Author: jandeap

My project is about Malls in the St Louis area and how over time they have slowly dwindled and died out. I am connecting this drought of malls to the idea of the world transitioning into a more digital age.

This project is using Timeline JS to map the change of malls over time, from 1970 to present. I will be discussing the highs and lows of the mall life in St Louis and how they change and adapt to the culture of the time. I also talk about how malls are more than just stores, but really community centers where people can go to socialize. I will discuss how over time this idea of a shared community space has slowly faded out by ease of access on online shopping.  

 
My main argument is that the decline of malls shows a shift away from community spaces towards digital ones. My timeline will show different moments in mall history to show how we have all used malls throughout the years. I still have some work to be done on the timeline but so far it is going smoothly. I personally wanted to do this project because growing up in my town back home, we had a mall I would always love to go to. This mall had all my favorite stores as well as food you could grab while shopping. Over the years they closed more stores in the mall, and it became increasingly empty. Nowadays there are maybe three stores left and its been forever since I went back there. 

Here is a link to my WIP timeline

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=v2%3A2PACX-1vQz3eI5O1RsPjaXy-_Vf6e5Lu_JPf6SFVdpeRHluJnk7ZdUs3AzBxezRZml0asKRzjdAwKCz4FsTuHE&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&width=100%25&height=650

The data set I chose was the Average hours of all employees in the St louis metro area. The creator/contributor to this data set is the Federal Reserve of st louis. This is a bank that is part of the U.S central banking system. The source of their data is the businesses they collect from. They survey businesses and log it here. They use this data to survey and track the economy by seeing if weekly hours are going up or down. They format the data with a bar graph. The data is organized in a time structure using months, years, and hours to measure the employee’s weekly hours.  

They structured the data with months and hours worked per week as the main fields. Dates and values are the main fields used. The effect this has is it lets you interchange the dates and values to see specific trends in the times, and this lets employers and just about anybody see the rates clearly.  

The Federal Reserve of St Louis made these choices to be able to clearly track the economy and any trends in the work environment.  

They chose to use broad indicators instead of personal ones so that they can see wider trends. I think because they used wide sets of data it can account for mostly everyone, but there will definitely be some outliers that are unaccounted for such as smaller businesses where hours are going down. I would use this data to track the workplace’s economy and see if hours are going down or up, and businesses could use this to decide whether to cut hours of employees or not.  

Jack Anderson

For AI fiction, I read The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury. I really enjoyed this very short story about a sad and seemingly lonely world where everyone is shut away in their homes. I would start this review off by saying the creator of this story assumes that as we progress in our technology, humans will become less social and dependent on one another and instead become more infatuated with their televisions and technology in general. I also think he assumes that most humans will be okay with this future, as in the story only one person is seen stepping away from this technology for a normal walk outside. I think it’s also safe to say the creator of this story believes that technology will advance to a point where it takes over complete jobs such as police officers, and that crime will be able to be controlled by just one AI car. I think the creator is making an argument that people and technology have a toxic relationship that might make things easier, but not necessarily better.  

The AI in this story is a vision of AI that is cold and calculating, while also being too robot to think rationally and human like. It shows AI as a machine that does not quite understand everything and instead makes generalized assumptions. The fictional AI in this story relates to my experience of AI as I can see that same type of assumptive nature in my own usage of online AI chatbots. Ai is clearly able to make some correct choices, but it seems to still need some supervision or an operator so that it can have a human perspective. I feel like the author is trying to show that we cannot let technology and AI dictate human life, and that seems to be where we are going.  

The Cahokia AR tour app is an app where you can use technology to emulate ancient America at Cahokia mounds. One thing the app does well is use 3d models to show what history looked like back then, as if you were there looking around yourself. It also does well at giving out information about these structures so that you can learn as you explore ancient monuments. It enhances access for an audience that suffers no visual impairments or no physical touch impairments which unfortunately does alienate those that cannot see as well. 

It also requires the user to touch on certain icons so that they can get added information about all the different artifacts and structures shown on the tour. This alienates those that cannot physically reach out and touch the screen themselves. I think the app has somewhat of the right idea, but it seems very clear to me it was made without thinking about accessibility at all. It is a shame that is the case as the app is clear for those that want to expand their knowledge, and yet it restricts full access to those lacking certain senses. The last thing I will cover is that they encourage users to have headphones when using the app, which once again shows that you may need to be able to hear to experience it fully.  

I grew up in Downs Illinois, which is right on the border of Bloomington Illinois. In Bloomington I remember a faint memory of going on a field trip to this old house known as the David Davis mansion. When looking at this assignment this house flashed into my head and made me wonder; “why did we go to this random house?” This led to me doing some research online and I realized this was not some random mansion, this mansion belonged to David Davis, the campaign manager of Abraham Lincoln. This is an important piece of history for many reasons, one being that the building acts as a time capsule for the time it was created, back in 1872. This building is also important as it offers a glimpse into the life of a very important individual from that time period. Not only was David Davis the campaign manager of Abraham Lincoln, he was also a close friend of his. Looking back to when me and my class took a field trip there I almost wish I was older, so that I could truly appreciate the history I was surrounded by.

I am interested in where this course will be going in the future and there a few particular assignments/units that interest me the most. One of the sections that interests me is the section about Ai fiction. I have personally not looked into or cared much for AI fiction, but I am interested in what types of work Ai is pumping out. I am also interested in the unit about early computation as I always think the way old computers were operated is so interesting. I love how computers know are insanely smaller than what they were back in the day, its such a cool sign to see how far we have come with technology. The final thing that interests me a lot is the unit about digitizing things from reality. I am not too sure what exactly that entails which is why the topic interests me so much. I look forward to this semester and all the different topics covered.

I wanted to make this post to share a little about myself. I am a junior at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and I am interested in advertisement and media production as well. Back in my hometown of Downs Illinois I have two cats, a dog, and my brother and sister. I am excited about this class as I want to see what exactly digital humanities is. I wasn’t too aware of this subject in general and I am eager to see if there is any knowledge I can pick up from this course that I can apply in my pursuit of my future career. I ended up joining the class about a week late so I am currently trying to play a bit of catch up but as I have been exploring the different modules and assignments I have been enjoying the different aspects of this class. I am looking forward to having a fun and successful semester. I decided to attach a picture of an old dog of mine named Cooper.