New Website

I have just finished completing a website dedicated solely to me! I created the website using Googlesites and the finished product can be seen here. Using Googlesites was very easy and having learned some rudimentary HTML code, I was able to appreciate the ease of use that comes with Googlesites. As a very modest and humble person, I always find it difficult to admonish myself to others with credentials. However, facing the difficult prospect of either entering the workforce or obtaining more degrees, I had better learn quickly. This exercise definitely helped me along this path!

It's refelection time!

I am a very reflective person. My brain and I have a good working relationship in caching experiences then rehashing them through introspection. While I never explicitly present this process in the form of a journal, it is something I am extremely aware of. When you have trouble sleeping for the first 17 years of your life, you learn a lot about what is going on inside that skull of yours. This is why I am truly excited to be writing a final blog reflecting on my experiences and developments over the course of my first term Digital History course. One can only include so much information on a teacher evaluation sheet, and even then, the information is not intended for personal reflection but merely personal assessment.

Upon entering this class I was really excited to learn what the digital world could hold for future and current historians. To tell the truth, technology does frighten me to an extent. Their are the usual Luddite reasons, however having read many books on the notion of primitivism versus modernism I understand how to contextualize such fears. My fears lie in the unknown, as with all human fear. Maybe in that light, it is not fear but rather apprehension and anxiety about the unknown that drives such anti-modernist sentiments. Perhaps because my generation has already seen such a drastic change in the human condition, I expect this change not only to continue unabated but to continue along an exponential ascension. This may or may not be true, but change in certainly happening and there is no slowing it down. Historians in general seem to be ultra-conservative in terms of change perhaps due to the fact the we like old things, pine for old things, and immerse ourselves in antiquated philosophies and realities. Perhaps this has been one of the greatest lesson I have learned over the course. Whether we historians want to confront it our not, we need to change along with the world. The Internet and technology not only broaden our potential mediums for communication but also display new possibilities in research methodology leading to entirely new horizons of interpretation. This is exciting! It is also does not destroy the traditional modes of scholarship. This would be another one of my fears of technology, that is destroys traditional bases of knowledge. This is true and for some skills, technology certainly will be the Shochet waiting in the wings. Yet this does not mean that all skills will die off and give way to new ones. Historians will still need their panache for research, their motivation to search hours and hours for the 'golden nugget' of information, the ability to interpret many different analyses to form a coherent narrative and the ability to transmit and communicate ideas.

As a public historian the ability to communicate is by far our most important skill. We are the mediators between the academic realm of history and what actually matters to people. One question posed by my professor Bill Turkel for this final assignment was what makes history interesting to the public. My response to this is quite literally, history separates us from the animals. Being a fan of anthropology I always found it interesting to note that one major difference between humans and our closest relative chimpanzees was the ability to transmit information between generations. A chimpanzee and human can both fashion tools in order to perform a task. However a chimpanzee cannot teach another chimpanzee how to make his or her own tool or even how to use the tool fashioned by the first chimp. It is this ability to transmit ideas, technology and once we developed language stories down from generation to generation. I have never even thought to connect this for the human desire to know history, transmit history our even produce history but I have come to this revelation now. When we discuss why the public has a thirst for history, I feel it is directly connected to this animal trait unique to humans, the ability to transmit information for generation to generation. The question now is, what history does the public want to know. The academic realm looks down on the public appetite for history with disdain. 'If only they could grasp our concepts and the importance of our work' seems to ring down from the tower tops. Indeed I have heard many history students echo that entertaining to a public audience constitutes a secession to the 'dark side' of history. I tend not to highlight the fact that the world's first historian Herodotus, produced his history for public consumption. Indeed, historians should always be mindful of the public consumption of history. This does not mean that scholarship needs to depreciate in quality in order to boost consumption. However, historians need to be mindful in the changing scholastic landscape of how information can be disseminated.

