Present(ing) History

When I was studying history as an undergraduate student, I was particularly fascinated by discussions about historiography. Perhaps it was the influence of my English Lit background, but I tended to do close readings of historical accounts, approaching them almost as literary texts that reflected much about the assumptions and attitudes, biases and values of the writer. It was therefore interesting to be asked in certain history classes to analyse the works of historians not primarily for what they revealed about the past, but for what insights they provided about the particular way of doing history that was “in vogue” at the time.

Over the course of this year, I’ve seen how the idea of the present’s imposition on the past is as applicable to public history as it is to traditional, scholarly history. History in the public realm is certainly as much (or perhaps even more) about the present -- that is, the “present” of whoever is, or was, writing the history, composing the plaque text, or curating the exhibit, for instance -- as it is about the past.

Museums, for example, as Helen Knibb’s article, “ ‘Present but not Visible’: Searching for Women’s History in Museum Collections,” suggests, do not necessarily present information, in the context of women’s history, about the actual lives and experiences of women from a particular time period. Instead, the artifacts on display may reveal more about the preoccupations and personal tastes of curators, or about the collecting or donating impulses of those whose items are on display. With regards to the latter, Knibb suggests that women may have simply donated items they thought were important from the standpoint of the museum or of society, rather than in relation to their own experiences. She raises the interesting question of whether "museum collections tell us more about how women collect than how they lived their lives.” [1] Knibb's article reminds me that museums themselves are constructed sites that are very much influenced by contemporary concerns.

The idea that public history is as much about the time period of the people presenting the history as it is about the history being presented is, I’m sure, hardly startling. But it does remind me of the need which underlies the rationale for these blogs – the need for self-reflexivity. As history students, my peers and I have been trained to read historical accounts critically, with an eye open to its constructed nature, to the ways in which the account reflects the biases of the historian and the preoccupations of his or her time. As public history practitioners, we will have to direct that critical gaze inwards, to assess how our own assumptions and biases are shaping the histories we will help to produce. Moreover, we will also have to negotiate our way through the assumptions and biases of others, who, in the collaborative realm of public history, will also have a stake – sometimes a very substantial one – in the history-making process. Given how contentious history in the public realm can be, not only the need for critical self-reflection but also the ability to practice what Rebecca Conard has called the “art of mediation” [2] are crucial requirements for the practicing public historian.

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[1] Helen Knibb, “‘Present But Not Visible’: Searching For Women’s History in Museum Collections,” Gender & History 6 (1994): 355, 361-362. The quote is from page 362.

[2] Rebecca Conard, “Facepaint History in the Season of Introspection,” The Public Historian 25, no. 4 (2003): 16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/.

Information vs. History

"Would a complete chronicle of everything that ever happened eliminate the need to write history?" -- St Andrews final exam question in mediaeval history, 1981

"To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine" -- Max Beerbohm

* * * * *

About a year ago, I took a short creative non-fiction course on the topic of writing historical narratives for a general audience. The instructor, Dr. Richard Mackie, emailed the class the above quotes, to stimulate thoughtful reflection about the nature of history and historical writing. (The first quote was actually a question that Dr. Mackie himself encountered as a History student at St. Andrews in the 80s.) These quotes have come to mind lately as I’ve been ruminating about the implications of doing history in a digital age.

The era of the Internet has, I think, made the idea of a “complete chronicle” of our current times more conceivable than ever before. The Web has certainly made it possible for virtually anyone, irrespective of gender, class, ethnicity, etc., to share their thoughts, ideas, photos, videos, even “statuses” (i.e. what one is doing at a precise moment in time) continuously. Provided that all of this electronic data is adequately preserved, there is going to be a vast abundance of information available for anyone a generation or two (or more) down the road who is curious about the interests, opinions, tastes, preoccupations, etc. of ordinary people in our time.

