Visual Historiography Project Update - Title/Abstract/Sources/Draft Storyboard

Title: Adobe Flash and the Demise of Digital History Projects

Abstract: Adobe Flash and the Demise of Digital History Projects aims to explore the effects of Adobe Flash Player's end of life in 2020 on various digital history projects. Many projects created using Adobe Flash were rendered no longer usable as Adobe ceased development on the program in December of 2020 - while most of these project developers still have the data associated with their projects, the visualizations of projects that used Flash Player are completely gone or inoperable. A timeline will visualize the lifespan of these projects, beginning with development, including the publication/live date, and finishing with the ending as Flash became obsolete. Information from the digital historians behind these projects will be included to provide detail and perspective; as digital historians rely on digital technology, the perils of software obsolescence are proven substantial as the demise of these projects show.

Primary Sources: 

Scott, Jason et al. “Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive.” Internet Archive Blogs, November 25, 2020. https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-animations-live-forever-at-the-internet-archive/.

Scott, Jason et al. “Flash Back! Further Thoughts on Flash at the Internet Archive.” Internet Archive Blogs, November 23, 2020. https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/22/flash-back-further-thoughts-on-flash-at-the-internet-archive/.

Secondary Sources: 

“University of Virginia Library Digital Curation Services,” Digital Curation Services, https://web.archive.org/web/20141010164712/http://www.digitalcurationservices.org/sustaining-digital-scholarship/valley-of-the-shadow/.

Cohen, Daniel J. and Roy Rosenzweig. “Promises and Perils of Digital History”. George Mason University, 2006.

Ferster, Bill. Interactive Visualization: Insight Through Inquiry, MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucf/detail.action?docID=3339532.

Howard, Jennifer. “Born Digital, Projects Need Attention to Survive.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 22, 2020. https://www.chronicle.com/article/born-digital-projects-need-attention-to-survive/.

Mladentseva, Anna. "Responding to obsolescence in Flash-based net art: a case study on migrating Sinae Kim’s Genesis." Journal of the Institute of Conservation 45, no. 1 (2022): 52-68.

-art-related, but still relevant. Ideas of opening projects to include general humanities rather than just history.

 “Thoughts on Flash - Berkeley Haas.” Accessed November 23, 2022. https://haas.berkeley.edu/responsible-business/blog/posts/thoughts-on-flash/.

Storyboard/Presentation: 

Blog Post 11: Project Ideas for Visual Historiography

As touched on in my last posting, it is so much harder to practice digital history than it is to read about it. I think what makes it so difficult is the multitude of directions you can go in visualizing a theme - but choosing one method that is perfect for that theme is another story. 

In looking through the sample topics, I am very drawn toward the Promises and Perils of Digital History and the disadvantage of proprietary software. I feel like a bulk of what we have read centers around the profession's growth, and with that, it is impossible to ignore the advantages and challenges that permeate digital history - from the openness of accessibility to the failure of technology. One thing we have noted in class is the obsolescence of Flash, which rendered many, many digital projects unusable. If I were to need to get specific, I wonder if tracing the demise of Flash projects, and perhaps other widely used software within digital history, would provide insight into the much larger narrative theme of technology within the field. Digital history relies on technology, which is ever-changing. We are constantly upgrading, and I have my doubts that we will create "perfect" software that will never be replaced or moved to obsolescence. What implications would this have for future digital history projects?

I am going to attempt to use the ASSERT model to lay the groundwork for my (very tentative) visualization of technology and obsolescence within the field.

Ask a question: 

How pertinent is the issue of technological and software obsolescence to the field of digital history?

Search for evidence to support the question: 

“University of Virginia Library Digital Curation Services,” Digital Curation Services, accessed September 12, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20141010164712/http://www.digitalcurationservices.org/sustaining-digital-scholarship/valley-of-the-shadow/.

Mentions problems of technological change that affected the usability of a digital project.

Cohen, Daniel J. and Roy Rosenzweig. “Promises and Perils of Digital History”. George Mason University, 2006.

Mentions preserving digital history and preventing the loss of your work.

Structure that information to answer the question:

If I were to research and collect examples of various obsolete/unusable digital history projects, I could present some sort of graph or chart.

