Hi folks,
A student sent me an email with this question --
I’ve been ruminating for some weeks on how we view what is history and what is current events differently.
I have two thoughts that I’d like your opinion on w/regards to that.
I think there has to be a group of historians whose job it is to capture and interpret recent events before the participants pass away and the temporary documentation gets destroyed. People who write biographies, gather oral histories, and then turn that into some sort of reasonable historical account. We depend so much on primary sources that we need objective “gatherers” IMO.
As we become more interconnected the volume and velocity (V2) at which information flows thru society has magnified. Volume is the amount of information we handle in any 24 hour period and velocity is the speed at which a piece of information passes thru a group. The old Churchillian saw of “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets it’s pants on” comes to mind. It occurs to me that we need to get at the truth faster and get it out faster to combat biased views b/c of the V2 phenomena.
Have at me Obi-Wan.
Great question -- right up my lane as I am no longer a historian but a philosopher so I can philosophize here ;-)
Here's the video response