Tag Archives: History 390

Trusting the world wide web

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Upon reading Mat Honan’s article, “How Apple and Amazon’s Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking” I was both terrified and paranoid.

So often individuals blindly sync their e-mail to every online platform. From Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Gmail, and the like individuals are blindly putting their faith into the notion that they are protected. One always thinks that the terrible hacking problems one hears about will, “never happen to me.” In fact, that’s not true at all.

Writer Honan thought the same thing and within in minutes, and hours, all of his personal information and accounts were now under some else’s control.

I am at fault for this too. In many cases I don’t realize how much faith I, and my friends, put into online access accounts. When Gmail partnered up with Youtube several years ago, Gmail automatically synced my gmail account with my “new” Youtube account. The same password, and no control over it at all. Is my generation, those that are now between 17-25 years old who have always grown up with the internet, naive to think that nothing will ever happen to us? That all of our data is, in fact, safe?

I would argue yes.

Photos are no longer physically printed off. We have digital cameras and we upload everything to Facebook, Twitter, or not Insta.gram. What if everything on those accounts was deleted? Those pictures of memories are no longer available? Many individuals I know, who have deleted their Facebook on accident, have grieved over all the pictures that are now lost in the internet. It takes too much time and effort to reclaim your digital identity in pictures. As Honan points out, “We don’t own our account security. And as more information about us lives online in ever more locations, we have to make sure that those we entrust it with have taken the necessary steps to keep us safe. That’s not happening now. And until it does, what happened to me could happen to you.”

However, I think it’s almost impossible to not be at some risk. People don’t normally back up everything. I have a few friends that do, but most don’t; in fact I don’t. Since my age group is not doing this, we’re probably not paranoid enough.

In Honan’s article, he pointed out how hacking can be done by just about everyone. In fact, by simply ordering pizza one is putting themselves at risk,  “Your pizza guy could do the same thing, for example. If you have an AppleID, every time you call Pizza Hut, you’ve giving the 16-year-old on the other end of the line all he needs to take over your entire digital life.”

And the price tag for recovering Honan’s data was a pricy $1690. Yikes!  Not only is loosing all of your digital life irritating, maddening, and upsetting, but it’s also extremley expensive. However, how much are we willing to pay to regain back our digital lives that we’ve been beholden to for so many years? Had the price been any higher would Honan have paid to get his files back? Obviously the pictures of his daughter were important to him, but how much would he actually pay? Honan seems to elude that he would have paid any price to regain those precious photos.

As a result, Honan now entrusted himself to the “cloud.” He isn’t the only person to do so.

This summer, National Public Radio’s Music editor Bob Boilen deleted his entire music library, comprising of over 25,000 songs and entrusted his music to “the cloud.” He now has more space on his hard drive and can now remotely access his music library easily. He’s backed everything up, but is still hesitant to entrusting his music library to the unknown “cloud.”

Much like the discussions we’ve been having in class, Boilen notes that the way we’ve not only saved music but also how one listens to music has changed, but he’s trusting the cloud:

I’ll miss the physical, the tangible, but that’s been feeling like a thing of the past anyway … I still miss liner notes, still wish digital would have more information to read while I’m listening and not sure why we haven’t all kicked up a bigger fuss about that. Streaming my collection or curating a playlist or a few dozen playlists and having knowing they’ll be there when you go to listen is an issue of trust. Right now, I feel like trusting.

After much thought, I’m still not sure if I’m willing to trust the elusive “cloud.” I’ve always backed up all of my files on an external hardrive or even a CD.  The question I’m posing is, whether I’m not paranoid enough to worry that everything I own on the internet will be taken over. Is my generation too blindly trusting the internet to always be reliable?

I wonder.

Wikipedia Site Evaluation: Elizabeth I

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As part of an exercise, the class was told to evaluate a Wikipedia entry. I chose to do my exercise evaluation on Elizabeth I of England. There is no specific reason for why I choose this particular person and/time period, it is simply the first thing that came to mind.

Based upon its sources alone, this Wikipedia page seems pretty substantial in comparison to other pages I have come across. Throughout the page, book pages have been cited along with extensive links to other information online and other books.

