This week's topic is titled “The Pasts and Futures/Promises and Perils of Digital History: Reports from the field”. Digital history can be broadly defined as an approach to researching and interpreting the past that relies on computer and communication technologies to help gather, quantify, interpret and share historical materials and narratives it is also Representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the internet network, and software systems. Digital history has many aspects. We can think of digital history as a sphere, a world of digital history encompassing its own universal strengths and weaknesses. Digital history includes producing scholarly work and a methodological approach. However, digital history in action creates a framework through the technology for people to experience, read, and follow an argument about a major historical problem.

Digital history certainly pushes the field of history towards innovation due to the large scale and scope of digital history it certainly encompasses its own perils and hazards. The field of digital history continues to evolve as technology advances. Digital history over the last 25 years has grown into a subfield of its own. The beneficial aspects of digital media and networks follow accordingly.

Beneficial

Capacity

Accessibility

Flexibility: Consumption

Diversity

Manipulability

interactivity

Hypertexuality (nonlinearity)

Perils/Hazards

Quality

Durability

readability

Passivity

inaccessibility

Digital history wasn’t always viewed as innovative or more so I should say attitudes about digital technology greatly differed during the 90’s digital era. The field was somewhat premature or young. A cyber enthusiast had an optimistic outlook towards the direction of a digital future. Techno-skeptics perceived the digital future as a threat. Techno –skeptics often thought that one must resist the lure of the electronic hive; the lure will threaten one's search for wisdom and depth. Then, we have the techno-realist who gives insight based on how actions unfold. There was an ongoing discourse within the academic space about the effect of electronic media on writing. The irony is that history is better suited with the use of digital technology compared to other humanistic disciplines. Digital technology has expanded the field of history capacity. Being able to harness large amounts of data and diverse mixed media. Mix media in history gives more possibilities in deepening the experience, through sound, visuals and interactivity. The scope of accessibility broadened the audience. Now access to materials could be considered easier due to the fact simple having an internet connection can connect you to resources that were unlikely to, if not had access to the internet. The interactivity enables multiple forms of historical dialogue. The fluidity of the internet lies privy to software and hypertexuality. Hypertexuality or nonlinearity of digital media refers to the ease of moving through narratives or data in undirected and multiple ways. Hypetexuality expands the historical imagination. Historical imagination, craft and art can now be measured by quantification. Previously in the 70s the quantitative process could take up to 5 hours.