Category: February 2 Assignment

02/1/11

You are being recorded!

Technology has advanced immensely in the past few decades, and as a result society has become more and more reliant on it. Along with the advances in technology came changes in other various aspects of society such as communication and government. Not a day goes by that people do not use the Internet or technology somehow, whether it is to send an e-mail, update their status on Facebook or Twitter, post something on their blog, or even check the news. People use technology to spread information and post their opinions on controversial topics. It is only natural that because of this change, the way that historical evidence is gathered, as well as the medium of historical evidence, changes also.

Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Wikipedia are all used by normal, everyday people to transmit personal and general information. It is no secret to the government and the rest of society how influential these websites can be to the public. Therefore the government takes full advantage by apparently archiving the “tweets” posted by every user on the newly popular Twitter, a website where people can “tweet” random thoughts as long as they remain under 140 characters. Many would ask what the purpose of this is? Does the government really care about our random everyday ramblings? The question of whether or not this violates privacy laws is raised in this situation, however the fact that we post these things online make it automatically public. Not only does the government take advantage of the world wide web, but so does society and its people. Recently, WikiLeaks, a site that is not run by the government, released government documents regarding foreign policy. In many cases this shows how normal everyday people take advantage of technology by publicly posting government documents. Both the government and its citizens make use of the advanced technology presented to us today which is why the different aspects of historical evidence has changed.

02/1/11

Crossing the line or making history?

Historians may be able to learn a few things on peoples tweets or wikileaks. However, how can the government get away with archiving or obtaining this information without the consent of the individual and how will they know which information will be useful later. The truth is, no one will know what the future will be like or what information can be kept for future use or purposes. What if this new form of technology can be something useful.. Even the simplest tweets or wikileaks may be helpful. They say that history should be learned in order not to repeat the same mistakes. With this being said, if we were able to view more documents from the past we may not be in certain situations. But we do have to get with the time. Tehnology has grown rapidly and we have the equipment to make impossible things become reality. Therefore why should we not see how successful it may turn out to be. It is a sticky situation because it must be within the boundries of peoples right to privacy. Do people have to agree with this. But in a way what is there to agree with? Everyone puts their stuff out on sites like twitter for random people to follow so there should not be any problem with archiving it. This situation is much more complex than it may seem. Hopefully historians would be able to get information they need and hey maybe someday one of us can end up famous.

02/1/11

Data of The Future

Technology has greatly improved many or most of people’s life throughout the years of computer era. The web has become a place where most people browse for information about just anything; anywhere. Social networking certainly provides unlimited service connecting people all over the world together.  Then again since free social networks like Facebook and Twitter involve with many privacy issues. Many users are concern that their personal lives are being exposed publicly. Yet many idiotic people are posing up statuses or pictures that are laughable to others. No matter what kind of information it is, it could be easily post up on the web. Therefore government is concern about the chance of national secretive data being leak out through WikiLeaks to do possible demage to our country. That is why I think the kind of information being exposed on the web should be at a certain extent. Above all these electronic data will very beneficial to future historians. More records and documents will be easier to attain, so I assume most of them will probably be obese since they will just  sitting in front of the computer rather than going out to do research.

02/1/11

“History” wishes historians good luck

To say historical evidence is changing, in my view, would be misleading. Historical evidence will always remain to be the same however the popular view of it will change as will aspects of it, such as accessibility, quantity, and quality.

As time goes on, binary code will become the language of historians, and as it does, historians will have more data to filter until they can reach objective evidence. With the coming of computers, social networks, cameras, or technological developments in general, history and the jobs of historians are changing. Many opinions, accounts, events, etc, have come to light that may otherwise have lain dormant never to be explored. That is not to say that these opinions are inherently worth hearing.

Historical evidence will become more comprehensive, nevertheless that does not change what historical evidence is, but rather addresses the faults of historical, historical evidence. As tweets are logged, search histories tracked, cables uncovered, we gather data. This data mustn’t be limited to textual data, for videos, photographs, and audio files are just as easily captured and stored. Data, although not always to the same extent or detail, has always been collected throughout the ages. It will be up to historians to continuously analyze this new data and ensure that we use the right information to build our knowledge.

