantastic blend of the stuff you thought you’d never touch again (Jefferson did this, Kennedy did that, that first Thanksgiving was really special…) with the stuff that is inextricably tied in to the way you live your everyday life (”300”, Phantom of the Opera, Sox in the series…). 

This isn’t history the way it has been taught. This is history the way it should be explored, debated, questioned, doubted, probed and ENJOYED. This blog is my way of giving you access to the questions we should have been asking since day one; the fun ones. Let me give you an example. In 19th century America, the plays of William Shakespeare, that oh-so-esoteric and high-falutin’ playwright, were the single hottest and  most popular ticket in town. People who could barely read flocked to his plays, people who had put up the money to support the whole production showing up in numbers just as great. Shakespeare was parodied, included in all kinds of pop culture references, in advertisements, in other plays. Most often, performances of his plays were accompanied by food, lots of noise, talking to the actors on the stage, vocal reactions to what was happening, drinking, songs in between the scenes, acrobatic acts, cutting scenes that seemed too long, etc. Shakespeare was a part 
of the popular culture, exactly as he was when his work was first published in 17th century England. Shakespeare was The Man. Literally. Bet nobody ever told you that, huh? 

That’s the kind of question I hope to be writing about on this blog. The ones you haven’t heard, didn’t know, never got to talk about. . My focus will be mainly on the 20th century, will some spillover to the 19th and our own, the 21st. I will address issues of history, culture, the role of sports, of movies, of Six Flags, I hope to humanize and make more accessible things like military history, strategy and moments in our past that seem to have defined us in some way. And my name…well. That’s not really important, is it? Call me Wishbone.  

A profile to get us started!

 Maybe I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am to report that there are quite a few blogs out there that talk about US History. I suppose I’m not surprised that many of them are quite academic and professional, functioning mostly as forums for writers, editors, researchers etc to pre-publish their work or pieces of it and get feedback. It seems as though the internet has become a sort of international gathering ground for professionals and amateur buffs alike to come together and exchange ideas and information.

            One of these blogs that I came across is entitled Today’s History Lesson, produced by a user named Joel Mundt. His personal profile is relatively limited. He seems to prefer to keep most of that information anonymous, but his posts speak for themselves. He is prolific, posting almost every day and thoroughly on topics as wide ranging as the Rape of Nanking before the Second World War, to one of his personal favorite stories of the close call atmosphere that absolutely pervaded the era of the Cold War.

These posts were also two of my favorites of his. His writing style really draws the reader in, allowing them to participate in what’s being said without sounding preachy. He also manages to give a lot of information in his posts, as well as draw the interest of the reader. After I read his post on the Rape of Nanking, I was definitely curious to know more; not necessarily of the atrocities themselves, but of the differences between Japanese and Chinese military culture, the involvement of Hitler in actually stopping these human rights offenses, etc. I was also, however, quite keen on following his advice about reading the book; “Today, I use the word “recommended” loosely,” he says. “There is incredible courage and strength detailed in this book, but also unbelievable suffering and awful violence.” Maybe I’ll save this book for another day.

In terms of how this blog relates to the blog I’m hoping to produce here, the model is almost perfect. Joel addresses lots of different questions, confining himself to loose parameters and boundaries that allow him free range over the realm of American diplomatic and political history, as well as questions of culture and international relationships. It is exciting to be able to click onto his blog and know that I’m going to get something different each time, something that really excited him enough to provoke him to write rather than just something that fit into a narrowly prescribed theme. I think this broadness of topic also helps ensure a broadness of audience. Because his posts are well-thought out and well-researched, he appeals to an academic or professional audience. Because his tone is casual and conversational, he appeals also to a more amateur or popular audience as well. And because he writes on many different topics rather than going very deeply into a single one, many different fields can find something to relate to in what he writes.

I have to admit that before I created this site, I was highly skeptical of the role of blogs, their usefullness or even the level of enjoyment possible for a reader or a writer. It was basically an online diary. I was not impressed. But I may be on my way to becoming a convert. The ease of the medium is hugely seductive. The ability to respond so quickly necessitates your involvement. But it’s more than that. In a class of mine today, we were having a discussion on the importance of the free flow of ideas between scientists regarding the development of the atomic bomb. After having done even this cursory research, I wonder if the internet, and the forum that it provides to those willing to look for it, may one day provide that kind of saving-grace tool for thinkers around the world.