This could be done as a wiki too, perhaps as part of the wikipedia project. but for me, i am less actually interested in the facts of the history, I am much more interested in the stories, true or not, that we tell about that history. I think that when I give my 15 minute internet history, I tell certain short parts for certain reasons to certain people and not to others and i give certain spins to various groups. This is the creation of the fictions, supported by some construct of the events, that really intrigue me. It is the fictions of the canon that tell the story about the disciplines, not the canons themself. Some stories i tell are: "the invention of packet switching" this one is a standard short history story that i usually tell on the fly "the history of the undernet or what it means to talk to someone in taiwan in real time along with 20 other people" this centers around my experiences during the early years of the undernet irc network, and my experience being myself in a wide variety of roles, channel manager, participant, being banned, etc. etc. "finding myself on the web; egosurfing and search engines" how many of you tell the story of when you first found information about you that you did not create on a page? there are other stories, this is just a short list, there are probably 100 or so that i can tell for various reasons. i tell them because i find they point to some aspect or another about the current discussion that I'm in, not so much about the truth of history, but about understanding situations, and events. It is sort of like the difference between listening to Utah Philips versus reading a book about the labor movement, the sense of the event is different in the spoken story, whether it happened like that or not.
This tool has proven to be valuable for its intended use, and the empirical studies of the results form an important part of my dissertation. There is a demo version that is allows use of every part of the system except the actual posting of commentary.
http://students.washington.edu/~veritas/DocReview/review30.cgi?name=DrDemo
-- jeremy hunsinger http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy cddc/political science http://www.cddc.vt.edu 526 major williams hall 0130 http://www.dromocracy.com virginia tech -under construction blacksburg, va 24061 540-231-7614 this email was sent from my office