Thinking about the past for the future.
... after all the literary deconstruction and structural analysis, the written word remains a given, the axiomatic first principle of historical thought. Historians will not be able to think about the visiualization of history in digital form until they rethink this axiomatic core of our discipline.Staley P.16
To me, this seems to be the point of what we are doing. Finding new ways to discuss and explore historical events. It could be exploring Tiananmen Square via Google Earth, or presenting an old book of broadsides as a transitional document in a way that allows access to the average student across the world.
The challenge, as I see it, is to create something that provides a conduit for meaningful dialog with the past, or at least, with our abstraction of the past. A problem I have run into during a previous project of this type is that it still ends up being a linear exploration of an event or document. This is solvable, but requires some additional thinking and analysis on how to present the project.
I liked the discussion of symbols and our attraction to them. I think this is pertinent not only in branding our projects, but also in fostering a discussion of the "halo effect" of meanings that symbols, like words, suggest.
An additional note on the McCloud book; I've been reading comics and graphic novels for years. Scott McCloud has been bouncing around the periphery of my readings for a while. I'm glad I had a chance to finally read his book, as I enjoyed his exploration of comics as a medium and a way of communicating information. I'm curious to see how those ideas that he and Staley have presented can be applied to this and future endeavors.