The most interesting thing I found was the problems of “quality and authenticity” posed in the introduction of “Promises and Perils of Digital History.” The interesting point on this subject is the relevancy sifting through poor quality information to discover the good stuff. Sure, for every website with a piece of wrong information there may be many others correcting it, but that would require the persistence of furthering the search. A historian, basing his research on facts, has to be aware that there are “facts” that circulate the internet very rapidly that very well may be false. The historian has to remain vigilant in finding the truth in the facts of the internet. Are we conditioned to do that? Perhaps not. For example, we see something on Facebook that we like, and all we do is hit the share button, without verifying the quality of authenticity of it. Last election cycle one of my friends shared a quote by one of the candidates that was so absurd it simply couldn’t be true. After doing some research I quickly discovered that it was in fact false. Instead of correcting it, my friend ridiculed me for actually doing the research. Can we, though, be conditioned to verify information? Of course. I guess Abraham Lincoln was correct when he said, “the problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to varify their authenticity.”
Three topics I would be interested in researching during the semester are as follows:
- The Sons of Liberty
- George Washington
- Historical discrepancies between two opposing sides of history (for example, war)