My thesis in three minutes (using Qwiki)

As a self-confessed digital storytelling geek, I’m always interested in new formats and technologies. Inspired by the digital humanities manta “more hack, less yack” it occurred to me that I should take a more hands on approach. This week I thought I’d try out Qwiki – a new platform that combines online interactivity with video and allows people to create dynamic visual web content in minutes.

For me, the most interesting thing about Qwiki is its built-in production values.  It allows you to create slick, professional looking video without the need for complex editing software. Online video shouldn’t be too polished. Keeping it real and being authentic is important – you don’t need to pretend to be a professional broadcaster. Yet, production is probably a major barrier to those considering video content and I like the potential of this product to democratise visual storytelling.


I’m writing my PhD proposal at the moment so it made sense to base a project around this. I wrote the script in around an hour, did one take of video (using the built in webcam on my laptop) and created my Qwiki in about 20 minutes.

Play the Qwiki: My thesis in three minutes.

If you are creating online content, video is a great addition to the mix. It’s a powerful way to bring content to life and engage people for whom visual communications is a preferred communication method. The golden rule? Don’t use video to replicate – use it to animate. It is a complimentary format rather than a replacement for written content. Before you commence, ask yourself why this particular story should be told visually.

At just over 3 minutes, my Qwiki actually feels much too long. I think this format would work better at half this length. If I used it again, I would keep it really simple. I think a short, stand-alone Qwiki could work well within the context of a longer blog post to express part of the story visually. I was a little frustrated about the lack of flexibility but I realise that the simplicity of this product is also its strength.  I would also take advantage of the ability of this medium to integrate other forms of online content to enrich the story; including Google maps, tweets and links.

5 lessons learned at X Media Lab: What’s Your Story?

"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." Robert McKee

Stories are a fundamental part of culture.  Whether told to educate or entertain, it is a human desire to understand each other and the stories we tell tend to reflect universal human experiences.

Though storytelling is most often associated with the realm of fiction, as a history student, I can't help but be aware that history itself is a series of stories. In this way, an awareness of the fundamentals of storytelling is essential for all public historians.

Actually, it occurs to me that an awareness of the craft and mechanics of storytelling is important for all of those in the humanities, a range of academic disciplines centred around understanding the human condition. Though much of the important work of academics involves talking amongst themselves, they are increasingly required to engage public audiences.

Digital media has arguably eroded the authority and influence of 'expert' commentators by empowering large numbers of people to create and disseminate information - an evolution that I believe is neither a wholly good, nor a wholly bad thing - and has radically changed the landscape of storytelling. It is for this reason that I was excited to attend X Media Lab 2012 - a digital media creative workshop held in Perth a few weeks ago.

After listening to a diverse range of speakers from a range of backgrounds, I distilled a couple of the ideas I found most interesting into the eclectic (and highly subjective!) list below.

1.    Storytelling is biological process as well as an mental one.  Evocative storytelling – especially visual storytelling - can have physical effects.
Screenwriter Linda Aronson spoke about the 1992 discovery of ‘mirror neurons’ by neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti, phenomena that allow us to empathise and relate to the situation of others “by feeling, not thinking”.  Rizzolatti  found that when you watch someone clapping his or her hands, you simulate the same action in your brain. You are essentially living their actions. The discovery struck me as a testament to the power of visual storytelling – films, TV and documentaries in particular. I am fascinated by the science of empathy - and believe good history is rarely without it.

2.    Push your creative process to its limits. You’ll never know what you might find there.
Warren Coleman, a screenwriter on the animated film ‘Happy Feet’, outlined the creative process of Robin Williams during voiceover recording. Williams would initially read the script as written and only after this would he start to improvise new material. The initial jokes were always ‘blue’ material. Completely inappropriate and unusable.  But once he pushed past this stage? Gold. Coleman admitted that of the 8 lines used in the trailer, 7 of them were improv from this final stage. His lesson? Hang in there during the creative process. Push through to the other side – you may be surprised at what you come up with. Wonderfully, Coleman also confessed the challenges of animating a movie about a tap-dancing penguin... when penguins have no knees.