Yet, such information, no matter how detailed, is not the same as history. The chronicling of people’s lives, even on as minute a level as that expressed in an article about “lifelogging” by New Yorker writer, Alec Wilkinson, [1] results only in the production of information. It is the interpretation of that information, the piecing together of disparate parts into a coherent and (hopefully) elegant narrative which pulls out (or, more accurately, constructs) themes and patterns, that transforms it into history, into a meaningful story about the past.

What’s interesting, of course, is that although no historian (I think) would ever claim to write the history on any subject, discussions about the potential of history in the digital age has sometimes suggested the ability for history to be more complete than ever before. The idea of hypertextual history, for instance, where readers of a historical account can click on links leading them to pertinent primary source documents on the topic, say, or to other similar or divergent viewpoints about the particular subject they’re examining, has almost a decentring impact at the same time that it provides more information. It can be easy for readers, I think, to be overwhelmed by the profusion of hyperlinks within a text, and perhaps to never finish reading the actual article to learn the historian’s particular approach to the past.

The beauty of history, I think, is not that it claims to be a complete, exhaustive chronicle that leaves no stone unturned in its examination, but that it presents one angle on the past, a new way of understanding something that is extraordinarily complex and, for that reason, is open to -- and I’d even say requires -- multiple interpretations. History is, after all, a story as opposed to a record book, a narrative as opposed to mere facts.
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[1] Wilkinson’s interesting article recounts how computer guru Gordon Bell has been involved in a “lifelogging” experiment, in which he wears a Microsoft-developed device called a SenseCam around his neck that takes continual pictures of his day-to-day experience and allows him to record his thoughts at any given point in time if he so wishes. According to Wilkinson, Bell “collects the daily minutiae of his life so emphatically that he owns the most extensive and unwieldy personal archive of its kind in the world.” Alec Wilkinson, “Remember This? A Project to Record Everything We Do in Life,” The New Yorker.com, May 28, 2007, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/28/070528fa_fact_wilkinson.

Google Tales for the Future

Sometimes, I wonder what historians of the future are going to be writing about, when they examine the early twenty-first century. No doubt, the term “digital revolution” is going to creep in to more than one monograph of the future about our present-day times. Cultural historians (if cultural history is still in vogue) might also, I think, take some delight in tracing the ways in which Google has entered into modern consciousness. Perhaps they’ll trace the moment when Google ceased to be only a proper noun, when the phrase “Let’s google it!” first appeared, and then flourished, in popular discourse. Or maybe they’ll explore the ways in which Google has become a part of popular culture and everyday life, to the point of inspiring satirical responses expressed in, you guessed it, digital ways.

Here are some anecdotes to help that future cultural historian.

* * * * *

Awhile ago, a friend told me an amusing story about how the father of one of her friends was confused about the nature of the Internet. He had never used it before (yes, there are still such folks), and he didn’t quite know what it was all about. So, one day, he asked his son to explain, framing his question according to the only term that he was familiar with – or had heard often enough: “Is Google,” he asked innocently, “the Internet?” The son choked back a gasp of unholy laughter, and proceeded to explain the phenomenon of the Internet to his father. However, if he had simplified his response, if he had said that Google was, in a way, the Internet, he may not have been all that wrong.

* * * * *

During Christmas dinner with my family this past winter, Google (of all topics) entered into our conversation. I don't remember how exactly. All I recall is that my mom, who (yes, it’s true) had never heard of Google before, perked up when she heard the term at the dinner table, probably because of its odd sound. “Google?” she said, brows furrowed, “what is Google?” To that, my dad, without missing a beat, responded (in Chinese) that Google "is the big brother of the Internet." Now, "big brother" (or "dai lo") in Cantonese, when used in a figurative sense, simply means someone who is to be respected, some important or dominant figure or force. But I couldn’t help laughing at the Orwellian overtones that my father's comment had unwittingly implied. He had meant big brother; I, of course, had heard Big Brother, Chinese-style.