02/1/11

Hidden History

Technology is one of the biggest factors that lead to progress. It exists everywhere, and humans cannot really live without it. We rely too much on our technology, which may become an issue later. But it really helps every aspect of life. In history, technology serves as a driver that pushes our civilizations to move forward from ancient time to modern time. And it makes those historians can easily record history and as well as analyzing it. We have history being recorded on papers, wall, chinaware, weapon and many other ways of recording history. The historical evidences are varied in time because of the technology in different time periods. In the present time, the information is mostly stored digitally, which it becomes more accessible than before. Computer and internet become so popular that we can easily access to whatever to we are looking for. In the article “Archiving Tweets,” Lauren argued that do we really need to store those public tweets. My answer to that question is that storing those tweets is wasting our resources. I don’t really think that historians in the future would look at those tweets. It may be interesting to read other people’s posts, but you cannot get history out of it.

For the article “WikiLeaks and the Historical Community,” I am in favor of having WikiLeaks because it reveals the hidden history. It might not be all accurate information but it opens up people’s eyes to see the hidden part of history. Most of the time, the history is written by winners, and the ugly parts always occur under the table. I think the technology in the future would help those historians to find out more hidden history.

02/1/11

Tweeting for a Better Picture

That is absurd! Who would want to record every word any regular person uses to describe their mundane everyday duties. Historians might. Believe it or not, the Library of Congress’ plans to archive every public tweet might actually be of some use. Picture this, an earthquake had just hit New York and already it is in the news. One person tweets about it and like a domino effect millions of others start tweeting the same thing. Except this time tweeters include their reactions and a broken promise to help ease suffering in New York.

One way or another news travel fast and soon billions of people are talking about the tragedy in New York. Picture this scenario and imagine how recording billions and billions of tweets would help future historians draw a picture of one of the darkest times in New York. Although an earthquake may never hit New York, the scenario is very real and can be applied to any event, like the protest in Egypt today. Many U.S. citizens have an Egyptian heritage and a good number of them probably tweeted their opinions about the President who vows not to run for reelection. The tweets can be considered as a small part of a diary or chat room that allows others to read and respond. None the less, the tweets would be used as primary sources to describe the reactions opinions of a wide collection of people.

Certainly Wiki Leaks has become very controversial as it publicly posted national secrets that could potentially hurt our nation. For historians, these leaks may prove to be a good thing as they gain more insight on foreign policies and political affairs. However, these leaks are a sign that calls for greater national security to ensure the safety of our country.

02/1/11

reveal the Top Secrets!

I use many social network as a source of my communication such as the Facebook,but I never use the twitter and I don’t know how that works. From My experience with social networking, either messaging on AIM or MSN, I rarely chat about anything important particularly but I do spend most of my talking there. With the issue of archiving Tweets, I am sure that millions of users use that as a major source of communication and they sure will do a lot of chatting and socializing there. When government archive the tweets, they are able to track down any chat history. It can be an advantage because they may discover conversations that post a threat or do harm to the society. Well with such advance techonolgy, that invaded our rights to privacy, hypothetically, if someone really want to post a threat to the country, I think they will do in a more secret way like mobile phone or mails unless the government is tracking down those too. Overall, I think archiving the Tweets can store massive amount of people’s conversation that can tell something about these people and what is like during that period of time.

I still remmeber when US had won the war of 1812 against the

Great Britain, general Andrew Jackson kept on fighting because the army did not have any advance technology to communicate with once the peace treaty was signed. Nowadays, we have texting, internet, all kinds of advance technology that can make communications across the globe happen within seconds. With that being set, the government can take advantage of the high tech, to keep the secrets to themselves and perfom underground diplomacy or any kind of national act without the public’s realization. Like how Wikileaks trying to reveal the true story of the Irag War, the government are trying their best to contain their top secrets. I think the Wikileak still has some validity issue whether if their sources are reliable or not.

02/1/11

Benefits for future Historians and no more privacy!

