When Howard Zinn wrote A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present in 1980, the effect was electric. It was a history book that talked more about citizens than leaders, more about daily lives than state conflicts. While it wasn't the first time that scholars focused on something other than the official histories as told by the winners, it was nonetheless eye-opening for academics and students everywhere. It signaled the end for the "great man" theory of history.
But histories based on the words, records and thoughts of average citizens have faced a serious problem: a paucity of documentation. People tend not to think of their letters and notes as historical artifacts, and for decades, only professionals would carry cameras around with them in their daily lives. Even as historians came to recognize the value of the stories and reflections from every day citizens, the records of key events used by scholars were still largely taken from the reporters and officials charged with documenting and explaining the world.
This is no longer true.
Yesterday's bombings in London will undoubtedly have many repercussions in terms of politics, and economics, and war, but its greatest -- if most subtle -- effect may be the confirmation that we have entered an era where we are all historians.
From blog entries by people in the bombed trains, to cameraphone photos of the aftermath, to wikipedia accumulation of facts (and squashing of rumors), the globally collaborative, connected and (most of all) personal nature of the modern Internet gives us remarkably abundant documentation of how everyday individuals responded to history-making events. Millions of us have online journals -- or, at minimum, send email -- where we can take notes about what we've experienced, visible to anyone who is interested. Millions of us carry cameras with us wherever we go, allowing us to record events as they happen. Millions of us are now historians.
It's hard to overestimate how revolutionary this is. Scholars who look back on events of the early 21st century will not have to rely solely (or at all) on the stories told by officials, or the images deemed sufficiently interesting by newspaper editors. There are almost always more citizen witnesses to events than reporters or political spokespeople; for what may be the first time, those citizen witnesses can have a louder voice than the official records. History can now be written by those who experience it, rather than just by those who believe they control it.
This does not necessarily mean that records of these events will be more "accurate." Like Rashomon, the stories each witness tells will vary, sometimes dramatically. Memories are imperfect, and we all interpret what we see through our own filters of experience and belief. But even if each individual story is a subjective impression, the accumulation of recordings and documents can form in total a far more complete version of a moment in history than one could get from the sanitized revelations from governments and sensationalized accounts from journalists. These personal impressions, in turn, shape the choices made by the citizens in policy, in elections, even in culture and media. Future historians will have a far greater understanding of the events of today than we could hope to have of our own past.
But even if weblogs and Flickr image sets offer greater visibility than handwritten journals and shoeboxes of pictures, they may be no more permanent. Eventually websites will disappear, backup files will become corrupt, and file formats will change. The Internet Archive is a good start at keeping track of what has been on the web, but it has its limits. If we don't think about how to retain our digital records, the most complete historical documentation ever could also be the most ephemeral.
Perhaps this should be Google's next project: Google History, regular snapshots of the Internet, held in multiple archives in multiple locations. They could remain accessible, like the Internet Archives, or could be "locked away" for a set number of years, only making them available to historians after the content's commercial value (or embarrassment potential) has long faded.
If those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, we have in our hands -- and in our computers, and networks, and phones -- a priceless treasure: the opportunity to remember our history in far greater detail than ever before. And it will truly be our history -- the words, images and thoughts of millions of us, documented and retained to help inform the future.
