First of all despite the fact that this article was extremely long, it was at the same time very informational and very insightful. What is something that I feel that is highlighted in the beginning of this post is that life is unpredictable. Sometimes things happen that you can’t control and all you have recorded via hard copy or non electronic sources can be destroyed without any back up, and…poof! No more history. However, now that we have the vast and complex resources we have, that is no longer a problem. We live in a society that is constantly searching for ways to move forward in this technological world we call our own. It seems like in the past 30 years, though, we have been accelerating in our technological expansion. And in order to keep up with the race to become digital, historians are racing now more than ever to open up as many technological and digital opportunities as possible. However, with the race to be the top and the fastest is in mind verses trying to help society push forward into the future, historians may find themselves faced with certain limitations they were not expected because they are blinded. With that said, progress does represent an aspect of faith that our future is unlimited.

Also, there are other draw backs… for example, although it is through a digital route, they are humans who are transcribing the data. Therefore, mistakes are eminent if not almost expected leading to sometimes not everything being saved. In addition, as the article states,

First-time digitizers typically overestimate the production costs and underestimate the intellectual costs such as those associated with making the right selections and providing the most helpful metadata. Even a sophisticated library team at the University of Virginia reports that they “dramatically underestimated the labor and time” in preparing the documents for a digitizing project on Walter Reed and yellow fever.¹¹ An equally important, but even less often considered, cost is maintaining the digital data, as Chapter 8 covers in greater depth.

However, there is accommodating and learning with experience, which you could say for any activity.

On the other hand, when there are obvious mistakes to be made through something so momentous and revolutionizing such as digitizing our world, there are also many benefits that would not be expected when these discoveries were first made. For example, as stated in the article, art historians can greatly be benefited by digital recording of history.
What is also great about becoming digital is because is can make our world smaller and actually bring it closer together. For example, while we all may have disagreements socially, politically, or culturally; there are things digitally that we can all agree on like certain methods such as font and ways to record the history around us with computers.
There are many other aspects to consider as well such as:

• Different languages on keyboards such as latin use
• Digitalizing specific images
• How  to get auido or moving images into digital form
• And much more to be discovered

The final paragraph I found specifically insightful. It draws on the importance of collaboration and what that can lead to innovation wise, but what the authors really focus on is the idea of anyone can become digital if they desire to be. They promote starting something on your own and letting your mind expand with each record recorded and each form of the digital world discovered. It’s not just up to the historians out there to record everything, it’s is also up to us if we care enough to take the initiative.

Well, after finally finishing the article on the Atlantic, “As We May Think” by Vannervar Bush  I feel like it left me thinking about a number of different things. First of all with the amount of content that was provided in this article, I feel like that was unnecessary in terms of the simplistic nature of what the the article is trying to say. The title itself, “As We May Think” almost implies the idea that we think we know the reasoning and context of why and how we create the technology that we do. When in reality the rhetoric of the title implies that we are unable to truly grasp the psychological element for our motivations and therefore, this article acts as a light (in a way) to illuminate the deeper meaning of what we don’t know.

One aspect in the beginning of the article that I found fascinating is that creation will only arise out of it’s necessity to be created. It’s almost a supply and demand quality, but more in terms of innovation and invention. For example, when war strikes a civilization, there is this need for survival and adaptation. And in order for the two to thrive, we must adjust, or invent, accordingly. If there was no war, there would be no need for specific types of weapons that were only created for the sake of survival, not discovery. To simplify, if one takes a darwinian approach, instead of adapting ourselves physically to survive, we adapting our surroundings and creating in order to survive. I sincerely believe that if inventions were created only for purpose of innovation and discovery, they wouldn’t be used for destruction. It’s the need to survive that allows us to be put into the position where creation is not only important, but vital.

On that note, Bush brings up an interesting thought:

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy, have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

 

What happens to our world of discovery if the need to create in order to survive is no longer the driving force. With the use of war as an example, there is an urgency and almost a deadline (no pun intended) for the creation to occur. While, as peach approaches, as Bush states, how much will discovery be actually worth while. I honestly believe that if there is no actual need for the invention to manifest, then it will not. Why would someone want to invent something that is not needed and will not be used. If there was no war, then why would we need specific combat weapons. Everything in that regards is therefore linked to the idea of what is there to come and is conflict and demand to only way for it to be introduced into the world?

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