A Twitter archive can have many benefits for future Historians . Because every public tweet will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. It’s means the future historians or just regular users who have a Twitter account will know all information about other people. I think that Future historians don’t need anymore to read a books, they just can go on any archive that is stored electronically and get the information. For example, Im using the facebook and when im going through other accounts, I finding out a lot of information about other people which I even don’t know and they accepting me like a friend!?
I don’t like this kind of technology, because you don’t have your privacy anymore. I had a bad experience with this kind of technology, but it will be good for future Historians!<img src=”Facebook fail” alt=”facebook” />

02/1/11

Welcome to the Future of No Privacy!

In the past decade, people have grown to be more and more dependent on technology. Technology offers us many advantages. It allows us to connect with people around the world. In addition, technology has the answers to our questions, even the silliest ones. Most people cannot go a day withour their phones, checking their email, or logging onto Facebook. It is through our reliance on technology that future historians are able to have some insight as to who the people in the 2000 era are like. Tweets, Facebook statuses, and Tumblr posts document our lifestyles. Archiving tweets is a useful method in gathering information. The WikiLeaks dump can also provide valuable data for historians since it will give clues to the political affairs of America and foreign nations. Historians no longer have to dig or go through caves to find information because they can easily find it now.

However, there is a privacy issue. Should the government draw a line as to the type of information it is collecting? I personally do not think it is necessary to archive all the Tweets because some of it contain personal information. This practice of providing information for future historians does make me wonder if there is privacy anymore. I think is great that we found a way to let future historians know more about us but people should be able to have some privacy of their own that nobody can google.

02/1/11

Your information is exposed!

In today’s society technologies are more advanced than it was back then. We are able to put information electronically instead of storing them as books or documents. When Historians need to do research on information that they need, they no longer have to go through books. Instead they can simply go on any archive that is stored electronically and get the information.

For example, the link about Twitter has me thinking that if I were to use a Twitter account and tweeted almost every minute of what I did in a day,  in the future if a Historian wanted to check back on me because of some odd reason, he would just need to look through the Twitter archives. There is no need to ask the people around me about what type of person I am, the things I did and how I lived my life. A Twitter archive can have many benefits for future Historians but it also has a drawback. Having a Twitter archive remove privacy from people, things that people might not want others to see will be seen by all.

With all these new technologies in today’s society, there is no need to worry about losing information because it is safely stored and backed up in case of any problems. This also gives us the fact that we have no privacy since we do not think of all the people that may see our post or blog. There is always an access to most of the things that we use.

In the website Wiki Leaks, we can get so many information about our histories. Wiki Leaks is a type of media that publish original sources along with their stories so readers and Historians can see evidence of the truth. I think that Wiki Leaks is a great site for future historians to look through and gather information for their research. Future Historians would most likely be able to have a more convenient way of accessing information.

02/1/11

The Future of Historians

I’m not a Twitter user, but from what i know about this  social network, i think it’s a great idea to digitally archive all public tweets because it can be quite useful for future historians. I agree with one of the comments on the blog post about Twitter and history http://cac.ophony.org/2010/04/16/archiving-tweets/ that there’s more useless information on Twitter than useful one. However, historians can filter information by, for example, searching by keywords. Having all public tweets archived will allow historians to collect a lot of historically important and interesting information, such as people’s reaction to important events or tweets of presidents and other political figures. In addition, Twitter will allow historians to use rel time every day information.

After reading the article about Wikileads http://hnn.us/articles/134077.html, i think that while the Wikileads documents dump will help historians in the short term, it will probably have a bad effect for the future historians.  Because if this leak, in the future all the information will be much more secured. It will be harder for historians to get access to the important information,  which will probably make them less relevant.

02/1/11

Post At Your Own Risk!

Today almost everything we do is noticed. What we say, what we do, where we go, are all being watched somehow. This provides historians with much fodder to analyze. Historians of the future will be able to look back on the past and have access to piles of information about every citizen. The scientists will be able to gather all this information through Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, MySpace, blogs, and any other web based social network. The scariest part about this is that we give all the information away, without even realizing it. In the past such extensive records were only kept on a few famous people, if even that. Today, almost everybody engages in social networking, allowing any stranger to access more information then they should be permitted to.

