I was doing some light reading last night on some historial events that occured in the past century and I came across a number of first hand accounts on USENET of events that took place around thirty years ago. It got me thinking about how our history has been, is and will be documented.
When I studied history at high school a lot of emphasis was placed on importance of source documents, in ancient history we were often talking about engravings on walls and tablets as well as well preserved pieces of parchment whereas in more recent times we have digital records which can be easily duplicated and don’t suffer the effects of errosion over time.
Still – it occurs to me that those engravings on walls and tablets have lasted thousands of years, what is to say that the digital records we have today will survive the constant churn that occurs on the Internet. Which sites can we point to and say here is a permanent record of humanity?
Certainly Wikipedia is a contender here, but it misses out on some of the really interesting tidbits which come from subjective first hand accounts. For example, one of the most interesting stories about Otto von Bismarck was that when he had visitors he would put a shot through their window if they didn’t wake up at an appropriately early hour.
I have no idea if this story is true or not, but there must be some source document that provides a first hand account. The problem is, as people that know about this story disappear the possibility that it will be added to Wikipedia diminish – and a great story that helps shape perception of the man is lost.