As more and more information is engraved into the magnetic
medium it can be accessed, read, indexed, searched, cross-referenced,
and eventually automatically translated into any human language.
Could this armchair access change history as we know it?  With more
information being referenced by more people, will we learn more about
history?  Are there events which are thought to be untrue which will
turn out to have merit or will new facts be learned and old facts
be altered?  Might we just rewrite history so it's convenient since
XXXXX as they did in _19840
_ or in the former _Soviet Union_ since everyone will have one
source of information?

22 responses total.

I believe that computers and products of the technology revolution
that is now taking place have already had a profound effect upon the
course of history. They have made it possible via email and fax
technology for ideas to be passed around the globe. In particular,
repressive governments like the former Soviet union and the current
People's Republic of China lost an important battle to this high tech
equipment and found that they could not suppress communication of the
truth across their borders with the free world.

I am not worried that history may be rewritten as long as we have
free speech in this country.

People will still twist the truth and distort lies.  Historians will
still interpret.  Perhaps this new technology makes it easier and faster
to do so? 

"History as we know it" has always been distorted. An accurate account of
events and players is inherently too complex to record accurately, so
all historical events are recorded as "samples": simplified, points
exaggerated, people lauded or forgotten unevenly, etc. Therefore, computers
will change history *as we know it*, by providing a larger record, in
greater depth, more cross-referenced, and rapidly accessible. However, that
does not mean that many people will recall and understand history better,
simply because of the limited attention and memory capacity of humans.
Instead of everyone having a single distorted perspective on historical
events, there will be many, only slightly less distorted, perspectives.
I do not know whether it will prove beneficial or detrimental, for a people
*not* to share a common sample of history, as we tend to do today.

If people do not share a common sample of history, aka a common
culture or cultural reference, society will be too fragmented to
survive.  Any society will only function as long as people agree
on acceptable behavior. 

I'm inclined to think you're right, Dana.  That's too weak; I'm sure of it.
But we seem to be on the brink of the opportunity to verify it the hard way.

There are differences between history and culture. Are current historical
paradigm about George Washington consists of Cherry Tree, Potomac, White
Horse, Father of Country, Wood Teeth, Farwell Address. If a lot of
people never learn those, but learn more relevant facts such as his
views, his personality, his concept of democracy, etc, we will have a
large variety of historical perspectives of the same person. However, I
am inclined to think that, in this case, our culture is strengthened,
rather than weakened. "Acceptable behavior" is not itself history, but
belief systems built upon history (and lots of other things). I would
agree that it is better to have an agreement upon a range of
acceptable behavior - than to have an agreement upon myths about Washington.

I think that without some fairly basic shared understanding of history you
can't have a shared culture.

#6      In your view, are myths about Washington history or culture?

Culture derives from distorted history. What we mean by "history" is
some simplified record of events, although there is of course a "true"
history, consisting of what actually happened, although we can never
recover that. So, in my view, myths about Washington are part of our
culture, and bad history.

Over in coop we are discussing what to do with the files of one who has died.
If all info in places like this are "reaped," then we may be left with only
the interpretations of history which have been published.  How will
historians of the future root out their own interpretations when much
of the original sourses have been deleted.

Another question is, will the information being placed on magnetic media
be able to survive physically?  Baked clay lasts thousands of years, paper
has been found to deteriorate (especially the acidic modern kind), and 
now magnetic media is being found to be even less durable.

Seems like there are only a couple of peoople here who don't frequent coop,
so what are we going to do to help preserve remnants of our history?

I'd say most people today leave more records and tidbits about themselves
than anybody would imagine a hundred years ago.  There are movements in
both directions, of course.

The telephone is a curious device in this fashion.  Long ago, it was not
uncommon for people to have extensive correspondences with other folks.
With phones, most conversations over distance leave no enduring record
unless you count the bill.  I mean, really, how often do people send or
receive personal correspondence via USnail?

Computer files show at least some promise of changing that.  Although
magnetic media can decay over time, as anything else, in general it is
pretty easy to ensure the integrity of digital data (error-correcting
codes, more noise possible with minimal corruption, redundancy in other
ways) if you are trying to do so.  As with paper, most will be
destroyed, a few will survive due to extraordinary care or luck.