3.    Don’t restrict yourself to traditional channels such as film, TV and publishing. The online world is now mature enough to tell complex, participatory stories.
Creative Director of ABC Innovation, Sam Doust, shared learnings from recent experiments in online storytelling. In 2010, ABC launched ‘Bluebird’ an internet only, alternate reality drama in which viewers were encouraged to ‘unlock the drama’ by uncovering the secret plans of an eco-billionaire over a 6 week period. It was a fantastic project however, although I found the idea really interesting, I think that participatory storytelling (and co-creation of stories) can be highly problematic. In my experience creating online communities using both bespoke and existing social media platforms, the number of people who have the time and inclination to create content can be very low. Doust acknowledged this too, citing that a major learning was the need to provide casual observers with a better way to catch up quickly on the action (reality TV does this brilliantly). Doust also spoke briefly about ABC’s online-only 3D documentary ‘Gallipoli: The First Day’ - very cool.  I have since uncovered a raft of online documentaries which I will discuss in a follow-up post.

4.    Don’t just use digital media to tell stories. Use it to start conversations about your story. Use it to build a community to share your story.
Jaunique Sealey, former social media strategist for Lady Gaga, outlined ways to leverage social platforms to build an audience for stories. It was basic stuff for a broad audience (which drove me crazy as I had SO many burning questions about Lady Gaga’s social media strategy) but contained some solid advice. Sealey stressed the importance of offering free content to create conversations around your central product. For example, if you want wanted generate buzz for a documentary series or museum exhibit, you could offer extra content or online Q&A sessions.

Sealey also spoke about “Good Deed” content.  This stuff is a social media manager’s holy grail. Content so good that simply sharing it with a friend makes you feel benevolent. I was surprised that no one mentioned Kony 2012! For me this campaign took the idea of “Good Deed” content even further. Not only could you gain social currency by sharing interesting content with another individual … the central claim of the campaign was that you could actually assist in tracking down the world’s most wanted criminal just by ‘knowing’ about him.  The apex of first-world slacktivism… or political genius?

5.    But remember, content needs to catch up with technology.
For all the new ideas, opportunities and innovation, there was a strong feeling that content needs to catch up with these new technologies of storytelling.  Helen Papagiannis, an expert in Augmented Reality from York University (Torronto) reminded us that in the early days of cinema, it was the medium itself that was the source of wonder, rather than the story.  We need to move past this. Forget about the gimmicks. The story should come first.

Despite these challenges, the nature of Augmented Reality lends itself strongly to historical content.  The London Museum’s Street Museum iPod ap allows tourists and locals to travel back in time, using GPS and camera technology to overlay historical images on mobile phone screens. Augmented reality can also liberate objects from the confines of perspex display cases in museums and allow them to be observed (virtually) in their original environments. The possibilities are endless. I recently heard of an guerrilla art exhibition held in MoMA, New York City where artist artists used the "Layar Augmented Reality browser" (available for free in the iPhone app store and Android market) to hold their own exhibition, without the knowledge of MoMA curators. The exhibit occupied all six floors -  including a virtual seventh floor. Now that's rock and roll!

All hail the curator’s code.

I’ve written before about how technology has shaped the ways in which we tell stories. Making sense of the huge amount of information available to us online is a challenging task and often requires specialist skills. In today’s information economy, the role of curators of content has become just as vital as creators.

This insight is not a new one for historians.  Writing history involves unearthing evidence and making informed choices about which historical sources to use and which to leave out. Museums and galleries often possess huge collections of which only a small amount (often as little as 1%) can be displayed at one time.

How should we acknowledge that it takes just as much intellectual effort to curate as to create? And if you have curated a new work, based on the work of others, how do you tell the story of your story?

