Friending the Past: The Sense of History and Social Computing

• Published in: New literary history Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 1 - 30
• Main Author: Liu, Alan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University Press 01.12.2011; Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subjects: Historicism; Literary criticism; Literary history; Literary style; Mass Media; Narrative history; Narratives; Oral literature; Philosophy; Physical Contact; Social Environment; Social History; Social Networks; Social research; Sociality; Tree structures; Web 2.0; Written narratives
• ISSN: 0028-6087; 1080-661X; 1080-661X
• DOI: 10.1353/nlh.2011.0004

Reflecting on the relation between the media ages of orality, writing, and digital networking, Liu asks the question: what happens today to the “sense of history” that was the glory of the high age of print? In particular, what does the age of social computing—social networking, blogs, Twitter, etc.—have in common with prior ages in which the experience of sociality was deeply vested in a shared sense of history? Liu focuses on a comparison of nineteenth-century historicism and contemporary Web 2.0, and concludes by touching on the RoSE Research-oriented Social Environment that the Transliteracies Project he directs has been building to model past bibliographical resources as a social network.