An Open Letter to the Historians of the 22nd Century 致22世纪历史学家一封公开信.doc

An Open Letter to the Historians of the 22nd Century 致22世纪历史学家一封公开信 　　In a popular recent academic blog post， the author， a historian， bemoans an imagined decline of diary-keeping in the present era. Future historians will have nothing to write about！ The author urges us to sharpen our quill pens， pull out a piece of vellum1） and begin journaling. “This is your duty，” he proclaims. “Create that thing that historians crave—real， firsthand accounts.” But this is silly， for a number of reasons. To start with， the author is using a blog on the Internet to complain that no one is writing about their lives anymore. The truth is precisely the opposite—we are living through an explosion of personal writing and documentation that is unprecedented in human history. More than a billion people are on Facebook， posting about their days， complete with pictures. Half a billion are on Twitter. There are tens of millions of blogs. And lets throw Instagram2）， YouTube， and similar services into the mix. And of course there is email—which is indeed being saved， as recent news revelations about the NSA3） should reassure all of us. Cats， in particular， are being documented to an amazing extent. Well， you might argue， theres a big difference between Aunt Edna’s Facebook updates and Mary Chesnut’s diary4）. Its worth noting how extremely atypical5） are the handful of historians favorite diaries. As every working historian has come to realize， for every Mary Chesnut or George Templeton Strong6）， there are a hundred surviving diaries of stoic7） Norwegian farmers or busy millworkers that are considerably less than illuminating： November 2， 1863： rained. November 3， 1863： Rained November 5， 1863： Cow dyed. November 8， 1863： Didnt rain In contrast， future historians of my era will have information， both useful and useless， sprayed at them with a fire hose. Its worth thinking about how you future historians can sift through8） the flood of primary-source material to sort th