The wonderful Maria Popov, author of the endlessly fascinating Brain Pickings website, has recently suggested a solution. She has launched the Creators Code -  a new system for “honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery”.

 “While we have systems in place for literary citation, image attribution, and scientific reference, we don't yet have a system that codifies the attribution of discovery in curation as a currency of the information economy, a system that treats discovery as the creative labor that it is.”

Brain Pickings is a shining example of content curation.  Not only does Maria mine the far reaches of the web for ‘interesting-ness’, she adds adds value by linking this content with other ideas and concepts.  The curator’s code offers an new system of attribution for our remix culture and you can learn more about it here.

5 must-read blog posts to start the week

I love writing this post. I'm an avid blog reader - there are so many exciting thinkers and writers out there -  but notice it is all too easy to skim-read content without critically engaging with the actual ideas. The process of curating the best posts of the previous week forces me to slow down and think about the articles that I’m reading and the themes that connect them.

 Several of the posts I was drawn to this week reflected a similar theme – nostalgia. Historian John Tosh has stated that;

‘Like tradition, nostalgia is backward looking, but instead of denying the fact of historical change, it interprets it in one direction only – as change for the worse’. 

Nostalgia can be a way of thinking, a political tool - or even a cultural commodity. Paradoxically, while facing increasingly complex challenges, the western world seems to be increasingly drawn to nostalgia. And when the past is packaged for public consumption it is generally shown in its most attractive light.

The articles below explore the ways in which people often seek comfort in the present or an imagined past, rather than looking to the future:

1. Is the future shrinking? The Long Now Foundation was established in 1996 by a group of academics and thinkers determined to challenge western civilisation’s ‘pathologically short attention span’ and encourage long-term thinking (where long-term is measured in centuries). The team have recently designed a clock that will keep time for 10,000 years.
2. Hipster culture has been one of the most interesting expressions of nostalgia and the search for authenticity in recent years and the fantastic New York Magazine essay ‘What Was the Hipster?’ provides historical and sociological context of this postmodern phenomenon.
3. Fintan O’Toole asks 'would the last postmodernist please turn out the lights?'. O’Toole states that ‘the biggest thing that happened to postmodernism... was its loss of a sense of humour’ and argues that ‘in the end, consumer and celebrity culture defeated postmodernism by embracing it’. When everything is ironic, nothing is ironic.
4. In her article ‘The Battle for Control of the Internet’, academic Rebecca MacKinnon writes that the longing for the comfort and security in the face of uncertainty is central to the battle for control over freedom of information. MacKinnon warns these desires have the ability to be manipulated to result in a population who ‘voluntarily and eagerly submit to subjugation' - a vision more like Huxley's 'Brave New World' (1932) than Orwell's '1984' (1949).
   
5. But there are still plenty of freethinkers with big ideas out there - and more platforms than ever before where they can share them. If you already know and love TED you need to know about the Big Think.
   

    ‘In our digital age, we’re drowning in information. The web offers us infinite data points - news stories, tweets, wikis, status updates, etc - but very little to connect the dots or illuminate the larger patterns linking them together. Here at Big Think, we believe that success in the future is about knowing the ideas that allow you to manage and master this universe of information.’

5 must-read blog posts to start the week

In my double life as a social media manager and history student I often find myself coming across thought-provoking articles and blog posts written by exciting thinkers working across history, culture, digital media, digital humanities and online storytelling.

In an effort to curate and share some of the big ideas that are currently making my brain melt - here are five of the best posts I read last week:

