My first reaction to this site and the book to which it's devoted was not unlike outright boredom. Surely, I thought, this can only be of interest to the particular group of historians who study the time and place whence this tome originated. The material seemed dry and I wondered why it could not have been printed in a book as easily as it had been published on a webpage.
Then it occured to me (I admit, I am slow from time to time) that this was, in fact, excellent fodder for the likes of this class. As I made my way through page after page, link after link bringing me more and more information, I realized that this wealth of data would not have been possible in the context of traditionally printed and bound text. Even if the printer(s) had been able to organize the original volumes' contents and any relevent information in such a way that the reader might be able to effectively find information without perusing it in its entirety, the book would have been weighty to say the least, and the costs of publishing would probably not be overcome given the likely lack of demand for such a thing. By making it available online instead, the publisher(s) of the site avoided the unnecessary costs of printing while providing access to a much larger audience. Granted, the site does not live up to its full potential (only the records for Bedfordshire and Berkshire are available online at this time and there are no satisfying images of the original text itself), but since extensive auxiliary information is as easy to retrieve as tapping a few keys and clicking a button or two, there's not much left to be desired. In fact, for simplicity's sake, if you want to know more about the history or implications of the Domesday Book, including how it relates to the Bayeaux tapestry, I suggest you just click on one or more of the links below.
The Domesday Book Online
The Domesday Book @ The National Archives
The Domesday Book @ The History Learning Site
Friday, January 19, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
On "HyperTapestry"
As I read Kim MacQueen's "HyperTapestry," I found myself simultaneously in agreement and disagreement with some of the main points of the article. Almost immediately, I was impressed by the similarities between the Bayeaux tapestry and hypertext documents. "Hand-stitched by 12th century monks," MacQueen states, "the tapestry is a painstakingly crafted physical document that details how Duke William of Normandy conquered England in 1066.” This description instantly evoked thoughts of individuals today creating webpages or other hypertext documents using HTML and other programming languages. The likenesses between these ideas was underlined for me by the fact that in each instance the created document provides numerous interconnected pieces of information to be read in a fashion and order determined by the reader.
Of course, almost as quickly, I was struck by the dissimilarities between these two drastically different types of creations. For one, it is abundantly obvious that a 230-feet-long tapestry is more tangible than a given hypertext document. It should also be noted that the monks responsible for the creation of the Bayeaux tapestry probably spent a considerably longer period of time creating their document than the creator of an average hypertext document would spend creating his or hers. Bearing this in mind, it seems hypertext, given all of its benefits and virtues, still falls short of accurately recreating the tendencies of the medieval mind and its culture. That's not to say that hypertext works no more like the medieval mind than traditional text; rather I mean to say that hypertext, being less tangible and arguably easier to create than the more concrete works of the Middle Ages, does less to enhance memory and perpetuate knowledge than creations like the Bayeaux tapestry did in their times. In fact, one could even argue that hypertext does a grave disservice to the functioning of the human memory considering the ease with which information can be virtually stored and retrieved. In other words, since we know it's relatively easy to record and recall our thoughts and experiences in a virtual world using hypertext, we devote less of our faculties to managing them within our brains in the real world. Whereas non-literate medieval minds relied heavily on "experience, memory, and their own eyes and ears" to make sense of their lives and the world around them, individuals today forgo these burdens and rely instead on technology's ability to retain information. In this sense, I find it hard to believe that we can ever recreate the worldviews of those who've come so long before us without renouncing the usefulness of modern technologies and reverting to the oral traditions of pre-print societies.
"HyperTapestry" by Kim MacQueen
Of course, almost as quickly, I was struck by the dissimilarities between these two drastically different types of creations. For one, it is abundantly obvious that a 230-feet-long tapestry is more tangible than a given hypertext document. It should also be noted that the monks responsible for the creation of the Bayeaux tapestry probably spent a considerably longer period of time creating their document than the creator of an average hypertext document would spend creating his or hers. Bearing this in mind, it seems hypertext, given all of its benefits and virtues, still falls short of accurately recreating the tendencies of the medieval mind and its culture. That's not to say that hypertext works no more like the medieval mind than traditional text; rather I mean to say that hypertext, being less tangible and arguably easier to create than the more concrete works of the Middle Ages, does less to enhance memory and perpetuate knowledge than creations like the Bayeaux tapestry did in their times. In fact, one could even argue that hypertext does a grave disservice to the functioning of the human memory considering the ease with which information can be virtually stored and retrieved. In other words, since we know it's relatively easy to record and recall our thoughts and experiences in a virtual world using hypertext, we devote less of our faculties to managing them within our brains in the real world. Whereas non-literate medieval minds relied heavily on "experience, memory, and their own eyes and ears" to make sense of their lives and the world around them, individuals today forgo these burdens and rely instead on technology's ability to retain information. In this sense, I find it hard to believe that we can ever recreate the worldviews of those who've come so long before us without renouncing the usefulness of modern technologies and reverting to the oral traditions of pre-print societies.
"HyperTapestry" by Kim MacQueen
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