These are the notes that are given on the Queen Elizabeth I's Wikipedia page. It goes to over 200 notes for this page alone, not including the references listed below.

The page also links to journal articles that can be found on various databases such as JSTOR. Apart from its reference, the page is also visually pleasing by including various works of art and citing who painted these works.

I went into looking into the history of this particular Wikipedia page. The page alone has had over 500 revisions and began in November of 2001. Back then the page looked like this:

There isn’t anything including Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with Shakespeare or anything about her reign. It simply states basic information. Now the Wikipedia page looks like this:

The page contains MUCH more information than it did back in 2001. More than ten years old, this page could have been one of the first Wikipedia page as it dates back so far. Based on my observations and seeing the history of its creation, I see this Wikipedia page as credible.

Photoshopped History

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In reading Errol Morris’ string of essays on Roger Fenton’s, “Valley of the Shadow Death” along with his essay on doctored photos, I really made me think.

In particular, I was struck by Morris’ observation that, “You are absolutely right; you don’t need Photoshop to editorialize. We can go back to Mao and Stalin and Castro and Mussolini, and all these guys. All the dictators doctored photographs in order to effectively change history.” 

Not only can doctored photos impact society, but the actual words that follow a photo can also. I had never thought of simple words being able to change the perception of an image. As Morris points out, doctored photos have appeared even before the age of computers. Photos were used in propaganda. Dictators such as Hitler and Stalin frequently doctored photographs. I began to think what photos Hitler had doctored. Much like Stalin, Hitler frequently removed people from his high command if he felt that they were opposing him or was suspicious of them.

It made me begin to want to do my own research on the subject of historical doctored photographs. I began my search with Google typing in Joseph Goebbles and Hitler. Joseph Goebbles was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and had a very complicated relationship with Hitler.

I came upon this image.

In the first image no one appears to be standing to the left of Hitler but a woman with her hair pinned up. However, in the second image, Joseph Goebbles appears. Leader such as Hitler and Stalin both airbrushed people that fell out of favor out of photographs.

I decided I wanted to look more into the art of doctoring images, something that is not only relevant in today’s images, but also in images of the past. In the case of the Roger Fenton’s photos, no one still seems to know a conclusive idea as to when each of the photos were taken, and which one was taken first.

Along with the image included in this post, doctoring images isn’t something of the present. In fact, it’s very much something of the past as Dr. Harry Farid of Datrmouth note in a presentation he gave on what is called Digital Forensics,

When we talk about digital foresnsics, we probably have the notion that this is something relativey new and modern and an artifact of the digital age, digitical cameras, and digital computers. But the reality is that for nearly as long as photography has  been around people have been making doctored photographs.

In his lecture, Dr. Farid points to a very famous image of Abraham Lincoln.

However, this picture is in fact, not a real photograph of Abraham Lincoln. It’s photoshopped. Instead, Abraham Lincoln’s head was placed onto then Senator John Calhoun’s body. Historians are unsure as to why  they decided to doctor the image. Historians believe that it was due to Lincoln’s poor posture that they replaced the head of Calhoun with Lincoln’s as seen below:

John Calhoun

It’s very clear that the image was doctored in order to present a more, “heroic image of Abraham Lincoln.” However, Dr. Farid states that the news even doctors photographs. Organizations such as Fox News and Time magazine have doctored photographs, making the Associated Press worried about the lack of trust individuals have on photographs in order to tell a story.

What all of these article have made me think of is that idea of what is an authentic photograph. In reality, what do we actually know as being a real photograph of real event? How do we actually know something hasn’t been altered? I am still perplexed by the notion of old doctored photographs as it still seems as though it’s something of the present and not of the past, as in the case of these pictures. Even if it’s not airbrushed or drastically changed, photographs such as the Roger Fenton ones still are questionable in terms of their authenticity.

I turned to the George Mason’s library database, in hopes of getting some concrete answers. I came upon an article written by Timonthy W. Maier, When Your Eyes Tell You Lies, along with Bill Marsh’s piece from the New York Times Upfront section entitled, Can You Belive Your Eyes focusing on historical photo doctoring such as Stalin’s famous airbrushed images. They may be useful to someone else who finds doctored images as interesting as I do.

