In response to the Introduction and first chapter written by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzwieg, technology has changed radically in the past twenty years, and these changes have reached academia, an area not typically known for its tech-savvy participants. Technology, while it has every aspect of society in some way, it has hardly been a revolution. Now, this is the opinion of the authors, and I do not entirely agree with their assessment. While I do not want to tear down the opinions of other scholars, I will say that I think that technology has been revolutionary, especially speaking in terms of the study and analysis of history. Instead of hunching over books in a dusty library, historians are now clicking away on computers and other devices, attempting to engage in a personal way through the screen. The authors throw lots of information and ideas at the reader, making reading the information almost overwhelming. However, I think that these are the key points:
1. While digital history might be more interactive, it is also more passive
2. The Digital Divide could create a serious learning curve in terms of educating the general public about history
3. Digital history materials can be of very high quality, similar to any other written or recorded resource
4. Digitalization makes history more accessible to the public, not just to scholars with access to more resources than ever
5. The internet moves unimaginably quickly, forcing historians to keep up and find ways to keep their general and scholarly audiences engaged
6. The History Web is vast, with all kinds of resources, making categorizing these tools very difficult, especially in terms of unveiled primary sources
7. Digital history does not just utilize the internet and its ability to host exhibits and vast databases; it also uses films, archival software, photography, and RSS feeds, among many others
I think they meant a revolution among the historians. Dr. Cox
ReplyDeleteI did not think about it that way. Thank you for bringing that into my thought process. With that twist, I certainly think that the internet has been a revolution in the field of history. Suddenly, everything can be preserved digitally, and information about millions of objects, topics, and people are available in just a few clicks. It would help me to talk about this in class since I'm having trouble wrapping my head around Digital History as a revolution.
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