Digital History and Technology
History Content Focus
My interests in history are centered on the political and social impacts of technology during the nineteenth century. In particular, I have developed a keen interest in the rise of telegraphy after 1844. This interest started as I taught American history survey courses. The section about technological developments during the Gilded Age kept expanding beyond what I could reasonably fit into a survey course. Discussions devoted to Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, Alexander Graham bell and other technology innovators along with the impact of those inventions almost took over the course.
I came to realize my interests in history really centers on how people have used technology to shape society. Many history textbooks place the technology explosion after the Civil War as either a forerunner to or an offshoot of the Industrial Revolution that swept the United States between during the Gilded Age. Technology, however, is one of those topics that has continuity from the antebellum to the postbellum periods and beyond. Telegraphy and the railroads emerged prior to the Civil War and the telephone and automobiles came afterward, which have progressed to aviation and social media.
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Sven Beckert, Eugene Genovese, Edward Baptist and others have made the case that capitalism (or any other economic system) essentially is a social system. Economic systems essentially represent a society's way of dealing with money, wealth, and power. Nicholas Barreyre also linked political issues of the Gilded Age, such as the debates over paper currency and the gold standard, to the Jacksonian debates over the Specie Circular and the national bank. The point Barreyre made was that economic debates over currency are essentially social debates about what people accept as having value in their societies. Of course, that spills into politics. Barreyre examined the Panic of 1873 but came to the conclusion that issues of currency have remarkable continuity even through the traumatic experience of the Civil War.​Technology is similar in that it predates the Civil War and had remarkable staying power as innovators have developed newer and more advanced technologies for life in the twenty-first century.
Digital History Focus
My interest in digital history stems from the interest in technology as outlined above. Just as I am interested in understanding how technology has helped shape society, I am also interested to know how digital technology can inform understandings of historical knowledge. David Berry at the University of Sussex noted in Understanding Digital Humanites how “research is increasingly being mediated through digital technology.” I agree with him when he said digital modes and methods of research are “slowly beginning to change what it means to undertake research.” I also agree with Berry that engaging in digital scholarship can “affect both the epistemologies and ontologies that underlie a research program.” David Bodenhamer at Indiana University has even argued digital scholarship has the potential to “reorient, and perhaps revolutionize, humanities scholarship.” Digital scholarship can eliminate disciplinary silos because it almost inherently favors cross-disciplinary collaboration. The use of digital analyses along with the cross-disciplinary expertise has the potential to completely reshape our understandings of even some of the basic premises of historical understandings.
Sydney Shep, Ryan Cordell, David Bodenhamer, Tomoji Tabata and other scholars have also pointed out that digital tools have provided digital humanists with powerful channels of analysis. Computer programs can analyze massive reservoirs of information for mentions of keywords or phrases and also to detect patterns in research that an individual scholar may not find over the course of an entire career. The proliferation of digital analytical tools has also increased the demand for digitally-produced publications. In fact, as the field of the digital humanities has grown over the past twenty years there have been major disruptions in the print-based hierarchy at universities and and in the private sector where people are engaged in research. In short, the field of digital history represents a relatively new and fascinating way to engage with the field of history. My research has focused on digital mapping but I have also engaged in projects that have included the use of photogrammetry, animation programs, such as AutoDesk Maya, and 360° cameras used to capture street views similar to the Google Street.
Technology and Society
Histories of technology must make clear that people “do” things and not the technology itself. Scholars of the history of technology, can sometimes fall prey to the trap of technological determinism. Barbara Hahn at Texas Tech University has defined technological determinism as “the idea that tools and inventions drive change, rather than humans.” David Edgerton at the Center for Science, Technology, and Medicine has said, “Technological determinism [is]…the interesting notion that society is determined by the technology it uses.” Neither Edgerton nor Hahn ascribe to technological determinism. Rather, scholars of technology, particularly those who belong to the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), typically ascribe to what has been called the social construction of technology (or SCOT) theory. The SCOT theory essentially posits that technology itself does not drive social change but that human beings create specific technologies within particular historical contexts in order to mold and shape their societies. I ascribe to the SCOT theory.
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The fundamental difference between pure technological determinism and the SCOT theory is whether human beings possess historical agency or the inanimate force of “technology” sets the course for the human experience. Technological determinism essentially assigns a teleological feature to technology and society sometimes associated with Marxism. I do not ascribe to the idea that technology predetermines human society. I am more in line with the idea that people possess agency. I do believe some technologies have unintended consequences that can serve as the impetus for social change. New technologies, for example, can allow people to imagine things that may have been previously inconceivable. Though people determine what they want to do with technology, technologies themselves can have altering effects when they fall into the hands of the right people.​ When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, for example, he fully intended the device to serve as a practical telecommunications tool. Edison essentially envisioned the phonograph as another iteration of the telegraph or the telephone. Below is an excerpt from an article Edison published in North American Review describing the uses of the phonograph:
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The practical application of this form of phonograph for communications is very simple. A sheet of foil is placed in the phonograph, the clockwork set in motion, and the matter dictated into the mouthpiece without other effort than when dictating to a stenographer. It is then removed, placed in a suitable form of envelope, and sent through ordinary channels to the correspondent for whom designed. He, placing it upon his phonograph, starts his clockwork and listens to what his correspondent has to say.
Ultimately, the phonograph had almost no impact on the field of telecommunications. With improvements, however, it did allow others to develop the commercial music recording industry. In the context of musical recording, Edison off-handedly quipped, “A friend may in a morning call and sing us a song which shall delight an evening company, etc.” When he introduced the phonograph in 1877, however, he never expressed any ideas about the phonograph being used to lay the foundations for the commercial entertainment industry. Within a few years, however, several companies sprang up with designs on using the phonograph to create a market for recorded music. William Howland Kenney pointed out in his Recorded Music in American Life, “The Columbia Phonograph Company…pioneered the recording of popular musical entertainment…[when] the first commercial recordings went on the market in 1890.” Very soon after, Edison himself jumped into the field of recorded music. This development illustrates how the phonograph altered Edison’s own thinking about a device he had invented. Even so, people created the music recording industry because the phonograph represented a new technology allowing human beings to imagine a new approach to pop culture.