Manan Ahmed’s “Polyglot Manifesto” seems to be a popular reading for discussion this week—and rightfully so, as it brings to the fore a number of the important questions digital historians must (however painfully) pose to themselves . These are largely of the why-type of question. Why bother with digital humanities? If I do, why should I learn the technical aspects of new media instead of letting someone else do the heavy lifting? And perhaps most importantly, why is digital history a step forward, why is it potentially an improvement over traditional methods?
Coding
Working on my portfolio was a fun exercise, and with a little work all my files are valid!
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On Footnotes
Footnotes present a frustrating problem of presentation on the web. A traditional, bottom–of–the–page footnote is not technically possible since a webpage has little similarity to the pages of a book which are of a specific, rather than interminable size. The tendency seems toward adopting an endnote approach on the web, placing all notation at the very end of the work, sometimes using links so a reader might flip back and forth between the text and notation.
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Grey Suits and Greening
Luke Wroblewski’s equation of brand with personality seems a questionable analogy. Personalities are full of complexities and contradictions, can change on a whim and be held in check. Brands, on the other hand, strive for simplicity and consistency. This is not to say branding is not ever useful, but with regard to human endeavors it seems a limiting concept at best. If you are interested in selling yourself to the internet audience, then branding is likely a worthwhile approach. A site through in which you might attempt to represent more than a few of your personality characteristics seemingly would contain a variety of looks and feels. The first approach seems akin to wearing the same clothes everyday, which is fine for some.
As I mentioned on Laura’s blog design is important, but it can’t be everything. More to the point the idea of design combined with branding becomes an easily abused model(for example companies like BP claiming environmental stewardship). Design, visual appeal, ease of use are all important, but I think if we are ultimately helping promote surface over depth and appeal over content, we are benefitting those who hope to use design to manipulate rather than serve.
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