Eragrup: Original Piece of E-Lit

                                                                     Eragrup

For my original piece of E-Lit, I chose to do an interactive story. Eragrup was made with twine, and it tells the story of you, the user, trying to escape an impossible situation.

Trial of Character
My original work of e-literature is entitled "Trial of Character." "Trial of Character" is a hypertext story heavily inspired by fantasy choose-your-own-adventure books and Dungeons and Dragons settings. It was coded from scratch using HTML.

Archiving the '90s

   Archives are important to our society because they act as a point of reference for viewers to locate and utilize important works in their research. Without archives to keep historical and other relevant information categorized, it is possible for important aspects of research to missed or overlooked during examination.

This week in class, our tribe discussed the idea of archives, in addition to taking time to explore these web pages and recognize their importance to the DH field. An archive, or an accumulation of historical records; as noted by Wikipedia, is a place used to store and categorize a series of events related to a specific topic in one general location.

   The idea of an archive is about combining many ideas of a specific topic into one well organized area. This benefits society with the quick and helpful location of the information they need. When information is quickly accessible and no important aspects are misplaced or left to be searched for, we as people can quickly learn and benefit from the source in an efficient manner.

Ultimately, the information stored in archives is used as a tool to increase the intelligence of a viewer interested in that specific topic. Archives take this important information and present it in a manner that creates a more efficient learning environment for the audience that is viewing it.

During class, our tribe was challenged to come up with a pitch for an archive. We came up with creating an archive of discontinued toys from the 90s. Our vision is to capture the time frame of 90s by archiving the most nostalgic component for the members of our tribe, toys. As “90s kids” we grew up with a lot of these toys and looking back at them brings with it so many fond childhood memories, this is the feeling we want to produce for people in creating this archive.

      Since these toys are discontinued they are not easy to come by and in some cases only the most dedicated collectors have them, so  having them easily accessible over the internet makes them more ubiquitous. Not only with this archive of toys appeal to our generation, but it might also be of interest to the next one. The next generation can look back at this archive and see what the kids of yesterday were playing with as well as see how that compares to the toys of the present.

Magna-Doodle

Original Game Boy

The toys showcased in this archive include, but are not limited to: the Game Boy, Polly Pocket, Beanie Babies, Easy Bake Ovens, Magna-Doodle, and The Viewmaster. All these toys will come with a picture of what the toy looked like in factory new condition and will have a description of what the toy is, accompanied by brief explanation on how the toy was played with.

Above all, our tribe believes it is important for someone of our generation to create this archive, because it encase the toys we grew up with. Ultimately, sharing a piece of our past with an audience can be special and a lot of these toys shaped who we are today. In short, this archive sets to display the toys of the past and shine a spotlight on a small portion of our childhood for present and future generations.

Furbies

Beanie Babies

Original Work of Electronic Literature

The Distance Between Us

For my original work of electronic literature, I decided to make a Google Maps essay, using the application Google Tour Builder. In this essay, I focus on the relationship I have with my father, pinpointing specific points about our relationship throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Original Work of Electronic Literature

My Journey to Myrtle Beach 

This work was completed on the Google Tour Builder platform and represents my interesting summer travel story to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Data Mining

This week our class began exploring the concept of data mining. As Wikipedia explains, data mining is, “the computational process of discovering pattern in large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems.” Furthermore, as Wikipedia notes, “the overall goal of the data mining process is to extract information from a data set and transform it into an understandable structure for further use."
After learning more about data mining, our tribe decided to take a shot at. We did this by looking at and examining our most recent blog posts, which were written individually. Using Voyant, a site that is “a web-based reading and analysis environment for digital texts, our tribe wanted to discover and understand what words we frequently used individually. Also, we wanted to discover if and how these frequent words overlapped with another tribe members. To begin, our tribe copied and pasted our individual identity blogs into Voyant’s textbox, which led us to discover what words were used the most. The results were as follows:
Jonas’s three most frequent words: identity, person, online

Sam’s three most frequent words: identity, intelligence, people
Morgan’s three most frequent words: online, intelligence, able
Chase’s three most frequent words: social, identity, virtual

Our tribes most frequently used terms (left to right): Jonas, Sam, Morgan, and Chase

After looking at our identity blogs individually, our tribe compared the frequent terms from each of the tribe member’s blogs and found that the most commonly used words were identity, intelligence, and online. Once we gathered this data, we then used the site Ngram Viewer, “an online search engine that charts frequencies of any coma-delimited, search strings,” to discover how frequent those three terms have been used over time.

