Facebook

Rather than using Facebook for historical/academic purposes, its principal service to me is recreational.  Nonetheless, I’ve considered the extent to which this Digital tool might be of service to the historian.  As for what Facebook actually is, the answer is that it’s a social networking service.  Specifically, it is a means through which people may keep in touch with one another over the internet.

For starters, Facebook has a friend-finding facility.  Individuals’ profiles have the option of adding a picture.  This facilitates the ease with which historians are able to find one another (given that they have met one another in person and actually know what each other looks like).  If the particular person for whom another historian is searching has a very common name, for example “John Smith”, then the chances of them actually finding this person, without an image, are almost non-existent.  If the person being searched for puts a photo up next to their name it will still be relatively time consuming actually seeking to find their picture, but at least there is the chance that they might be located.  Having a common contact between the two historians would make it significantly easier to find one another over the web if it was the case that the two had common names. However, this is not always an option.

A profile picture is not the only kind of picture that the historian can upload onto their Facebook account.  If the historian is in possession of a digital camera they are also capable of uploading any photographs they take using it to their Facebook account.  Thus, the historian may take photographs of images at historic sites and upload these.  I am aware that Dr D’Aughton here at UCC has a particular interest in historic imagery.  Thus, such a facility may be of interest to her as well as other like-minded historians.  If a historian uses their Facebook account for both casual and academic purposes they have the option of being able to categorise the various photos they take into different albums.  This adds a degree of organisation to their account and makes it easier for those contacts of theirs who are historians to find pictures that may be of interest to them.  Furthermore, the option to leave comments on pictures offers a further benefit for historic circles.  For the person who uploaded the pictures to their profile they may receive several kinds of feedback on their images; from commendations for simply having made the images available to comments about the history of the image about which the person who initially made them available (as well as all other historians with access to the profile where the images are located) may have previously been unaware.  Thus the picture uploading facility provides the basis for a forum to develop with individuals feeding off one another’s comments and discovering things to which they may have been completely oblivious!

Moving away from the image-based services provided by Facebook, to those more focussed on dialogue, there is the wall.  The benefits to be derived from using the wall may depend upon the number of contacts the historian has.  On the one hand there is the advantage that if a comment is left on the wall, every historian who decides to browse the individual’s personal profile will receive the message which the historian desires to convey.  By leaving messages intended for a large number of other historians on your wall rather than theirs, there is the advantage of saving time that would have been spent leaving the same message for multiple people on each of their walls.  I myself did this when I left a message on my wall with a link to my Digital History blog.

Nonetheless, such a course of action has the downside that not all may realise that the message is there until such time as it may no longer be relevant.  They may be aware shortly after the message has been left on your own wall if they go to the Facebook homepage, browse the recent history of activities that have taken place and see the individual’s message that they have left on their own wall among these activities.  However, if they login to their Facebook account a considerable time afterwards, they’re unlikely to see it.  This is especially the case if they’ve lots of contacts because more recent “news” will replace it.  Alternatively, the historian desiring to convey a particular message can leave it on the wall of an individual if it is only of relevance to them and not the wider network of historians to whom they are connected.  This latter option has an advantage over the former in that the person upon whose wall they write will be directly notified of the comment: they will be notified by email.

In either case, be it the historian leaves a message on their own wall or that of the person for whom it is intended, they have a variety of options available to them as regards how they specifically do it.  For example, I have recently seen people posting links to videos on Facebook walls.  Therefore there would be no reason why, if a historian found a video of particular interest on say Youtube which they thought others might be interested in, for them not to post this on either their own wall or that of the people for whom they think it might be of some interest.  Besides this, exactly the same can be done with links to other websites.

Like the wall, the chat option’s usefulness to the historian depends upon the frequency with which other historians log into their Facebook accounts.  What the chat option offers is a more direct form of interaction.  In fact, the interaction it provides, as its same suggests, is immediate.  Towards the bottom right hand corner of their screen the historian may click on a box with the word “chat” written in it whereby they can see all of their contacts who are online and engage with them in dialogue.  There are numerous ways in which this might facilitate the historian.  For example, they may wish to ask them about a topic which they are aware the person to whom they are talking is very familiar (be it due to, perhaps, their reading of an earlier comment left by the person on a wall or photograph).  Perhaps one historian, not fully appreciating the views or comments made at some earlier date by the one to whom they are “chatting” may request through this facility for the individual to elaborate or clarify their comments or arguments.  Besides this, another possible use for the chat option may be for one historian to question the other about the details of some historical meeting happening in the near future which the other knows.  These are but a sample of the possible uses to which the historian might put the chat facility.  Obviously, the chatting option’s usefulness depends on the extent to which the people to whom one particular historian wishes to speak are online.  If people are not online, then obviously they can’t talk to them.

Two final benefits that the historian might derive from Facebook are the use of joining societies and sending invitations.  As regards the former, on Facebook there are numerous societies which would be of interest to historians such as Medievalists.com of which I myself am a member (though I don’t engage with the rest of the community who are also members).  Such societies, whatever period in history they may deal with, may provide a stepping stone to the historian wishing to make connections.  Through such societies the historian may find others sharing their historical interests and with whom they could become connected.  As for the invitations, if a particular historian went about organising a conference, they could send out a Facebook invitation to all those for whom the conference might be relevant.  Not only could the invitations be sent for conferences, but indeed any sort of event.  Why it might be useful to historians is because events significant to their academic discipline could be organised by themselves and then they could invite one another to these.  The invitations themselves would offer the basic details of the time, venue and nature of the event to which the people receiving the invitation are being invited.  For the person attempting to organise the particular function in question it would provide their potential guests with the option of declaring whether they will, won’t or may attend thus easing the task of organising the event.

