Before reading:
Digital history is the dissemination and exhibition of historical information through electronic means. This includes TV and other forms of video production, websites and articles, blogs, radio, and social media postings. In the last decade, digital history usage has exploded thanks to the Internet, especially due to high-speed accessibility and smartphones. Digital history implies that history also has a permanent presentation, since pretty much everything posted on the Internet is, frankly, there
forever.
So what do I have to add to this after the readings?
I have a few random thoughts.
Notice how I highlighted that last word. What you put on the Internet, stays on the Internet. I can only imagine if Facebook were around a few years earlier... But I digress. As far as the digital dissemination of history, is this a bad thing? I think not.
But there is a TON of information available out there. The greatest challenge to the navigating all that stuff out there, I believe, is critical thinking. Although Wikipedia may be completely slammed by academia as a resource, its presence, along with a healthy dose of skepticism, makes you really think about what's in those articles and if they're true/correct or not.
We're putting more and more information on the web. Now we need to present it in forms suitable for certain types of media--i.e. smart phones and tablets rather than just desktops. In the last few years, information has become not only instantly available both temporally and spatially. We can have it when we want it and where we want it (provided you don't have AT&T and are in Garinger, haha).
I'd like to see, personally, if the currently available forms of social media will satisfy this requirement of right here, right now. So here goes my immersion into digital history.
