For those who are interested in the complex marriage of culture and new media this book is a compulsory reading.
Since this is my first experience with a book on the effects of new media, it is obvious that my impressions are somehow overenthusiastic or amateur. First of all, many thanks to Manovich for bringing me back on Earth from the infinite dreaming about the innumerable possibilities of new media. After this reading, I will start to enjoy the smell of the documents and to pity the future historians who would rely mainly on the imperialism of the screen for their future research projects. Obviously, I would not like to be misunderstood: new media provides huge possibilities but it also hides important traps.
One of the positive aspects of “the digital materialism” is the rapid inter-connectivity and intercommunication of different means of information and historical sources. Nevertheless, historians are no longer mass producers of history. What Manovich calls “individual customization” is not limited to the present of post-industrial society. It actually implies customized versions of the past. Each computer user can generate infinite versions of the past.
To a certain extent, this fact generates a phenomenon, which optimists would call “democratization of historical craft” while pessimists would term to be “the end of the professional history.” Does this mean that everyone can become a historian? Still, this question is not limited only to the historian’s craft. It also applies to other “professional spheres.” I know that there is no final answer to this question but I hope that after this semester I would at least be able to carry a debate on this issue
P.S. For other thoughts on this matter you might consider my comments on the following page
2 comments:
Wow,
Can everyone become a professional historian? Just because everyone has tools to assist in doing the task doesn't make them a professional. The fact that someone has a camera does not make them a professional photographer. How many people hire someone with a camera to take wedding pictures - they go to someone who studies the art and knows what it takes to make long-lasting pictures.
Since there is no objective measure of what a professional historian is, I guess the answer is yes. In my opinion though, a professional historian is someone who likes to have actual data from primary sources for their conclusion. I was doing a study on The Boer War and looked up many sites. Since they all referenced the Boer War how was I to tell what information was real and what was not. Why is the information on a web site suspicious yet published information in a book is not suspicious. If everyone is a historian and as Manovich says the web makes all information exist at the same level should we consider them equal. No. Pictures can be doctored, and documents forged, a Professional Historian is someone who supports conclusions with supportable evidence. Therefore, everyone CAN be a professional historian - but very few are willing to put in the effort to gather data, analyze conflicting data and defend their conclusions. The web only makes access to this data, both good and bad, easier - it does not do the analysis.
My post was not intended to reveal "the nature of the professional historian". Since Herodotus, we are struggling with this question, and there are many other personalities who, in their subjective way, attempted to find an answer to this fundamental deontological question.
I rather intended to anticipate a possible dissolution of the good and to the same extent professional historical scholarship into an ocean of questionable and scandalous narratives, which tend to invade the Internet, without any peer reviews or any plausible evaluation mechanism.
The fact that documents can be forged is not a secret either for electronic or paper environment. Nevertheless, my own subjective view on the matter is that it is much easier to forge a document in an online milieu than to do the same thing in the classical and so far real world.
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