One of the often promised advantages of new media is the ability to combine different datasets into unique presentations. Just perusing Yahoo Pipes, for example, we see the aggregation of concert dates for multiple London music venues made available in a digital calendar format or an RSS feed which captures all tabloid news about Britney Spears. Yahoo Pipes is often referred to what has become one of the most ubiquitous terms of the digital twenty-first century, mashup. Originally referential to music which overlayed multiple songs, mashup has come to be a catch all for creations that combine different information and media (often all of which is not original material) into something new. The OED even felt compelled to canonize it (with a hyphen, as mash-up) in 2006 largely in reference to the musical revolution taking place. However, Wikipedia also offers some insight into the mashup on the web, contending, “In technology, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool….”
This idea is very familiar for us having worked much of this semester to present specific historical material cartographically, especially after spending time with Google Earth and Maps this past week. In fact, the Wikipedia mashup entry continues with a description, “an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data from Craigslist, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source.”
The last part of the example seems to be precisely what we are trying to accomplish in this class. Take out “web service” and replace it with “historical argument.” Thinking about the Rumsey Maps on Google Earth or the historical projects that abound on Google Maps such as the Las Vegas, NM Historic Sites map or Sites of Ancient Rome, or the Mongol Empire, it becomes clear that these tools allow us to think about and present history in new and exciting ways. Throw in our SketchUp skills and it seems we can bring mashups even into the realm of history!