The Digital Age Get Down

As Gertrude Himmelfarb is quoted in "Digital History", “the Internet does not distinguish between the true and the false, the important and the trivial, the enduring and the ephemeral. . . . Every source appearing on the screen has the same weight and credibility as every other; no authority is ‘privileged’ over any other.” That is the general thread of the reading for this week: the Internet, its benefits, its problems, and is there a solution.

Digital History by Cohen and Rosenzweig

The same debates over the benefits and harms of the Internet have been circulating amongst scholars and ordinary people. The optimism of the radical changes that the digital community can bring to society, although decades later still not realized, is still discussed. While research and access to knowledge has grown and changed disciplines like history, if anything the Internet is just another skill that needs to be learned. Yet it is still a privileged access. Class and money still affect who can get that access (whenever I work, I constantly still get lower to middle class young adults who do not have access to the Internet and rants about technology). I think we, as people and academics, forget that until we are confronted by it.


Hyperlinking Reality by Nate Hill

I think it is a cool idea to be able to access information by scanning a bar code. I will admit some of this excitement stems because CSI: NY had an episode that involved postcards with a bar code to promote a local bar which linked to murder suspect and I have been fascinated by that accessibility ever since. I'm incredibly energized and optimistic by QR code simply because if it can reach just one person and get one person seriously interested in something they never would have encountered before is worth it. Yes, most people would scan the QR code just to see what it was and probably dismiss it after seeing it was "history" or "library" related. However, someone's interest could be peeked by whatever the subject is or that another person took the time to create and pass on a bar code. It is not a perfect way to get people involved but it is a creative one. I give the Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library credit for trying something new, different, and technological based to reach out to the public.



Haunted Mouses by Virginia Heffernan

Static. Nothing is clear on the Internet. It does multiple things and be many different things to different people with no answer to what is real. If you cannot tell, what is real from what is not then doing history online could do more harm than good it seems. For every valid point there is a least one invalid point. There is no solution for the problems the Internet can cause but discussing the benefits of the Internet over not having it at all is worth wild.

More than the content itself, the imagery she uses is amazing. Comparing the Internet to the rural roads of the highway with ghostly hitchhikers gets her argument across far greater than other words or phrases she uses.


American Historical Association articles
"Should We All Become Public Historians?" by Joyce Appleby
"Public Education and the National Park Service: Interpreting the Civil War" by Dwight T. Pitcaithley
"American Exceptionalism and the Teaching of European History" by Arthur Haberman and Adrian Shubert

I really liked how these authors struggle with what public historians are, the public longing for a progressive story, and a public interest in expressively American stories. Perhaps liked is not the right word, but it drives home that as a class, we struggled with these issues and even professionals still have not found a solution. It seems to be a circular debate: recognize a problem, discuss the problem, call others to act on a solution, give suggestions, and repeat. Yes, there is no quick solution or maybe not even a solution at all. Yes, calling historians to remember that they do have some responsible to the public is important. It just seems there is a whole lot of talk and not much action when action will only solve it.