This list is not exhaustive of the potential benefits that Facebook has to offer the historian.  However, what is discussed in this post, I am confident, covers the main points.  Facebook may not be for all historians. I think the extent to which it is will be greater the more the historian has an interest in dialogue with others in their field.

Wikipedia

Before I begin I would like to inform the reader that this post is twinned with another produced by Timothy Howard which may be viewed at the following web address:

http://tjfhoward.blogspot.com/

No Digital History blog, especially one produced by myself, would be complete without a post on Wikipedia.  If anyone reading this is somehow unaware of what Wikipedia is, it is basically an encyclopaedia which is accessible on the internet.  Furthermore, though providing articles on historical subjects, those articles it offers consider subjects relevant to other academic fields besides history.

So to what extent has it been of service to me?  If Dr Cosgrave is reading this article he may remember about two years ago setting an assignment for his second year students doing the BA in Arts at UCC.  Specifically, the task we were set was to produce three different mind-maps depicting a plan of the same essay that one might write on the French Revolution.  My personal knowledge about the event, to be quite honest about it, was hazy.  Thus I turned to Wikipedia for help.  I can’t remember the exact mark I was given for this assignment, though I do recall being satisfied with it.  Had it not been for Wikipedia I may not have done as well as I did.  This is but one example of how the tool assisted me as a historian.

Wikipedia has been an enormous benefit to me down through my years in college.  At times during my BA years, lecturers advised us (the arts students) to get out books from the UCC library relevant to the essays we were assigned.  However, the students were so many in number that I struggled to acquire from the library those books relevant to my preferred essay title.  Alternatively to this frequent frustration, there was the option of purchasing some of the books that were significant to my preferred essay question from either the college shop or one in town.  The downside of this route was that it cost money.  In contrast to the purchasing of books and library borrowing of books, Wikipedia (theoretically) has the advantages of both options: the provision of gratuitous access to historical information, and the universal applicability (to the extent that the student/historian has access to the internet – which ultimately we all do through the UCC computer centre).

Another advantage of Wikipedia is its speed.  For example, if the historian was to refer to a book-based encyclopaedia it would take longer for them to find the article addressing the specific topic which they wish to read about.  By contrast, Wikipedia has a search option which, more often than not from my experience of using it, has immediately displayed whatever article I was searching for.

New events are constantly taking place, and new discoveries are constantly being made.  For users of a book-based encyclopaedia this may be an impediment if the edition in their possession is not up-to-date.  However, such a situation is not an issue for Wikipedia users as its material is potentially expandable.  Specifically, any article concerning a particular historical topic about which nothing has yet been written can always be added.  Furthermore, those that do exist but are crude in their discussion of a particular topic can be elaborated and amended.

That Wikipedia is most ideal for providing the basic facts about a particular topic with which the historian may be completely unfamiliar is compounded by the capacity of this digital-tool to interlink its pages.  For example, if the historian is investigating the history of Christianity, and historical figures from the Old Testament were mentioned, a reader with no exposure to the faith may be completely oblivious to the significance of names such as Moses.  This difficulty is overcome by the fact that such words are ‘links’.  What is meant by this is that they are highlighted blue, and if the student/historian clicks on them, they are redirected to an article which discusses the link word’s theme in detail.   Again, this provides an advantage over a book-based encyclopaedia which would take up more of the reader’s time.  If the reader was confused about particular subjects mentioned in the article they may be reading, and thus needs to understand these words’ significance before they (the historian) can resume reading their original article of interest, this link facility would save them considerable time and so reduce the extent to which their train of thought is disrupted.  Once finished reading the link, the historian can simply click on the back arrow visible in the top left corner of the screen which will return them to their initial article of interest.  By contrast, the same cannot be said of a book-based encyclopaedia.

As a result of the potential for public contributions in elaborating and amending Wikipedia articles, there can be quite considerable variation in the length of various articles.  This problem is overcome by menu options within the lengthier articles.  These provide both the advantage of telling the viewer what the contents of the article may be, and also allow the reader to skip immediately to their specific topic of interest within the article if it is not all relevant to their interests, by clicking on the subtitle within the contents box.  This facility displaces the need for users to seek and find a particular theme being discussed in the article, which might not even be addressed at all, by scrolling down the screen.

A final benefit of Wikipedia, or rather an indirect benefit of the web-based encyclopaedia is that it can be digitally stored.  By copying and pasting it to a word document it can then be saved onto a hard-drive or a USB key and backed up.  Therefore, if the user of the article needs to refer to it without an internet connection (after having saved it) they are able to do so.  By contrast, the book-based encyclopaedia can at best be replicated through photocopying its articles.  If these are lost then it is more laborious to produce additional copies.  By contrast, saving an article that has been pasted onto a Microsoft word document is quite easy.  Furthermore, if the individual/historian in question has access to a printer then they can produce as many copies as they want.  If they lose a copy and need another, they simply need to refer to the article which they already have digitally stored and once more, print it off.

This post has focussed on the advantages of using Wikipedia as a digital tool.  A discussion considering the disadvantages of this digital tool may be found at Timothy Howard’s blog, the web address of which is displayed at the very beginning of this post.

Evernote

Having used Evernote, I’m convinced of its potential to be very useful to the contemporary historian.  However, I would not argue that such applicability extends to historians studying every period in history (at least to the same degree).  What this piece of internet software actually does is “clips” (captures) images of a variety of kinds and stores them.  This particular aspect of the service is probably that of greatest significance to me given my immediate circumstances as an MA Medieval Historian about to commence writing my thesis.  Whereas the individual relying solely of notes in paper form is at risk of losing these and finding themselves in a difficult situation, Evernote offers the potential for the information depicted in these paper form notes to be captured as an image and stored on a computer.  Thus, if the scholar does lose their paper-form notes, they have a back up.  Special attention should also be paid to the fact that Evernote captures “images”.  Thus, the spectrum of forms of information which might be stored using it is enormous.  Whether the individual wishes to capture the image of an on-line source/document, or a news-paper cutting, the services of Evernote are equally applicable to both.

