Dan Cohen: History made is history lost in today's digital age
Today's technology has proved to be a double-edged sword: There's no dispute that it has improved our lives, but it also has caused us to lose history as fast as we make it.
Correspondence is by e-mail; hit delete and it's wiped out. Thousands of photographs are taken; few are printed. Official records are increasingly digital.
With our fingers poised over the delete button, what will be left of our culture for historians?
Scientists say we have to take steps now to preserve our footprint, so that future generations will know how we evolved.
"Are we losing history? Every day," says Rob Spindler, university archivist and head of Archives and Special Collections at Arizona State University Libraries. "The loss of history is a matter of neglect."
The problem is twofold: scarcity and abundance.
Drowning in data
We're taking more photographs than ever and piling up e-mails by the thousands. The National Archives is wrestling with how to store 40 million e-mails from the Clinton administration alone.
On the other hand, we're getting rid of information indiscriminately. New technology makes old technology obsolete. Files are lost if they are not transferred to the next generation of a product.
"There's just a lot being missed," says Dan Cohen, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and co-author of "Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web" (University of Pennsylvania, 2005, $28.95). "We live in an instantaneous age, a throwaway age."
"What of ours will be preserved in the future? Our landfills are overflowing," says Arleyn Simon, director of ASU's Archaeological Research Institute.
They all agree we need to come up with solutions.
Price of technology
One of the treasures of the 18th century is correspondence between John and Abigail Adams, letters that not only chronicle a love story but also document the founding of America. What love letters written today will be around in 300 years?
Since the invention of the computer — and even the typewriter — less and less is being handwritten. Historians always have used letters, documents and literary manuscripts to interpret the story of a civilization.
Look at the opening page of James Joyce's "Ulysses" (1922), for instance, covered in cross-outs and notations showing his extensive revisions. Even T.S. Eliot's typewritten "The Waste Land" (1919), has words crossed out and penciled in across his lines of poetry.
Today, authors bang away on their computers and make digital revisions, with only the final draft surviving.
"It's a great loss," says Christopher R. Coover, senior vice president and senior specialist of books and manuscripts at Christie's auction house and a frequent appraiser on television's "Antiques Roadshow." "There's no evolution of the work. It makes it impossible to look at the thought process of what goes into these great works."...
Read entire article at Barbara Yost in the Arizona Republic
Correspondence is by e-mail; hit delete and it's wiped out. Thousands of photographs are taken; few are printed. Official records are increasingly digital.
With our fingers poised over the delete button, what will be left of our culture for historians?
Scientists say we have to take steps now to preserve our footprint, so that future generations will know how we evolved.
"Are we losing history? Every day," says Rob Spindler, university archivist and head of Archives and Special Collections at Arizona State University Libraries. "The loss of history is a matter of neglect."
The problem is twofold: scarcity and abundance.
Drowning in data
We're taking more photographs than ever and piling up e-mails by the thousands. The National Archives is wrestling with how to store 40 million e-mails from the Clinton administration alone.
On the other hand, we're getting rid of information indiscriminately. New technology makes old technology obsolete. Files are lost if they are not transferred to the next generation of a product.
"There's just a lot being missed," says Dan Cohen, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and co-author of "Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web" (University of Pennsylvania, 2005, $28.95). "We live in an instantaneous age, a throwaway age."
"What of ours will be preserved in the future? Our landfills are overflowing," says Arleyn Simon, director of ASU's Archaeological Research Institute.
They all agree we need to come up with solutions.
Price of technology
One of the treasures of the 18th century is correspondence between John and Abigail Adams, letters that not only chronicle a love story but also document the founding of America. What love letters written today will be around in 300 years?
Since the invention of the computer — and even the typewriter — less and less is being handwritten. Historians always have used letters, documents and literary manuscripts to interpret the story of a civilization.
Look at the opening page of James Joyce's "Ulysses" (1922), for instance, covered in cross-outs and notations showing his extensive revisions. Even T.S. Eliot's typewritten "The Waste Land" (1919), has words crossed out and penciled in across his lines of poetry.
Today, authors bang away on their computers and make digital revisions, with only the final draft surviving.
"It's a great loss," says Christopher R. Coover, senior vice president and senior specialist of books and manuscripts at Christie's auction house and a frequent appraiser on television's "Antiques Roadshow." "There's no evolution of the work. It makes it impossible to look at the thought process of what goes into these great works."...