There is, for example, supposedly a company archiving all of USENET who
will sell it to folks.  Twenty years from now, perhaps a prominent
senatorial candidate will be haunted by an article he posted to alt.sex
while in college.

Almost all original sources have been deleted for practically everything
throughout history. Consider the totality of all communications between
all peoples in, say, ancient Greece. What fraction of that do we have?
Practically none. What is preserved is scraps, usually cut into some
endurable medium by the very rich, and stored in relatively protected
places. A few written histories have come down to us - what fraction of
the total? Close to zero. We are preserving vastly more today than at any
time in history, in more durable form than ever used before.  Some might
consider that unfortunate. Eventually, humans could reach the point that
they have to spend 70 years reading the past, before they can act in the
present....sounds like a prescription for extinction. In regard to
electronic media - I think they will become more durable as the technology
progresses. Magnetic media could be more sensitive so only remnant
magnetism is needed, and the mechanical forms (CD-ROM for a start) will
probably replace magnetism for long term storage (you can already have
your files put on CD-ROM). I'm more worried about *too much* on file,
rather than too little. 

CD's are almost certainly good for a century with no special effort.
They may well be good for considerably longer.  The real issue there
would be if the plastic is liable to break down or do something less
unpleasant.  Chances are, the plastic is something that's stable under
UV radiation.  Otherwise, strong sunlight would break it down.  That
means it's likely to be fairly stable indoors.  It's likely to be real
stable if it's cooled down or frozen, so the accidents of nature are
likely to preserve at least some this way for thousands of years.  It
may well be that all the ones people are sticking up in the attics will
still be good thousands of years from now.  Perhaps they'll be traded
rather like we trade roman coins today.  Even if nobody bothers to keep
any around, there will certainly be plenty buried in today's landfills.

There will also be plenty of more official records.  A lot of that will
be on microfilm, which some nameless government bureaucrat will have
undoubtedly put into some nice underground vault which they'll then
forget.  So, perhaps, they'll have a better idea about the number of
driving violations in Yugoslavia in 1988, than they do about about the
contents of the Ann Arbor Observer in the same period.

Re 12:  There's nothing wrong with a oversized record of the past.  It
just changes the skills needed to interpret the past.  The records will
always have some bias, and be clouded by issues of perspective.  As the
ability to conveniently store information increases, the ability to search,
compile and reference the material must also increase. There are already
many lifetimes worth reading of scientific information available for you to
consider. That doesn't cause any prospect for the extinction of science.


Re 10:  The problem of electronic "history" is an issue at the U of M. 
The Bentley Library is largely responsible for collecting material
related to the history of the university.  Mediums, access, & durability
are all concerns now; not just for extending the scope of information, but
for replacing what has been commonly retained. 

  I think this progression has always occurred.  "Recently" the introduction
of the telephone as a common tool for communication significantly changed
the character of information exchanged and stored.  Historians will always
work with tiny samples.  They're still better off than the guessing gods of
archaeology.

Waht would be fun is to put a whole bunch of Grex on CD and seal it for 100
years.  I like reading history which has examples of real conversations of
"ordinary" people.

That *is* a good idea!

Two things:

First, I'm suprised that y'all are assuming that the primary mode
        of storage will be on compact disc.  What about solid state?

Second, I'd like to know why mdw is assuming that CDs will last 100
        years.  Why did he pick that number when CDs have only been 
        around for ~15 years.  

Because that's the figure I've heard.  Nobody really knows (obviously)
but it's possible to make some educated guesses based on accellerated
aging tests, and our general knowledge of the physical sciences.

There is now enough of an investment in CD technology world-wide that,
even if some infinitely superior technology appeared tomorrow, it would
be safe to assume CD's would still be dominant for some time to come.
That investment is not just in high tech stuff like CD mastering
systems, but also low tech stuff such as the shelf space in record
stores, consumer acceptance of the CD medium, accumulated libraries of
CD's in private hands, millions of CD players installed in automobiles,
and so forth.  Even though CD's were in most respects considerably
superior to LP's, it took some number of years for them to displace
LP's.  One of the "breakthroughts" that made CD marketing possible was
the invention of CD packaging that could be used to adapt the relatively
small form factor of CD's into the traditional large record bins that
had been built into every record store built for the past 40 years.

