A non-linear approach to history
"It is the fixation on the material culture, the multitude of objects man produces, that makes things appear so different, so incomparable over time. When instead we would focus on the spiritual side of things, change is much less evident. All these material things, contraptions, constructions, consumer goods, blind us and let us think that what is now was never before. A history of basic concepts of humanity could be written that would show repeating patterns only over long stretches of linear time, far beyond human comprehension. It is in the recurrent themes of old and modern myth that, at an abstract level, such basic concepts become visible.
This non-linear approach towards history can be a fruitful way of approach for using the electronic media. Instead of an attitude that everything is newer than new and that the electronic media do not have a past and should just blindly point at the future, an attitude whereby inspiration for the electronic media both on the content and interface level is taken from the past, whereby high technology is combined with low technology. Instead of the 'effect driven multi media' with its urge to be the most modernistic and futuristic, a more content oriented multi media, that has something to communicate beyond the flashing electronic effects of modern machinery."
Tjebbe van Tijen, Virtual Museums, text for a telepresence lecture, 1998
Sustainable Tourism
Some more popular history tangents:
The Virtual Tour
Time Team
World Heritage Map
Bodies of Evidence
Write History together
We're building a system for collaborative history writing. I've found some examples of on-line tools in educational and projectmanagement software; worth testriding with students to see what kind of results they produce.
Do we know any examples that involve multiple authors?
How to visualise various perspectives? [i.e.: should this timeline differentiate between authors / readers based on their skills, age, geographial location, gender...?]
Content Management
As part of the project we should look at different existing Content Management Systems [in the widest sense of the word].
We need to find a way to compare/analyse what the difference is between the output of various systems, i.e. what kind of content it produces: what is the effect of a particular system on the construction of a certain [history] writing?
There must be a good reading list around this in the Fuller brain.
The analyses could also involve very simple hands-on exercises in looking at personal management systems and obviously blogging as a phenonema.
Archis on Europe
Here's a poor attempt to produce a collective archive of images on the identity of Europe. Or does it just pretend it's doing that?
http://www.archis.org/eiparticipate