An Introduction

When Roy Rosenzweig and Dan Cohen wrote their Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, a 120-gigabyte hard drive could hold an approximately 120,000-volume library, all for the cost of $95. Today, about ten years after Rosenzweig and Cohen published their collaborative work, a quick search on Best Buy's website shows that for about $20-$30 more, you can now purchase a 1-terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) external hard drive. That multiplies your storage capacity almost ten-fold, and the hard drive fits in the palm of your hand, weighing about nine ounces. You can now carry an entire library in your pocket.

The introduction to Rosenzweig and Cohen's publication offers a keen insight into the burgeoning world of digital history. I hesitate to say the word "book" when describing their work, only because they publish it for free online in an easy-to-navigate format, with the option to purchase a printed copy online from several sources. 

It was very thought-provoking to read their introduction, which touches on capacity, accessibility, flexibility, interactivity (or passive interactivity, such as watching news on the TV). It led me to ask myself many questions about how history has not only been changed by the advent of the Internet, but how this will impact the study and profession of history as well. Today, anyone in the free world with Internet access can get an account on Facebook or Twitter and post selfies, comment on pictures of friends' meals, link to "clickbait" articles, or simply tell anyone who will look, "I'm bored" - complete with smiling, winking emojis. Everyone has a voice, whereas in the past only those with money, education, and positions of power would have their words immortalized. 

With this deluge of information, inevitably there will be people who will need to decide what's important to history and what's not. Just because we have the ability to record and store virtually everything, should we? If not, who will be the ones to decide what's kept? What version of our history will be saved? Some say things disappear on the Internet, but in reality, they only get buried. Who will be the future generations' Internet archaeologists?

There are certain upsides to the speed of and widespread access to the Internet. News spreads across the world as quickly as it takes someone to post information on Facebook or a media outlet to send out a tweet. There are pros and cons to this, that I may discuss in later posts, but for now I'd like to relate it to Chinese students' use of the fax machine to spread knowledge to the world about the protests occurring in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and subsequently the massacre - news of which was being suppressed by the Chinese government. A recent bombing in Thailand reached thousands of people on Reddit within hours of it occurring. Considering that, the speed at which news can pop up on your Facebook feed or Reddit front page, can be buried and forgotten just as quickly. 

All of these questions are leading me to certain ideas for my final project in my Introduction to Digital History course at Northern Virginia Community College. The debate over digital versus paper is still raging on, according to a recent NPR presentation and article, drawing from a study published last year in Psychological Science. I've personally found that I retain more information and have a more personal connection to what I'm reading when it's on paper than on a screen. I remember more when I write it down on paper, perhaps because it requires more thought than the muscle memory I use to type. This debate as well as the use of Internet to spread news of grassroots political movements are interesting topics to me. 

I look forward to reading more of Rosenzweig and Cohen's work and sharing my thoughts with you all. Please feel free to comment with your own thoughts!