Preserving History in the Digital Age
Online, June 14-15 was a pretty confusing weekend in America. Two major events happened simultaneously on Saturday: a pro-Trump military parade in Washington, DC, and national “No Kings” anti-Trump demonstrations in towns and cities throughout the country, and internationally.
- The crowd estimates varied widely, for both events.
- The amount of media coverage varied widely. Some news providers lauded one event and entirely ignored or vilified the other.
If you think you know what happened that day, you are probably at least partly wrong.
It used to be book-burning. Now it is simply deleting.
The proliferation of digital information storage has made it easier for history to simply disappear. In the past, a historian could go to an archive to see original pictures, manuscripts, correspondence, and notes from people in the past. Now, scanned versions of such artifacts can be obliterated with a keystroke.
Did you know that there was serious medically based research on homosexuality and transsexuality in the 1930’s? The details are in ashes. In 1933, the Nazis destroyed the research from The Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. Burning libraries, research centers, and museums are acts that make the past less visible or invisible to future generations. The most striking artifact of the Institute’s existence is the newsreel about its destruction. This library of trans history and medical care has all-but fallen out of history.
“Over time their stories have resurfaced in popular culture. In 2015, for instance, the institute was a major plot point in the second season of the television show Transparent, and one of Hirschfeld’s patients, Lili Elbe, was the protagonist of the film The Danish Girl. Notably, the doctor’s name never appears in the novel that inspired the movie, and despite these few exceptions the history of Hirschfeld’s clinic has been effectively erased. So effectively, in fact, that although the Nazi newsreels still exist, and the pictures of the burning library are often reproduced, few know they feature the world’s first trans clinic. Even that iconic image has been decontextualized, a nameless tragedy.” [source]
When it is digital, can you trust it?
If it is digital, has it been manipulated? Look (or look again) at the Scientific American article from 2021. The first picture is clearly generated with AI. It is badly done in all the hallmark ways to spot AI – distorted hands, changes in color levels and texture, appearance of figures added or areas where figures may have been removed.
Does using AI discredit currently produced historical evidence? Hell, yes. Can we read around it? Hell, yes.
What is media literacy and why do we need to teach it, again and repeatedly?
In my distant professional past, I used my teaching degree to teach 6-12th grade language arts. I did a unit on media literacy. I had a book with news articles about the same topic, with different information. It challenged the students to decide what the true story was most likely to be. I miss that book. Every adult should be exposed to it.
However, reading newspapers or watching TV news is so 1980’s. There is more to it now. I guess I have a new topic to study…