Memes and Us

Meme's and What mean to us

Meme's have been a big part of most of our lives since we were kids. Problem is that not as many people seem to have noticed the grand impact memes and the communities that formed around them have had on our lives. I intend to reveal or at least shed some light on this not so new phenomenon!

DH Final

Convergence and Archiving: Something Greater

 My final essay for this class was on Archiving and Convergence. I wanted to show these two things go hand in hand in everyday life that people don't even know about. Enjoy!

Final Essay

For my final essay, I explored the reason's why eSports has taken off. I think to understand the reason as to why eSports has grown so much is you had to understand just how big it's gotten with many different companies investing money into eSports to let it grow, the prize money it has paid out and the streaming and television deals they have gotten. I also found out that people enjoy watching others play video games competitively because they like to be distracted, acquire knowledge about the games, the fact that is so new and the aggression that is displayed.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MdHMWuQbSBPhxnybYWe9Au4T_rj_3gkraB2baLEvwEY/edit?usp=sharing

Exhibit Response:


     One of the exhibits I thought was an interesting topic was the exhibit on "using Social Media as a Personal Archive" It talked about how people can archive their lives through social media such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. People post on these websites and keep you up to date with their lives which is a cool concept I never really thought of before. Another interesting exhibit I looked at was on the "Effects of Social Media; Kids vs Adults". It talked about how older people, like our parents never got the chance to grow up with technology we have now. Its a new way for everyone older and younger to stay connected with.

Exhibit Response

The essay exhibits that I was able to view on Wednesday were both interesting and impressive. It was fun to get a chance to hear what everybody else worked on and how their topics were relevant to today's world. One that stood out was my groupmate, Cory Geer. He talked about the evolving of E-sports.

 

This got to me because he talked about what my friend currently does for a living. He talked about how E-sports is becoming a thing of today and will only get more popular.

I was also interested because I, myself, am super into video games and watch professionals play on apps that Cory mentioned.

The Digital Humanities SharkTank

For our class we had to exhibit what we wanted to do our final project on. While looking into many different classmates projects they were very interesting. Two stood out to me the most. The first was an exhibit by Jack Shirk. Shirk was looking into the different influencers of social media.

How he explained the different types of Influencers, in my mind I could think of different people who belong in those categories.

The next one that stuck out to me was done by Chris Carder. Carder focused on how different forms of artificial intelligence could find themselves into the classroom.

It is interesting that after talking to Carder how different forms of AI could really help humans learn in a different way. I think that this would only work at the High School/College level. Overall I was very interested in his thoughts on AI in the classroom

The Binary Archive

We propose an International Archive of Programming Languages.

Just as we have saved and studied actual spoken languages of the world, it is equally important as our technology improves to preserve and study coding languages and how they can be applied for times to come. Just as spoken languages continue to develop, coding does the same. Just as language has developed from earliest civilizations that had no form of contact, Code has developed in a similar way. Coding in its earliest form began with simple switches of instructions for computers. However, as our systems get more and more complex, so must our way of communicating within them.  Just as people could not simply communicate through body language and a series of grunts and groans after building towns and villages. Objects in the world changed, and so did the way we talked about it.

While this archive would be of great importance to computer nerds in the present and future, it would also be of great help down the road when computers inevitably improve and change beyond what a lot of people are going to be able to understand. Computer literacy is increasing at an astounding rate as time goes on, and will only continue to do so as long as things are going well. If we make it possible for people to have access to different languages of code as time goes on, it will be much easier to be able to spread such knowledge to those who'd need it.

The biggest issue with establishing such a thing would be logistics, but just like spoken languages like English, German, and French, all it takes is time and practice to learn. There are already a myraid of spaces available online for people to learn coding in languages that have been around since the beginning of computing. Having a single place where all of it is accessible would just be icing on the already sweet cake.

Coding is becoming a very important skill as computers begin to expand further into our lives, if we are to understand them as much as they understand us, we must be able to learn their language, and make them better able to suit our needs. For this to happen, we believe an archive of Code is necessary.

-Vaughn, Cory, and Brendan