This introduction of a summarisation of the benefits offered by Evernote needs to be considered along with that which is required to derive the maximum benefit from the software.  Essentially, the Evernote user needs to have some form of image capturing technology such as a digital camera or an iPhone.  Without one of these at their disposal, those images the individual might capture are limited to those which it is possible to immediately summon up upon their computer screen.  If the person concerned encounters some document they wish to store such as a written will, and is without either the camera or iPhone needed to take a picture of the will, they face an obstacle.  Specifically, they will be unable to upload the desired image to their hard-drive and store it.

Where do I stand with this service?  In one of our Medieval History lectures with Dr. Scully the question was raised how we know what we do about the period we are studying.  The answer: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.  In essence, this is the single most important source for the Medieval Historian.

Medieval History isn’t like the more recent branches of our academic discipline.  For the student studying say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, there is available for them a much greater bulk of source material.  In essence, there is available to them a significantly greater number of the “facts” about their chosen period in history.  However, for those of us studying the medieval period, we have a lot less to work with.  Insofar as we do have source materials (Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and more significantly for my Thesis, the writings of St Patrick) there is much more “weaving” the pieces of available information together to produce coherent narratives because, in short, we have to!  Why would I, therefore, go out of my way to be taking pictures of the pages from the book in the library when the amount of time it would consume would be enormous and I would be better off just purchasing the text?

For me, of the materials I’ll be using for my thesis, those which I would probably be allowed to take photographs of (either those sources on Q+1, 2 or 3 of the UCC Boole Library) are also those that I can photocopy for free (as a post-graduate student I have at my disposal several photocopying cards granting me 100 copies each, which I received gratuitously).  As for the sources I cannot photocopy for free (those located in Boole library basement), I am also prohibited from taking pictures of these. Thus I am rendered incapable of capturing images to be stored using Evernote.  I would be quite happy to capture these images were it allowed because it would save me considerable time from being spent in the basement taking notes, but rules are rules!  I did recently discover however that a particular source for which I was searching in the library (in book form) has gone missing.  Despite this, the librarian informed me that it was also available on-line.  This would be an instance when Evernote would prove useful to me.  Recently my internet has not been responding.  Were I to capture images of this online source, and any others I might later discover that I need, I would be rendered free from the hassle of having to wait for my internet connectivity to become available once more to me.  This availability of online sources, for my immediate purposes is very limited.  I think the clipping of online sources would be much more relevant to historians of more recent periods for the simple reason that a considerably larger number of sources relevant to their historical fields will be available online than there are for mine.

OCR

That “Optical Character Recognition” software processes images of texts is desirable for a number of reasons, the chief among these being that of storage.  Furthermore, that which is fed back to the user by the software after having been processed can be annotated.  Thus if the user wishes to add notes into the text after it has been processed, they are capable of doing so and also of saving these annotated notes.  One downside of the software might be exemplified were I to scan a primary source from the medieval period onto my hard-drive and then upload this onto OCR to be processed.  Names like “Æthelred”/“Ethelred”, which are composed of characters no longer used in contemporary English, may confuse the software and lead to spelling mistakes.  Consequentially, it might incorrectly process the text, requiring me to find every word spelt with these particular characters and insert the contemporary English Equivalent.  At best to make these corrections would be a burden and time consuming.  At worst, I might actually miss them and the errors may remain there.

I found Evernote indispensible to my use of OCR.  However, unlike X-mind and Zotero I’m not sure whether I’ll find much use for OCR given my contemporary circumstances.  Perhaps if I had a camera on my mobile phone, or got into the habit of bringing my digital camera into the library with me, I might find it more significant to my research.  I understand that OCR has its uses as a piece of software for scanning texts, but to be quite honest I don’t find myself doing this very often.

If I wanted to get a particular text from a library book, considering how I am currently an MA post-grad, and get free photo-copying cards, why would I bother going to the trouble of taking photographs of text from books and uploading these photographs onto OCR on my laptop when I can just print off the text I need?  Perhaps I would do it because there would be the safety of having sources saved to my computer whereas if I lost my photo-copy of a source I would have to return to the library and search for the source in question – and someone may have already checked it out leaving me to wait for its return.

My first experiment with OCR saw me feed it a document that I had already typed up by hand.  Unsurprisingly, my initial reaction to the service was one of bewilderment as to what real benefit it has to offer.  Considering how Times New Roman is the most standard form of text font, as the soft-ware fed back to me this document which I instructed it to process, it reproduced that which I had initially fed it in exactly the same form.  I was reminded by this initial experiment of my reaction to Evernote, and how despite this service was of little use to me in my immediate circumstances, I nonetheless appreciated the potential it had to be of service to other historians.  Could it have been that I was missing the bigger picture with OCR?

In a succeeding experiment with the tool I used Michael Winterbottom’s article on Gildas and Columbanus which I currently have saved as a PDF file.  Perhaps if I became more accustomed to OCR, I wouldn’t find it so time consuming to have to clip captions of pages, save them, then upload them onto the software, and then paste the processed text to a Word document.  Yet since I’m new to this tool, I found it difficult to get used to it.  I also found the process of transferring text from the PDF to OCR time consuming for the very reason that I was only able to clip whatever caption of the text was visible on the screen.  For example, on the third page (page no. 312)I was clipping, I had to clip the top and bottom halves of the page separately because Evernote couldn’t capture the entire page’s text with a single clip.  For me this was a cause of frustration.  Besides this difficulty, there was the restraint of a message I received from OCR telling me that there was a limit to the amount of text image it could process and that I’d have to wait for an hour before I could avail of the service.  Luckily I received this after having completed processing Winterbottom’s article.

