(Not) Wireless Wednesday: How Twitter is Rewriting History!

I'm fully aware that it is Wednesday, and usually my Wednesdays are preoccupied with phone news, but not today. Instead, I want to talk about how technology in general is changing the way history is being recorded.

I recently started school again, and one of the (unfortunately) required courses for my History major is History and Historians, which focuses largely on the most boring part of history: Writing about it. Now, I know not everyone loves studying the past like I do, but allow me to say this: If you think reading about ancient events is a snooze fest, try reading about reading about it. Anyway, I'm expected to learn and write about primary sources, which can at times be the Holy Grail to historians. Especially when dealing with the day to day lives of ancient peoples, scholars have been known to get pretty tight in the pants when they come across an old letter about some generally unimportant business deal, or even graffiti from Ancient Rome talking about their favorite gladiator.

The problem is, these sources are pretty rare because back then, your average Joe (er, Julius) was either unable or just didn't want to write down their every day activities and thoughts. When they did write letters about current events to each other, the paper usually wasn't the highest quality and wasn't cared for or just ceased to exist. We often have little to go on when it comes to the minutiae of life. That's where Twitter has changed everything.

To be fair here, it isn't just Twitter. Social Media (the collective phrase for social networks like Twitter and Facebook, blogs, and other such things) in general will shape a huge part in the indexing and retelling of events in our time. Now that the internet has provided everyone with microphones and an easy way to record their rambling (Don't worry, I'm very self-aware right now), we have a massive shift in paradigms. Where guesswork and filling in the blanks were necessary before, we now have an abundance of data. Entire corporations have been created for the purpose of collecting and indexing the massive amount of data.

It brings an interesting new challenge to writers and scholars of things past (puns!). Never before have we had to eliminate primary sources. Many people criticize Twitter for being a cesspool of irrelevant non-information, that nobody cares about what random people had for lunch. Generally speaking, I affectionately refer to such people as turbonerds, but in this case, they're almost right. The next generation of historians will have to focus less on connecting the all too scarce dots and more on ignoring a whole lot of dots referencing Jersey Shore.

Oh, and in case I use some of this for a paper in the future and the dreaded TurnItIn.com tries to screw me, I am that kid in your history class, Professor. And I give me full permission to use this work in the future. That was cool.