In class Daemian brought up the point that history is our relationship between memory and wisdom – a personal experience with our own memory. He said that with time, history is becoming more vivid. I guess for me, to really get a grasp on an idea, I have to question it from all sides, and in this case, I wonder if new media is really making our history more vivid.
Obviously, we all know that if you travel around the world, you will find different accounts of the many wars of the past. It’s all perspective, or again, an experience with our own memory. Those living in Europe would probably have a different view of WWI or II than Americans living here did. It has all been affected by our culture; therefore, are we saying new media is going to get rid of this bias? Sure, we now have more documented photographs, videos, and recordings of events happening today, but who is to say there is no bias? And in that, it may be even more dangerous that our history is tampered by the amazing capabilities of our new media.
We are a generation prone to “Reality TV” and hopefully, many of us, if not all of us know how “REAL” the footage is. Though I’m not a huge MTV buff, I’ve witnessed, as I’m sure many of you have, the reality of “The Real World”. And after viewing a few minutes of drunken screaming, fighting, and crazy regrettable nights (and the occasional normalcy), all I can do is sit back and laugh knowing the power of editing. A comment said by one character about one thing can be moved to apply to something totally different.
Right now, as we are living our history, we seem to know what’s real, what has actually happened, and it is vivid and true. But 100 years down the road, is our new media going to tamper with our history? I agree to some extent there are going to be better accounts of things, but it’s scary to think of the power of new media.
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