{"id":3394,"date":"2019-03-04T03:50:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T08:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/?p=3394"},"modified":"2019-03-04T03:50:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T08:50:24","slug":"joshua-kim-digital-darwin-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/2019\/03\/04\/joshua-kim-digital-darwin-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Joshua Kim; Digital Darwin Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found the Digital Darwin project directed by Dr John van Wyhe to be quite fascinating and an eye opening project that opened up several new paths in the field of Science, Technology, and Society. To be honest, I didn\u2019t even have an idea of what a digital project was stepping into this STS class so it\u2019s crazy to think that a few weeks later, I was able to meet and interact with the director and leader of one of the biggest digital projects made in human history. Never did I think this was even something that was pursued, but come to think of it, it makes complete sense. I mean, <\/span>someone<\/span> has to be converting the information from the past and updating them into the technology we use today\u2014 I just had never thought about it. <\/span><\/p>\n

While I had originally thought that a transferral of information from books or manuscripts into an online website would have been pretty simple, after hearing from Wyhe, I\u2019ve come to realize that it is actually very difficult and a huge consumption of time and energy. I was especially intrigued by the fact that the hardest part of this digital project wasn\u2019t the actual searching of the information but getting the okay and receiving permission to use it. But again, I guess that makes sense since we live in a world of ownership and copyright. It was definitely valuable to get the insight to all the inner workings of creating a digital project and hearing all the roadblocks and loopholes one had to go through to create a successful project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another aspect of digital projects that I and many other people might not think about is the actual publicizing of the final product once it\u2019s launched. Wyhe explained how with a combination of luck and support, they were able to use the University of Cambridge as well as the newspaper to create publicity once the site was open to public. I found it humorous when Wyhe mentioned that the day that Darwin Online was published, there were no huge stories for the newspaper to cover so the digital project got the most of the attention that was needed. <\/span><\/p>\n

If there is one thing that I personally took away from Darwin online and the skype with Dr John van Wyhe is the type of people that pursue these types of digital projects as well as the audience these projects are targeted at. I quickly realized that this was a scholars\u2019 world where for the most part, scholars are the ones who create these projects and other scholars are the ones who utilize these sites to gain more knowledge. I had asked Wyhe if there was a particular reason why he chose Charles Darwin to be his subject and model for this huge project of his and although I don\u2019t remember his exact answer, I do remember his message: \u201cI decided to start this because of my love for Charles Darwin and to help make his information accessible in one location.\u201d While I have a hard time imagining myself finding passion in accumulating information into one source, it was exciting and intriguing to seem someone else carry a passion of theirs and make the biggest digital project based on one person. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found the Digital Darwin project directed by Dr John van Wyhe to be quite fascinating and an eye opening project that opened up several new paths in the field of Science, Technology, and Society. To be honest, I didn\u2019t even have an idea of what a digital project was stepping into this STS class […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[402584],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3395,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3394\/revisions\/3395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}