Curtis Robinson
Technology for the historian serves as both a tool and an impediment in the study of history. In the modern age and in the future, historians will cling to their computers and have access to information, books, and other publications without having to leave the sanctuary of their homes or universities. Books, articles, and primary sources that have been scanned will be at the historians fingertips. John Gaddis lamented in We Now Know that he could not make a multi-archival survey at the time his book was written. In the near future, this will no longer be a problem since searching archives will be made easier with the increasing reliance upon electronic databases and catalogues. The process of creating full digital copies of the archives are, of course, years away, but are inevitably on the way.
Technology has already revolutionized the writting process; typewriters are obsolete, replaced by computer word processors with spell check, grammar check, as recently demonstrated, features such as automatic sourcing, bibliographic entries as well as page numbering and document dating.
On the other hand, while the internet enables access to sources and literature especially in the form of E-books and journals, technology often destroys sources of the primary nature. It is true that primary sources in existence are salvaged by being scanned into databases but let us not forget the proccesses which create these sources. For historians, for example, the invention of the telephone was a curse. Letters, memos, and telegrams began to decline, all of which historians depended on in order to survey the communications that took place between people and their organizations. In the modern age, email has been used as the primary mode of communication. These comminuques are rarely saved and are surprisingly easy to delete or loose, therefore historians will find written worl source even more rare.
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Hi Curtis,
ReplyDeleteThese are some interesting thoughts. There is some valid concern about electronic communications not be saved for future historians. An interesting note here is also how our understanding of privacy and the privacy legislation that has been created is also going to impact future historians. I believe there are going to be some censuses that under current legislation will never be available at the individual level they way they were in the past because of this legislation.
There are certain initiatives such as "The Wayback Machine" that are working at archiving the internet and is amusing to see what the early internet looked like.
Additionally, at this time I am pretty sceptical about entire archives being digitized and made available online. I have seen some estimates for individual archives talking about the process in terms of centuries.