HIST390

The Novice in archives/Internet history

The result has been a revolution in control over information, and in the ways, we understand authority.

We talked about credentials. Back in the day only people with authority could get access to history information, but that has changed. We have easy access to documents that used to require credentials. What took months to do now it only takes a couple of minutes to do, find or access. We mentioned the causes of the Civil War and an example of authority was brought up when professor O’Malley said the cause of the Civil War was slavery. He is the professor with authority and stated slavery was the cause.

There are sites that claim that African Americans fought for the confederacy. For example, the Virginia 4^th grade text book that said 50,000 fought which was incorrect. There are several evidences that African Americans were sent to the war for support. The reason why there are African Americans in photograph is because they were paired with their owners for support, not necessarily to fight for confederacy. We go back to having easy access to documents that may be perceived as something there are not. For example, the photographs that include slaves. People without the correct knowledge or sources may think they went to war to fight along the white soldiers, but in reality, they were forced to go.  Additionally, there were those who were enlisted in the army and the main question is, why did they do it? Butler believed that once they enlisted then it would give African Americans to be included as citizens. But once again, none of the documents we read are not trustworthy because they are still suspicious or questionable one or another way. The point of this lecture was “The novice in archives”- the fact that you can go online, fight an evidence and make a conclusion supporting your point. Our responsibility as a generation with easy access to evidence/history is to make sure we have the correct and legit sources of information. This is even highly requested throughout school/college to prevent plagiarism or simply obtaining false information.

 

Wikipedia and Crowd sourcing

We learned about Encyclopedia Britannica- almost everyone had one of this back in the days. I did not have one, but my aunt did.

One crucial point Professor O’Malley mention is that things get better as people use them. The easier access we have to information the better it gets. I agree with this as more people have access to information or website, they get to see what needs improvement and can either fix it or give feedback for other users to fix it.
We also learned about the Four Freedoms-
Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program for any purpose

Freedom 1: the freedom to study show the program works, and change it to make it do your wish

Freedom 2:  the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public

The idea of copy rights did not exist. For example, the only reason we know about Socrates is because of Plato.
Crowd sourcing- the more people you put in a problem the quicker the problem will be solved. We see this through Linux operating system as many people work on it to make it better.
Wikipedia started in 2001 and now is the number 10^th more used website. We see Wikipedia as an example of crowd sourcing because people from around the globe have access to it and are constantly adding and updating information.
What I obtained from this lecture is the understating of how open sources work.

 

We started class by watching videos of James Brown and Bob Marley. We see how Africa is involve in both types of music.

Digital tools are supposed to empower us, so we will learn how to operate these tools.

A History in Recording:

Sound in a medieval cathedral- echoes like crazy. Hard to tell the original source the priest from the echoes. We talked about the catholic approach and how Catholics do not read the bible like Christians do. In the catholic church, the priest reads the bible, and this is because people don’t have the education to read it and understand. The point the catholic church wants to make is for people not to understand what’s happening, rather experience the “holy” moment and not understand why and how.

We learned about different religions and how some religious traditions are hostile to “graven images”- in Islam, you cannot depict Allah or Mohammed. In Judaism, you cannot write the name of G-d. In some forms of Protestantism, you can’t have picture or status of Jesus. These are false, lies, dangerous-representations. You want as much as possible the direct contact with ideal, not imitations of it. Personal experience: my dad was christian, and my grandma was catholic. They would often get into “arguments” and question each other religions. For example, my dad would ask my grandma why she prays to a statue that is not God; insinuating her religion was a lie. My grandma would ask why he didn’t believe in Virgin Mary, who is holy and should be prayed to and idolized.