First published in 1994, this essay was the subject of some controversary, although it all seems pretty banal now. I’ve updated links where possible, although others will stand as memorials to what was.

Academic publishing has always been about commitment. In writing down your thoughts on a particular topic you commit yourself publicly to the ideas behind the words. There is no possibility to significantly modify the argument…at least until the next publication. This sort of public writing is one of the cornerstones of academic culture, and it is based on the principal of peer review, and an economic calculus, that helps dictate what makes it to print and what does not. This is changing.

The grumblings of the neoLuddites aside, the Web is here to stay, and many disciplines are finding increasing pressure to situate themselves somewhere on the digital frontier. Historians, for what ever reason, have been among the first to stake out just such a homestead. In general, however, when historians attempt to write about the web there is still a ‘golly-gee isn’t this neat’ sort of mentality that obfuscates some of the issues raised by this new technology. One of these is publishing.

Probably, within a year or so, historians like everyone else will have worked out some sort of formal policy concerning academic publishing on the Web. Maybe in a couple of years digital publications will be acceptable in hiring situations. Already the Web has transformed the way historians teach and, in some cases, conduct research. Martin Irvine’s syllabus for his course Inventing the subject: gender, sex, and texts, 350-1500 is a particularly good example, as is the collection of Roman legal codes at the Juristisches Internetprojekt Saarbrucken. It is only a matter of time–and in some cases that time has come–before journal articles begin regularly appearing on-line, and then full-fledged books. The Bryn Mawr Medieval Review was one of the first on-line attempts to bring one of the more regular activities of scholarship to the Internet, although it is based on a tactile print idea. There are some instances of monographs, but these tend to be digitalized only after the initial press run is completed. James O’Donnell’s Cassiodorus is one of a few formerly tactile books that are now becoming works in progress again, as readers respond and as O’Donnell makes changes. Irvine, O’Donnell, and a few others are involved in on-line publishing on a number of fronts, and will no doubt play a significant role in formulating the discipline’s response to the Web.

I think the real importance for historians, as well as other scholars, rests not in the digitalization of formal academic prose, but something else entirely. In traditional academic publication, indeed in traditional academic discourse, there is no room for play–for a process of public intellectual activity. Because of this, no one publishes until they are sure of what they want to say, and often are forced into a position because they have to publish. The Web helps mediate the fear of print by moving public writing to a much more communicative and interactive level than academic historians have been accustomed.

Discussion lists, newsgroups, and on-line seminars are indicators of what the Web could do for history and for historical discussion. But the Web can go far beyond any of these resources. Because of its ability to present material in ways unavailable to print publishers, the Web can provide an ever-changing medium for the presentation of ideas. Works in progress would dissolve to mean all works currently on the Web. Ultimately, authors could modify their arguments without fear of censure and ridicule.

Historians could mount sites that encompass not only their text, but some of the evidence as well. Criticism would be quick, and response to that criticism would be ongoing. Scholars and readers of history could provide connections to wider issues or to other sources. Instead of hearing only from the few scholars invited to participate in the formulation of the ideas that make up the core of any work, historians could depend upon a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds. The obvious result, by propelling the investigative process into the public sphere, would be much stronger history.

So much for the hype.

There are at least two big problems with such a scenario. The first and most obvious is the fact that history, aside from the acknowledgments at the beginning of every monograph, and frequently footnoted at the bottom of journal articles, is a solitary pursuit. All disciplines, with the possible exceptions of some of the sciences, operate on the principal that an academic career is the story of the single scholar wrestling with, and ultimately subduing a topic. Publishing on the Web in an act of collaboration goes against the grain. Who gets credit? Whose vita does it go on?

Secondly, there is the argument that publishing as an interactive act can only lead to more noise than signal, that this sort of playfulness is not what academe is about. Historians live and die by what they write; how can a constantly changing text be serious scholarship? If people are not committed to what they write, they will right anything, regardless of how irresponsible or off-the-wall it is.

These are significant concerns, but I would argue they are concerns of a different age. Although cliche, the information revolution is just that. Why is it that we expect history, or academe in general, to remain rooted in the technological era of printing presses and the ideological era of solitary conquest? There is still room, and there always will be, for great minds to struggle with great ideas. But, all has changed. For once, or perhaps again, we can play with ideas, with words, with history. The economic restraints of the press look foolish when, for nearly nothing, millions upon millions of people can read, comment upon, and transform historical writing.

Wider economic concerns are already transfiguring academe. Jobs are disappearing, departments are constricting or dissolving, and the world of young graduate students looking forward to a tenured career is nearly laughable.

What a better time than now.

Tags: historiography