The convergence of cellphones with positioning technologies like GPS and electronic compasses make it possible to annotate any place with layers of digital information. As computing and communication devices become smaller and cheaper, the potential for ‘ubiquitous computing’ becomes more real: people begin to imagine computers as things that are embedded into the environment, rather than placed on a desktop or carried around. This week we discuss the implications for historical practice and public history, concentrating on the possibility of making each thing in the world “the protagonist of a documented process … an historical entity with an accessible, precise trajectory through space and time” (Sterling).
Readings
- Bilton, “Disruptions: The 3-D Printing Free-for-All,” NY Times (13 November 2011)
- Cisco, “The Internet of Things,” All Things D (14 July 2011)
- Crane, “Georeferencing in Historical Collections,” D-Lib Magazine 10, no. 5 (May 2004)
- Davies, “The Internet of Things and Yet Another Revolution,” BBC News Magazine (22 September 2011)
- Dodson, “The Internet of Things,” The Guardian (9 October 2003)
- Fergusson, “Sculpture of James Watt Created Using 3D Technology,” Engineering and Technology Magazine (21 February 2011)
- Fish, “Geek 101: What is Arduino?” PC World (8 September 2011)
- Gallagher, “Scottish Laser Pioneers Lead Way in Preserving World Heritage Treasures,” The Observer (23 August 2009)
- Kelly, “Everything, Too Cheaply Metered,” The Technium (15 September 2008)
- Leung, “Life Murder and Bootleggers: Every House Tells a Story,” Toronto Globe and Mail (19 October 2007)
- MacManus, “Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Mobile Web & Augmented Reality,” ReadWriteWeb (10 September 2009)
- MacManus, “Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Internet of Things,” ReadWriteWeb (11 September 2009)
- Robertson, “Putting Harlem on the Map,” in Dougherty and Nawrotzki, eds. Writing History in the Digital Age (2011)
- Rogers, “Google Earth in 4D,” Googling Google (12 November 2006)
- Schulman, “GPS and the End of the Road,” New Atlantis (Spring 2011)
- Sterling, “Augmented Reality: Historical Reconstruction,” Wired: Beyond the Beyond (28 October 2009)
- Sterling, “Dumbing Down Smart Objects,” Wired 12, no. 10 (October 2004)
- Watters, “The Public Library: Completely Reimagined,” Mind/Shift (9 November 2011).
- Weiser and Seely Brown, “The Coming Age of Calm Technology” (5 October 1996)
- Williams, “Object Lesson: How the World of Decorative Art is Being Revolutionized by 3D Printing,” The Independent (28 August 2011)
See Also
- Simpkin, “Georeferencing Effectively on the Cheap,” A Matter of Degrees (26 September 2011)
- Sinclair, “The (Nearly) Immediate Gratification of Playing with Geospatial Data,” Stefansinclair.name (15 November 2011)
- Sterling, “Understanding the Spime,” (5 Sep-31 Oct 2006)
- Tales of Things
Blogging Assignment
If you’ve had a chance to put down the books and get out for a while, you’ve no doubt noticed that this is the season when everyone goes gift shopping. And what better gift than a nice book? Following the lead of Mr. Dickens, in this assignment you are going to head for Christmas past. Go to Archive.org and load the Eaton’s Fall and Winter catalogue from 1913-14. Starting on page “n282” you will find a list of books that Eaton’s was selling that season. Your task is to choose 6-8 of the books advertised in the catalogue and find full online digital copies of them. (Some obvious places to search are the Internet Archive, Google Books, Hathi Trust and the Gutenberg Project.) Write a blog post about your search, and provide a list of links to the books that you found. You can also write about some of the books that you couldn’t find. As you’re doing this assignment, pay attention to the unexpected. When you are writing your blog post try to reflect on what you found the most surprising about the process.
William J Turkel 