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Computers, Visualization, and History: How New Technology Will Transform Our Und
This visionary and thoroughly accessible book examines how digital environments and virtual reality have altered the ways historians think and communicate ideas and how the new language of visualization transforms our understanding of the past. Drawing on familiar graphic models--maps, flow charts, museum displays, films--the author shows how images can often convey ideas and information more efficiently and accurately than words. With emerging digital technology, these images will become more sophisticated, manipulable, and multidimensional, and provide historians with new tools and environments to construct historical narratives. Moving beyond the traditional book based on linear narrative, digital scholarship based on visualization and hypertext will offer multiple perspectives, dimensions, and experiences that transform the ways historians work and people imagine and learn about history. This second edition of Computers, Visualization, and History features expanded coverage of such topics as sequential narratives, 3-D modeling, simulation, and video games, as well as our theoretical understanding of space and immersive experience. The author has also added "Guidelines for Visual Composition in History" for history and social studies teachers who wish to use technology for student assignments. Also new to the second edition is a web link feature that users of the digital edition can use to enhance visualization within the text.
Hardcover
First published December 1, 2002
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July 7, 2021
Humanities Computer Visualization Case, Ways, and Means - This book provides the case, ways and means of computer visualization in the humanities better than anything I have seen. I first happened upon the book when looking for material on the uses of such visual tools and was delighted to find this compact volume about the topic as it relates to history and other humanistic disciplines.
The book quite clearly lays out the case for using visual forms of analysis rather than just text particularly with the advent of readily available computing that enables the use of such methods; Staley spends a good deal of time discussing the biases around the use of text and the limitation of such predispositions.
There is a preface to the 2nd edition which explains that the first three chapters are the same as the 1st edition and where there are additions based on learning during the interval of the two editions. After a helpful introduction that outlines the text (see pages vii-xxi), the book has 5 main chapters (Prose and History, Visualization as an Alternative to Prose, Visual History Secondary Sources, Virtual History, and History Takes Shape), a conclusion, and an appendix (list), bibliography, index, and information about the author.
Some of my favorite parts, begin at very beginning of the book’s introduction. The first sentence declares that “. . . historian should align the computer with the telescope and the microscope, rather than with the printing press . . . “stressing its real impact with graphics rather than processing written text. From there, Staley goes on to explain the nature of visualization, its difference from prose and his argument for its use (e.g. visualization is more akin to poetry with its imagery). Staley makes references to McLuhan and others as to ways the medium and communication shapes the culture overall (see my review of Genosko's Remodelling Communication: From WWII to the WWW (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication) ) and more specifically the culture of the history field. There are also references to Franco Moretti (see my review of Distant Reading ), Joseph Novak (see my review off Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools and Corporations ) as well as to historians such as Denise Schmandt-Besserat ("When Writing Met Art: From Symbol to Story"). There is a table that indicates the differences between written history and visual history (page 55) illuminating their 7 respective characteristics. Then there are the comments on modeling and gaming (starting on page 102) as means for historians to visually represent and interact with secondary data sources. In the section on Conceptual thesis” on Cartography, Staley uses a graphic showing a Google N-Gram reader (page 144) to test the “Steigerwald thesis” about “alienation” as a 1950’s-60’s explanation of social ills that faded by the 1980’s.
If you are curious as to the ways such visual tools can be applied and/or about a strong case, ways, and means of computerized visualization can be utilized in the humanities, Staley’s book appears to be one without equal and deserves your attention.
The book quite clearly lays out the case for using visual forms of analysis rather than just text particularly with the advent of readily available computing that enables the use of such methods; Staley spends a good deal of time discussing the biases around the use of text and the limitation of such predispositions.
There is a preface to the 2nd edition which explains that the first three chapters are the same as the 1st edition and where there are additions based on learning during the interval of the two editions. After a helpful introduction that outlines the text (see pages vii-xxi), the book has 5 main chapters (Prose and History, Visualization as an Alternative to Prose, Visual History Secondary Sources, Virtual History, and History Takes Shape), a conclusion, and an appendix (list), bibliography, index, and information about the author.
Some of my favorite parts, begin at very beginning of the book’s introduction. The first sentence declares that “. . . historian should align the computer with the telescope and the microscope, rather than with the printing press . . . “stressing its real impact with graphics rather than processing written text. From there, Staley goes on to explain the nature of visualization, its difference from prose and his argument for its use (e.g. visualization is more akin to poetry with its imagery). Staley makes references to McLuhan and others as to ways the medium and communication shapes the culture overall (see my review of Genosko's Remodelling Communication: From WWII to the WWW (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication) ) and more specifically the culture of the history field. There are also references to Franco Moretti (see my review of Distant Reading ), Joseph Novak (see my review off Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools and Corporations ) as well as to historians such as Denise Schmandt-Besserat ("When Writing Met Art: From Symbol to Story"). There is a table that indicates the differences between written history and visual history (page 55) illuminating their 7 respective characteristics. Then there are the comments on modeling and gaming (starting on page 102) as means for historians to visually represent and interact with secondary data sources. In the section on Conceptual thesis” on Cartography, Staley uses a graphic showing a Google N-Gram reader (page 144) to test the “Steigerwald thesis” about “alienation” as a 1950’s-60’s explanation of social ills that faded by the 1980’s.
If you are curious as to the ways such visual tools can be applied and/or about a strong case, ways, and means of computerized visualization can be utilized in the humanities, Staley’s book appears to be one without equal and deserves your attention.
Displaying 1 of 1 review