* * * * *

Back in September, Dr. Don Spanner, my archival sciences professor, showed the class a video clip called Epic 2015. Its opening lines were captivatingly ambiguous: "It is the best of times," said the solemn narrator, "It is the worst of times." We were entranced by the video's fictitious yet somewhat chilling projection of the world in 2015, which involved no less than the merging of two powerful companies (Google and Amazon) to become Googlezon, an entity whose information-making and dissemination power had reduced even the might of the New York Times. At the end of the clip, Don joked that the first time he watched it, he just wanted to sit in a corner and stare at paper for a long, long time. We all laughed – and, perhaps, shivered inside a bit too.

Subsequently, I mentioned the clip to a friend, remarking how it was so interesting to see just how big Google had become, as evidenced by the fact that it was inspiring such responses as Epic 2015 with its subtle questioning of the Google empire and its cultural hegemony. My friend in turn enlightened me further about other similar responses. He asked if I had ever heard of “The Googling”? I hadn’t. So he emailed me links to several clips on YouTube, which explore Google’s services (such as their mapping devices) in a new - and, of course, hilariously sinister - way. To view them…simply google “The Googling.” :) (There are five parts.)

* * * * *

To the cultural historian of the future:

It was true. Google was (is?) ubiquitous, to the point that it entered into dinner table conversations and was mistaken (or correctly identified?) for the Internet. Even to the point of inspiring satirical YouTube clips and prophetic visions of a Google-ized world. That is, of course, when you know something is big – when it becomes the subject of cultural humour and unease, negotiated and even resisted in satirical ways.

So, we embraced Google even while scrutinizing it at arm's length. We questioned Google even while googling. It’s what we did in the early twenty-first century.

Pieces of History

One of my best friends and I have a tendency to reminisce about our shared experiences. During these (sometimes admittedly nostalgic) moments of looking back, I am always amazed at the different things that have stood out for each of us – a telling word, gesture, expression that I or she would not have ever recalled without the presence of the other.

In a way, then, my friend and I help make each other's history more complete by remembering details that the other has forgotten. In a way too, it means that the past - or that particular version being remembered in bits and pieces – becomes quite spontaneous for us, entirely dependent on the course of the conversation, on the ebb and flow of memory on that particular day. Reminiscing about the same experience with my friend years later, I find that other aspects surface; the past is, one might say, renewed and re-created in each instance of remembrance, a mental landscape that is both familiar and yet full of surprising colour too.

I think one of the interesting aspects of conducting oral history interviews – which I had the privilege of doing recently with one of the former staff members at a local health care institution – is observing that very organic and spontaneous process of memory in play. While I, of course, did not share in any experiences of my interviewee, bringing only my knowledge of certain aspects of the history of the institution to the table, it was interesting to see how certain memories surfaced for her based on the flow of the conversation.

My understanding of this institution’s history informed the questions that I prepared. Yet the interview was by no means confined to these questions. They became starting points, triggering memories of other aspects of my interviewee's experience – ones that I had not thought in advance to ask about and perhaps ones that she had not revisited until that moment in time. Another day, another interviewer, would undoubtedly bring other memories to the surface, revealing new pieces of a multifaceted history that can be tapped and reconfigured in so many ways.

And speaking about fragments of the past, I left the interview with an unexpected piece of history – literally. My interviewee was excited and eager to give me a brick that she had kept from the first building of her former work place, constructed in the late 19th century. Embedded with the shape of an animal, it now sits at the foot of my desk, a tangible piece of the past that stands in contrast to the transience and spontaneity of memory.

Dabbling in the Digital Age

Photography is one of those activities that I can lose myself completely in. The hours I spend on it is time freely given (and hardly felt). Although I’ve been lucky enough to capture a few photographs that I’m pleased with (including the one above, which was modestly granted an honorable mention in the Geography Department’s fundraising contest for United Way), I’ve always considered myself just a tinkerer of sorts. A dabbler, if you will, whose yearning to be “artistic” has been mostly helped by technology. (I credit my Nikon camera completely for taking good shots.)

