[Course] Frédéric Kaplan: Time Machines from infoclio.ch on Vimeo.
Collaborative notes taken by paricipants of the DH Summer School Switzerland:
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[Course] Frédéric Kaplan (@frederickaplan), Time Machines [How to Build a Time Machine]
[Kaplan’s personal web page: http://www.fkaplan.com/en/pag1-bio.html ]
Project Website: http://dhlab.epfl.ch
– changes to Geneva (prior it was almost a walled medieval city)
– panoramic view of Geneva – reconstruction of Geneva in 1850: http://www.panoramio.com/?no_redirect
– relief Magnin, at Maison Davel: shows the city in ca. 1850 http://www.ville-ge.ch/mah/index.php?content=6.2.1.3.5.&langue=eng
– using “bird’s eye view” as a tool without realizing how revolutionary it is
– What is missing of Google’s Maps & Street views is the time factor
– http://robotflaneur.com/ based on google street view thanks to the work of google that made the space machine-readable (ie not only visible) : we now live in a huge map \o/ => did he say so or not ?
– Check this game based on Google street view : http://geoguessr.com/
– we are living in a “big now” – relationship between time and space (high intensity “now”)
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– Hilarious depiction of year 2000 prediction: “en l’an 2000” images: http://www.ufunk.net/en/insolite/en-lan-2000-le-futur-imagine-en-1910-avec-24-illustrations-retro/
– Travelling through space and through time: can we build the tools to do it?
Can we build Google Map of Past, Facebook or other social networking for past?
Information mushroom: http://fkaplan.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/champignon-en-lucida-3.png
Digitization of information available can help with that as well as extrapolation of information (simulation).
Used Digitization and Simulation for VENICE TIME MACHINE: http://fkaplan.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/lancement-de-la-venice-time-machine/
80km of archives of Venetian history over 1000 years written in different languages, documenting every detail of Venetian history
Goal: Transform 80 km of Archivial documents spreaded on 1000 years in a single digital knowledge system
Digitizing 450 volumes per day! And so 10 years. (First step of the project).
Maturing techniques to improve efficiency
– digitize, transcribe (crowdsourcing), translate, index documents
– demonstrates the development of language and also the meta-development of documents/documentation
– speech recognition software might show a way to improve OCR of historical documents if we know what kind of text we expect
– next step: semantic extraction of 10 billion events for different type of information search from it.
It will allow us to discover how Venice developed as a city as well as an empire
– from this data, we can also extract information about, say, maritime routes (and we can build a Mediterranean simulator)
— allows for a recreation of maritime habits (i.e. if I were living in 1323, how would I get from point A to point B) [“routerank of the past”]
Inconsistencies have to be taken care of while generating these simulations. These include:
A.Incompleteness
B. Errors
C. Falsification
in primary sources;
and
A. Inconsistencies and Contradictions (intra as well as inter document)
B. Errors in transcriptions
C. Interpretive Biases
in secondary sources
Also, some additional ones during processing and pre-processing of documents.
Coding metadata permits to speak about the notion of “fictional space” (in order to say that we speak about possible representations, and we always deal with a “truth”).
Metadata coding will not ensure correctness but a procedure for correcting whenever it is found. A kind of inconsistencies tracker.
Coding uses RDF standards and some additional TRICKS….
Problems of the word fiction: he prefers the word fiction because it has the potential of being true
Who is this tool for? propels us into second half of talk
– larger goal is to create a sense of attachment (the VTM is their project)
one strategy: make the search/visualization/contribution tools disappear…
– Aimed audience composed by researchers AND a large audience to engage them in various ways to evaluate using some evaluation matrices.
The missing piece: students, prepare them for a change, which can happen or is seen as happening as it did in life sciences. So that they are ready for the Paradigm shift in the Humanities: large-scale projects
Teaching
Course of Kaplan: dh101.ch #DH101 –> give them the feeling of being part of something larger than the course
The missing piece: students, prepare them for a change, which can happen or is seen as happening as it did in life sciences. So that they are ready for the Paradigm
Guiding Challenges while teaching the students:
MOOC courses as a way of teaching students and engage them in such large scale projects and engage them in a distributed manner where they learn while working on REAL project. (and crowdsourcing)
The project tries to invent a new kind of large-scale academic projects.
Question: What about financial aspect ? Well… it’s a scientific adventure…
Question: What kind of team is already in place?
– a big one… but one that always has room for more. 😉
Question: How can you be so optimistic about manuscript OCR?