My second project that I researched was called “Hypercities”. This was a project created through Harvard and UCLA by Todd Presner, David Shepard, and Yoh Kawano. This site was a little tricky to navigate because it is a collection of YouTube videos. The group started their YouTube channel in 2011 and posted consistently until about 3 years ago when they stopped. The group posted a book about their experience and findings in 2014. The basis of the project is to make cities more than just a space or a collection of building, but to evaluate the past, navigate the present, and predict future possibilities based on the networks provided.
This project seemed to be a compilation of a few different projects which were all very different but stemmed from the same use of mapping. They have created a database that is compiled of maps from different places in different time zones in the past. For example, you can go into the data set and find Germany in world war 2 or see Paris in 1704. They got this information from Google Earth and Photographic documents and then were able to publish it with Stream Daemon. They have a very large and extensive library of maps from the past. These maps are also interactive. You can adjust hoe see through they are as they lay over the modern maps in order to compare and contrast them to each other.
Another project that I watched a video about was created singularly by Kawano. It references the large tsunami that took place in Japan on March 11. At the time, no one had cell service, so the people who faced that catastrophe used Twitter to live stream their locations in an attempt to be found. Kawano created a program that you could plug in a “topic” and a “place” that would then show you the exact location of anyone tweeting about that topic in the surrounding area. He talked about how this program would be helpful in natural disasters around the world.
The map creators also built several 3D models of old historic sites. Users are able to take on the shape of an avatar as they explode Rome and Greece and for some reason have buildings fall from the sky. It isn’t the prettiest graphically but it’s cool to see the city they build with the information they had available. It even has a chat feature so you can play with friends.
The creators of this data set took a lot of data and compiled it in different ways. They had to organize and create a way that what they were making could be displayed visually. The mission statement of this site shows a strong desire to have their work built upon. They have several videos that will walk you step by step through the process of making something very similar to what they already have done. This is all in video form, which is a drawback when you are trying to hurry and figure out exactly what to do but is probably beneficial to be able to watch and follow along step by step.
I really liked this project because I could see the benefits for it easily. I feel like more often than not I have a hard time seeing how digital approaches to the humanities lead to things that aren’t just interesting facts. I liked the twitter project because it had a solid and concrete concept that was so applicable to the world we live in and I could see the benefit from it. It is a project that could help people survive. I think the maps would be so helpful for historians, especially with the goal to adapt from the past. I mentioned the incredibly tedious way this website is formatted, which was very frustrating and hard to get around. Project wise, I think they all could have been explained better instead of just letting individuals figure it all out for themselves. A flaw with the twitter project is that in order to be used, the person sending out the tweet must have their location turned on which is not always the smartest thing to do on the internet. Overall, I really enjoyed learning about this project. It made me excited about the digital humanities and the possibilities it has that are sometimes hard to recognize.