* * * * *

As it turns out, the digital age is apparently very amenable to those with tinkering and dabbling tendencies.

That, at least, was the (hopeful) sense that I got from reading Jeff Howe’s article on “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” In it, Howe traces the ways in which companies are tapping into “the latent talent of the crowd.” He brings up the example of iStockphoto, a company that sells images shot by amateur photographers – those who do not mind (who, in fact, I’m guessing, would be thrilled about) making a little bit of money doing what they already do in their spare time: take pictures.

According to Howe, the increasing affordability of professional-grade cameras and the assistance of powerful editing software like Photoshop means that the line between professional and amateur work is no longer so clear-cut. Add to that the sharing mechanisms of the Internet, and the fact that photographs taken by amateurs sell for a much lower price than those of professionals, and it seems inevitable that some ingenious person would have thought up a way to apply crowdsourcing to stock photography sooner or later.

Howe provides an even more striking example of how the expertise of the crowd is being plumbed these days. Corporations like Procter and Gamble are turning to science-minded hobbyists and tinkerers to help them solve problems that are stumping their R&D departments. Howe mentions the website InnoCentive as one example of the ways in which companies with a problem and potential problem-solvers are finding each other on the web: the former post their most perplexing scientific hurdles on the site and anyone who is part of the network can then take a stab at solving the problem. If they do, they are finely compensated. And a good number, in fact, do. According to InnoCentive’s chief scientific officer, Jill Panetta, 30% of all problems posted on their website have been solved. That is, to quote Panetta’s words, “30 percent more than would have been solved using a traditional, in-house approach.”

What’s intriguing about all of this is the fact that the solvers, as Howe says, “are not who you might expect.” They may not necessarily have formal training in the particular field in which the problem arises; their specialty may lie in another area altogether. Yet, it is this very diversity of expertise within the crowd of hobbyists that contributes to the success of such networks as InnoCentive. As Howe puts it, “the most efficient networks are those that link to the broadest range of information, knowledge, and experience.” The more disparate the crowd, in other words, the stronger the network. [1] I love the ironies of the digital age.

* * * * *

I’ve been wondering lately about whether history could benefit at all from the diverse knowledge and background of the crowd, whether crowdsourcing – posting a problem or request out in the virtual world in the hopes that someone might have the expertise to be able to fulfill it – could apply to a non-scientific discipline.

In other words, would a History version of InnoCentive work? A network where historical researchers could poll the crowd for information or materials or insight to help fill research gaps…where they could tap into the memories, artifacts, anecdotes, records, ephemera, (and even the ways people understand the past) of a diverse group and thereby possibly access information that might have never made it into the archives for formal preservation? How would the writing and construction of history change if, instead of primarily drawing upon the 5 to 10% of all records that ever make their way into an archives, researchers could tap into the personal archives of a disparate crowd made up of the “broadest range of information, knowledge, and experience”? (Let us put aside, for the moment, the issues of the integrity of the record and its provenance when we talk about “personal archives.” I realize that the shoebox in the attic is not nearly as reassuring a sight as the Hollinger box of the archives.) It seems probable to me that some of the 90 to 95% of records that never make their way into an archival institution are still extant, not destroyed, and that there could be valuable research material in them that could very well change one’s argument about the past. Would crowdsourcing be one way to get at that material?

* * * * *

P.S. Of course, I just realized that I’m raising the above questions without considering a crucial aspect in all the examples of crowdsourcing that Howe mentioned: money. Those who answered the call – whether the amateur photographer or the scientific tinkerer – were paid for their services (ranging from a dollar all the way to an impressive $25,000). To pay someone for a piece of history raises a whole other set of questions…

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[1] Jeff Howe, "The Rise of Crowdsourcing," Wired, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html.

