Learning about Unity3D

Great presentation about using Unity3D to create humanities games.

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks: A Signpost of the Data Visualization Transformation

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks- Orlando Rents

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks- Jacksonville Income Map

New tools for data visualization seem to be appearing everyday.  A number of trends seem to be driving it. First, there is more data available. The Obama administration's Open Government Initiative has provided a central repository for public information.  This commitment at the federal level has been followed by many municipal and state governments. Several non-profits are working to support these efforts. The National Day of Civic Hacking allow open data advocates to promote innovative solutions to public problems using open data sets.


The second trend I see affecting things is the number of tools for data visualization that are available.  While I recognize that not all the program available are  useful to humanities scholars uninterested in quantitative analysis, some of them can be a powerful way to highlight points made in a traditional manner.  

Third, the number of digital devices connected to the internet means that data visualizations are becoming an important way to distinguish yourself from the crowd. Mobile devices are becoming the defacto space to interact with the world. With so much information for everyone to sort through, visually engaging presentations can make the difference between success and failure.  This is not a question of the quality of the information. The problem of information fluency grows ever more important because of these issues.  Instead, this is a simple question of user experience. If you can create an engaging visual as a gateway to your argument, then you provide yourself the opportunity to draw the audience to discover the substance of your analysis.  If I'm right, as educators concern with preparing students for contemporary society, basic understanding of data presentation will be essential regardless of discipline. 

Quick Reflection II --The Postwar Experience in Orange TV's New History of International Drive

Recently, I received a couple of comments and emails related to my post about Orange TV Scrapbook new documentary about the development of International Drive. In my comment I mention an omission of women and minorities in the story. This is what garnered the emails. First, as I mentioned in the initial post, this is an interesting documentary. Having said that, my perspective on the coverage of the documentary is based on a desire to contextualize the story of community development to include voices that are left out. By "left out" I do not mean a deliberate attempt to remove from the story, I do not believe that was the intent (I didn't think it in August and I don't think it now).

Since the 1960s, the turn toward social history in historical study has looked for ways to incorporate the story of the poor, women, and racial minorities into history. This is a difficult process, and it important to recognize that this blog by its very nature is about inquiry and trying to shift focus toward that discussion. The title is "NEW ADVENTURES IN DIGITAL HISTORY," so yep, I am looking for the stuff left out.

If you have been reading this blog over time, you must realize that students in my classes are forced (yep I said it) to examine the stories we (academic types like me) know are not getting a lot of attention and try to bring those voices and perspective into the story. Now, the goal of the producer of the documentary are similar, but they operate under greater constraint and need to provide an audience with a understandable narrative in 30 minutes. They are telling a story of development that focuses on decision makers and those decision makers are white and male. Any consideration of major economic, social, and political processes in the United States would come back with a narrative very similar and that is not a surprise given the story they need to tell.

For an academic like me, the opportunity to broaden the story by considering issues of the composition of the labor pool constructing the businesses, discussing the minorities and women employed in the service industry, or merely taking a moment to contextualize the multicultural history of the region as it is linked to tourism would have been a way to incorporate greater diversity into the story. These efforts would have broaden the context of the story, but did they have time for them or would they have made sense with the story they were trying to tell? These are good questions. This is the inherent tension between academics and general public, academic are suppose to look at something like this and go, "What about......?" I fully expect more minorities and women to make their way into the story, and I will watch it when the next part is available.

The history of I-Drive is not on my plate right now and I haven't done research to know all the details, so honestly, I'm happy to see Orange TV making the effort. Given the limited funds and long hours, the task to produce this program must have been considerable. My comments should not be seen as trivializing those efforts. I was surprise to find out that I know at least one of the people involved in the documentary! Indeed, our project on the Colony Theater was featured on Scrapbook, so I am a fan of their efforts. If you haven't watched the documentary, you should. The story they are telling is one part of the narrative we all should know. Central Florida is a region ripe for study and Orange TV is reaching out to the community to provide those stories. They deserve our support, but that support should come in the form of providing a rich diversity of stories for them to pull from. Efforts like our Golden Personalities project at Rollins provide profiles and history of well known people, but we strive to include voices of women and African-Americans. Recently the University of Central Florida has put together a great program called RICHES: Regional Initiative for Collecting the History, Experiences, and Stories of Central Florida. RICHES is an umbrella program housing interdisciplinary public history projects that bring together different departments at UCF with profit and non-profit sectors of the community.

With more efforts like these combined with the programs like Orange TV Scrapbook, I think we will get a greater diversity of voices in the stories of our community.

The last thing I want to say is, thanks for taking the time to read the blog. My students are forced to do it:-) So, I appreciate you wasting your time with my awful typing skills.

Quick Reflection--The Postwar Experience in Orange TV's New History of International Drive

This is new documentary about the history of International Drive made by Orange TV. I, like a lot of academics who study urban development, have mixed feelings about the impact of the type of development represented by International Drive. That issue is different from the question of the history of people and organizations that strove to make a community work in a period that growth was not guaranteed. The experience building international drive speaks to the post-war consumer mindset in the United States. The men (and there is an omission of women and minorities in this narrative) who promoted International Drive sold the possibility of the future where people could consume the environment. Cheap and plentiful land, infrastructure to support tourist travel by car and tax structure built on those visitors remains the key to understanding the development questions in Florida today. As we struggle with the implication of future where resources will not be as freely available, the enterprising perspective on display in this documentary will be needed again. The difference is that opportunity must be found in creating new industry not as depended on tourism, better resource management, and greater recognition of the region's diversity will be necessary if International Drive will support another next fifty years of economic activity.