1. I do love a good infographic and Reif Larsen has penned a love letter celebrating the narrative eros of visual storytelling. Appropriate for the eve of Valentines Day I think. You’ll love his definition of an ‘infogasm’.
2. Social media and technology have made humanity more connected that ever but are these connections authentic? Historian Jason Farman explores the myth of the disconnected life and offers a historical overview of the persistent fear that emerging technologies  - from the printing press to the telephone – drive us apart in the ways that really matter. Reading about fears of ‘Kaleidoscomania’ in nineteenth century England made my week.
3. Historians and archaeologists have already begun to harness the power of online crowdsourcing to engage communities – from enlisting the general public to help translate a 1000 year old Egyptian papyrus to training armchair archaeologists. Gamification occurs in the online world when crowdsourced tasks are turned into games. Tac Anderson explores the truth, lies and promises of gamification and argues that gameplay has the ability to  'unite leaderless groups around shared goals and objectives' and 'turn a crowd into a movement'. Powerful stuff.
4. You've probably already heard people talking about Pinterest. Last week Techcrunch revealed it is the fastest growing site ever. I started exploring the platform last week and wasted far too much time on it. It's exciting because it is both visual and social and has created a multitude of possibilities for sharing and discussing images online.  Archivist Melissa Mannon agrees and has outlined why she thinks Pinterest offers new opportunities to engage audiences with cultural heritage.
5. And since it is Valentine’s day tomorrow I hope you enjoy a wonderful post from a blog I can’t stop raving about – the delightful and frequently life affirming Letters of Note.

Will future historians face a Digital Dark Age?

Lack of historical evidence has always been one of the greatest frustrations facing historians. Skills such as reading and writing were long the preserve of a privileged few – resulting in a historical record that often reflects the voices of those in power and obscures the lives of ordinary men and women.

All of which makes the recent creation of the largest and most democratic archive of information that humanity has ever seen pretty darn exciting. Behold – the internet!

Yet, despite promising a tantalising treasure trove for future historians our digital heritage is in danger of being destroyed. Digital preservation is not just an issue for historians, it is important for everyone wishing to preserve precious memories for future generations - photos, video or correspondence - in our digital world.


Here are five things you need to know.


1. Much of our cultural record is now ‘born digital’.

Records that are ‘born digital’ include websites, correspondence (such as email), digital photos, digital music files and ebooks. Unlike paper records or film negatives, this information is often stored solely in digital archives. We must find ways to store this data or risk losing it.


2. Digital data is extremely challenging to store for long periods of time .

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the technologies for storing digital data are prone to decay. There is no way to tell exactly how long a burnt DVD, CD or external hard drive will last but the amount of time is likely to be shorter than you think – estimates vary from 2-5 years. Secondly, even if data is preserved perfectly, data will be lost if the technology that gives us the ability read it becomes obsolete. The U.S. Government found this out the hard way in the late 1970’s when they tried to access data from their 1960 census. By this time there were only two machines left in the world that could read the data (one was in Japan, the other in the Smithsonian Institution). Finally, the amount of data in humanity's digital archive is increasing exponentially. Researchers from University of Southern California have estimated that the volume of digital records overtook analogue records in 2002 and by 2007 (five short years!) over 90% of memory was in digital form.

3. These challenges mean that digital archives need careful management.

Unlike paper records, which often survive despite being abandoned for centuries, digital records will disappear quickly if forgotten. While your grandparents may have tucked away their old photos and papers in a shoebox for decades, digital data does not offer this luxury. The emerging field of digital archaeology is manned by specialists whose task it is to retrieve information and record these technologies.


4. There is only one known way to preserve your digital data.

Keep it moving! Think of your digital archive as a river of data. To keep it flowing you need to regularly move digital photos and documents into new formats. Here are some tips for preserving your digital memories:

• Recognise that you need to actively manage your own digital archive.
• Back everything up. Files should exist in at least two difference places in case one format fails or corrupts.
• Keep external hard drives in a dry, cool , safe place, eject them from your computer properly and for goodness sake, don’t drop them!
• Shift data onto a new formats every 2-5 years
• And my best tip? Print out your photos and put them in albums. Retro, right? Printing your photos is inexpensive and a physical photo is still far more likely to be around in 50 years than one saved on a hard drive. Those emails you sent your family while you were on that backpacking trip in Europe? Print those too.

