Introduction

Welcome to this special themed issue of IDMAA’s journal, part of what we hope will continue to be a continuing tradition of using our journal to address specific issues of relevance to our readers. When the call for “History and Changing Paradigms: The Role of Digital Media and Arts in How We View Our World” went out, we received a number of wonderful submissions; the ones you see here represent the depth and far-reaching range of this concept of “History” and what it means to us today in relation to digital cultures.

We asked our authors to ponder the very notion of History and how we communicate and experience it, and I believe these articles speak to the importance of this idea to many of us: as teachers, as learners, as artists, and as citizens. Our articles collectively address the popular (YouTube), the local (the BBC’s digital storytelling project), the educational (using video game frameworks for teaching cultural history), and the philosophical (how digital art can explore notions of time and space). As always, we are proud of how this journal and organization bring together so many different disciplines and methods of analysis, and I hope you enjoy the unique “histories” that unfold in this issue. In an increasingly rapidly changing world, I think it is more important than ever to examine the role of history in our lives and cultures— what histories we share, which ones we prioritize, which ones we dismiss. I believe that in some small way, this issue can remind us of the value of looking at our past, present, and future as a means of staying connected through story and art.

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In this issue

• V4N1: Fragging History: Why Gamers Don’t Learn It the Old Fashioned Way

  By Erik Champion | March 5, 2013

  One of the more concise reviews of game definitions is a paper by Jesper Juul. He offered the following definition of games, which is really more the listing of six criteria for a game to be a game:

• V4N1: It’s Not About the Technology: Shifting Perceptions of History and Technology in the BBC’s Digital Storytelling Project

  By Joanne Garde-Hansen | March 8, 2013

  This paper explores the use of digital technologies for creating meaningful histories about personal pasts with reference to the digital storytelling projects enabled by the BBC in the UK since 2002. In so doing, I […]

• V4N1: LANDeSCAPES

  By Ellen Jantzen | March 12, 2013

  The tradition of linear forward marching time is backward, from the standpoint of the Aymara people of South America. They see history as lying in front of them. Because history consists of known events, they […]

• V4N1: Seneca’s Internet: A Preliminary Review of YouTube and its Implications for Digital Media

  By Emory Craig | March 5, 2013

  As of this writing, it registers 20 million unique users per month, with over 100 million videos viewed daily and 65,000 new videos uploaded every day. 1 Measured on the basis of user popularity, it […]