At the end of it, after having laboriously gone through the task of transferring the PDF to OCR and pasting it to a word document, I saw how for me the costs of the process exceeded the benefits.  This is one Digital History tool I can’t see myself returning to use any time in the near future.



Photo Tour

In producing my photo tour of Cork I was quite fortunate that my laptop was fitted with software which assisted me in achieving my end.  Having traversed around the city taking photos of historic sites (of which there are a considerable number) I loaded these pictures which I had taken with my digital camera onto my laptop hard-drive.  From there It was my intention to go about modifying them, as we were told in Digital History that there was software on the internet which could assist us in doing this and we had seen it in action in one of the classes.  However, it just so happened that very shortly after my photos were loaded up onto the hard-drive I discovered that the laptop had Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

I discovered that the picture manager had sufficient services available for me to achieve my end:  I was able to rotate and crop, as well as alter the colour and contrast of my photos.  The first of these options (rotation) I didn’t both using as it didn’t serve my purposes.  However, the latter three I did.  Form the picture comparisons displayed in this blog, the extent to which this particular piece of software enabled me to improve the quality of the images I had initially photographed is self-evident, and I think has no need for me in this blog to clarify which image is the photo before undergoing “improvement” using the picture manager.

After increasing the quality of the images there was the task of incorporating them into some kind of digitally presentable historic tour.  Again, I initially resorted to seeking some kind of software on the web which would facilitate this purpose of mine.  Yet, again I discovered there to be at my disposal software already applied to my laptop whereby I could do this: Windows Movie Maker.  There were a number of tasks that needed to be carried out in the process of producing the tour, and I went about inserting the pictures into the video bar first in the order of subjects I wished to talk about.  From this I had a base upon which I could structure the narrative which would correspond to the images.

From experience of having given speeches roughly 10 minutes in length, and also intending for the duration of this tour to last approximately 10 minutes, I thought it best to type up and print out what I had to say because I knew I couldn’t sustain a coherent narrative for that length of time without a visual aid to assist me.  So, as I read out what I intended to say, with the Movie Maker set to record me, I spoke into a small hole just above the screen of my laptop with a symbol for a microphone upon it.  When I played back what it had picked up, though I what I had said wasn’t perfectly clear, it was sufficiently understandable.  Perhaps if my mouth had been closer to the hole, my words when played back to me may have been more distinguishable.

A less serious matter was that of making the appearance of the photos, on the main video screen, correspond to the section of the narrative which discussed the history relevant to them. This issue was quickly addressed by my being able to extend and diminish the duration of the narrative for which the various pictures appeared on the main screen by dragging them back and forth within the Video Bar.  Thus, having done all this and saved it, my Video Tour was finally complete.

As for the things about which I actually spoke, they were primarily religious subjects.  In discussing St. Finbarre’s Cathedral I referred to its history going back to the Protestant Settlement of Ireland during which English and Scottish settlers came and with them brought their reformed versions of Christianity.  In particular I focussed on the pulpit of the Cathedral and discussed how Protestant Churches tend to have a greater diversity among their congregations.  Specifically, the pulpit of the Church is more heavily decorated than that of St. Peter and Paul’s.  This led onto a summary of the differentiation between High and Low Church Anglicans before moving onto the Celtic Cross erected in memory of those from Ireland who fought and died in the Anglo-Boer War.  With this particular historic feature I gave attention to those names inscribed upon the base of the Cross, and indicated that the vast majority of those listed would have been members of the Protestant Ascendency/Anglo-Irish aristocracy of the country, with very few (if any) being of indigenous or Catholic heritage.

To the extent that Beamish Stout too was linked to the Protestant heritage of the country (Beamish being a Protestant name) I thought it appropriate to take a slight detour on the route and include the Beamish and Crawford factor on the tour. More than likely I wouldn’t have bothered to do so only for the fact that at the time I had been taking my pictures in the city I knew that Heineken was soon to take over control of the brewery, and that famous logo of the local Cork Stout would no longer be seen on the brewery’s distillation tank. Following this slight detour about the brewery I returned to discussing history of a purely religious nature which included the Huguenot community in Ireland and the Presentation Order in Cork before finally moving onto St. Peter’s Church and the Franciscans’ history in the city.  For this final part of the tour I was fortunate to have focussed during the final year of my primary degree on the Franciscans in producing an 8,000 word thesis on this particular religious order.  Thus, I was well furnished with things to say.

The new smarter web

If I could summarise my understanding of what the Semantic web’s introduction will bring about, it is this: the transformation of the internet with which we are currently familiar into a more organic phenomenon.  When it was first created, the use to which the internet was put was fairly basic.  However, since having been made available to the public the demands placed upon it, as described in the article, have been increasing:

“’The technology hasn’t changed a lot from http and html but the user has…We’ve done all this wonderful stuff but under the hood it’s still really ugly,’”

In itself, I don’t think that the Semantic web is a bad thing.  In my blog about the article on mobiles offering a new view of reality I discussed the ways in which the development of mobile phone technology might generate business opportunities which would assist in alleviating the impact that has been endured due to the recession.  This article on the Semantic web describes similar developments providing like opportunities:

“This will lead to new business possibilities…with technological advances driving the need to start classifying data to build the semantic web.”

Nonetheless, it also describes some of the immediately foreseen consequences of such a development.  Among these is the emergence of privacy issues.  At the same time there is reference to the need to achieve balance.  Reading this article provoked the question in me of whether the benefits exceed the costs of this new “smarter” web being implemented.  Considering how this is a new phenomenon, along with the nature of the information which will be handled, there are potentially enormous consequences for mismanagement in the organisation of the information with which the new web will be dealing.  Examples are given of patients’ personal details and legal documents.  How does one find the right balance of flexibility for this continuously evolving web?  And to what extent is the Web 3.0’s initiative limited?