5. Digital archives will transform the way historians work in the future.

While digital archives (including social media such as Twitter and Facebook) are likely to offer future historians rich insights into the lives of a diverse range of people – they will also require the development of new tools to find meaning in an ocean of data. Storage of this data will require both time and money. Who will choose what records survive and which do not? It just may be that we see a kind of digital Darwinism come into action.

Or perhaps, in some cases, even a return to analog technology? The Rosetta Stone is wonderful example of the beauty of simplicity. The stone tablet, created over 2,000 years ago, was rediscovered in Egypt in 1799. It contains a single decree inscribed three times – in Greek, demotic and hieroglyphic. It was the hieroglyphic text that caused a sensation. Hieroglyphs were rarely used after the fourth century AD and the knowledge of how to read them had been lost. This single stone unlocked much of the world of ancient Egypt. When I was living in London, sometimes I would call into the British Museum just to see it.

Inspired by this simplicity, The Rosetta project is a contemporary effort to preserve the world’s many written languages. Academics have created a metal disk engraved with records of over 1,500 languages. The cover of the disc contains the following message for the reader;“Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.”. Like the Rosetta Stone, it is hoped the tablet will survive for over 2,000 years.

The Rosetta Stone - Image courtesy of the British Museum.

The Rosetta Disc - Image courtesy of the Rosetta Project.

8 lessons from X Media Lab Perth: Storytelling in a digital age.

I find myself continually drawn to the intersection of history and digital media so jumped at the chance to attend X Media Lab Perth: Storytelling in a Digital Age. Technology has always shaped our relationship with the past and today it offers exciting opportunities to reach new audiences and communicate in more engaging ways.

A range of speakers from various disciplines shared their understandings of this paradigm shift. Their views were inspiring, thought-provoking and, at times, contentious. Though aimed at a broad audience, there were some valuable insights for digital historians:

1. No matter what technology you use, the fundamentals of storytelling remain the same.
Stories are central to mankind and humanity. They teach us about how the world works, how to live in society and how to get along. Both Marshall Vandruff (Artist) and Dominic Knight (The Chaser) spoke about storytelling as a craft. It’s not enough to express yourself. There are rules and they can be learned. While most relevant to those writing non-fiction, it is important for historians to acknowledge the structure and effects of a compelling narrative. Despite all the talk of crowd-sourcing, collaboration and co-creation, Dominic rightly questioned the ability of a committee to write a classic novel or make a TV show like The Wire. It’s all about balance.

2. The most engaging stories reflect our basic human emotions.
Marshall Vandruff has had an extraordinary career as an artist and knows a thing or two about storytelling having worked for clients including Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbara, Dark Horse Comics and MAD magazine. I was hanging off every word as he gave a lecture about classic storytelling (doing his best to condense 40 hours of lectures into 10 minutes). The most powerful stories are those which connect us with others, take us on a journey (not a tour) and give meaning to our lives. Vandruff’s focus on human empathy resonated with me - I recently read a fascinating article which cited empathy as a ‘universal solvent’ and ‘the world’s most valuable resource’. I believe good history is rarely without it.

3. Good storytelling conveys both the familiar and unfamiliar.
Another gem from Dominic Knight. Powerful storytelling treads a careful tightrope across our comfort zone. It is the tension between the familiar and unfamiliar that can convey realisations about ourselves. I was reminded of a powerful quote by historian William H. McNeil (Mythhistory and Other Essays, 1986)...

“Historians can only expect to be heard if they say what the people around them want to hear—in some degree. They can only be useful if they also tell the people some things they are reluctant to hear—in some degree.”

4. Stories can transcend borders.
Peter Shiao spoke about his work adapting classic Chinese martial arts literature for the Western world. The themes of transformation and spirituality have a powerful ability to transcend borders. His work has a strong cross cultural appeal in USA and China - two countries are most often talked about in terms of differences, rather than similarities.