As our graph showed, the term “intelligence” has had several spikes since the 1500s, most notably in the 1600s and mid 1700s until 1900. This led our tribe to wonder what was going on during those times that made people ask about intelligence. Was the rise of the term intelligence in the 1600s, due to the pilgrims arriving in Massachusetts? Did intelligence spike again beginning in the mid 1700s have something to do with the French Revolution or the United States gaining independence from England?

Along with intelligence, the term “identity” spiked majoring in 1628. Was this because of England’s exploration into what we know today is America? Were they trying to find out who they were by exploring a new land? Furthermore, after this point in 1628, intelligence drastically decreased until the mid 1950s, right around the time computers were being made and used.

Finally, our tribe examined how the word “online” measured over time. Like our tribe suspected, there was zero frequency measuring the term online until the beginning of the 1980s, when computers and their use started becoming widespread, leading many people to venture online.

After we gathered our data, our tribe was fascinated by the data mining we had done using our past blogs on identity. We found that we not only used common terms in our own blogs, but those same words have been used throughout time, showing us how often or little those words have been discussed by people. Above all, our data mining was able to provide us with some essential evidence about how our world and the time we live in is shaped by the terms and words we us

Social Media Identity

In the advent of the digital era, human beings have stretched their personalities into the internet in the form of social media. Opinions, ideas, and experiences are cataloged on websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and any of the other ever-trending social media platforms. As such, characteristics of a person's identity are stored online, creating a presence that mimics real life persona. However, as the internet is a platform that allows for editing and filters, one has to question how much of a person's digital identity is representative of their living self.

Viewing the internet as a tool, a person must make a conscious effort to interact with it. This allows for a level of filtering in forming an online identity, just as editing a scholarly work can alter how readers absorb the information. That being said, the process of action is what gives people their identity outside of digital media. Intrusive thoughts are describe a person's instinctual, and usually unwanted, desire to do something generally negative. Things like momentarily wanting to drive into oncoming traffic on a whim occur in the minds of 4 out of every 5 people. However, few people are tempted enough by the passing whim to act on it. Does the intrusive thought identify a person, or does the action of not driving into traffic identify them? In a similar fashion, using the internet is a kind of filter like the brain is in allowing someone to dictate their actions. Arguably, action is what makes a person who they are.
So if action dictates persona, then does the additional level of filtering imply that what a person posts online is more representative of them than their actions as a living person? That depends on the context of their posts. Within the confines of identifying social media, like Facebook, then a person may portray themselves in a certain way under the premise that people know who they are. But under anonymity, a person's actions may change. On some websites, a user can post without fear that anyone will know who they are, such as 4chan. 4chan is a website within the culture of the internet that is infamous for being host to some of the most depraved, horrid content a person could imagine. It is also the birthplace of the hacktivist group, Anonymous. Research provides evidence that anonymity online allows users to fear very little for the way they are perceived, thus giving their most carnal thoughts and feelings no reason to be stifled.

Are the actions one takes under anonymous circumstances more indicative of their personality than what they post on personal Facebook accounts? Or is identity dictated by how other people perceive a person, making their anonymous posts nothing more than intrusive thought brought to life? Once again, do the actions a person takes on the internet affect their identity in real life, or is the online identity a separate entity altogether?
In my personal opinion, identity online may be defined by how people perceive that persona, but a person's identity in real life is much more represented by who they are all the time. I think the second filter allows for too much editing and doesn't necessarily fully represent a person. When considering anonymity, a person posting anonymously online is more representative of their real life persona than their online identity. Personally, I believe the philosophy of it all to be fascinating, but it is difficult to really pin down what makes an identity, and therefore, it is difficult to discuss how an online identity represents a person.