{"id":388,"date":"2010-01-27T06:19:06","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T13:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=388"},"modified":"2010-01-27T06:22:06","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T13:22:06","slug":"hey-the-internet-worked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/hey-the-internet-worked\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey, the internet worked!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In theory, internet-based collaboration can improve the quality of scholars’ work. Though I didn’t have any reason to doubt this, I hadn’t actually experienced this for myself until recently.<\/p>\n

About a year ago I uploaded one of the films I’ve been investigating, Thomas Edison’s 1914 The Temple of Moloch<\/em><\/a>, to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is cool because you can not only view videos there; you can also download them.<\/p>\n

Someone took the bait! YouTube user markdcatlin<\/a>, an industrial hygienist in Akron, Ohio, re-uploaded The Temple of Moloch<\/em> to YouTube as part of his workplace and environmental health and safety film collection<\/a>. Mark included a great narrative along with the video, explaining that it depicts silicosis, or “potter’s rot,” a disease that had often been misdiagnosed as tuberculosis.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

I hadn’t realized this, and in fact I’d wondered why, if TB is transmitted by a bacillus, you’d get it from working in a pottery, as the film seems to claim. I’ve actually presented my research on these films at conferences, but never \u2014 obviously \u2014 at a conference of industrial hygienists.<\/p>\n

So there you go! The internet works! Good job, internet!<\/p>\n

(Although I should also mention that, true to YouTube form, Mark’s upload of The Temple of Moloch <\/em>is followed by a commenter’s xenophobic rant about immigration. The perils of free speech.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In theory, internet-based collaboration can improve the quality of scholars’ work. Though I didn’t have any reason to doubt this, I hadn’t actually experienced this for myself until recently. About a year ago I uploaded one of the films I’ve been investigating, Thomas Edison’s 1914 The Temple of Moloch, to the Internet Archive. The Internet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}