5. Digital storytelling can give a voice to the voiceless.
Emma Kaye spoke about the ways in which mobile phones are being used in South Africa to empower impoverished communities to tell their own stories. In Africa, oral tradition was central to building and maintaining of community and today digital platforms have allowed a resurgence of personal storytelling. Unlike traditional filmmaking, editing and broadcasting content on mobile phones has low barriers to entry, resulting in a renaissance of content being made by the community for the community.

6. People are already pushing boundaries.
Ana Serrano shared several examples of digital storytellers who are leveraging technology and social media to create more immersive experiences. Some of the results are more engaging than others however all are breaking new ground.

• 'Life In A Day' is a historic global experiment to create the world's largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day.
• Spend a minute in a test tube with David Suzuki.
• The Johnny Cash Project – a crowd-sourced music video project.
• Turtle Talk at Disney/ Epcot uses 3D, voice-activated technology to bring animation into real life.
• The first Facebook Movie, 'Him, Her & Them', offers a new experience that blends interactivity with passive viewing. Filtered by the viewer’s social media graph each ‘version’ of the film is unique.
• An interactive zombie adventure from a NZ Pizza Chain.
• 'Conspiracy For Good' is an augmented reality drama that allowed people to participate in a fictional story.
• 'The Witness' is another blend of gritty drama with augmented reality. If you had a mobile phone, you could take part in the film.

7. Don't fear a shift from sole creator to co-creator.
Social media has changed everything. It’s now possible to interact with a ‘story community’, build relationships and even maintain these over the long term. Just think about all the opportunities to use these tools to connect communities for local history projects! The new remix culture (legitimised by revolutionary new frameworks such as Creative Commons) can also be harnessed to fuel innovation.

8. Interactivity can increase the level of engagement - but tread carefully.
Professor Duane Varan from Murdoch University shared his 10 Commandments for interactive storytelling. His research at the Interactive Television Research Institute has proven that interactive stories can be better than traditional linear narratives – but only if we stick to the rules of structure. Varan noted it does not matter how small the screen is; if it is an iPhone, laptop or wide screen TV. Media platforms do not hold power – content is king and interactivity should be used to complement the story rather drive the narrative.

The future of stories.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the stories we tell about our past. I've written before about the complexities of writing history, and it suddenly occurred to me that the medium is just as important as the message.

Stories we tell about our history that have the power to send men to war, topple governments and empower minorities do not lie in journal articles or a few brilliant minds - they are possessed by the public and expressed through collective memory (popular culture, ceremonies, media etc).

The power of stories cannot be harnessed unless they are shared, and they way we have told stories has always been shaped by technology.

In oral societies people often lived their entire lives in the same place. The historic record was meagre but knowledge of the past was widely shared - factors that ensured the group also shared a common worldview. During the Renaissance the printing press revolutionised the way that ideas could be communicated and the industrial revolution allowed mass production of books for the first time – both facilitating cultural relativism. The development of mass media during the 20th century enabled those in power to broadcast stories to huge audiences.

Today websites, blogs and social media including Twitter & Facebook have democratised storytelling. Millions of individuals broadcast billions of stories on a global scale however, paradoxically, this also enables us to select and consume stories that enforce the world-view we already have, rather than challenge it. As we splinter into homogenous online tribes reminiscent of oral societies, have we come full circle?

Is the quest for historical ‘Truth’ obsolete? In many ways the internet is the embodiment of postmodernism - there is very little shared experience, just competing versions of experience. Perhaps now it is more important for historians to pursue ‘many Truths’. The production of diverse histories from different perspectives reinforces the fact that there is no universal, objective Truth, but many.

Digital technology also offers up exciting new narrative mediums from which to redefine 'Truth' and reconfigure the way in which it is conveyed. For the first time in human history we have an opportunity to escape the narrative. The aptly named ‘World Wide Web’ organises information and social connections in networks as opposed to straight lines; perhaps a more accurate reflection of ‘real life’ than traditional linear storytelling. Faced with countless interpretations of the past it is possible the role of Historians may shift from ‘creator’ to ‘navigator’ – providing essential methodologies and platforms to celebrate the diversity of the human experience.