I would not deny that I, like most people, have been part of the trend moving towards greater participation rather than purely “publish” and “push” on the web.  However, I would argue that my participation is significantly less than that of most other people:  I use it for receiving and sending emails, Facebook (though I rarely use this) and watching videos on Youtube.  Besides these tasks I also use it for searching the Boole library website for books that I need for college, and at times gaining access to certain articles on the web for college purposes.  Although the article discusses how the two main advantages of the Semantic web are better searching and information storage, these have never been major problems for me.  For example, if I need to find cheap flights to visit a friend of mine somewhere else on the continent, it is fairly easy for me to find what I’m looking for.  If I don’t find it during my first search, I enter a more specifically defined search subject into the Google text box, and then search again.  This more often than not locates what I am looking for.  As for the organisational support I am provided by Zotero, I would be quite prepared to resort to typing up the bibliography of whatever works I am engaged in on a Microsoft Word document with all the relevant details and library code number, and then saving this.

I feel that the storyline to the film “Terminator Salvation” somewhat echoes the developments that will continuously take place following the Semantic Web’s introduction.  In the film, machines learned to think for themselves, and mankind ended up at war with his creation.  I think that the individual’s open-mindedness to the Semantic Web will depend on the extent to which one is a technophile/technophobe, and unfortunately the latter applies to myself.  Maybe, given more time to familiarise myself with new developments, I would give quite a different response to this one I am currently producing for this article.  Nonetheless, I am satisfied with the internet with which I am familiar, and have no desire to “improve” it.

Mobiles offer new view of reality

For me, my mobile phone has two purposes.  One is for making calls, the other is for texting.  I don’t have a camera on mine and, although I have a digital camera (which I did not purchase myself but received as a present) I rarely make use of it.  These are the limits to which the mobile phone technology I possess influences how I live my life on a daily basis.  I have a friend with some kind of phone that can do just about anything and everything: it has the internet, can take photographs and probably more things than this.  But I wonder about the propositions made in this article.

For instance, at one point there is reference to the possible benefits that Augmented Reality can provide for an individual considering the purchase of a particular service or item they have noticed in a shop:

“’Or in a store where the assistants are useless it could provide a video demonstrating how a particular product works or allowing you to call up all the specs,’”

This particular benefit I can definitely relate to.  During the summer of 2009 I was using a particular machine at the mardyke gym.  Apparently I was not using it correctly.  The consequence which I have incurred for my ignorance is that my back has been damaged to the extent that I am permanently hindered from playing rugby: an enormous part of my life up until that time.  Why this is significant to this article is because it makes me consider how different things could have been.  Had I at the time been in possession of an AR product which gave me a demonstration of how to properly use this particular piece of gym apparatus I might not have been injured and still be playing the sport I grew up playing to this day.

However, a point I didn’t like about this article was that of people being able to use their mobile phones to scan what was available within a shop they were passing without having to step foot in the door:

“’This ability to find out what a store is selling without having to actually set foot inside the store is brilliant…’ said Paula Abrahamson”.

Furthermore I discovered a point of conflict in myself.  There was the reference to being able to use AR technology to scan what items were available on the corresponding part of a different shop to the one in which the person in question was situated at a given time, thereby rendering it unnecessary for that person to have to travel by foot to the other shop they were considering browsing, and incurring disappointment.

The former part of the previous paragraph describes a potential for what I consider abuse of AR.  The latter however recognises an advantage of the technology which I would not consider an abuse.  From personal experience I know the frustration that may arise from searching for clothes.  Recently a hoody of mine shrunk in the drier and I desperately needed to find a new one soon.  At the time I was under a lot of pressure from college work, and was racing around the city going to T.K. Max, Pennies, Guineys etc. finding nothing but disappointment in my search for a replacement which satisfied me.  Had I been in possession of such A.R. technology which would have allowed me to browse the other shops without wasting time trying to find what I was looking for I wouldn’t have been so stressed trying to get back down to work.

In another of the articles which we instructed to read and blog about in conjunction with this one there was reference to the struggle of achieving balance.  Though it is not mentioned in this article, indeed the concern for balance doesn’t seem to be present in this article, I think that it is crucial to find that balance as regards the extent to which we apply AR technology to our lives as it becomes more prevalent in society.  My concern is this: how can millions of people be brought to use the great advantages AR offers without abusing them?  As John Cassidy describes in the article about building the perfect citizen:

“a lot of people behaved like spivs…You can’t blame human nature.  It’s up to Government, not regulators, to create the rules and the norms for society and citizens,’”

This may be very well and true.  But where will they draw the line between use and abuse as regards the use of AR.  I may be ahead of myself in even discussing this as I mentioned earlier that the concern about balance in the use of AR doesn’t even seem to be considered as it becomes more prevalent.  If I couldn’t specify what my concern is then it is this:  That technology we will become excessively dependent on technology.  The article describes how the real and virtual worlds will become increasingly blurred as AR becomes more prevalent.  I am anxious about this happening.  Is there a point at which the level of blurring becomes dangerous?  The two worlds: the real and virtual might become increasingly enmeshed but the fact of the matter is that they are two separate worlds.  I am firmly convinced that one cannot replace the other, and that is what seems to be the trend I detect being described in the article.  If people do try to replace the real world with the virtual world, in my opinion they will only be fooling themselves, and sooner or later the two spheres will collide.  When/If they do I don’t want to suffer the impact.

It would seem however, that this is the direction things are going to take, and that there is an economic dimension to this article, further raises my concerns.  Right now we are suffering a recession and the drive to recover from it is one of the background motives for developing AR:

“Although a relatively small sector at the moment, analyst firm Juniper Research predicts that AR will generate incomes of $732m (£653m) by 2014…The most obvious way to turn AR into a money-spinner would be via advertising”

The drive for profit and development of this industry I think needs to be balanced with a desire to promote what is in the best interests of society’s well-being.  I doubt that the excessive reliance of technology which AR is likely to encourage will bring this about.  As stated earlier, this concern of excessive reliance on the technology doesn’t even seem to be aired in this article.  How can any caution be taken against it if it is not even recognised?