What that means is it's a very safe bet that a museum 100 years from now
*will* be able to read a CD.  It's probable that archaelogists a
thousand yaers from now will be familiar with CD technology, and have
experts available who can read them.  It's quite possible archaelogists
working 10,000 years from now will find sufficient numbers of CD's
preserved in weird obscure ways to make it worth their while to decipher
what's on all those CD's, if they care.  All of these are safe bets,
because today, with our interest in history: we can play records
recorded a century ago on tin-foil, or for that matter, purchase used
books printed a century ago on decent paper.  We have experts in museums
who can read ancient writings scribbled in ogham on old sticks and
wooden tags over a thousand years ago.  And we have archaelogists who
are quite busy piecing together what people were really doing with all
those rocks at the close of the ice age, and there's serious speculation
about the possibility of someday finding "natural" phonographic
recordings fossilized in prehistoric turned pottery or other hard
material.

Could you explain about "natural recordings", Marcus?  That sounds
intriguing.

If you look at the original edison phonograph, you're looking at a very
simple mechanism.  Tin-foil, wrapped over a wax cylinder, is turned by a
hand-crank, while a stylus attached to a diaphram is pressed against the
tin-foil.  A mechanism to move the stylus parallel to the axis completes
the picture.  There's nothing in any part of this mechanism that could
not have been made a century before - say, by good old Ben Franklin.
Indeed, about 90% of the mechanism is the same as a good old mechanical
lathe, and those date back to prehistoric times.  That means it's
actually kind of amazing nobody came up with the idea much earlier.  The
egyptians, for instance, were excellent craftsmen, and a phonograph
would have been well within reach of their technology.  It's easy to
imagine that, with only a slightly different turnout of history, we
could be looking at thousands of phonograph cylinders of the pharaohs
instead of papyrus records.  Or the chinese, or the romans, or almost
any of the major ancient cultures.  And who knows - there's still hope;
perhaps we'll find some ancient clever chinese craftsman made one
example as a toy.  There's some precedent for this; recently, some
electroplated jewelry was found in egypt.  As near as can be determined,
some ancient jeweler figured out how to do it, probably made a lot of
money cheating his customers, and of course didn't tell anyone so the
secret died with him.

Ancient sound records would of course be fascinating.  We know almost
nothing about the vowel structure of ancient egyptian or hebrew; for
instance.  Or take music; written music is actually a very recent
invention.  We have virtually no information on the rhythms or harmonies
of the romans, greeks, egyptians, or other ancient cultures.  We know a
bit about what instruments they played; but the actual instruments
themselves are about the only clue we have as to what they did.
Imagine, if you will, trying to recreate the music of the Beatles from
the broken remains of one electronic piano found a thousand years from
now.

Be that as it may; we're out of luck so far as regarding actual
deliberate sound recordings.  *BUT* - as I said, the lathe is about 90%
of the mechanism of a primitive phonograph.  The pottery wheel also has
potential in this direction.  All that would be necessary is a material
of sufficient fineness to record sound frequencies, plus a stylus that
is of sufficient sharpness & fineness to actually pick up sound waves &
record them.  So, the question is, can we find examples of "accidental"
phonograph recordings? Even 15 seconds of ancient spoken egyptian would
be worth it, in terms of expanding our understanding of egyptian.  Or,
if we could catch someone humming an ancient popular ditty?

Such ancient recordings could even predate the invention of the wheel.
A long faint scratch made on a bone surface by a bored caveman holding a
suitable stylus *might* suffice to record sound - and we have many
unanswered questions regarding the origin of speech.

Very interesting.  So, to decipher the sound that was occurring when some
scratch was being made, you'd just have to approximate what the scratch
would have looked like had there been *no* sound at the time, and then
subtract those depths from the actual scratch, and there's your sound wave?
Or something like that?

Well, something like that.  It's one of those signal to noise kinds of
problems.

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