After exploring Hypercities and watching the “Getting Started” video, I found the website’s emphasis on collaboration most interesting. In several moments of the video the narrator mentions the different types of people and organizations that contribute to the site in quotes. For example:
“Hypercities is essentially a time travel application, in which high school students and university students collaborate using social technologies to delve into the past, present and future of city spaces” (seconds 20-34).
“It’s a collaborative undertaking in which universities, museums, libraries, cultural institutions, non-profits and community advocacy groups all contribute content (seconds 48-59).
“I’ll also notice that there’s various kinds of material: historical material, academic content, archival content, as well as community generated content all living side by side” ( minutes 2:32-2:43).
This emphasis on collaboration is undoubtedly a way to relay the new possibilities made available with the use of new technologies. A project whose goal is to create a site full of vast knowledge found from a variety of sources would not be possible without the powers of the Internet and other technological advancements. This website allows anyone to publish useful information to contribute to a greater and more in depth understanding of a specific location at a specific time. As a result, viewers of the site can sort through information if they need a specific type of source (i.e. an academic source for a college paper) or simply browse through the information in order to get a broader perspective. Because the information is provided by all sorts of people and organizations, it allows the viewer to see the same location and time period from different angles. For example, when looking at the city of Los Angeles Sunset Blvd map from the 1920s, there are a number of different collections associated with the map. Under “Classes” there are maps created by students for university projects and under “Public Collections” there are excerpts written by the Works Progress Administration and video clips from past news reports. In effect, with the use of technological tools found on hypercities.com, history becomes more open to the public, who is now allowed to shape and construct it, and not solely dictated by trained historians.
Exploring Hypercities
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