It's amazing that the ability exists to conduct such a large scale evaluation of history in order to better understand these watershed moments. I've read about the tendency that we have in the 21st century to view the current political climate and state of the world as getting worse. In reality, many studies suggest that the situation and climate are actually improving over time, but just that it is easy to have a "grass is greener" attitude toward time periods you have not lived in. A lot of this is of course relative, but I am interested in seeing how big data might be able to track progress over time in this way.

In seems that in many fields, the digital age is bridging the gap between the abilities of a scholar and the abilities of a citizen to engage with different types of knowledge. On one hand this is very exciting because it suggests new opportunities and a greater sense of equality, but there are of course many challenged that come with this too. It seems that anybody can be an "expert" today, which is on one hand good for society, but can also challenge the authority of formally educated experts.

It seems that the field of digital humanities serves as a way to work with and around the digital age rather than trying to combat it as many might consider when the digital age poses many challenges and can lead to information overload.

Reading this really helped me to understand just how digital tools can be used to examine big data in a way that doesn't require the human researcher to do more than in possible. By setting up a proxy for difference, the researcher is able to compare this proxy against all of his prints in an efficient manner.

While I think that ultimately what a researcher chooses to publish is their own decision, I would have to side with the student (though not necessarily his method) who opted for including the soft data. It seems highly important in digital history to show your data and progress in order to present the whole picture of how your ideas came to fruition and ultimately resulted in your argument. While presenting a precise argument is paramount, it would likely be more helpful for readers to show exactly how you arrived at that conclusion.

Being about to examine long-term trends by using a macroscope would be extremely useful in applying historical trends and data to the present day.

This macro approach seems to counter the tendency in academia to focus on a highly specific and micro topic. I am interested in seeing how this different approach will be explored in an academic setting.

This breadcrumb analogy really interests me. Using this approach would allow for taking hard historical facts and turning them into more holistic and easily digestible narratives.

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I feel like I'd rather do option 1 but I might go for this option as the topics interest me more. I wish we could devise our own topic but obviously this is a compressed course with a lot of information. The limit in topics might force me to focus more on the digital aspect rather than the topic and research as is typical in a traditional history course.

The method of 5/5 = A, 4/5 = B, etc. seems like a really fair and reasonable way of assigning grades, especially in an online/summer course where schedules are different. I feel at ease knowing that if I complete the work the best of my ability I won't have to worry so much about the final result not coming together the way I want it to.

I love the computer-generated Indiana Jones script. It's fascinating how a computer language can be used as a tool for creativity and craft.

I'm really looking forward to annotating readings and reading others' annotations. I was worried that an entirely online class might be hard to form community in or cultivate discussion but it seems you've found a really great way of combating that!

The Red Queen hypothesis is very interesting and never more relevant. Fields that constantly force you to change, adapt, and grow can be challenging but often seem to be the most rewarding.

This is an interesting idea! I often think about this continuum and whether it really is a continuum (rather than something more fluid and dynamic) or just sort of a social construction that perpetuates ideas about certain fields of study. "Humanities" under which history typically falls is typically placed at the "softest" side with math and physics at the "hardest" side. It's really interesting how digital history seems to embody many of those spaces.

This was fun to play around with and I enjoy having a darker background and larger font for navigating the manual.

This question really interests me since it can be hard to identify truth when speaking about the past, especially when recalling traumatic experiences.

I figured out how to annotate! I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had some trouble at first but it's really easy now that I have the hang of it. I will definitely be using this for future classes and research!