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• 1 2021-05-31T10:44:06-07:00 Traversal of Mark Bernstein & Erin Sweeney's "The Election of 1912" 27 Video clips of the live stream Traversal of Mark Bernstein & Erin Sweeney's "The Election of 1912" plain 2021-08-22T16:11:03-07:00

  These are videos of the Traversal of Mark Bernstein and Erin Sweeney’s hypertext essay, The Election of 1912. The two authors performed remotely––Bernstein from Watertown, MA and Sweeney from her ranch in New Mexico––via Zoom and YouTube while Dene Grigar navigated their work from the lab at Washington State University Vancouver. For the Traversal Grigar selected a Mac SE sunning system software 6.07 . The event took place on Thursday, October 15, 2020 and was hosted by the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver. Moderating the Q&A is Dene Grigar, Director of the lab; joining her is Mariusz Pisarski, the Research Affiliate for 2020-2021.

  Mark Bernstein’s and Erin Sweeney’s Traversal of The Election of 1912, Part 1

  Grigar introduces Bernstein, Sweeney, and The Election of 1912, the only historical work in the Eastgate Systems, Inc.'s catalog. Grigar compares the contentious Progressive Era depicted by the complex, multimedia work to "the fierce partisan battle" of the current era. She performs the Traversal on a Mac SE using system software 6.07 while Bernstein and Sweeney direct her remotely through Zoom (from Massachusetts and New Mexico, respectively) and Mariusz Pisarski participates from London. The group begins by clicking the work's launcher icon, which features a folder with an American flag on it. They are taken to the title page of the work featuring an illustration, a title, a series of tabs offering access to various parts of the work and several buttons at the bottom of the screen. Bernstein describes the multi-year process of writing The Election of 1912, crediting Sweeney with most of the research and himself with most of the coding. Recalling a series of conversations with Theodor Nelson, Bernstein explains that he was "deeply concerned with navigation" and making sure readers would not get lost. Clicking on the "About the Election" button, Bernstein reads a screen setting the stage of 1912's political scene. Grigar asks Sweeney about the research process, which was carried out in "card catalogs" with "notes in longhand, photocopied, and mailed to Mark." Sweeney says this laborious process "was probably a good thing" because it made her think deeply about what she read and its relevancy. Bernstein discusses the smallness of the screen the two were writing for and the inability to scroll through text on it, which forced certain constraints on The Election of 1912. 

  Mark Bernstein’s and Erin Sweeney’s Traversal of The Election of 1912, Part 2

  Bernstein reads a screen describing the situation of the three main political parties––Democratic, Republican, Progressive––in 1912. He points out the "little dot" next to the button leading to the "About the Election" lexia read in the previous video, saying it is one of the first appearances of the "read" mark. Grigar points out that hovering over a button changes the cursor to a check mark, which Bernstein says "was fairly radical and also fairly hard" to do. Clicking the link to La Follette, a prominent Progressive politician and governor of Wisconsin, Bernstein reads a lexia describing the collapse of La Follette's Republican primary campaign. From there, he navigates to a text lexia quoting part of a speech La Follette gave in the Senate. Sweeney talks about her focus on original sources chosen "to give a sense . . . of what people where thinking about at the time." Bernstein then aligns The Election of 1912 with the movement in late 20th century historical pedagogy towards telling history through "hot media" like film and simulations and highlighting "contingency," which, he argues "can be brought up quite subtly by the contingency of the links and the way the same quotation can fit between lots of different links."

  Mark Bernstein’s and Erin Sweeney’s Traversal of The Election of 1912, Part 3

  Bernstein clicks the tab labelled "Issues in 1912," and discusses with Grigar the "notorious back button" that appears in The Election of 1912 when mousing over the "History" button, in the form of a clickable list of already-read pages the reader can return to. Clicking the link for "fair business practices" in the issues menu, he reads that lexia describing the issue of monopolies and, then, decides to "visit Bernie with the Socialists" and follows the "Socialist" link to read a lexia about Eugene V. Debs, who ran as a fourth-party candidate in 1912. Following further links, Bernstein reads from a speech by Debs about Theodore Roosevelt and, then, from a speech by Roosevelt about Debs, placing the two men in conversation with each other. Moving onto the "1912" tab, Bernstein reads a description of the cultural sphere at the time and the interest of intellectuals in change and reform.

  Mark Bernstein’s and Erin Sweeney’s Traversal of The Election of 1912, Part 4

  Clicking a button in the "1912" tab, the group moves to a series of advertisements from that year, which Bernstein reads aloud. Grigar asks about the images accompanying the advertisements, and Bernstein describes the process of xeroxing images and digitizing them using "an object called the Thunderscan" to scan them "pixel-by-pixel." Sweeney talks about her process for selecting advertisements, which she chose because "as they came up . . .  [they] seemed like a fun thing to include," and they offered "a snapshot" of life at the time. Bernstein explains that parts of the advertisement texts are in all-caps because bold text could not be rendered on the technology of the time, which had "less computing power than today's watches."

