On the Bright Side

I took a course this year about Britain in the nineteenth century. When it came time to research my thesis, I was astonished at the amount of archived information available. Primary sources such as personal letters, diary entries, notes on calendars, and comments in the margins of books proved themselves vital in my quest to dig a little deeper. Casual banter about the day’s politics, or a comment about what was seen in the store window that day were, for me, artifacts of my archeological probe into daily life in Victorian England. I began to wonder about the details of our modern lives that are recorded electronically. What if my subject’s best ‘stuff’ was in emails or on Facebook? Would some of the nuggets that were instrumental in my research have just fallen into some electronic abyss few years after he passed? Will ours? I have no box of letters in my closet. Some of my best writing is on my blog. What will historians 100 years from now have access to? Public figures will leave...