The Pasts and Futures/Promises and Perils of Digital History

        This week's readings expanded on the history of digital history. William Thomas does a great job outlining the adolescence of the field. His chapter, written in 2004, points the origin of digital history to the late 1960s and early 1970s when historians were on going through a "culture war". He explains that during these decades there was a rise in quantitative history that came about with early computers. The culture war was between the historians who believed that quantitative history was more in line with social sciences and deviated away for the "traditional" way history was done, which was narrative history. To note, Thomas does point out that quantitative history was done even in the 1940s, but he is rather emphasizing the use of technology in the 1960s and 1970s allowed for a vastly larger amount of data to be computed with more efficiency.

     William Thomas emphasizes these debates between historians with the example of the 1974 publication of Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman. Time on the Cross was a pinnacle work that dove head first into quantitative methodology and historical analysis. Thomas uses this book to emphasize how quantitative history, even with the controversy surrounding it, was being used in a meaningful way to talk about a very controversial topic. He also used the book, however, to identify pitfalls in quantitative history, which was that the data has the possibility to dehumanize the topic. Thomas writes that, "...the book rested so much of its key findings and interpretations on purely quantitative analysis and addressed purely economic questions, largely ignoring the textual and qualitative analysis of other historians as well as the social and political context of slavery."

    Thomas uses the rest of his chapter to highlight more contemporary digital history projects, such as Edward Ayer's Valley of the Shadow Project and the American Social History Project's Who Built America? , which was a very encompassing project that centered on the founding of America. Thomas ends his chapter by claiming that historians will increasingly be reliant on "born digital" evidence in digital archives and more notably anticipated in the rise of historical geographic information systems. 


    Thomas hit the nail on the head with these two predictions. In 2024, historians are hugely dependent on digital sources. The importance of these digital sources can clearly be seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. With most of the world on lockdown and having to stay indoors, digital archives were one of the only ways that historians could continue their research. GIS has become an increasingly more popular. As seen in Richard White's article "What is Spatial History", GIS projects are great in academia because of the collaboration it calls for and because of the inclusivity of who can be involved. White points out that "..historians, graduate students and undergraduate students, geographers, GIS and visualization specialists, database architects, and computer scientists" are all working on this project which coincides with history becoming more interdisciplinary as digital history and digital tools become more popular. 

    The future of digital history I believe is very positive. With new tools at historians disposal, such as the use of AI to assist, the speed and accuracy in which historians may be able to research will be better than ever before. I did want to use this section to point out parts of digital history that are in jeopardy. As of yesterday, September 5th, 2024, Internet Archive lost its legal battle regarding the digitizing of certain projects. Many of the articles this week talk about the open access of materials and evidence to help historians with their research and this is a major step in the wrong direction. The Internet Archive's book lending project was more than just a way to skirt around copyright laws, but rather was a way to keep books preserved online as well. The articles this week talk about many problems with digital history, such as the dehumanizing aspect of quantitative data I previously mentioned, as well as Sharon Leon's article about the erasure of women from the digital history narrative. All of these problems need to be addressed, but I strongly believe with Internet Archive's lost legal battle there may changes on how digital sources are view or regulated by the government or other institutions. 

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