The UI for this site is absolutely terrible but the content and context/state logic is actually quite good! If you stumble upon this, check it out in about a week and it should look much better
This was a research project for the Software Systems Laboratory at Loyola University Chicago (SSL).
As part of the agreement to work with SSL, I was a Mulcahy Fellow
For transparency's sake, the abstract of that fellowship, which is now complete, is below:
Our goal, with Prof. Thiruvathukal and Professor David Dennis, is to synthesize the field of Computer Science and Cultural History. We aim to go beyond the traditional narratives of computational historiography, in which linear technological developments are focused upon. Instead, it seeks to provide a more fulfilling explanation of The History of Computing, by explaining the cultural aspects that led to the information age, an overview of how the advent of new computational technology led to significant cultural shifts, while also showing a clear timeline of significant developments in the sphere of computing.
Technically, we would like to create a site that compares and contrasts the historical timelines in both the History of Computing and the History of Culture. This solves a separate problem about the field of the History of Computing, there are not many aesthetically pleasing condensed summaries for readers without the time to read a whole book, and there are none that also take into account the aspect of Culture within the history of computing.
Specifically, the ‘stack’ is as follows.
The website is hosted on a single React page, where separate pages are loaded as components. The pipeline is updated through git, where a new push to the master branch updates the site.
By the end of the year, we would like our website to be presentable to the public!