The fact that Twitter is being archived is not a surprise to me. Whether Congress announced it or not, everything that is done on the web can be traced back to its user. If one doesn’t want the world to know about something, then do not post it on Twitter. When you post a tweet you are putting your information into cyberspace, and once something is created you can never completely destroy it. It is easier now to spread information then it has ever been. If one wants to invite everybody to a party they can quickly send out an email, post a status, or put up a picture, and soon their entire group of friends would know about that party. The information travels so quickly that we get aggravated if our Internet page takes more than 2 seconds to load. This is what we are dealing with! Due to the ease of spreading electronic data, I was also not shocked when “confidential” data was leaked on WikiLeaks. There is always one person in every office that is willing to give up information for a small price. We see this in many industries. Today we download music CDs weeks before they even comes out, and that is only possible because somebody leaked it out. Leaking private information is nothing new, but due to today’s technology it spreads much quicker.

02/1/11

A Powerful Collection of Any and Everything…No Matter What!

The gathering of historical data is far easier now with the technology that we have.  Unless the digital era crashes or is destroyed in a way that computer technology can no longer exist.  Historians can obtain information without leaving their seats, in a matter of seconds.  No dusty books, that hopefully is in a readable condition.  No documents that can’t be preserved.   Information is sent quickly, gathered fast.  Making it easier to do research.

Reading the article on the archiving of every public tweet actually gave me chills.  We use the Internet for so many different things, that to know that the pictures posted on facebook are no longer yours or that google saves all your searches, and that a tweet stating that ” I’d sleep with my dentist, because he is so hot”, or “I can’t wait till I can eat a bunch of small animals for Thanksgiving”, is locked away somewhere is uncomfortable.  Some time capsule that is!  To imagine that, that’s going to be something that historians will use to study the era that I live in doesn’t sit well with me.  I really don’t want to be remembered that way.


Honestly, I have some major privacy concerns.  It’s one thing to collect data so that you can return to a certain time period, and discuss these historical evidences with the future generations, to better our world.  It’s another not to give people the choice to opt out or better yet, to ask if you can use their belongings.  Honestly, if I knew that Facebook was going to have the rights to my pictures, I would not have joined or posted any up.  Also, I don’t believe most of the entries from twitter should be saved, a lot of these things are just a waste of digital space.

" I know everything!

Where else the information of the wiki-leaks are so controversial, that the government is upset that these “confidential” documents were leaked. What makes them so special, or exempted from disclosure?  If “We the people” can’t keep small secrets or even pictures for ourselves, what makes it okay for “Our government” to keep large ones from us?  It has to be a balance.  I feel that the leaks were wrong, because they may have been obtained illegally, but it shows that all things are being collected in this large pool, whether anyone likes it or not.  That the internet is going to continue to provide the best and worst collection of information… no matter what!

We live in a world where the internet allows no doors to be closed because of it’s vast collection of human knowledge.  It would be nice to know that there is some privacy left.  That there are still some things that are not obtainable through the strokes of a few keys. Yet, I think those days are numbered."The Vast Collector"

01/31/11

Assignment due 2/2

1) Log in as a blog author, by clicking “WRITE a post” in the upper-right hand corner of this blog.  Use the account information that was emailed to your Baruch email address at the end of last week.  Email me at  thomas.harbison at baruch.cuny.edu if you have trouble logging in.

2) If you haven’t already, update your profile and your avatar (picture).  After logging in, you should see a gray bar at the top containing a new menu particular to users of the Blogs@Baruch system. Update your profile by choosing “My Account” / “Profile” / “Edit Profile” from the top menu (gray bar) and follow the instructions.  Update your avatar by choosing from the same menu, “My Account” / “Profile” / “Change Avatar” and follow the instructions.

3a) Read this blog post on the topic of Twitter and history, http://cac.ophony.org/2010/04/16/archiving-tweets/, as well as the comments that follow it.  Feel free to add a comment.
3b) Read this post at History News Network: http://hnn.us/articles/134077.html

4) Write a post on our blog explaining how historical evidence is changing in our own time because of new technlogy.  To do so, click “WRITE a post” in the upper-right hand corner of the blog (as described above).  Give your post an exciting title.  In the body of your post, write 1-2 paragraphs speculating how historians of the future will use evidence from our own time.  Make reference to the posts on Twitter and WikiLeaks linked above.  Add at least three tags to your post in the “Post Tags” area on the right.