Flip Board, The History Channel, and Ancestory.com: Digital History's Ups and Downs

This September I had the pleasure of joining the 21^st century and updated to a smart phone, finally turning off my four year old LG Rumor II for good. One of the features I found on my phone was something called “Flip Board”. For those who are not familiar with Flip Board, it is an app which allows the user to select particular topics and read the latest stories about them. Originally I was excited to keep myself in the loop regarding politics and events around the world but then I found the “A Blog About History” flip board and I was in heaven. Just today I was able to learn about excavations that uncovered a Roman temple in England, and slave tunnels at Hadrian’s Villa in Italy, as well as learning about a new television series coming out this fall that will follow two soldiers in the trenches of Ypres during the First World War. Twenty years ago I would have had to wait for excavation reports to be published in academic journals before I found anything out about either dig site. The digital world has made me more connected to history than I ever was before.

Still Image from "The Wipers Times" airing on BBC. Image from: http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/11/world-war-i-comedy-drama-the-wipers-times-mixed-humour-with-humanity-3959186/

On Monday in Digital History, the question: “What is Digital History/ Humanities?” was asked. To me, digital history is the use of digital resources to enhance the experience of history for everyone, regardless of whether they are academic or not. It’s not just digitalizing archives to make the lives of academics easier but the “This Day in History” app, history based computer games, and virtual museum exhibits. Digital history includes accessibility, making far away museums closer to those who cannot afford to travel the world to see such things or creating a framework for history that is more interesting than sitting in a classroom or reading a 300 page book on a particular subject. Studying history in-depth is not for everyone but that does not mean that history should not be accessible to everyone in some form.

However there are pitfalls to digital history to be certain. Only a decade and a half ago I sat with my dad and watched grainy film footage of the First World War on the History Channel and learned that there were no “good guys and bad guys” in history. Now when I turn to that once beloved station I find myself being informed of the possible price a Yankee baseball card could bring, although the seller will never receive that price because the pawn broker is running a business not a charity. Worse, amateur historians have tried to convince me that aliens created ancient Egyptian pyramids and the colossal Nasca Lines of Peru. The History Channel only becomes what I remember of it when an anniversary approaches (Remembrance Day, Pearl Harbour) and the rest of the time it is saturated with information that is more about heritage (and baseless hypotheses) than history. The digital world will surely, and perhaps already has, become like the History Channel: brief, bright moments of critical thought with historical backing amongst the clamour of 140 character posts where history need not apply because it won’t fit.

Still image from "Ancient Aliens". Image from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivyFCRVTFZ1NWw52ruuu3f47zygCxxPveq3iP7G1e3_fvULfyFktlVzAm9fuXiSdxhq1ok-dmqRKbKonAUpIGxfKkihdx1RwAkn66iLnIYs-VWLRKiG64wDlWiIqrLEpz4iPLo25dTu6I/s320/giorgio-tsoukalos.jpeg

I apologize, I have just realized how narrow-minded and elitist that sounded. Don’t mistake what I have said for thumping a military-history-is-the-only-history chest or suggesting that heritage is not as important as history. Rather, heritage is the backbone for what spurs people forward to seek out history. Ancestry.com is the most popular example of this. People intrigued with their family’s past can trace themselves back to specific points in time. Those particularly keen to learn what prompted their female ancestor to leave Ireland in 1850 will reveal the Great Potato Famine and the mistreatment that the Irish suffered under British rule leading up to that tragic event. Heritage in digital history can result in a furthering of historical knowledge that may not have been undertaken otherwise.

For that reason I think it is important for historians and public historians to become more engaged with the ever changing face of digital resources for educating the general populace. Sometimes a particular technophobia arises among our ranks, myself included as I just begrudgingly set up my first Twitter account, but there is a growing necessity for digital literacy in the binary world of the Internet and social media. If we as historians do not keep up with the changes and utilize them to our benefit, we will become just as archaic as the ancient times we study. Based on the Darwinian frame of mind, historians of both academic and public background must, “adapt or die”.

Sources:

http://www.ablogabouthistory.com/#sthash.NOrBEZdp.dpbs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines

https://flipboard.com