It's refelection time!

I am a very reflective person. My brain and I have a good working relationship in caching experiences then rehashing them through introspection. While I never explicitly present this process in the form of a journal, it is something I am extremely aware of. When you have trouble sleeping for the first 17 years of your life, you learn a lot about what is going on inside that skull of yours. This is why I am truly excited to be writing a final blog reflecting on my experiences and developments over the course of my first term Digital History course. One can only include so much information on a teacher evaluation sheet, and even then, the information is not intended for personal reflection but merely personal assessment.

Upon entering this class I was really excited to learn what the digital world could hold for future and current historians. To tell the truth, technology does frighten me to an extent. Their are the usual Luddite reasons, however having read many books on the notion of primitivism versus modernism I understand how to contextualize such fears. My fears lie in the unknown, as with all human fear. Maybe in that light, it is not fear but rather apprehension and anxiety about the unknown that drives such anti-modernist sentiments. Perhaps because my generation has already seen such a drastic change in the human condition, I expect this change not only to continue unabated but to continue along an exponential ascension. This may or may not be true, but change in certainly happening and there is no slowing it down. Historians in general seem to be ultra-conservative in terms of change perhaps due to the fact the we like old things, pine for old things, and immerse ourselves in antiquated philosophies and realities. Perhaps this has been one of the greatest lesson I have learned over the course. Whether we historians want to confront it our not, we need to change along with the world. The Internet and technology not only broaden our potential mediums for communication but also display new possibilities in research methodology leading to entirely new horizons of interpretation. This is exciting! It is also does not destroy the traditional modes of scholarship. This would be another one of my fears of technology, that is destroys traditional bases of knowledge. This is true and for some skills, technology certainly will be the Shochet waiting in the wings. Yet this does not mean that all skills will die off and give way to new ones. Historians will still need their panache for research, their motivation to search hours and hours for the 'golden nugget' of information, the ability to interpret many different analyses to form a coherent narrative and the ability to transmit and communicate ideas.

As a public historian the ability to communicate is by far our most important skill. We are the mediators between the academic realm of history and what actually matters to people. One question posed by my professor Bill Turkel for this final assignment was what makes history interesting to the public. My response to this is quite literally, history separates us from the animals. Being a fan of anthropology I always found it interesting to note that one major difference between humans and our closest relative chimpanzees was the ability to transmit information between generations. A chimpanzee and human can both fashion tools in order to perform a task. However a chimpanzee cannot teach another chimpanzee how to make his or her own tool or even how to use the tool fashioned by the first chimp. It is this ability to transmit ideas, technology and once we developed language stories down from generation to generation. I have never even thought to connect this for the human desire to know history, transmit history our even produce history but I have come to this revelation now. When we discuss why the public has a thirst for history, I feel it is directly connected to this animal trait unique to humans, the ability to transmit information for generation to generation. The question now is, what history does the public want to know. The academic realm looks down on the public appetite for history with disdain. 'If only they could grasp our concepts and the importance of our work' seems to ring down from the tower tops. Indeed I have heard many history students echo that entertaining to a public audience constitutes a secession to the 'dark side' of history. I tend not to highlight the fact that the world's first historian Herodotus, produced his history for public consumption. Indeed, historians should always be mindful of the public consumption of history. This does not mean that scholarship needs to depreciate in quality in order to boost consumption. However, historians need to be mindful in the changing scholastic landscape of how information can be disseminated.

Another lesson I have learned in this class is the pressing need for historians to harness the new mediums of intellectual exchange in order to create a two way dialog with the interested public. One major reason that I entered a public history program as opposed to a traditional academic program was this desire to connect historical study with a larger audience that pines for it. The proliferation and success of historically based movies, television shows, videogames, novels, documentaries, websites and the attendance of museums and heritage sites testify to this public desire. Historians have so many ways now to get their interpretations and analysis to people, it would be occupational suicide to ignore them. One way that we can do this is blogging. I have already blogged about this subject and why it is imperative for historians to adopt blogging. However, simply by becoming a little Internet savvy, historians can fashion websites dedicated to their particular research interests. The beauty of websites is that historical information can now be a two way discussion between scholars and their audiences. Historians almost never focus on an audience past the dozen or so academics in their field. History has to be more inclusive then this! Technology can definitely bring us together, historians need to embrace this new connected intellectual environment. We have been so scared to let people into our world that we have alienated ourselves to people who are interested in what we do, we can’t afford to shut them out any longer.

My journey into the technological realm of history is not complete so I feel it would be premature to make some final assessments of my development. Next semester I will be engaging in an interactive exhibit design course which again will marry technological processes with historical initiatives. This first inculcation to the digital humanities has gotten me very excited about this next chapter in my development. I have learned about tools which I thought only existed in science fiction, or at the very least, possessed by the military in total secrecy. Perhaps the greatest lesson learned by anyone over time of their life is to never doubt one’s own capabilities and to always keep and open mind to new experiences. As a self professed primitivism, technology and me seemed like two positively charged ions on a collision course bent for instant and total repulsion from each other. However I find myself energized by what I have learned over the past four months. Rather than being scared of technology, well I think actually I am still a little scared to be honest. Rather than being consumed by fear, I now see that there can be a harmony between past, present and future. Are we in the process of a major change in the very nature of human existence, I would say yes. Does that mean we as humans have to fear such a large development? My answer before this class would almost assuredly been yes. Even though I understand how large scale evolutional technological initiatives have almost always improved the human experience, I would have still talked as though the world was transforming in ways that would hamper the human experience. But now, I see things not necessarily in a more positive light, but certainly in a much more balanced way. Will the Internet and digital technology change humanity for the better or worse. The answer is both! After learning about the new kinds of technology on the forefront for humanists and the general society at large, I can say that the future is here. Overall, humans will continue to live and our lives will change due to currents now unstoppable in their momentum. However, this is not a bad thing. Talk to a version of me four months ago and I would not have even contemplated these answers to such a daunting question! The journey has been started, I’ll report back in another four months when I’m a little farther down the road.