The Age of the (Aggravatingly) Smart Machine

(Or: One Disgruntled User's Frustrations with Printers)



From the moment that I laid eyes on it, I should have known that I was in for trouble. After all, as the old saying goes, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

* * * * *

Here is how the story goes.

Back in September, I decided to purchase a printer. I’m the kind of person who finds reading on the computer for extended periods of time difficult. Despite numerous attempts to read on-screen, I still prefer the physicality of text. My eyes find pleasure and relief in the printed word. (You’ll not, in other words, find me curling up with a Kindle any time soon.)

Anyways, back in September, after a great deal of difficulty that involved no less than lugging a large demo Epson printer on the bus and accidentally denting it a few times during my trip home (it was box-less, carried in two plastic bags, and ridiculously heavy), I managed to transport and set up this beast of a printer in my apartment. It was an all-in-one contraption, able to scan, fax, print, and copy in colour. And it was, amazingly, only $34.99 at Best Buy. A veritable deal.

Within a few weeks, I had used up the complementary black ink and had to purchase a new cartridge, which ran out in a ridiculously short amount of time (even though I bought the “heavy usage,” i.e. more costly, one). In mid-November, the black ink had run out again. After dishing out yet another $25 and installing the new cartridge, I discovered that the complementary colour ink – which I had used to print, perhaps, five documents all term – had somehow run out as well. That’s when I realized that the Age of the New Printers means that everything shuts down when the colour ink is deemed to be empty. The machine’s printing capabilities simply cease to function. All the amount of black ink in the world will not get it to print a single page.

As it was near the end of the term, I simply decided to print all documents at school rather than deal with the fuss – and cost – of getting new ink. In hindsight, a perspective which all historians will always have at their disposal, that was a mistake.

* * * * *

About a week ago, I finally had a chance to pick up some colour ink cartridges (the kind for “moderate usage” only), installed them eagerly into my dusted-off printer, and looked forward to the convenience that modern technology would again afford. (I would not have to go to the computer lab at all hours now just to print readings.)

That’s when I realized that modern technology does not always work in one’s favour. The document I printed, which was simply set in black, came out starkly, aggravatingly, white. The black ink cartridge must have dried out over Christmas break. So, it appeared that I had just shelled out $35 for colour ink in order to be able to access black ink that was no longer operative.

This evening, however, I tried to print a document again, in black, just to see if something miraculous might ensue. And it did. The machine managed to cough out a document in black ink. The printout was extremely irregular in quality - numerous lines were missing - but at least the page was no longer blank. Eager (and slightly foolish), I printed the document several more times, thinking perhaps that persistence would pay off. Although the quality did improve, the document was still quite spotty in areas. That’s when (again, eager and foolish), I decided to clean the print heads, despite the warning that this function would consume ink. I then printed a sample document. The result was much better, but still not perfect. However, I discovered with shock that running the cleaning function used up half of the new colour ink cartridges, according to the meter.

I now had two choices:

1) Run another print head cleaning (which would probably use up the rest of the colour ink – of which I had not, in any real sense, used), or

2) Give up on the black ink cartridge completely (which was also unused, except for the test printouts), and shell out more money for black ink.

(Why I didn’t decide to unplug the printer then and there, affix a sign on it that said “Free – completely, utterly free”, and put it out in the hallway of my apartment, is still something I have not answered satisfactorily yet.)

Instead, I had a flash of inspiration. History came to my rescue: I remembered that I had owned an Epson printer before. It had run out of colour ink before. And I had “fooled” it before - by going through all the on-screen steps of installing a new colour cartridge and “charging” the ink, without actually doing so. With the colour ink meter subsequently indicating that it was “full”, I could then finish troubleshooting the problem that I was dealing with at the time, which required, finicky machine that it was, colour ink.

