History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
scholars-stage.org
History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
1–10 of 44 posts
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#2Sima Qian chose suffering and mutilation over death to complete his life's work.
The written word can persist throughout space and time. What will happen to our digital archives?
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#3Also don’t forget Anna Komnene.
She was the oldest daughter of Alexios I (who unwittingly kicked off the Crusades).
After unsuccessfully trying to overthrow her younger brother, she was exiled to a monastery where she ended up writing the Alexiad which provides much of our information about the early crusades including first hand descriptions of some of the key players as well as as weapons and tactics.
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#4Sima Qian chose suffering and mutilation over death to complete his life's work. The written word can persist throughout space and time. What will happen to our digital archives?
Even paper needs shelter. It must be kept from moths, because they eat holes in it. It must be kept from humidity, because it causes the fibres to expand and the ink to run.
It stands to reason that Sima Qian, if he cared about posterity, would have submitted his works to people who make it a point on preserving records.
Similarly a person is writing a digital work, they will need to go through a digital analogue of the same process, if they want to preserve their work.
The process of bit entropy acts like digital moths.
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#5Tanner is one of those people I might disagree politically with from time to time but who nevertheless convinces me of the alternative point of view regularly. I see he disses my man Herodotus right off, so now I need to read this to see why.
There is, of course, a margin of "losing" from which no history can return. Anyone know about Khazar history? What happened to those guys? The Mongols happened.
His series on the Soviet "cybernetics" movement was also fascinating.
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#6> A man dies only once
Interesting words from a man who has died but of whom we still speak. And fitting that they come from a person who some say invented history; there wouldn't have been counterexamples.
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#7Tanner is one of those people I might disagree politically with from time to time but who nevertheless convinces me of the alternative point of view regularly. I see he disses my man Herodotus right off, so now I need to read this to see why. There is, of course, a margin of "losing" from which no history can return. Anyone know about Khazar history? What happened to those guys? The Mongols happened. His series on th…
[flagged]
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#8Sima Qian chose suffering and mutilation over death to complete his life's work. The written word can persist throughout space and time. What will happen to our digital archives?
Even paper needs shelter. It must be kept from moths, because they eat holes in it. It must be kept from humidity, because it causes the fibres to expand and the ink to run. It stands to reason that Sima Qian, if he cared about posterity, would have submitted his works to people who make it a point on preserving records. Similarly a person is writing a digital work, they will need to go through a digital analogue of…
In 100 years with minimal, passive effort, a piece of paper will be fragile, but usable.
In 100 years, a hard drive will degrade without multiple transfers to new media - an active process.
The barrier to digital archival is much higher than paper archival for the average person, and the internet does forget. There's not really an equivalent authority who preserves records for digital works, is there? The Internet Archive works toward this goal, but their mission is not enshrined anywhere permanent and could be gutted.
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#9Tanner is one of those people I might disagree politically with from time to time but who nevertheless convinces me of the alternative point of view regularly. I see he disses my man Herodotus right off, so now I need to read this to see why. There is, of course, a margin of "losing" from which no history can return. Anyone know about Khazar history? What happened to those guys? The Mongols happened. His series on th…
[flagged]
Would you mind providing links to those “true sources”, please? I’m curious to do some research for myself.
Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
#10Tanner is one of those people I might disagree politically with from time to time but who nevertheless convinces me of the alternative point of view regularly. I see he disses my man Herodotus right off, so now I need to read this to see why. There is, of course, a margin of "losing" from which no history can return. Anyone know about Khazar history? What happened to those guys? The Mongols happened. His series on th…
Why is cybernetics quoted?