Conner

I enjoyed visiting the  Hypercities, PhilaPlace, Euclid Corridor History Project websites and browsing them. I think it is very interesting that there are websites like this out in the world and organizations willing to take the time to make historical information like this available to all. I’m sure that there is an advantage for these cities like Cleveland and Philadelphia to create websites like this because it can help attract tourists. It is nice to see that on PhilaPlace, anyone who visits the website can add a story and image to the map. I guess this is a creative way of crowd sourcing.

I looked up hypercities on the web and found this http://www.briancroxall.net/dh/2011/10/24/hypercities-evaluation/ website which has an overview of how the site works along with reasons as to why people should use it or not use it. The author of this post was critical of the website but it was interesting to see his perspective. At one point he writes “Despite facilitating scholarship, Hypercities doesn’t really offer us anything new” and I find this very funny. He wants to make this point that the website is not really revolutionary and offers nothing new. But that is the point of the website! It offers things that are old and forgotten. He does go on to say “The true obstacle holding Hypercities back is its currently limited audience” which may be the main focus of his writing and he has a good point. I had no clue that websites like these existed before tonight and I couldn’t see a way where I would have stumbled on them besides through this class. And in the end, that statement or concept I just presented is a sort of microcosm for the internet. There are sooooo many things out there that are useful that people are not aware of and there are more educational resources being made every second. This is what makes the internet so great.  The key to making it better is passing these sorts of things on so that people can have the opportunity to find something they may not have realized they love.