Cheered by this memory of the not-quite-so-smart-nor-sharp-machine, I decided to run another print head cleaning tonight. Sure enough, this nearly “used” up all the remaining colour ink. I printed a few more test documents in black; their quality was improved somewhat, but it was still blanking out at certain lines. I then tried to run one more cleaning function, but the printer told me that I couldn’t – there was not enough colour ink to support it. In fact, the warning of low ink was now replaced with the message that there was no more colour ink. (Apparently, just even attempting to run a print head cleaning uses up the ink, by the printer’s standards.)

Confident, however, that I could fool the machine, I then proceeded to go through the cartridge-replacement steps, clicking the “Finish” button at the end with a flourish. The printer responded by humming and telling me that “ink charging” was occurring. I smiled - and then, I frowned. A box had popped up indicating that the replaced cartridges were, in techno-lingo, “expended.”

In other words – the machine knew. It was telling me that I could not fool it. It could detect that I had not actually fed it anything new, despite my subsequent actions of physically removing and re-inserting the colour ink cartridges, which, I have to add again, were not really used, but were indelibly (and one might even say ingeniously) branded so by the machine. Such crafty labelling had made the colour ink inoperative.

Welcome, friends, to the Age of the (Aggravatingly) Smart Machine.

* * * * *

P.S. Sixty dollars invested into printer cartridges since mid-November and I have still not been able to print one actual document since then for any useful purpose.

If it were still in vogue to be a Marxist historian, I would seriously point to the ridiculously profitable economics underlying printer design as the source of all our (or at least my) present-day ills!

On Writing

I like words. I like their abundance. Their variety. The different nuances that they contain. I like how a word like “melancholy,” for example, has a slightly different flavour than “forlorn,” or how the word “myth” conveys something deeper - more emotional, more enduring, more fluid - than its neutral variant, “story.”

Now, most of my Public History peers would probably say that I don’t just like words – I like polysyllabic words. I’ll be the first to admit that long-ish and rather atypical words have a tendency to come to me, unbidden, and that I have an equal tendency to utter them aloud, without thinking. This penchant for the polysyllabic has sometimes even gotten me into trouble, won me unintended notoriety among my peers. ;)

As someone studying in the field of Public History, I realize that I have to think especially carefully about the words that I use, not only because using the “wrong” word can alienate a general audience but also because choosing the “right” word involves weighing various needs, such as those of the client and of the audience, as well as my own for precise language and "good" history. So, while I might immediately prefer the word “auspicious” over “lucky” or feel that “appropriated” explains a situation more clearly than “took,” I’m learning to pause and reconsider the effects of my instinctive word choices, and I’m learning to negotiate the sometimes conflicting needs and desires that exist at the micro-level of diction.

What I didn’t expect was to have to consider the machine as an audience as well. And yet that is what Dan Cohen’s blog post has drawn to my attention. In “When Machines are the Audience,” Cohen suggests that the age of machine-readable text means that we’ll need to write a little differently – or at least with the awareness that what we write can be more, or less, visible in a digital environment depending on the words that we use. The implication is that because text can be read by machines and mined using keyword searches, it is better to use precise and even unique terms or tags in related documents, so that the writing can be more easily searched, grouped, or retrieved. Cohen mentions, for example, how coming up with a unique string of words to identify related history websites can facilitate the process of narrowing searches to these sites only, so that relevant research information can be found. He also cites the example of a legitimate, history-related email being marked as spam, because of its unfortunate use of certain words that are high on the list of favorites for spammers. [1]

Looking over the words I used in a recent email to a friend, I’ll confess that terms ranging from “usurp” and “misnomer” to “vignette” and “quadratic” (yes, as in the quadratic equation) made their way in. (You are probably feeling some pity for my friend right now.) However, I’m consoled, and slightly amused, by the fact that what stands out as atypical word usage is precisely what spam filters ignore. At least, in this area, my penchant for the polysyllabic - for what’s seen as the atypical - has some redemptive purpose. :)
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[1] Daniel J. Cohen, “When Machines are the Audience,” Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities Blog, http://www.dancohen.org/blog/posts/when_machines_are_the_audience.