Can we build the perfect citizen?

I think that the answer to this question asked by the question of this article’s title is answered by the second, third and fourth paragraphs.  The description given of how human’s, given “human nature”, responded during the Celtic Tiger indicates that by our nature, humanity is imperfect.  How can someone create something perfect?  For myself, I think the concept of a “perfect citizen” is unattainable.  However, I am open-minded to the concept of progress.  Insofar as this article proposes steps of progress towards perfection I am somewhat sceptical.

The structure of the article considers the impact of the Celtic Tiger’s aftermath on Ireland, and the desire to avoid repeating such a negative experience.   The three areas it considers to improve the Irish Citizen are ethics, identity and education.  I agree that people should have a firm grasp of what it means to be Irish and also have the capacity to cope with living in a multi-cultural society whilst at the same time being able to uphold their own heritage.  As the sense of community however, I wonder about the extent to which this is attainable.  On the purely economic level I think that such aspirations are possible to realize:

“Citizenship implies sharing resources, not maximising one’s own interest.”

As for the sense of community however, I think that the level to which this can be achieved is limited.

I grew up in England, in a very multi-cultural society.  The article talks about the decline of the apparent status the Church had in Ireland.  Not having come to live in this country until summer 2006, I’m unfamiliar with how life was in Ireland before.  But what I think I can appreciate is the way Ireland will become because in England the influence of any Church over any sphere of life is fairly much non-existent.  So having come from the country which, in my estimation, Ireland is increasingly becoming like I think I have already witnessed the dilemma of achieving an identity.  What was “Irishness”?  What does it mean now?  Is it an objective or subjective identity?  Who determines what it is, and is their consensus over this?  To appreciate what I think will be an enormous challenge to establishing a sense of community in modern Ireland, I think the best parallel I can offer is to consider what a self-described Englishman would have been a couple of centuries ago: a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.  Given the new multi-cultural and secular disposition of contemporary English society “English” can mean black, brown, white, yellow and just about every, any or no religious conviction.  Thus it has proven to be a subjective concept.  If one were to go and take a survey of what British citizens in this country would consider the factors making them “English” the answers would not be unanimous.  Thus, with the increasing secularisation and growing cosmopolitanism of Irish society, though the task of establishing a common denominator for what it means to be Irish may not be impossible, I think it will be extremely difficult to find anything that will have significant meaning to the people of this country.  Perhaps I am wrong, but since I grew up in England, I saw no objectivity in their concept of identity.

I agree that it is pointless to introduce ethics courses at post-graduate level, but disagree that ethics should be taught at secondary school level also.  Does not the article itself say there is consensus that education should start as early as possible:

“There is also a broad consensus on the idea that…we need to start as early as possible in the education system.”

Furthermore, my deduction from the article is that there is an implication that the imbuing of the youth with ethics is something that takes place at a certain point in their formation and is thereafter resolved.  I would argue that education in “ethics” is a long-term process starting at infancy and continuing through secondary should level with the point at which the youth enter (if they do) into post-graduate education being that at which they are emancipated from said ethical instruction.  From then on, they are free to apply or reject the lessons they had been receiving up until that time.  But the issue of control adds a further dilemma to this consideration of ethics.  The first teachers of any children are their parents.  Given the reference of the article to the Government having responsibility to create rules and norms for society there is raised the question of the extent to which the Government may encroach upon the family and the school:

“It’s up to Government…to create the rules and the norms for society and citizens,”

What if parents/schools disagree with those rules and norms which Government declares they must accept?  For me, the state isn’t justified in dictating to families those ethics in which they are to give their children instruction.  Furthermore, the State has no right to dictate to those schools owned by Churches amendments to their confessions.  It is a sensitive area and one in which, to be quite honest, there will never be complete consensus.  At best Government can look to its own ethics and not impede on those which parents and schools give to their children and pupils.  The dilemma of ethical instruction is irreconcilable.  Whatever those of this author, he recognises the reality of the situation: consensus, at best, will be limited.

I agree with the article’s reference that it is desirable for children to be provided with opportunities to develop their skills, but that they should have some form of stand-by support.  After-all such opportunities will be learning curves for them, and they are bound to make mistakes.  For example, within the previous month I was talking to a man who had been working with the youth in north Cork who were going to organise a sale.  They were completely disorganised and nearly had to cancel it.  Though he exposed their disorganisation as the heart of the problem he did not resolve it for them.  Rather, this identification on his part was the point beyond which he did not go.  On the basis of their initiative, having been notified of the heart of their problem, they mobilised themselves and managed to have the sale.

Furthermore, I think that personal research by the youth is only desirable insofar as they are provided opportunities to develop skills which will be of benefit to society.  Discovery of one’s own values and ethics however I think are more difficult questions to be answered.  If values are relative then sooner or later there will be a conflict of interests.  Ultimately, the interests which will overcome will do so according to the principle of “might is right”.  If there was an objective source of authority (not necessarily the Government) on the subject then perhaps the issue would be resolved.  Yet, even if there was, would society listen?  As stated earlier:

“Citizenship implies sharing resources, not maximising one’s own interest.”

To share means to sacrifice (at least to an extent), and if there was a theoretically objective source of authority, it may tell people they have to give up things they really don’t want to give up.

Thesis Blog

The course I study is Medieval and Renaissance History.  It took me time to choose the subject of my thesis.  Though I found some of what we studied in the medieval period interesting there was very little I felt I had the capacity to produce 20,000 words on.  At one point I approached Dr. Pattenden about doing something on the Protestant Reformation, in the end this never came to fruition.  Dr. Malgorzata Krasnodebska –D’Aughton’s subject area involves imagery, which didn’t strike me as something I wanted to do my thesis on, and when I approached Dr. Scully he suggested doing something on the arrival of the missionaries in Kent or focussing upon the character of Wilfrid.

