This tool addresses the bias, gaps, and subjectivity that are inscribed in historical records. The messages – contributed by fellow researchers and everyone interested – address the agency and positionality that are part of any knowledge production, both then and now.
It comes in 2 versions.
the chatbot – which is the one you are looking at right now;
and the message-bot.
Both are meant to address and interrupt the researchers: at the very moment when they are using and browsing the respective site that displays the information, archival document, or database result relevant to their current research.
Want to experience the effect right now?
You are probably looking at it at this very instance – the chatbot box pops up automatically, as soon as you visit this post. It simulates a help-desk chatbot, but you will see: no matter what you enter in the chat window, you only get new questions back – no answers.
You can toggle the way you experience it, depending on how often enter new questions; or by closing the box temporarily (and then reopen it by clicking on the arrow).
This is how it is meant to work:
the chatbot can be implemented on any page or post with data content – by the institution that hosts the respective website.
You can find the code on Github.
Check out the rest of the tool-kit.
You can still contribute your own comments and questions, I will add them to the message bot step by step – please do share them here!
(This is a work in progress. More questions, comments, prompts will be added as they come in. The design might change as well, an interactive chat-version is in the making.)
The form asks contributors if they want to have their names and institutions mentioned here on the website – here are those that agreed:
Milan van Lange
Ganga Rajinee Dissanayaka
Eva Lehner
Yann LeGall, TU Berlin
Mrinalini Luthra, Amber Zijlma, Combatting Bias | Huygens Institute