Another lesson I have learned in this class is the pressing need for historians to harness the new mediums of intellectual exchange in order to create a two way dialog with the interested public. One major reason that I entered a public history program as opposed to a traditional academic program was this desire to connect historical study with a larger audience that pines for it. The proliferation and success of historically based movies, television shows, videogames, novels, documentaries, websites and the attendance of museums and heritage sites testify to this public desire. Historians have so many ways now to get their interpretations and analysis to people, it would be occupational suicide to ignore them. One way that we can do this is blogging. I have already blogged about this subject and why it is imperative for historians to adopt blogging. However, simply by becoming a little Internet savvy, historians can fashion websites dedicated to their particular research interests. The beauty of websites is that historical information can now be a two way discussion between scholars and their audiences. Historians almost never focus on an audience past the dozen or so academics in their field. History has to be more inclusive then this! Technology can definitely bring us together, historians need to embrace this new connected intellectual environment. We have been so scared to let people into our world that we have alienated ourselves to people who are interested in what we do, we can’t afford to shut them out any longer.

My journey into the technological realm of history is not complete so I feel it would be premature to make some final assessments of my development. Next semester I will be engaging in an interactive exhibit design course which again will marry technological processes with historical initiatives. This first inculcation to the digital humanities has gotten me very excited about this next chapter in my development. I have learned about tools which I thought only existed in science fiction, or at the very least, possessed by the military in total secrecy. Perhaps the greatest lesson learned by anyone over time of their life is to never doubt one’s own capabilities and to always keep and open mind to new experiences. As a self professed primitivism, technology and me seemed like two positively charged ions on a collision course bent for instant and total repulsion from each other. However I find myself energized by what I have learned over the past four months. Rather than being scared of technology, well I think actually I am still a little scared to be honest. Rather than being consumed by fear, I now see that there can be a harmony between past, present and future. Are we in the process of a major change in the very nature of human existence, I would say yes. Does that mean we as humans have to fear such a large development? My answer before this class would almost assuredly been yes. Even though I understand how large scale evolutional technological initiatives have almost always improved the human experience, I would have still talked as though the world was transforming in ways that would hamper the human experience. But now, I see things not necessarily in a more positive light, but certainly in a much more balanced way. Will the Internet and digital technology change humanity for the better or worse. The answer is both! After learning about the new kinds of technology on the forefront for humanists and the general society at large, I can say that the future is here. Overall, humans will continue to live and our lives will change due to currents now unstoppable in their momentum. However, this is not a bad thing. Talk to a version of me four months ago and I would not have even contemplated these answers to such a daunting question! The journey has been started, I’ll report back in another four months when I’m a little farther down the road.

Clausewitz: What data mining can reveal!

Is warfare just the continuation of politics by other means? Carl von Clausewitz's bold theoretical assertion in On War has enthralled many a military historian since its publication in the 19th century. Writing in the wake of his own experiences as a Prussian officer in the Napoleonic Wars, Clausewitz's analysis is stunningly contemporary to rise of nationalism/imperialism in Europe and has been argued as a major ideological foundation for the first world war. If we want to learn more about his infamous work, we must explore the new ways to encounter texts. In the digital age, historians have many new tools to develop new research techniques. One of the most accessible is text and data mining software. What new themes can we find by examining the metadata of Clausewitz? The one that I would really like to explore in this blog is the most central to Clausewitz theory and also his practice of warfare: Warfare is the continuation of politics by other means.

The first task I performed was a simple text search to see which words were mentioned the most in the text. While unsure what this would show me, I figured it would be a great way to start. The three most used words (other than pronouns, prepositions and general verbs) were battle (266), means, and general (both 259). Words that associate the interrelationship between politics and warfare do occur a great deal. Examples are power and influence (both 94), political (77) and superiority (62). This initial step was illuminating, but not very revealing in terms of interpretation. I next tried a concordance analysis using the words politics and warfare. I did not find anything information of value using these words. However I realized that the word politics is not used by Clausewitz, and I checked my initial text search to confirm this suspicion. I then used the word policy instead of politics and got a much better result. The concordance reads as follows:

