TH : Privatising the Digital Past

Privatising the Digital Past
Tim Hitchcock, DH, London
http://historyonics.blogspot.fr/2016/06/privatising-digital-past.html

La numérisation des archives a été confiée à des multinationales.
Cette privatisation incite les historiens à faire une lecture occidentale et conservatrice de l'histoire.

extraits :
« It is easier to find details of the Gordon Riots of 1780 online, than it is to locate the archives of the Mau Mau uprising and its suppression; easier to look up the financial records of 19th c. slave holders; than the records of Apartheid.  Easier to trace a 19th-century history of glorified empire, than the messy details of decolonisation »

This conservative way has given « new breath to old ideas and old texts ». 
« It is now easier to read books and articles written in the 1940s and 1950s - easier still for works from before 1923 - than it is to access material from the 1980s and 1990s ».

« Without intent and purpose, by the privatisation of the digitization by corporations we have made normal London’s lack of central planning and governance - it’s democratic deficit ...  We have made normal the idea that a great city can survive without effective democratic systems – leaving a powerful financial elite largely free of democratic accountability ».

« because that digital memory is inherently conservative we build the cultural inequalities that we inherited from a much more small-minded and bigoted era directly into the DNA of the Online »

Tim Hitchcock, Sussex U.
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/336034
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/336034/publications

Le blog - http://historyonics.blogspot.fr

The Old Bailey online - Data Mining with Criminal Intent
http://withcriminalintent.blogspot.fr/

Tim Hitchcock / Robert Shoemaker (2015) - Making History Online.
The internet offers real opportunities for bridging the divide between the academy and a wider audience.
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/56991/

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