Learning in Creative Chaos

The Ancient World Online? Are you kidding?

I have a long relationship with a particular site online. When we were talking about CSS a couple of weeks ago in class, I realized that the whole site is built upon it--there's no other way they could keep up with it all!

The site I'm referring to is Ancient Worlds.

I discovered the place while I was pulling my short stint as an art history major. I was taking a classics class (Ancient Greek architecture, to be precise) and working graveyard shift in the art department's computer lab. Those two things combined with boredom around the 2am point of a extremely quiet shift, I wound up stumbling upon a column in Archaeology magazine online. Following a link, I found what I thought at first was a really cool three dimensional historical interactive online game set in ancient Rome (SPQR) with a few message boards about the game turned out to be a fully functioning online community. Of course, I signed up as a patron and spent *way* too much time in online "classes," storyplay, building my personal pages and generally helping to build some of the interactive "neighborhoods."

We even had a conference in New Orleans with several classics lectures presented by professors who also happened to be members as well as a lecture and reading by author Steven Saylor (he writes historical mysteries set in ancient Rome). The conference wrapped up with a costume ball after which we hit Bourbon Street in full regalia. We kept losing our Romans--tourists thought they were just locals who liked walking around in togas and kept stopping them in order to have their picture taken with the "toga guys." Some of the "academia" types on the site also used it as an opportunity to create online ancient history journals. These were short lived, but not before I managed to have one of them publish a paper I'd presented at Ole Miss's graduate symposium (on Herod's ancient seaport of Sebastos). Back in 2000/01, there were at least three grad students that I knew of who were toying with the idea of doing their thesis/dissertations specifically on AncientSites. We really felt like we were breaking new ground in creating such an online world.

Alas, much like many products that are riding the cutting edge of interactive technology, the site grew too quickly and, in trying to cope with the beginning of the .com bubbleburst, the "demigods" or founders spread their resources much too thin and CyberSites, Inc.--the parent company--went bankrupt.

For a couple of years, AncientSites was dead. The members moved on and began their own interactive sites--PanHistoria being the most successful of these. However, one of the founding "deities" of CyberSites, Inc. managed to purchase the old databases and resurrected "AS" as "AW" or AncientWorlds.

For me, I was skeptical at first. I'd spent too much time on the old site only to have all of my work vanish into thin cyber air. That said, the fact is that there are a lot of people as members of the site that I've known (albeit some only online) since 1998, there is a certain "homey" feel to it that draws me in, if only to catch up with others.

I noticed last week, however, that AncientWorlds is quickly changing formats (again pushing the envelope of an online community). A new social group called MediaPhiles is encouraging its members to communicate via online video and audio conferencing, podcasts and videocasts (They're already doing the site's news in podcasts). Considering the subject's right in line with what I've been learning in the OLL at South, I jumped at joining. I figure its a great way to learn and hone my craft while having fun at the same time (and paying homage to my fascination with ancient history). Is that cool or what?!?

posted by Stash @ 10:59 PM