The Future of History

History is interesting to discuss because it is dependent upon the people's interpretation of the past and present. During the French Revolution, history was most likely viewed as the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Scientific Revolution (and all else earlier); the Enlightenment was probably too recent to be thought of as history even though we study it as such now. People weren't talking about the impacts of their actions during the French Revolution because it was a chaotic mess of power and death. Not until later could one step back and really study each fact of the Revolution to find patterns and motivations that just weren't clear in the late 1700's.

Other questions arise for me as well when thinking about history. One is namely how the practice of studying will change a hundred years from now or a thousand. At this moment we have events two millenniums ago or fifty years ago that we call history and that we study. But in the future, there will be even more history, more dates to memorize, more people to remember, more patterns that have emerged, and perhaps people will begin to know less and less about specific events in history because there is simply too much to retain. It is possible that in the future, centuries of dense culture will be blended into one for practicality and for the sake of saving time, because there just won't be enough time to learn everything.  History will lose specificity, each moment its definition, and figures we remember now will be lost in the endless torrent of historical knowledge that will bombard the future.

Throughout history classes over the years I have studied US History, European History, Latin America, India, China, and the Middle East. I've been taught about varying societies and events and how trade routes in Asia connect to America's economy. But now I wonder what I've missed. What schools have decided not to teach us, about events that happened and that were important but not important enough that we had to know them. Even now we are all missing some part of history; something or things that have been lost to the flow of time. We may have skipped over a revolt in the Middle East or a drought in Africa, we may have even lost the entire past of an island in the Pacific. And as significant or insignificant as these events were, we and those who came before us have chosen what we perceive as the content of history. The future of history has and will be defined by what we choose to know and what we decide to let go. History is not just what happened in the past, it is about what we remember in the present.