Digital History: The Final Frontier?

I loved the way all of the readings cohered this week. I think the defining aspect of this course has been that it’s laid bare a lot of my shortcomings and dislikes. And actually, this isn't a bad thing. Now I know the areas in which I need to improve. One of my shortcomings recently further exposed (I knew of it before) is a certain level of ineptness when it comes to technology. I’' not such a big fan of computers and the like and I have a sneaking suspicion the feeling is mutual. Sure, I'm proficient in all the ways that count, but not at doing things like creating and maintaining a website. I've certainly got to reckon with the burgeoning range of hardware, software, etc., that has developed quite rapidly as of late. The same is true for museums and historians.

As an aspiring archivist, the notion that paper and books won’t be around in physical form is fairly unsettling. Even just as someone who loves books, the idea is discomfiting. There is nothing like the smell of an old book, or the tactility of turning the pages of a spellbinding novel. Can’t get that from your Kindle.

Seemingly, some historians want digital archives to be free and accessible to all. My problem with this is similar to the one currently facing the newspaper industry: how would that enable the purveyors of digital archives to turn a profit? After all, everything comes down to making money. Also, once everything goes out onto the Web, how can historians discern the reputable from the bunk? The Internet lacks pretty much every check and balance of the publishing/academic/museum model of doing history. Then, there's no finding a rare first edition copy in the digital world. Part of the fun of books is seeking out different editions to view the evolution of a particular text over time. We're not consistently saving editions of webpages and I think that’s a problem. Lastly, turning everything into bits and bytes takes up far less space. History may look very different if nothing ever gets trashed or lost. I'm not sure if this is good or bad or both.

However, there are aspects of this new digital age that excite me. I love the idea of museums as being one of the last bastions of physical "things." That’s job security for sure. Additionally, utilizing technology effectively could be a really viable way to get young people engaged with and interested in history. The use of video games to achieve this as in museums as suggested in the AAM document is intriguing to me.

There's no way of predicting the future, but one thing's for sure: we're all about to become a lot more familiar with advanced technology. I'm working on brushing up and I hope museums and historians are, too. After all, we can't let museums become...history.