History and the Media

Traditionally, history has been recorded by the winners or at least society’s majority. Technology is changing that. While textbooks and scholarly documents may still promote the official view of what happened, the media is allowing individuals to share their perspectives through blogs, YouTube, webpages, etc. This allows everyone to record history not just scholars. It also allows the public to access many different types of history ranging from world, national, city, and personal in ways that were not widely available to the general public until new media gained popularity. People are also able not only to record history but also analyze and contribute to historical events that have already been recorded much like Burroughs suggests doing with text in order to see different themes and meanings in existing work. These changes make history feel much more alive to the average person. Almost like the happenings Kaprow described where audiences are no longer refined to their seats and polite applauses but to interact with the performers and help create the performance. Another consequence is that history recorded in the media reflects a much greater portion of life than the staunch researched version does. This will be immensely helpful to future generations as they learn about the past, unless Paula’s fears come true and some horrible catastrophe destroys our digital world or some device that allows us to access it. With any luck, we can rely on the fact that media and history act reciprocally. The media records history, but history also helps create the media. Wiener mentioned that after WWII, he decided a new type of scientist was required who was engaged with the consequences of scientific work. In his attempt to be the type of scientist he desired, he began working towards cybernetics and helped create the new media we know today which has allowed history to become more interactive than ever before. History and the media are connected. Neither can progress the way we have come to expect it to without the other.