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Christopher Witmore |Social software is, at the broadest level, software that facilitates group interaction and communication (Shirky 2003). One of the most versatile examples of social software is the hypertext, collaborative authoring package, known as a ‘wiki.’ Derived from the Hawaiian word ‘wikiwiki’ meaning ‘quick’ or ‘fast,’ wikis are real-time web-based forums, which combine collaborative authoring and multimedia publication, with the potential for limitless hypertext. Collective, non-hierarchical, digital media architectures, which facilitate real-time interaction with and instantaneous publication of information, wikis were first developed as collaborative business and management forums by software designer Ward Cunningham in the mid 1990’s.
Unlike paper-based media and most websites, wikis bring about the ability to excavate underneath the divides between project director and trench hand, archaeologist and public, author and audience or consumer and producer, in the collaborative articulation of the past (cf. Hodder 2000; Joyce 2002). Yet, beyond standard hypertext where a few links (however, refer to Holtorf 2001 for an example of multiple hyperlinks in a HTML document) would be provided in a single webpage, every word articulated within this collaborative software has the potential to become a ‘hyperword’ or comprise part of a ‘hyperphrase.’ In this way, each noun, every verb, could contain a link or links to other texts, media (image, video or sound), archives, sites, or wherever—every word an intermedia chiasm. But within the architectures of these forums no interpretation is ever definitive; no statement is ever closed; no link is ever singular. They are open to perpetual transformation and have the potential to become as chaotic as the landscapes of the Southern Argolid. I will elucidate these points further.
Every since the critiques and predicaments of Clifford, Marcus and Fischer, archaeologists such as Ian Hodder (1997; 1999) have been concerned with the intervention of text in the constitution of a bounded, demarcated, distinct and fixed past. Some strategies have focused on the ways texts were written in particular locales (on site, in the field, or wherever those to be represented roamed) or the integration of ‘other’ voices through their involvement in the authorship of the text (Bender 1998; Hodder et. al. 1995; Hodder 1999; Joyce 2002). However, as Bjørnar Olsen points out ‘{t}he discrediting of the ‘tyrannical’ authorial voice, and of the author as the centre and source of discourse, led to numerous conscious attempts at infusing dialogue and multivocality into the text’ (2005, 93). These hypersensitive strategies can, following Olsen, ‘be read as a way of safeguarding against criticism, by controlling reader responses (producing both questions and answers) and thus actually reinstalling the author as the centre of discourse. It is as if the author takes on the reader and critic’s role, producing texts that are already fragmented and ready-made deconstructed’ (2005, 93). Paper-based media only takes us so far. Decentering and fragmenting the author in order to attain the aims of multivocality has led some to focus on the Internet and more specifically hypertext web sites.
It was the greater flexibility in including, for example, as many contributions from, and hyperlinks to, other communities through web-based sites while circulating more detailed archaeological inscriptions with open access on a seemingly ‘global scale’ that attracted many (Hodder 1999). However, such perspectives are not without their critics. Adrian Chadwick as has objected that ‘website authors still hardwire in the pathways that users follow, and the idea of unfettered access is a ‘hypertext myth’’ (2003, 103). Fortunately, software designers and engineers have worked against this critique since the mid-1990s.
I will return to this issue in more detail shortly, but of course with any web-based application there is a mandatory requirement for an administrator, the need for a centralized server to run the site, forum or network and the necessity of an Internet service provider. However, wikis take out the intermediary of the website author by replacing the HTML coding with an unseen markup language such as that which exists within standard writing software like Microsoft Word. All one has to do is click edit, write and save the text with the addition of simple character scripts for formatting. Chadwick, and in another forum Gary Lock, are correct to point out the hierarchies associated with the networks upon which the Internet is based. At the moment, this necessary practicality, unfortunately, as they both point out, mirror the loci of IT power (Europe, the US, and increasingly the Asian Pacific Rim) (Chadwick 2003, 103; Lock 2003, 255-260).
Wikis run counter to standard HTML web pages where a web master has control over design issues and also collates the completed information centrally. In social software wikis such as Traumwerk (which refers to Freud’s dream work) developed by the MetaMedia Lab at Stanford University, content control and manipulation are dispersed and open. More specifically, any forum member with access to a computer with internet connection, depending on password controls, can edit, change, or delete anything that anyone else has written from anywhere at anytime. Everyone potentially has an equal stake in the articulation of an archaeological report whether skilled excavator, laboratory specialist, project director or local community member (of course, providing the availability of access). The presentation of material is always organic, in that the forum is continually growing and changing through the input of the collaboratory. In this way, and in returning to the point of recruiting the proper modes of documentation to attain the goals detailed in Chapter 1, Traumwerk grows from the ‘bottom up’ in comparison to traditional forms of publication such as the excavation report, catalogue or HTML based web pages, which are hierarchical and ‘top-down’ in their relations to a single author or editor (refer to Hodder 1999).
Unlike other modes of documentation, the digital architecture of a wiki remediates the democratic assembly-space and like an agora it provides a forum where a group can make things public (Latour 2005(in press)). On the one hand, a wiki works like the thing in its ‘gathering’ (gathering being the etymological basis of ‘thing’), on the other it provides a forum for holding a parliament regarding the things of the past. This has fantastic ramifications for project archives.