 

Scavenger Hunt

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For this week’s post, our class was assigned an online scavenger hunt. The items we had to search for, we were encouraged to not use our handy friend Google.

Below are the items we had to look up and the process I went through in finding them:

1. An op-ed on a labor dispute involving public school teachers from before 1970.


For this item, I simply went to the Pro-Quest database, which is accessible to GMU students. I went to the Historical newspapers section of Pro-Quest. I selected the “Advanced Search” section and typed in “labor AND public school.” I also selected the option to narrow down my search results, by selecting “before 1970” of any month and any day. I then went to the drop-down menu and selected only for editorial selections to be searched in. I knew I had to specifically look for a way to narrow down reports of labor disputes with public schools from what I was looking for, which were op-ed/editorial pieces.

I found a lot fewer results that matched with my search topic, meaning I had properly narrowed down my topic out of all of the information I had before. The first of which included a piece from the New York Times October 28 1928.

This is just one of two search results that appeared when I searched. Another included a similar piece from the Christian Science Monitor on November 1, 1927. Both dealt with issues going on in Great Britain.

Overall, this item I did not find hard to find.

2. The first documented use of solar power in the United States

This item was a little bit harder to find. I found a feature piece from the New York Times, however it dealt with solar power in Israel. However, I later realized the assignment asked for the United States. So I went further down my search results. I did the same process as I did with the Op-Ed piece, however I removed the date limitation.

I had to narrow down my search even more by only searching items before 1989, as anything before 1990 would be irrelevant as solar power started being used in the 1990’s. Then I had to narrow down my search even more by replacing the phrase, “Solar panel” with “Solar Photovoltaic power AND United States.” Solar Photovoltaic was being used in many of my search results, so I decided to only search items with this phrase instead.

What I ended up finding each time were reports of the first solar pond, but of the first use of solar energy.  I then found that I wanted to change the date to be before 1982. As a result, my search was even more narrow to only 465 results. However, I’m still not sure if I ended up finding what I needed. Many reports discussed the first solar house, or the first use of commercialism solar power, not the first use of just ANY solar power within the United States.

So I failed by using my friend Google to help me find the timeline for the, “history of solar power.” It directed me to a timeline from the U.S. Department of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. While I did not find the first account of solar power use in the United States, I was still able to find a reputable source of exactly what I was looking for.

What I found the problem with databases is that you have to know EXACTLY what you are looking for and EXACTLY how you are going to find it. In the past, I’ve had trouble finding sources on databases before because there is just so MUCH information, that it’s hard to find out exactly what you were looking for in the first place. However, with Google I only had to type in one thing and I instantly got what I was looking for. Initially, searching for something via Google doesn’t blind you from all of the search results you are inevitably going to get if one simply goes head first into a database expecting to find something.

3) The best resource for the history of California ballot initiatives, including voting data.
For this item I knew I needed to look somewhere else besides historical newspapers. I instead went to the the library set of databases and went to the letter “D” to find Data.gov from the United States Government website.

I wasn’t 100% sure what I was supposed to be looking for. So I typed in, “voting data for ballot initiatives in California,” and came to the University of  California-Berkley’s library site. Detailed in it, it gave me a .pdf of the history of the voting initiatives in California. Within this, I found the date October 10th, 1911 for when, “the initiative process was established in California by a margin of 168,744 to 52,093 votes cast for Senate Constitutional Amendment (SCA) 22. S.”

Using that date, I decided to go to the Pro-Quest Historical newspaper data base to find a press clipping of this information to make sure that what I was getting was factual. I searched, “California AND voting initiative” narrowing down my search to only show results before 1912. I came up with 252 search results and a press clipping from the newspaper Outlook in American Periodicals from October 21, 1911 (.pdf).

What this exercise taught me is that Google is the first stepping stone. It’s really difficult to navigate around databases, particularly when you aren’t an expert on a topic. This is because you don’t know what you’re looking for or where to start. With the second item, I had a very difficult time trying to find the first use of solar power because it wasn’t called solar power to begin with. While Google isn’t the answer for everything, it’s a good first start to doing some small background research to make sure you know exactly what you are looking for.