Envision ways to answer the question using data:

I am thinking of something that shows a project's length of work and research, length of being live on the internet, and then the time that the project became unusable due to software/technological obsolescence. If there are a lot of projects, this would prove that technology presents a meaty peril to digital historians.

Represent the data in a compelling visualization:

In showing the lifespan of projects, I feel like maybe a timeline like this could work.

Here, we could see how long these projects lasted. Monographs and print history arguably last forever, while digital history faces a special problem in relying on technology in an age where it is always changing.

Tell a meaningful story using the evidence to answer the question:

With technology changing frequently and consistently, the need to preserve and back up digital history projects is integral - there are several digital history projects unusable because of these issues.

Blog Post #10: Revisiting/Revisioning the Historiography of "History in the Digital Age"

I will say this has been the most challenging blog post to tackle - it is one thing to study, critique, and review digital history projects and the visual synthesis of large data sets, but it is another to put it into practice. I don't know that I have yet trained my mind to see the large themes of digital history, themes that could be interweaved into some interactive visualization to show the progress of digital history into where the practice stands today. However, I think breaking the question down into simple ideas will help!

Can we create timelines, spatial histories, or network graphs that explore the "canonization" of certain pioneering scholars/centers/projects and the influence of more recent revisionist histories?

I think, to answer the "can" we create a visualization or digital project to convey these important aspects of digital history, yes. I think what is hard about this is determining the "canonization" - sure, we have talked about some very important figures, like Ed Ayers, important projects, like the Valley of the Shadows digital archive, and centers, like the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, but I struggle with the idea that these are completely canonized within the realm of digital history. Just as in traditional historiography, we constantly break down methods and theories in lieu of newer thought processes, and as time goes on, no one method can be truly acceptable as the method. Maybe this is where the revisionist voices come in. I also do not think I could agree with one specific person, center, or project being considered the example of digital history. As such, a digital model would need to include a multitude of different, important projects and peoples, which could become cumbersome, and would require a model that could house this information.

Where would revisionist voices come in?

In "Complicating a "Great Man" Narrative of Digital History in the United States," Sharon Leon touches on some of the apprehension I have for making a digital history project surrounded by "canonized" practices. If we did focus on the digital history of big names, like Ed Ayers, Roy Rosenzweig, Dan Cohen, and Stephen Brier, what if we are missing the important contributions of women and other minority players? Leon claims these women were very much there, in the production of digital history, but are often not included in these large surveys.(1) Would a digital history project need to include a specific section or disclaimer for this lack of inclusion in the writings and surveys of our canonized players? Leon also calls for a broader definition of digital history work, as the current one may exclude important contributions.(2) 

Jessica Johnson brings up another concerning point in the treatment of black digital practice - in aiming to computerize and synthesize from the deaths of black slaves, the commodification and calculation of black bodies becomes a natural practice for the digital humanities; some things should remain unquantifiable.(3) How would we include pertinent issues such as these within our projects?

In Exploring Big Historical Data and the same issue of computational methods being used in information overload - where contextual information can become overlooked with a focus on big data synthesis. (4)

How might we "visualize" this historiographical revisioning of the field and its history?

Given these revisionist issues of inclusivity, unquantifiable subjects, and overload of big data synthesis, perhaps a timeline of projects, peoples, and centers, moving along chronologically would be a good way to show growth and discourse, as it was happening. Maybe you could start with the Valley of the Shadows, moving forward to include new canonizations, new revisions to the method. We can see how things progressed - and we can include the challenges that arose in a way in which the historiography makes itself known. Trying to visualize these large themes is challenging, but I do think a timeline could convey thought processes and methods better than a computational method alone.

Works Cited: 

1. LEON, SHARON M. “Complicating a ‘Great Man’ Narrative of Digital History in the United States.” In Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities, edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont, 344–66. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.22.

2. LEON, SHARON M. “Complicating a ‘Great Man’ Narrative of Digital History in the United States.” In Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities, edited by Elizabeth Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont, 344–66. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.22.

3. Johnson, Jessica Marie. “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social text 36, no. 4 (2018): 57–79.

4. Graham, Shawn, Ian Milligan, Scott B. Weingart, and Kim Martin. Exploring big historical data: the historian’s macroscope. 2016.