History in the digital domain

Mark Poster

pp. 15-30

in: Friederike von Gross, Winfried Marotzki, UWE Sander (eds), Internet — Bildung — Gemeinschaft, Wiesbaden, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008

Abstract

What is at stake in the alteration of the material structure of cultural objects from the paper forms of manuscript and print to the digital form of computer files? In particular, how is the change affecting academic disciplines which rely upon stable forms of symbolic records? More specifically still, how is the discipline of History affected by the digitization of writing? Is digitization simply a more efficient means of reproduction, storage and transmission of documents, whose availability in space and time is enhanced for the application by historians of research techniques and methods? Or does digitization cause an alteration for historians in the constitution of truth?