Time Travel

I am traveling through time. My vehicle is the Wayback Machine. I enter the Smithsonian on June 6th, 2000, which I will compare with the Smithsonian's current state. Of course, the Smithsonian has changed their site dramatically within the past twelve years. The most obvious difference that I notice immediately is the aesthetics, but there are other aspects of these two times that should be considered.

The main page of the 2000 site is very simple and mostly text based, but has a picture of the Smithsonian that looks like it was rendered in The Sims (which actually came out that same year...) in the center of the page. When I click on the text links surrounding the picture, I am redirected to pages that are solely text or only contain a few small images with a wall of text. Many of the pages that I am redirected to (such as "Planning Your Visit" vs. "About the Smithsonian") are totally different formats; the pages do not even appear to be apart of the same website. This definitely has a negative effect on the fluidity of the page. This is contrasted with the Smithsonian's modern page in which images take up a larger portion of the main page than the text, but there are links that are text and links that are images. This site seems to be uniform throughout, using a similar format for all pages. Because Smithsonian 2000 is so simple, it is very easy to navigate and understand. I actually find myself a bit overwhelmed looking at the current Smithsonian page. The images make it prettier, but there's so much going on, I don't know where to look! The center of the page is scrolling, there are text links at the top of the page, and then a massive amount of much smaller text beneath the large images. There are even small pictures mixed in with the smaller text beneath the main images. I think the goal of the current site is to have no unused space, since the developers (in addition to the surplus of pictures and text) felt the need to have social connection links as a bar at the top of the page, then the same links repeated in a different format further down the page. I now believe there can be such a thing as too many images! Blank space can be useful, especially when communicating clarity and organization. I feel like the current Smithsonian website is trying too hard to grab my attention, and it seems overly complicated. This is probably a usability issue for many visitors.

Now that I've exited the Wayback Machine, I've realized it is a useful tool for digital historians. The ability to utilize internet archives is beneficial in examining various types of digital media since the 1990s (generally), which allows us to improve website communication/usability through comparative analyses. Technology is constantly building on itself, and digital history can (and should) do the same by using tools like the Wayback Machine.


http://web.archive.org/web/20000606112742/http://www.si.edu/

http://si.edu/