What Was Lost May Not Be Found

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NYT Graves

A recent piece published in the New York Times by Michael Graves, an architect and Professor Emmeritus at Priencton University remarked on some of the losses of our digitized world. When we were discussing the negatives and positives of a digitized world, this article kept peering back into my frame of thought.

In the age of computers, Graves feels that we are loosing an art for drawing. Instead, architects resort to computers and software programs,

IT has become fashionable in many architectural circles to declare the death of drawing. What has happened to our profession, and our art, to cause the supposed end of our most powerful means of conceptualizing and representing architecture?

The computer, of course. With its tremendous ability to organize and present data, the computer is transforming every aspect of how architects work, from sketching their first impressions of an idea to creating complex construction documents for contractors.

–Michael Graves, Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing

As commented on in Cohen and Rosenzweig’s book Digital History, we digitizing history is not only difficult, but when we do so we not only again new knowledge, but we also loose it. I have never been against digitizing history, but I think we loose so much when we try and convert everything to become digitized. At what point do we loose the art form of the written word? Could Hemingway have written “The Great Gatsby” on a Macbook Pro? Maybe, maybe not. The connect that an artists and an architect has to their pen, pencil is so innate in creating art. The pen or pencil both allow for the expansion of ideas to flow from imagination to execution. Could Monet have painted with a simple computer? It’s a sad realization, but we are loosing art forms through digitization. Whether it is for the better, we have yet to determine.

With every advance in technology, we are loosing something of our past. Cohen and Rosenweig comment on this by saying, “but even in the best of circumstances, the move from analog to digital generally entails a loss of information…”

It’s not just a loss of information that we loose when we look at manuscripts of Shakespeare’s work digitized, but we aren’t able to analyze the ink of the time, the paper, or even the binding. But we are also loosing forms of art. In the case with Grave’s comment, he feels that architects of today aren’t as closely related to their work as they were in the past where, “buildings are no longer just designed visually and spatially; they are ‘computed’ via interconnect databases.”

Graves continues to note that with the digital world’s impact on architecture, the mere practice and art form of architecture have fallen apart. There used to be a process and tools one used to sketch out future buildings. Despite the benefits that technology bring, in particular to the art world, we are loosing ways of practice and we are loosing art and a way to process ones creativity.

Apart from architecture, the music industry has been growing since the age of the internet. But with that, has also come some losses. This is not to say that we are no longer producing great music, it’s just different. In the age of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, recording was a long process. It was something one worked up towards and people used to listen to their music. It’s great that I can carry my iPod with me holding up to 6,000 songs, but am I really appreciating the creation of the music I’m listening to? The process? Do I even care? Pop music artists are able to go into a recording studio, put in a few vocals, mix a single and put it online. Just like how Graves is disheartened by the loss of drawing in architecture, should I be disheartened to not care about the process of making music? Am I loosing an experience the same way future architects are loosing something?

For example, partisans of (digital) music CDs played with solid-state (digital) amplifiers tout their quality and reliability, with the thousandth playback as crisp and unblemished as the first, whereas devotees of (analog) vinyl records amplified by (analog) tube amplifiers enthuse about their “authentic,” “warmer” sound, despite the occasional scratchinessof an old platter.

– Cohen and Rosenzweig, Digital Past

The more and more I go through this class, the more I am trying to appreciate the slow process of how things are made. I am starting to recognize the process of how things are made and what we are truly loosing in the age of continuing growing technology. I am curious to see what other students in the class think about the actual art forms that we are loosing in a digitized world.

To end, Graves tells the story of how he and his architect friend have an unspoken dialogue occurs between him and another architect, simply done on a sketpad; not a computer.

We had a genuine love for making this drawing. There was an insistence, by the act of drawing, that the composition would stay open, that the speculation would stay “wet” in the sense of a painting…As I work with my computer-savvy students and staff today, I notice that something is lost when they draw only on the computer. It is analogous to hearing the words of a novel read aloud, when reading them on paper allows us to daydream a little, to make associations beyond the literal sentences on the page. Similarly, drawing by hand stimulates the imagination and allows us to speculate about ideas, a good sign that we’re truly alive. 

For more information on Michael Graves, he was profiled on CBS’ Sunday Morning program.