Like medieval collections of rare manuscripts paper-based archaeological archives are situated in particular locales. They are reserved for the dusty shelves of singular ‘centers of calculation’ associated with a particular site—the Athenian Agora—or a particular landscape—the Southern Argolid. While these archives contain richer articulations of a site or landscape and the events associated with their mobilization, they do not circulate as does the significantly reduced fine-edge of the final publication. Irrespective of the disparities over global access (pace Chadwick 2003, 103; Lock 2003, 255-260), web-based archives appreciably amplify their circulation in comparison to the paper-based archive.
What is more, with paper-based publications such as A Greek Countryside (Jameson, Runnels and van Andel 1994) necessary choices were made as to whether plans, maps and photographs should be published with a particular ‘site’ or not. Digital transformation brings something of the richness and complexity of the archive to the fine-edge and yet it also gives the archive new legs, so to speak. Something of the things left on shelves of a storehouse in Porto Kheli, qualities of the features of the countryside of the Southern Argolid come together in these digital forums. Moreover, there is more flexibility with ‘data’ design.
Paper-based scenographies work through the effective juxtaposition of various media on a flat, two-dimensional surface. We may recall from Chapter 2 William Martin Leake’s emplacement of measured plans within the textual narrative of his Travels (refer back to Figure 2.5). This immediate juxtaposition of different media on the same page both highlights their disparities and, at the same time, mutually reinforces each other. The Internet, in contrast, contains richly intertwined multimedia. Of course, these media can, as with paper-based scenographies, be effectively juxtaposed with plan, map, and text on the same screen or they can be mobilized via hypertext or ‘hotspot’ connections. Concerning hypertext, in the shift from one screen to the next, the hypertext linkage works more like the separated plates of a standard 19th century excavation volume. With the latter, the activity of flipping from visual plates to the descriptions of context and associated finds demands a level of energy and time to verify connections. With hyperwords, this time and energy is reduced to nil. The shift occurs in the flash of a page mediated by connection speed. But what of the issue of information display?
Beautiful ‘data’—aware of the tethers which hold archaeologists to our most necessary scenographies born out of paper work, what does one do with a blank screen? With social software forums new visualizations, recombinations of various media and creative modes of interactivity are possible. While I will discuss some of these issues in the subsequent section on new media templates, I would like to provide a couple of brief examples. First, through digital templates some forms of connection can be mediated by other ‘nontextual’ modes of connection such as hotspots (of course given the nature of programming such is still based upon numerical representation).
Hotspots, which are placed behind features in a photograph and facilitate linkage, allow for the navigation through a series of photographs via visual features such as a terrace wall. An entire region can be navigated via images of the things or areas of focus (as with the Quicktime panoramas). Likewise, aspects of particular modes of engagements once only possible with archival materials are now launched digitally. For example, the act of magnifying a portion of an aerial photograph, once mediated by a hand lens, is now possible with a software program developed by MetaMedia called ‘Zoomify.’ ‘Zoomify’ allows a viewer to view any portion of a high-resolution photograph down to the details at the level of the grain. Both of these modes of engagement with the visual image can be readily collated into wiki forums.
Wikis open up what are perhaps the most guarded steps of the archaeological process—the final stages of writing. While every step in the archaeological process from excavation or survey to laboratory work is marked by some form of reference as discussed in Chapter 2, this process ends at the point in which all references come together in the final write up—the closed space of the laboratory, office or study. These final acts of delegation (constituting moments), these last small steps in the archaeological process are tightly guarded. Effectively filtered out, few if any traces remain of the various acts of articulation which occur at these final stages (the digital document of writing software often filters such changes out). Such loss of traceability in the writing process affects both the sciences and the humanities. However, with Traumwerk, every change, every comment, every trace is instantaneously tracked and archived. As a database this minute tracking extends to the transformation of all pages within the forum. Traumwerk manifests the archaeological process. Traceability, which we may recall from Chapter 1 is critical to accessing the accuracy of archaeological knowledge construction, is built into the architecture of this social software.
With digital transformation much can be brought together in one locale so much faster and with much less effort. Nevertheless, social software are appropriate media for a symmetrical archaeology in that these theoretical concerns are mixed into the digital form itself. In other words, the relentless entanglements of the network are embodied within the architecture of the digital medium. A wiki constitutes the fastest hypertext network available both in terms of articulation and the immediacy of being made visible. It vastly speeds up access to information and as a result the pace of debate. The distance between the text on my laptop in my apartment in San Francisco and the publisher is six months to a year or much more. While the distance between my laptop and wiki authoring forums is but a few seconds.
The limitless nature of wiki hypertext allows one to openly and freely navigate from the articulation of a site, feature, or landscape throughout the archive. Every word can spawn a potential connection or indeed multiple ones. Combined with the ability to freely integrate text, plans, maps, photography, video, sound and mixed media templates, social software such as Traumwerk provides an ideal platform for reiterative practices. But these qualities also create the potential for the forum to become as multiple, chaotic and turbulent as the landscapes we seek to materialize, because control of the very organizational structure is also dispersed. While there are ways of regulating the freedom and openness, ultimately I believe the best course of action will be developing a rich aggregate mixture of both paper-based and digital modes of engagement. They allow use to do fundamentally different things.
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