My interest lay in Ireland, monasticism, identity and Church administration.  For the first semester Dr. Bracken had been away on Sabbatical, but the Medievalists finally had classes with him after Christmas for HI6011 on Wednesday mornings.  It was then that I realised he focussed on areas which were of interest to me.  In the end I was able to produce a title for my thesis “Patrick: Patriarch in the Wilderness of the Archipelago?  Founder of the New Covenant of the Monastic Church?”

Why I chose Patrick and this particular slant is because in the final year of my primary degree we had studied a seminar on monasticism and a lot of the historic periods I covered were based on monasticism.  For example, in the seminar of that year we learnt how in Gregory the Great’s account of St. Benedict, the Saint is described as being at the top of the tower (thus away from the world) during the early hours of the day before dawn (a time when Christ himself is described as praying according to the Gospels).  From having encountered the primary sources produced by Patrick himself, the “Confession” and “Letter” to Coroticus, I recognised that this monastic type imagery also had some significance to him.  For example, that Patrick was a shepherd, and eventually became a bishop, ties into the concept of the “Paster Bonus” which is Latin for the good shepherd.

From Dr. Bracken’s classes we had been discussing the idea of the chosen people initially having been the Jews and their identity being determined by their physicality: their racial heritage, their circumcision, their exclusivity.  It was explained to us how this contrasted with Christian identity which was spiritual rather than physical, determined by choice rather than the irreversible circumstances into which one was born, and was inclusive rather than exclusive.  Considering these types of identity contrast there is nonetheless a complementary relationship between these Old and New Testament concepts of identity.  The figure of the Patriarch is represented through characters like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses in the Old Testament.  However, it finds an echo in the New Testament with the Apostles, and their successors: the bishops.  Thus, that Patrick became the bishop of the Ireland technically renders him a “spiritual patriarch”.  This is one of the themes I will be exploring in detail.

It will also require an in depth discussion of Irish identity.  This is because in the Old Testament, the Patriarchs were leaders of the original chosen people: Israel.  But who were the new chosen people?  Such a question will provoke a consideration of Patrick’s identity.  Was he Irish or British?  Perhaps he was British to the extent that he was born of British parents, yet Irish in respect to the fact that this is how he describes himself at one point in the “Letter”.  Furthermore, were the Britons or the Irish the first of the “new chosen people”?  Perhaps the Britons were to the extent that they paralleled the Jews of the Old Testament.  According to a number of my sources, this was the point Gildas wished to emphasis in his “Ruin of Britain”.  Nonetheless, the Irish were the nation through whom the faith really spread, first to the English and eventually to the rest of the continent.  By contrast, the Britons had a very small role to play in the spread of Christianity.  Perhaps they were too like the “chosen people” of the Old Testament in being too exclusive and consequently are disqualified from being the new chosen people in preference of the Irish.  These are just a selection of the maters to be considered for the first part of my thesis title.

The Ireland in which Patrick was operating will require consideration.  Unlike the continental nations, Ireland lacked major urban centres which profoundly influenced the Irish Church’s administration.  Whereas on the continent the Church was managed by bishops who resided in cities, the lack of cities resulted (in the aftermath of Patrick’s death) in a series of monastic families being founded which saw bishops become members of monastic communities, retaining their authority insofar as the tasks exclusive to the bishop’s office were concerned, but in all other matters submitting to the authority of the abbot as just another ordinary monk.  This trend in monastic churches in Ireland was however preceded by a similar occurrence in Britain which may have in fact been the initial cause of the developments in Ireland.  Even if it wasn’t, Patrick’s British heritage still renders the Britons with potential credit for the unfolding of events as they did in Ireland.

Whether Patrick founded the New Covenant of the monastic Church also ties into that of spiritual identity.   The answer will depend upon an analysis of the extent to which the great Irish religious figures who succeeded Patrick were like him.  In particular, I will be looking at St. Cuthbert.  Why?  Well, I think he is the ultimate subject to investigate the matter of spiritual identity.  Whereas Columba and Brigit were of Irish descent, Cuthbert was an Anglo-Saxon monk.  Yet despite this, he was moulded by the Irish tradition in Northumbria which came through the missionaries sent by Iona in response to Oswald’s request for assistance in evangelising his subjects.  Thus, he exemplifies how spiritual allegiances transcended those of race.  But to what extent had Iona been influenced by Patrick?  Insofar as Iona’s founder Columba was also a monastic, he was similar to Patrick.  However, he was reputed for being well learnt.  If this was so, then the significance of the contrast between Patrick’s education (which was very little) against that of the succeeding Irish religious figures will need to be considered.  The availability of works written by the Church Fathers in Ireland, as the country became Christianised, will be considered within this particular section of the thesis: most notably Augustine of Hippo’s “On Christian Doctrine” which considers the significance of teachers and instruction in the faith.

If I reflect on the extent to which Digital tools have been of assistance to me, I would say that so far, X-mind has been indispensable to my reading.  I have found a number of purposes for it.  As well as planning I use it to take notes.  For whatever reason, I find it difficult to settle into taking notes on Microsoft word, perhaps because I am put off by the time I have finished by the site of pages of text which I know I shall have to read back over later.  For some reason, I find that using X-mind helps me to naturally condense the tones I am taking, without them losing substance.  That this happens on an unconscious level allows me to keep my full concentration on the source from which I am taking notes without having to prune the notes constantly (which would be a distraction).  I have also produced several mind-map plans for the various sections of the Thesis, which I find helpful for the reasons outlined above: I dislike looking at pages of text which I know I am going to have to go back over.  As for these mind-maps themselves, I have displayed them in the post about X-mind and mind-maps for any reader interested in seeing them.

