[Air-L] "Definitive" citation for the concept of digital trace data?

Brian Dear brian at platohistory.org
Mon Oct 5 10:04:27 PDT 2015


The PLATO system, founded in 1960, recorded every keypress and touch input for each terminal connected to the system, and started doing so in the 60s. I’m not sure they used the phrase “digital trace” but the fact remains it was a common thing to do, given PLATO’s educational mandate, to record every input each user made, and timestamp it all, so that it was possible to reconstruct how students interacted with interactive lessons and simulations, including what kinds of mistakes they were making when answering questions. It was a great way to figure out if users were struggling with UI designs as well.

Of course, as the system expanded and grew around the world in the 70s and 80s, PLATO was used for far more than just delivery of education to students. The tracing capabilities were also used to track down security breaches, anonymous threats posted in notesfiles (forums), as well as to locate and race to get help to suicidal users before it was too late.

I’m not sure there was ever an academic article published regarding these capabilities on PLATO. If there was, I’m not aware of it. These capabilities were just taken for granted.

- Brian

Brian Dear
PLATO History Project
Santa Fe, NM
brian at platohistory.org




> On Oct 5, 2015, at 9:40 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13 at osu.edu> wrote:
> 
> This idea comes from the beginnings of the Internet.  The germs of it can be found in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As we may think" in the Atlantic.  It was concretized by Nelson in 1974 (probably earlier) in his conception of hypertext in his book Dream Machines (although he's not talking about the Internet, but Berners-Lee did apply this idea to the Internet per se).  It seems to me we have been playing off of these ideas in one way or another ever since.
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Kevin G Crowston
> Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 11:17 AM
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] "Definitive" citation for the concept of digital trace data?
> 
> An argument for studies of online behaviour is that the systems collect records of what people do and that such digital trace data provide a rich source of evidence for all kinds of studies. I’m trying to trace back that idea but it seems so taken for granted that there’s often not a citation. So I wondered what people consider the definitive citation for that idea, and for the term "trace data” in this context more specifically. 
> 
> For example, there’s a 2008 handbook article:
> 
> Welser, H. T., Smith, M., Fisher, D., and Gleave, E. 2008. "Distilling Digital Traces: Computational Social Science Approaches to Studying the Internet," in The Sage Handbook of Online Research Methods, N. Fielding, R.M. Lee and G. Blank (eds.). London, England: SAGE Publications, Ltd, pp. 116–141.
> 
> But I suspect there are even earlier sources.
> 
> Kevin Crowston | Distinguished Professor of Information Science | School of Information Studies
> 
> Syracuse University
> 348 Hinds Hall
> Syracuse, New York 13244
> t (315) 443.1676 f 315.443.5806 e crowston at syr.edu  
> 
> crowston.syr.edu
> 
> 
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