brockett

It was interesting to compare the websites we were given. I thought the first two were very thorough, but the other two raised some questions for me. History Wired seems like a good idea in theory, but my question is, how would you ever know to look for it? By that I mean it seems like a fun site to browse, but not very useful if you are looking for specific information. Moreover, you’d only come across it if you happened to look in the Educators section of the Smithsonian homepage. Nothing about the site, however, indicates that it is intended for use by educators. This recalls some of the points raised by Agre, namely, that one must consider the needs of the particular user and the community. Or, if the point of this site is simply to browse, its presence on the web should be made more apparent for a curious browser, since he or she isn’t looking for anything specific in the first place.

Perhaps it was that I had just read the section in Digital History about corporate sites, but when I opened the National Geographic page, the first thing I noticed was the “Save up to 62% off our magazines” icon. This made me look at this particular site more critically and called to mind some of my experiences with fact checking. There are certain sites that are acceptable (usually those ending in .gov or .edu). Otherwise, it was up to our discretion to judge the credibility of a site. If I were to consider this site, I would probably see if I could find a better one, because the actual data comprises only part of the site and the rest is corporate packaging. When we use a site, especially for research, we must be careful to recognize who made it and, in many cases, we have to make a judgment call. Perhaps we could discuss further what criteria we’d use.

Lastly, I’d like to discuss in more depth Agre’s assertion that a community’s media, when they evolve without design, can become unequal and undemocratic. Does he mean access to media, or something about how sites/media themselves are constructed and used, such as the example of television versus the Internet? Is this something we can correct in existing media, or should we advance new forms of media that are more democratic to balance out the ones that have already evolved beyond some kind of democratizing realignment?

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