Maintaining Historical Materials: An Anti-Luddite Perspective

Improved Essays
Maintaining historical materials requires an anti-Luddite perspective. As a Luddite pertains to someone who is opposed to new technologies, this kind of opinion can ultimately hinder the preservation and future of historical materials together. A Luddite perspective also limits the relevance of materials, because a community that is impacted by the subject matter may not be able to access it do to distance or other such barriers. If the materials were maintained online as well as in person, it would increase its overall influence.

Having historical literacy enables people to learn skills to think historically; Gutterman argued that there is a lot of danger that public historians give up to the community. To maintain historical materials, it

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    John Fea attempts to answer the question posed in the title of his book, “Why Study History?” He answers this question in eight chapters that talk about the different aspects of history. In chapter one, Fea talks about the role of historians as “revisionists.” Though history can be revealed through simple facts, it is meaningless without a story. Historians try to identify the story behind the facts by following the five C’s: change, context, causality, contingency, and complexity.…

    • 374 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    History is a subject based on story telling. Sometimes, it is based off letters and written documents. History is not written down for others to learn in a nonbiased opinion in the present moment. Historians must go through these documents later and decide what is biased, and what is not. They must read about an event from multiple perspectives and try and pick out what happened and what is an opinion.…

    • 1531 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In conclusion, Moyers demonstrates the importance of history and the way it can help current and future conflicts happening in our civilizations. Moyers expresses the loss of concern for history. He does this through deeper meanings and observations on possible reasons people seem to have lost interest in history, such as a lack of relevance to the modern world. However, there are matters occurring in today’s communities that can correspond to some of today’s…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An individual will prefer to use the Internet for browsing than going to a library and looking for the same information in a book. It is quite possible that there will come time when books will no longer be around because people are addicted to the multimedia world. According to Bradbury, various historical and political parties dictated the correlation of people into burning books and going to the…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This excerpt from Ralph Nader’s The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood depicts the significance of the traditions of history, education and argument, and civics as well as express how these concepts are connected. While Nadar experienced these things as a child and his narrative refers to events when he is younger, these virtues are vital to the engage citizens to actively participate in government and impact their communities. To gain more aware and active citizens, these citizens must be equipped with history. In Nadar’s writing, history takes the form of stories and experiences of past places and peoples. As Nadar and his family visited their native country, they “absorbed the cultural history of custom, myth, folklore, festivities, food, humor, and religion ” (52).…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A historian needs to describe the various influences of the age, the climate of opinion or intellectual atmosphere, and the effect of that period of history on subsequent centuries. Above all, the historian will attempt to show the meaning of the events so that readers will understand the significance of the period to human existence Porter, 2002). Could the Great Depression have been avoided? Most historians will agree that the two main factors that lead to the Great Depression were the crash of the stock market, and the Great Plains Dust Bowl.…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The famous quote from George Santayana “Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, underlies the cruciality and importance of preserving our historical past, due to the belief that history itself would always resonate and reoccur throughout the spectrum of time. In encouragement to the preservation of our history, Daniel Boyd’s artwork ‘Untitled PSM’ (2014) conveys the idea of how the trajectory and movement of historical knowledge that is passed back and forth becomes lost and forgotten throughout time. As a result, due to this lost of information we are conditioned with the inability to fully comprehend our past or to a larger extent, even the possibilities of the future. ‘Untitled PSM’ is a large oil and archival glue…

    • 991 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    History. Let’s just say theres a reason its called history and not the truth. By dissecting its parts we realize that the word itself conveys its meaning. History is, his story. Taking into consideration that“his” is not always a male but the one thing that stays constant is that his story is never exactly the same as her story or the other guys story and most importantly not, your story.…

    • 1582 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Midwife’s Tale is the story of Martha Ballard’s life based off her diary written from 1785-1812. The film depicts what the life of Martha Ballard was like, including sickness, birth, and death. The film showed the life of Marth as a town midwife and doctor in the 18th and 19th centuries. The film was told through reconstructions of the past based on Martha’s writing throughout her life. Historian Laurel Ulrich told the life of Martha Ballard based on the primary source, Martha’s diary.…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Radical’s Radical Plan to Eliminate Radicals When I was younger, I remember many days where I came home from school and asked my dad “Why do we have to learn history. It’s not like it's going to help me at all when I’m a grownup.” I could understand why we would need to learn subjects like English or math, and their applications in the “real world”, but I was always stumped on history. Puzzling me, he would respond every time by saying “those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.”…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In History “In History”, by Jamaica Kincaid, weaves together the stories of Christopher Columbus, George Clifford, and Carl Linnaeus so that the reader may understand why the author is questioning her own history and those who are like her. Kincaid questions us, “What is History? Is it a Theory? Is it an Ideal” She answers these questions through the stories of these three men as they come across and label foreign people, lands, or plants. Kincaid implies that the act of identifying and labeling unfamiliar with familiar terms are taken from these men 's subjective lives.…

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In his speech, “Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are,” historian David McCullough demonstrates that it is important to learn and understand history because of its influence on present-day society. McCullough emphasizes that past generations were inexperienced and imperfect, but their improvisational character shaped destiny. Additionally, McCullough mentions the “hubris of the past”; everything that people are doing now, having now, and thinking now is the best it has ever been. Finally, McCullough stresses that today’s citizens cannot understand the decisions made throughout time without learning history to recognize and comprehend the differences between past and present-day attitudes.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This onslaught of technology has reduced our ability to stay informed in all aspects of our lives, and this includes keeping educated on current political events. Singer is not to be held accountable for not acknowledging those who are naturally apathetic or apolitical. Since his argument and main claim is based on technology, however, he must address technology’s broad transformation of society into a more apathetic group of people due to the fact that technology has complicated the information retention process and made it harder to…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “History …is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by its many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do… And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history, which has placed one where one is and formed one’s point of view.…

    • 1334 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    When most people think of a history class they imagine sitting in a dark lecture hall taking notes off a PowerPoint presentation, memorizing a few dates and people, repeating it on the test. Truly studying history, I learned, is more than memorization of a previously told story and accepting it as true. In this class I have learned history is about actively engaging the material, picking apart the details and nuances, creating and using timelines, finding deeper meaning in the material, asking questions, then looking again and digging deeper. It is not a passive study and not about memorization as I believed at the beginning of the semester. History is about asking questions and looking for answers, not just accepting what is already there, but…

    • 1696 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays