Old computer users (Was: Re: Laptop (cell phone) in my pocket?)

[Stephen]

Having grown up with a historian (by education if not profession)
history is only complete when as many people as possible record their
thoughts... sadly it is usually the "winner" the gets to write things
down.

but like anything else said it is subjective, the skill and art of it
is compareing as many different possible views to paint a picture...

and even in as honest a representation as we can imagine you and i are
still slanted by our own understanding of a series of events even
without guile or deciet.

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 2:01 PM, Alex Dean<alex at crackpot.org> wrote:
> On Jul 8, 2009, at 9:37 AM, Alan Dayley wrote:
>
>> True history is vastly important.
>
> The trouble here is that history is always written by someone.  It is, by
> definition, an *interpretation* of past events.  A history that does nothing
> but report facts is incomplete and deceptive in its own right.  Events have
> meaning in context, and without that context, the meaning is lost.  It's the
> job of the historian (like a journalist) to present a fair portrait of the
> events which occurred, and to make an argument about their meaning.
>
> Presenting incorrect facts is of course wrong, as is presenting a
> controversial/unusual interpretation as uncontroversial.  I'm not saying you
> can just make this stuff up, because you can't and informed people won't let
> you get away with it.  But, I think it's only possible to talk about 'true'
> history if you take a very simplistic view of what a historian does.
>
> regards,
> alex
>
> ps - So... history was my field before I got into programming.  Fun to see
> it pop up here.
>
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-- 
A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen