The first thing that struck me upon opening up the Domesday Book page was that this weeks material was being presented in a completely different manner than last. Instead of a straightforward article I got a webpage that had many, many branching paths of information.
The amount of info presented in pretty much overwhelming, with almost no linear structure, one must go about their exploration of the site in a somewhat planned manner, scanning the FAQ's for questions that one was thinking; finding the "W"s. The Who's, What's, Why's etc...
I assume this change in presentation was a very, very intentional one. The Site for the Domesday book is presented in a very hypertextual way, with highlighted links that lead from item to item. The connection between the two readings is readily apparent.
As for the Domesday book itself, I'm really amazed that it managed to get compiled. After reading through a portion of the site, seeing what sort of effort that went into the compilation process. I found it hard to believe that such a large scale undertaking managed to get completed.
Aside from the gathering of information, it is the fact that it was gathered multiple times in order to check for accuracy which really impressed me.
The most interesting thing though, is the ironic circumstances regarding the 1986 'New Domesday' survey. The fact that the original book has lasted for around 900 years or so, while the once created on state of the art computers, circa 1986, is now obsolete and almost unusable. Irony like that just tickles my funnybone. It's another one of those old tech vs. new tech ordeals. And it's another thing that connected this reading with the previous.
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2 comments:
I find it fascinating that such an enormous endeavor of such minute detail and labor intensiveness ever reached this level of completion. The ability to collect, organize and story so much information manually is unbelievable. We can hardly make a list without using a spreadsheet. I would even venture to say that attempting this task without a laptop today would certainly meet with failure.
You do point out an interesting irony. The original,handwritten document survives nine hundred years...and we can't manage to hold onto the "new and improved technological" one for twenty-one years...! It's situations like this that reinforce my belief that the written word, though it's popularity continues to wane, will never be completely eradicated.
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