1. Studio 11
Timelines, Maps, Graphs
Introduction to the Digital Liberal Arts
MDST 3703 / 7703
Fall 2010

2. Business
• Quizzes due

3. Review—Effects of Big Data
• BD allows for the discovery of megapatterns – or
“petapatterns”
– Petabyte = 1000 Terabytes = 1000 Gigabytes …
• Appears to entail a new hermeneutics, or
interpretive approach to humanities data
– E.g. behavior (online interaction), texts, paintings, etc.
– At a remove from the individual work or act
• Question: viewed in the aggregrate, what do
these data reveal?
– Moretti: Darwinian patterns
– Anderson: Who cares?

4. Is there a “mother of all funk
chords” for social life?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA

5. http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/ct/pages/JWM/Papers/Four%20Ways%20
to%20Measure%20Culture/Kroeber%20Fig.jpg
Kroeber’s Model of Women’s Fashions
[Krober] studied women’s dress
fashion over 300 years and
discovered that skirt length
changed in a periodic cycle.
Kroeber considered various
causes that might affect the skirt
length, such as political
instability, but failed to find any
reason for the cycle. Therefore,
he came to the conclusion that
fashion cannot be explained by
outside factors because it
evolves according to its own
internal laws.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/anthro
pology/Kroeber.html
A. L. Kroeber, “On the Principle of Order in Civilization as Exemplified by Changes of
Fashion,” American Anthropologist 21, no. 3 (7, 1919): 235-263.

6. Overview
• Scrum
• Check WordPress fixes
• Go over more hacks for creating and inserting
timelines and maps
– Use Google Spreadsheets to create SIMILE
timeline
– Use Google Maps to create a map
– Embed both in WordPress using shortcodes

7. WordPress Plugin Check
Look for …
• My Page Order
– Lets you sort pages visually
– Under Pages
• Vipers Video Quicktags
– Lets you embed video into pages and posts
– Under Settings and as menu items in the editor

8. Hack 1: Creating a Timeline with
Google Spreadsheet
• See the Post “How to Create a Timeline with
Google Spreadsheets” associated with today’s
class
• Shortcode = [shanti-gg src=“longgoogleurl”]

9. Hack 2: Creating a Map with Google
Maps
• Go to Google Maps
• If you are logged in, you should see “My Maps”
– It’s in the upper left inside the light blue strip below
the Google Maps logo.
• Select “Create new map”
– Give it a Title and Description and press Save
• Use the toolbar on the map to add points and
lines
• To publish, grab the second line of code, under
the label Paste HTML to embed in website.
– Or select Customize and preview embedded map

10. Hack 2: Continued
• Paste the embed code in your page or post
• Remove the iframe end tag (</iframe>)
– It’s not the last item – Google also adds a link you
may want to keep
• Change the start tag to shortcode as follows
From <iframe...> to [shanti-gmap...]

11. Hack 3: Create a Graph using
GraphViz
• Go to http://ashitani.jp/gv/#
• Enter a series of “edges” in the box on the left
– E.g. A -> B
• Voilà!
• To learn more, download GraphViz
– http://www.graphviz.org/
– PC: WinGraphViz
• http://wingraphviz.sourceforge.net/wingraphviz/
– Mac: PixelGlow
• http://www.pixelglow.com/graphviz/