Preparing for the future

In our reading this week Cohen and Rosenzweig begin to speculate about the future of technology, in particular how an historian is supposed to ensure that the work done today will be accessible tomorrow. In their own words they say this: “Technological change has indeed become a troubling constant in our world, and one that greatly erodes the reliability and durability of the data and documents on which we rely as both historians and modern human beings. It is already difficult to open WordStar documents from the 1980’s or even many WordPerfect documents from the 1990’s” (pg. 243)

Obsolete

Of course I’m not savvy enough to know how to prevent the loss of historical information due to new developments in technology, although I’d like to be. To go along with the examples of the authors, I can’t help but think of my old 3.5 inch floppy disk that used to store some of my old college work way back when—about 9 years ago. How would I go about retrieving that information? (assuming I could actually find the floppy disk in the first place). Certainly at the present moment there are probably ways of going about this, but I can see what the authors are getting at. As we look farther down the road, my naïve hope is that new technology will be able to solve these sorts of historical dilemmas.

Underlying much of this worry is the fact that technology grows exponentially. Cohen and Rosenzweig give us an example of this phenomenon: “At Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, one terabyte of storage cost roughly $5 million; today you can purchase the same amount of digital space for $500” (pg. 227)  Since Digital History was written the price has gone down even further to about $100.

How did they play angry birds on these old supercomputers?

The prolific growth of technology was noticed at least by 1965 with the introduction of ‘Moore’s Law,’ and is championed today by techno-prophets like Ray Kurzweil who reminds us that our smartphones are “several billion times more powerful per dollar” than the supercomputers of the 1960’s and “100,000 times smaller.”  Essentially this exponential growth is due to the fact that we can use today’s best computers to make even better computers tomorrow, and in turn use tomorrow’s computers to make something even more powerful for the next day, and so on.

Whoa...

In regards to our relationship with technology, with this sort of information, it makes me think that the greatest attribute a 21^st century historian can have is the ability to adapt. Aside from that I still don’t know how we can possibly prepare for such an uncertain future.

Did Google really made me more dumber?

Any commentary done on the internet is likely to reference Google, being that Google is possibly the most profitable, and influential website that has ever existed. It is the ultimate switchboard, taking us anywhere online that our little heart’s desire. As Cohen and Rosenzweig allude to, any new website builder must take into account the effects of this popular search engine. In regards to their own website, they have this to say: “Almost 60 percent of those who come to History Matters arrive via a search engine, especially the currently dominant search engine, Google, which gives us about three-fifths of that traffic. Thus you need to understand how your site gets listed and ranked in Google.” (Pg. 148)

"Stoopid is as stoopid does" Forrest Gump

But for all of Google’s growing influence on our world an argument has emerged as to whether or not this is making humans dumber. Google takes away the effort of information gathering. We have outsourced our knowledge to Google. Google has made us intellectually lazy. We don’t even need to know where we are going anymore (in the real world) because Google Maps will get us to wherever we need to go. These are arguments I’ve personally heard and understand to a certain extent, but yet I can’t help but still view Google as a good thing.

The sophistication of Google is astounding. As the authors point out, “Google found a way to measure reputation on the web through a recursive analysis of the interconnectedness of the medium itself.” (Pg. 149) How is that possible? For a search-engine to be able to measure something as amorphous as reputation, and effectively rearrange our search results accordingly makes me feel not so much that Google is making me dumber, but that Google is so much smarter than I am that it makes me feel dumb.

Sweet internet glasses Mr. President!

Aside from what Google initially set out to do as a search-engine, we might look towards other business ventures they have made to determine if it’s making us dumber. They have developed a self-driving car that we will see on the streets soon enough. They have created new glasses that will bring the power of the internet that one step closer to our brain. It’s probably only a matter of time before they develop a chip to implant into our brains.

Google is making the day-to-day tasks of our lives easier, which theoretically would allow us time to pursue more, whatever that might signify.  Google is changing the way humans operate in the world. As a company they appear as concerned with inducing a paradigm shift as they are with making money. Personally, I can’t help but appreciate their innovations.

I can't believe that I actually like Twitter

Much of our readings so far have dealt with the ways in which our analog world is transitioning into a digital world, and how this movement has made research (scholarly or otherwise) faster, more efficient, cost-effective etc. It has also created a level of communication among individuals in a society that has never been seen before. As I say this I can’t help but reflect on our recent foray into Twitter.

Tweet, tweet

When Twitter first came out I thought it was stupid for various reasons. But then I watched the Arab Spring unfold and learned that much of their organizational efforts were using such mediums as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Occupy was organized in very similar fashion. Over the last couple of years I kept hearing about the phenomenon that is Twitter, and how it is the new, fastest way to access information. “Find out what’s happening right now,” the site confidently boasts on its sign-in screen. Finally I couldn’t resist any longer and had to see what the fuss was about, and somewhat embarrassed created a Twitter account with a fake name. I considered it cultural research, trying to stay as detached as possible. I’ve been on Facebook soon after it started, but I never wanted to become a Twitter person.

Fast forward several months and I’ve become a person who checks his Twitter account multiple times daily. It took very little time for me to realize that Twitter is not what I thought it was, and in fact is much more than I ever expected it to be. As I tell anyone who asks about it, I get most of my news off of Twitter now. Somewhere in there I realized that I didn’t have to see 140 character statements by celebrities who think they’re more interesting or important than they really are. Of course that’s what Twitter could be if one were so inclined. Instead I’ve followed news organizations (local, national and global), magazines that interest me, artists that I respect, and so on and so forth. What I’m ultimately trying to get at is Twitter has become a valuable learning and awareness tool for me, and the fact that it’s all so instantaneous is baffling. For example, several weeks ago while driving through Spokane I accessed Twitter through my wife’s IPhone and read from Krem2 News that there was a fire about a mile from where we lived. Moments later as we got closer to our neighborhood I could see smoke billowing overhead. There are countless other examples I could use, but this blog post is nearing its 500^th word.

In short, Twitter, to my pleasant surprise, is a lot better of a website than I ever expected it to be.

           

The Wikipedia Dilemma

In Cohen and Rosenzweig’s book Digital History, many issues are brought up (naturally) in regards to how a 21^st century historian integrates the internet and other technologies into his or her studies. One particular issue that stuck with me, and thus far only briefly mentioned in Digital History was the presence of ‘wiki’ sites. They have this to say about it: 

Another even more radical departure from professional norms and conventional notions of historical authority is the wiki—a piece of collaborative software that allows people to edit web pages directly through any browser. This makes it possible for history to be written and then re-written in an iterative and participatory—and some would say troublingly anarchical—process. The most dramatic example so far is the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia with more than a half million articles, hundreds of them on historical topics and most written by enthusiasts rather than professional historians. (pg. 42)

            As anyone who has been to college can attest to, it is never ok to use Wikipedia as a source in a research paper. I’ve personally had probably a dozen or so teachers explicitly state that students are not to use Wikipedia as a source, on account of it’s supposed unreliability. The fact that regular people can edit pages makes the site far too suspect in the academic world, and I don’t necessarily disagree with the fact that it shouldn’t be used for professional style research. What I find interesting is the fact that, while I don’t use Wikipedia in an academic setting, I use it almost exclusively everywhere outside of school. It seems ironic to me that while I officially don’t trust Wikipedia entirely, my actions on a personal learning basis would say that I do. Anytime I want to learn about something I will immediately go to Wikipedia and search for whatever it is that I’m curious about, read the article, and generally feel as though the information I just absorbed was accurate enough. I trust it, even though I shouldn’t. 

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