  Mark Bernstein’s and Erin Sweeney’s Traversal of The Election of 1912, Part 5

  The group moves onto the "SIMULATION" tab, which is composed of a series of windows the reader can open. As Grigar asks a question about Bernstein's thinking on "the term 'hypermedia,'" she is interrupted by the sound of a "choo-choo train" in a pop-up window. Bernstein answers that 'hypermedia' was always a part of his thinking and, then, instructs the group to click on Detroit on a map of the United States, sending Roosevelt there to campaign (and bringing up the choo-choo train pop-up once more). After cycling through different map views showing the relevance of particular issues to particular states through shading on the map, Bernstein decides to make Roosevelt give a speech and selects from a list of possible actions "oppose protective tariffs" and "offer patronage." Then, clicking the "newspaper" icon onscreen, Bernstein reads some real headlines from the era which offer "an interesting mix of shocking sexism and really interesting writing about the rights of women." These real headlines are interspersed with "synthetic newspaper stories" describing Roosevelt's opponent, Taft, doing something under the AI's direction. Grigar asks about the menu in the top bar, which offers readers the chance to take notes and add annotations and fulfills Bernstein's and Sweeney's "rhetorical, aspirational desire to let people write in their hypertexts . . . we certainly wanted to provide the familiar affordances of the book." Bernstein describes how he was always parrying accusations that hypertextualists wanted to "replace books," which was not his goal. The group then investigates the "people" tab, which offers a list of prominent figures from 1912 to whom the reader can send telegrams. Grigar asks Sweeney if she remembers how many pages there are in The Election of 1912, to which Sweeney responds with a laugh that she wishes she still had her notebooks from the time, but sadly does not. 

  Mark Bernstein’s and Erin Sweeney’s Traversal of The Election of 1912, Q&A Part 1

  Grigar invites online participants to ask questions in the YouTube Chat. Pisarski asks the first question, which focuses on Bernstein's conversations with Theodor Nelson, coiner of the term "hypertext." Bernstein answers that Nelson was polite but concerned about the possibility of people getting lost in hyperspace. Bernstein listened to Nelson's advice, but opted against an approach of "strict regularity"––which Pisarski praises as offering a "more human" way of teaching about the election. Pisarski then asks how Bernstein feels about the amount of screen space navigational tools take up, and Bernstein answers that by 2020 standards, the navigation is a little overwhelming but that for his audience in 1990––which had likely only had their Macs "for two years"––it was necessary, since people were a bit "nervous." Pisarski then asks about what platform Bernstein would use for The Election of 1912 in 2020, and he answers that he would "want to go deeper" and make it more "detailed, precise, and nuanced" before concluding that HTML5 would work. Kathleen Zoller in the chat asks about the map and its focus on the East Coast––Bernstein answers that although in this Traversal the group did not travel West, it is possible to do so although (true to the era) it takes a lot of time to get to the West Coast and most of the action is on the East Coast. Holly Slocum asks about the influence of the hypertext medium on Sweeney's research process, and she answers that she was not focused on the end product, to which Bernstein adds "we were building the medium [hypertextual history] alongside" the work. Richard Snyder, then, asks if Bernstein and Sweeney believe "our contemporary hypertextual society" is better-adapted to confronting nuance and contingency. Bernstein answers that "I spent much of my career talking about hypertext as a line of defense against ignorance" because diverse viewpoints and information can be fit more densely and vividly in hypertext than in print, and laments how "dismal" it is that in many cases, politicians and decision makers actively seek to have less knowledge about the decisions they make and the people who are impacted by them. 

  Mark Bernstein’s and Erin Sweeney’s Traversal of The Election of 1912, Q&A Part 2

  Grigar asks Bernstein about his work in the electronic media publishing world and his "vision" then and now. Citing Engines of Creation by J. Eric Drexler, he makes a distinction between the creation of "docuverses" (like Theodor Nelson's Xanadu or the World Wide Web) and the publication of freestanding hypertexts, more like book publishing. Then, Bernstein recalls rereading Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story, "which I didn't like the first time," and thinking it was "something we could do as a small company," and he could publish "standard hypertexts" for researchers to test out. Kathyn Cramer came to work at Eastgate Systems, Inc. and taught Bernstein "a lot" about publishing, namely that book publishers also "put their pants on one leg at a time." Grigar then asks Sweeney about her response to being considered "a pioneer" and her career overall. Sweeney answers that she met the "Eastgate folks" while editing reviews for them, and was more focused on "literature and history stuff" to the point that she "never saw the finished product [The Election of 1912] until the other day." As Sweeney moved out West to work with horses and run a ranch, she took on a lot of "non-traditional skills" and was "never a typical anything," living what Bernstein calls "a hypertextual life." Sweeney and Grigar then joke about the lack of a "back button" for life. Pisarski asks about the development of Hypergate, and Eastgate's motto "serious hypertext" and the source of the literary/games division in hypertext. Bernstein clarifies that he was never opposed to games, saying "they can come for drinks, but not for dinner," although at certain points he was "worried about the ludic, game-like elements," which he wasn't sure were appropriate for all hypertexts. Hypergate, written in an obscure code language, posed difficulties, and Storyspace "took off" and superseded it. Finishing his remarks, Bernstein says "we were on the side of a titanic conflict in the humanities, and it was necessary to pay attention to that conflict." Grigar concludes the Q & A session by thanking the organizers of the event and the guests.