This,
of course, has huge ramifications for Historians who need to
develop new methodologies and techniques to deal with this data.
There are perhaps less than a dozen documents in existence that
throw light on the period of the 5th Century of the
dark ages, but in today’s world, there is way too much data.
As Thomas Eriksen states in his aptly titled Tyranny of the
Moment:
The
point is no longer to attend as many lectures as possible,
see as many films as one can, have as many books as possible
on the shelves. On the contrary; the overarching aim for educated
individuals in the world’s rich countries must now be make
the filtering of information the main priority
As
tides of information lap at our door, books and the academic
monologue provide an important historical, political and academic
solution for cognition. These skills are not something that
we should diminish, even if we are to go through post-industrial
paradigm shifts. Those that tell us that all technological change
is a progress towards the removal of privilege are probably
profiting handsomely from these shifts. We need to find conciliatory
transitions into the technological jungle of the Internet in
terms of what we think is important. Again it is all about balance.
It
is difficult to prescribe a standard use of a medium that is
inherently interdisciplinary in nature. The ability to negotiate
this interdisciplinarity may be one of the greatest skills required
of the new media researcher. Researchers arrive at new media
from a number of different backgrounds and each brings to it
fresh perspectives. We have a choice as to how new media technology
is used in our disciplines, however as previously discussed,
some schools and some sections of the Humanities have more choices
or dissimilar ambitions than others. Succinctly, different authors
face different realities.
Perhaps
the greatest benefit of building a web site in terms of academic
practice is that the researcher learns to communicate their
ideas through one of the most interesting mediums to come along
in a few generations. I am not the greatest fan of the model
where an academic may propose a project and then hire someone
to build it for them. This only reinforces the old class divisions
in the Australian education system between the technical colleges
and universities. I agree that new technologies have novel ways
to see and engage with the world but a lot of the old academic
hierarchies largely remain the same.
We
also need to make sure that the systems of incentive and meritocracy
are in place to appropriately reward innovation and effort within
this medium. Far too often individuals who have made little
or no intellectual investment in digital technologies are, paradoxically,
rewarded in the broader field of electronic scholarship for
actually not making this investment. Again it is about balance.
In
the mid 1990s, the Internet captured the popular imagination
fuelled by a wave of market fundamentalism, libertarianism,
economic rationalism and entrenched populist conservatism. Many
of the norms that we took for granted became dis-rooted, re-branded,
and circulated in contexts never thought imaginable.
Suddenly
conservative laissez-faire politics became 'radical', academic
merit became 'hierarchy', democracy became 'unrepresentative'
and boundaries became not healthy and robust components of a
respect for difference but walls that contain privilege. In
reflection, the turbulent historical period over the past four
years of this project has simply provided the incidental initial
conditions for a medium that reached critical mass during the
superstitious times of the fin de siecle. It was the Internet's
golden age. It is liberating to identify new researchers entering
this field without the oppressive weight of opportunistic and
immature expectations.
more>>