renewal of the era of     warfare      be a change for the  ONLY A CONTINUATION OF STATE     POLICY      BY OTHER MEANS . This  always be the aim of     Warfare      . Now War is always  therefore , will action in     warfare      be stopped , as indeed  it is called forth by     policy      it would step into the  step into the place of     policy      , and as something quite  a want of harmony between     policy      and the conduct of a  prior right to consideration .     Policy      , therefore , is interwoven  IS A MERE CONTINUATION OF     POLICY      BY OTHER MEANS . We  the tendencies and views of     policy      shall not be incompatible with  if we regard the State     policy      as the intelligence of the  only if we understand by     policy      not a true appreciation of  War may belong more to     policy      than the first . 27  object of particular acts of     Warfare      , and therefore also the  an intimate knowledge of State     policy      in its higher relations .  of the War and the     policy      of the State here coincide  at the different scenes of     Warfare      , or to send there  is still more like State     policy      , which again , on  scale . Besides , State     policy      is the womb in which  end of the act of     warfare      , and modify or influence  at the present state of     warfare      , we should say that  displays itself most in mountain     warfare      , where every one down  lie towards the province of     policy      . The preparations for a  SUSPENSION OF THE ACT IN     WARFARE      IF one considers War as  suspension in the act of     Warfare      , strictly speaking , is  Nevertheless in this kind of     Warfare      , there is also a  which , with a shilly-shally     policy      , and a routine-ridden military  as the real activity in     Warfare      , which , by its  are cases also in modern     Warfare      in which this has not 

The results display each time warfare and policy are mentioned in the text. If tweaked a little in terms of grammar, this result could be abridged to produce a overview of the overall theme of the book. The concordance works well to illustrate how to identify a theme in the book. When using a word pair search with policy and warfare, there are no results. So text mining to me seems like a great tool once the book has already been read. One would need to read the book in order to ascertain this specific theme in order to begin asking questions.

Like all good historians, I know that the hardest and most crucial part of our inquiry is asking the right questions.  In terms of text mining, I simply do not know the questions to ask in order to find out the information I desire.  Luckily for me, the TAPoR software which I used for my text mining offers a great 'recipe guide' to finding useful information through text mining.  I decided to try the recipe for Exploring Themes Withing a Text since I have been searching for Clausewitz's theory.  At first I had to generate a word search using words related to the theme I was searching for.  This is certainly an area where I am not very comfortable.  Word associations remind me of grade 12 English, not historical research.  But herein lies the challenges of this new type of interpretation, forcing us to think outside of our comfort zone.  With enough practice, historians could be forging new links between themes and theories using these novel digital tools.  For Clausewitz and the theme of nationalism engendered by policy and warfare, I chose to enter only four words: warfare, policy, nationalism, superiority.  Next I had to determine the senses of the words.  Again, deja vu of grade 12 English.  After determining the senses I then had to find synonyms and antonyms of my chosen words.  There were no synonyms or antonyms for any of my words.  Using all my words, I then used the concordance tool to find all the instances of use for each word.  I came up with a very similar result as my first concordance test.  I then needed to finish the recipe doing a collocates search.  Unfortunately, my words came up with no result.

Overall, I can definitely see how useful text mining can be for historians and scholars.  However, I simply do not know the right questions to ask to uncover any meaningful information for new interpretations.  I started on this quest hoping to find something new about On War.  I did not learn anything new about the text,but I did learn something about how I have interpreted it.  Perhaps I should have expanded my initial observations on the books themes and not focused on such a narrow aspect.  Perhaps the best lesson that I learned was the difference between Human language and Machine language. If we are going to harness the power of computers to advance scholarly research in the humanities, we had better learn how to speak effectively with them.  The biggest obstacle that I ran into was asking the right questions of the software.  I needed to be more descriptive in my word selections and better attuned to the use of language in On War.  The real skill of text mining is knowing what the computer requires in terms of information to produce the results you want.  In my first attempt, I was way off!  The computer and I were speaking a different language.  The next step for historians is to figure out how to ask the right questions of computers.  We have gotten pretty good at questioning humans, now its time to face a new challenge.

I was able to perform text mining of this book with the help of TAPoR.  This website has a text analysis portal that can be accessed by scholars and students with great ease.  The site is easy to use and has a wonderful tutorial to help all new users.  I used the Gutenberg Project to extract the text for On War.  This digitization initiative contains over 30 000 e-books for free download and use and continues to add to its extensive collection.