Lies, damn lies and history.

We have always told stories about the past to make sense of the world and ourselves. Not only does history provide the foundation for shared belief systems vital for social cohesion, it can also facilitate social change. Storytellers who claim the authority of truth over the past hold immense power but how can we be sure the stories they tell are True?

Truth is a fairly recent measure for evaluating the past - many myths and legends were once accepted versions of the human story. In many oral societies The Truth was judged on the reputation of storytellers or what majority thought worthy of belief. It is easy to forget too, that we have only recently become familiar with a multitude of different global belief systems. In a not too distant past individuals nearly always grew up in isolated communities to a more or less homogenous world-view.

Historians have long debated the best ways to turn ‘facts’ into ‘history and the stakes have never been higher, for today we navigate an online world that offers us countless competing interpretations.

19th century historian Leopold von Ranke developed a method of 'scientific history' by which he believed historical truth could be uncovered. His method? Harness historic evidence (documents, records etc) to prove undeniable facts... then arrange these into a readable narrative. That the true story could be accessed in this way remained largely unchallenged until the 1960’s when historian E. H. Carr stood in front of his peers at Cambridge University and proclaimed ‘this clearly will not do!’.

Carr rejected the idea that the facts existed objectively and independently of the historian, noting that in order to create meaning historians must decide which facts are considered important and selected and suggesting it more appropriate to study the historian before you begin to study the facts.

Despite acknowledging the effect that the historian had in ‘creating’ history, Carr was confident that historians could access the past. He believed that historians studying the same event might produce many interpretations - all with the potential to shed light on the past. Postmodern scholars disagreed. If history is as much about the historians world view and beliefs, they asked, how can any one version of the past be more True than another? And if this is the case, how can we possibly tell fact from fiction?

While raising important questions (and perplexing generations of university students) the complexity of post-modern analysis has, at times, risked isolating the general public from their own history. Historian David Lowenthal has noted that ‘the gulf between sophisticated chroniclers and the public seems to widen all the time’ - perhaps the single biggest threat to the quest for Truth.

Today digital technology has democratized the truth and allows storytelling on an unprecedented scale. Is this the greatest threat academic historians have ever encountered... or the biggest opportunity? Can the internet save History? I'm excited about the possibilities.

Does the past have a future?

While taking a break from exam study yesterday I read a thought-provoking article by historian Simon Schama in which he outlined his vision for history in British schools. Insightful and inspiring, it reminded me why I started studying history in the first place (and how neglected this blog has been during exams).

Schama argues that sanitised, spoon-fed history curriculums patronise kids and underestimate an enthusiasm for complex stories proven by the popularity of books such as Harry Potter, The Dark Materials Trilogy, Twilight and Lord of the Rings. Perhaps we should ask if they stay in the best-sellers lists despite hefty word counts and challenging themes - or because of them. The truth is certainly stranger than fiction. Is it time we started telling history differently?

In a Facebook culture firmly focused on the next 'status update', Scharma suggests that ‘unless (children) can be won to history, their imagination will be held hostage in the cage of eternal Now’. I would argue that the dangers of being seduced by the ‘eternal Now ’are in no way limited to children. The 24hr news cycle has come to offer us a relentless drumbeat of action and reaction. With our minds set in the present, the perhaps future may soon become obsolete.

In his article, Scharma listed six key events from British history that he believes every child should learn, along with the reasons why. It made me wonder - how do you even begin to list the most important events in a community’s history? Do you select those events that had greatest impact at the time; or ones that have become more important in retrospect? Is it more important to know the about events that have made us who we are; or to select those that may help us become who we should be?

While we may never reach consensus on a single list of events that have defined us; perhaps we can all agree that to claim our future, we must first reclaim our past.

How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet

A glorious quote from Douglas Adams about the ways people have approached new technology throughout history...

"I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3. anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really."