To a lesser extent I have found Zotero to be of assistance.  This is partly down to the fact that I have a constant reference point for the books from which my Thesis bibliography shall be compiled.  Unlike a piece of paper I, this bibliography will not be lost (unless I lose my lap-top – which is very unlikely).  However, the extent to which Zotero serves my purposes is limited.  Given my immediate circumstances, those sources I will be using are exclusively drawn from the UCC Boole Library collection.  Thus, ideally I would like to see the reference code together with the source title when I pull up my bibliography.  Unfortunately this can’t be done.  At best, I can put the code into an additional note next to the title.  Better for me would be if the bibliography was typed up on a word document with the library reference code for each source next to it so that when I print this off and enter the library I know immediately where to go to find what I want.  Nonetheless, I have found a nice compromise by using Zotero and Microsoft word together: the former providing me with a constant point of reference for those sources I have selected for my bibliography, and the latter with the means of constructing my preferred form of presentation of the sources’ location information for which I am searching.

I might also add some aspirations I have for Wordle.   Some Day in Summer as I go about laboriously writing up my Thesis, I am bound to encounter the problem of writer’s block.  I might try in instances like this to enter whatever sources I have entered onto my hard-drive, or even my thesis insofar as it has been written up into this internet toy, having it process and rearrange the text into a Word cloud, and printing these out in colour.  I think because of the colour and the distinct shapes which I can give to my various clouds the varying degrees of prominence of the different words in the word clouds might give me an idea of the themes I have so far addressed in the Thesis and to which I have attributed greatest prominence.  If I am brain dead I won’t so much have to analyse the word clouds as simply “soak up” the sight of them.  However, this is just an idea.  What I will actually do is yet to be seen!

X-MIND/Mind-Maps

At first I considered damning mind-maps, but now I’ve actually found myself constantly using them.  On Friday the 19th I had an oral presentation to give on the sources I’ll be using for my thesis, and was considering using a mind-map as the handout for the class.  Unfortunately this “amazing”2 plan of mine didn’t actually come to fruition, I had a bit of trouble printing out my mind-map/hand-out for the class and so was compelled to resort to produce something simple from Microsoft word.

I have so far produced 22 mind-maps on different sources I’ve been considering as using as the sources for my thesis.  That’s right, 22!  I found that before I came to using mind-maps I tended to revise from by simply retyping out quotations and hoping they’d stick in my head.  With these mind-maps, because they’re something new, I find myself holding concentration on the task at hand (revision and note-taking) much easier to concentrate on.

As the title of this blog indicates, I created my mind-map using X-mind.  From my experience, the greatest advantage of using the Computer-produced mind-maps is that they help to break down the monotony of simple text produced notes.  In my thesis plan mind-map I have been able to branch off several topics that I’ve wanted to elaborate on, for example on Part 3′s “Obedience theme leading onto that of justification”.  If there has been text spreading too far across the screen I’ve been able to reduce the breadth of the text box by double clicking on it until the text appears with a blue streak across it, and dragging the text box using the green arrows at its side such that it will not span so far across the screen.

I think, particularly for the 20,000 word thesis, using this tool is probably the best way to plan.  I remember Dr. Cosgrave saying in one of our lectures that it can be of great use to dyslexic people whose brains are well suited to processing a mass of text.  That there is also the option of producing the text within the floating topic boxes of the mind map in various colours would also be of great help to such people.  Though I myself am not dyslexic I haven’t gone to the trouble of producing the text for my mind-map in a variety of colours.  At the same time, for me it is easier to find what I’m looking for from this planning tool.  Because the thesis will be considerably long, it is not unlikely that I will lose my train of thought from time to time.  That I have this tool at my disposal, and have used it to produce a plan will make it much easier for me to re-gather myself when I lose my train of thought.

At first I considered damning mind-maps, but now I’ve actually found myself constantly using them.  On Friday the 19th I had an oral presentation to give on the sources I’ll be using for my thesis, and was considering using a mind-map as the handout for the class.  Unfortunately this “amazing”2 plan of mine didn’t actually come to fruition, I had a bit of trouble printing out my mind-map/hand-out for the class and so was compelled to resort to produce something simple from Microsoft word.

I have so far produced 22 mind-maps on different sources I’ve been considering as using as the sources for my thesis.  That’s right, 22!  I found that before I came to using mind-maps I tended to revise from by simply retyping out quotations and hoping they’d stick in my head.  With these mind-maps, because they’re something new, I find myself holding concentration on the task at hand (revision and note-taking) much easier to concentrate on.

As the title of this blog indicates, I created my mind-map using X-mind.  From my experience, the greatest advantage of using the Computer-produced mind-maps is that they help to break down the monotony of simple text produced notes.  In my thesis plan mind-map I have been able to branch off several topics that I’ve wanted to elaborate on, for example on Part 3′s “Obedience theme leading onto that of justification”.  If there has been text spreading too far across the screen I’ve been able to reduce the breadth of the text box by double clicking on it until the text appears with a blue streak across it, and dragging the text box using the green arrows at its side such that it will not span so far across the screen.

I think, particularly for the 20,000 word thesis, using this tool is probably the best way to plan.  I remember Dr. Cosgrave saying in one of our lectures that it can be of great use to dyslexic people whose brains are well suited to processing a mass of text.  That there is also the option of producing the text within the floating topic boxes of the mind map in various colours would also be of great help to such people.  Though I myself am not dyslexic I haven’t gone to the trouble of producing the text for my mind-map in a variety of colours.  At the same time, for me it is easier to find what I’m looking for from this planning tool.  Because the thesis will be considerably long, it is not unlikely that I will lose my train of thought from time to time.  That I have this tool at my disposal, and have used it to produce a plan will make it much easier for me to re-gather myself when I lose my train of thought.