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You know at one time when I heard the word 'revisionist' applied to topics in history I sort of believed it was a very pejorative description when applied to events that most thought horrific in our age. I note the Holocaust for example where some historians noted it never occurred or 'it wasn't like that'. So there in that context 'revisionism' works really bad when it comes to making judgments about historical events. It is there that 'revisionism' fails since it fails to tell the truth and sells lies.
As we go on ahead through the centuries there will be definiely 'revisionism' in how say our age dealt with things. There will be no doubt fascinating changes in interpretations. Why? Because the past will be filtered by their contemporary society and culture. That can't be evaded. And that brings up another problem. Will they be better than our age in telling the truth historically? Probably depends on what kind of people they will be. If they will be like our age I'd say they'd have to be careful too when they look and interpret a past far far from them. Sometimes truths are just hard to write down.
Will they be better than our age in telling the truth historically? Probably depends on what kind of people they will be. If they will be like our age I'd say they'd have to be careful too when they look and interpret a past far far from them. Sometimes truths are just hard to write down.
Your question goes exactly in the direction of what I was thinking when I started the thread.
The answer will surely partially depend "on what kind of people they will be", but only in part.
I believe it will be easier to identify the "historical truth" about the 21st century than about the 18th century, for example. Why? Because the abundance of sources will be much greater. If proper backup is made, the future historians will have tons of blog posts, Facebook and Twitter posts, YouTube videos and tons of other sources to research.
Today, people are taking pictures all the time and posting them on Instagram, and taking videos of everything and posting on YouTube or directly on Facebook. Future researches will have a ridiculously enormous amount of pictures and videos to analyze.
So, maybe I'm over-optimistic, but I believe technology will make it more difficult to "falsify the past".
i can see where you are optimistic because of the technology. I guess with myself I see it as opportunities for fabrication. Having more information and correspondingly in more hands because of the convenience of the information brings on great challenges. Before perhaps only scholars could drive and make 'opinion' on historical events and people. Documents were tucked away in libraries or personal collections making analysis tough to do. Today well due to the availability and ubiquitousness of information almost anybody can make 'changes' if they want to on a certain area of study. I note wiki there.
I think you as others might be aware of how individuals in some 20th cenyptury Siviet photographs were conveniently 'air-brushed' out of existence because they were considered persona non grata or a perceived enemy of state. Today I'd think even with the advent of technology we'll never get away from that example. In fact I'd think it could get worse. Add to that the rapidity of how information courses through the world now lies can be spread quicker than two shakes of a lamb's tail'...;-)...
The problem won't be an abundance of data but a lack. Because of potential litigation no one keeps diaries, correspondence files, or anything else a day longer than mandated by law.
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by David McCullough on the Wright Brothers. (I even got to meet him for about a minute while he autographed my copies of the Wright Brothers and Truman.) McCullough said the same thing: Historians in the future will be handicapped because no one writes letters, keeps diaries, or saves emails. He actually said that about three times during his lecture.
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by David McCullough on the Wright Brothers. (I even got to meet him for about a minute while he autographed my copies of the Wright Brothers and Truman.) McCullough said the same thing: Historians in the future will be handicapped because no one writes letters, keeps diaries, or saves emails. He actually said that about three times during his lecture.
Interesting that he would say that.
Obviously as an historian he knows that sources change with the technology and culture. Diaries were not fashionable to keep before the 18th century and hit their peak in the Victorian era. If you go back to the middle ages you don't find many diaries, even among rich people who could read and write, simply because it was not cultural thing they did.
The nature of the history discipline is that you always work with an incomplete picture, there are simply a lot of known unknowns.
No, I think the bigger problem will be an embarrassment of riches so to speak - historians of the mid 20th century forward already have this problem of too many sources - how do you choose WHAT sources to focus on. Every electronic source from today will not remain but enough is already archived to make it impossible for any one person to make sense of it and reduce it down to a coherent narrative.
I wonder how they will compartmentalize our period. They will probably conflate it considerably. We do that with the period prior to the Civil War more or less - as we get closer to our own era we make quite prominent distinctions between "the 1950s" and "1960s" etc... but in the future they won't do that. 500 years from now, they may conflate our entire period into a "not very interesting" part of the story and skip over a lot, like how we group things into larger categories like "the Renaissance," "the enlightenment" etc... - certainly there were distinctions between say the 1610s and the 1580s but we don't really distinguish them now.
I wonder how they will compartmentalize our period. They will probably conflate it considerably. We do that with the period prior to the Civil War more or less - as we get closer to our own era we make quite prominent distinctions between "the 1950s" and "1960s" etc... but in the future they won't do that. 500 years from now, they may conflate our entire period into a "not very interesting" part of the story and skip over a lot, like how we group things into larger categories like "the Renaissance," "the enlightenment" etc... - certainly there were distinctions between say the 1610s and the 1580s but we don't really distinguish them now.
This was the point I was making with my earlier post. The further the future gets from the present, the smaller our present will be in their eyes. In the manner in which we collapse a thousand years of European history into the collective "Middle Ages" (which often is summarized as the "Dark Ages") , students in the year 2600 might be reading (or having information being electronically implanted in their brains) about how the Middle Ages were followed by the Age of Nationalism. There will be a short summary the years 1400-2200 which explains that nations arose, wound up in constant conflict with one another driven by antiquated notions of patriotism which leaders exploited. The serial chaos which prevailed reached its peak with a mid 20th Century conflict which killed seventy million people.
Then there was a prolonged stalemate as the power of weapons became such that no one dared use them. Finally toward the start of the 22nd Century, globalism and world government became seen as....etc."
And that may be all that the folks of the 2600's feel people need to know about that era.
Arthur C. Clarke once argued that man is a product of his tools but our tools have advanced to the point we may be living on borrowed time. By the 25th Century we should know whether our time has run out or whether we and our tools will merge into one (Think the Borg) .
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