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  In their introduction to Digital History, Cohen and Rosenzweig present the changes in how history is both produced and consumed in the wake of the digital revolution. They see both positive and negative consequences to this dramatic shift in access, as more people have more access to the historical record and the scholarship that interprets that data. They raise many questions, both ethical and practical, and their book offers historians a guide to navigating the new technology that will help them capitalize on the benefits while avoiding its liabilities. In “It’s a Wonderful Block,” Mark Oppenheimer offers readers a chance to zoom in to a particular place, a single block of West Rock Avenue, New Haven. Seeing the neighborhood through his eyes, he gives an interesting, detailed account of his block as an organism, and what he thinks are the dynamics that make it a great place to live. He places these dynamics within the context of trends in urban planning.  

 At first glance these two readings would seem to have little in common. Upon reflection, perhaps the microhistory of what makes a city block ‘work’ for its residents can be seen as a type of material that can now be accessed by many due to the digital revolution. While it was published in a magazine, it has been accessed here digitally. Its author is not a historian in the traditional sense, but his narrative could be accessed digitally by historians in the future trying to tell the story of urban planning or New Haven history. While Digital History is from 2005, and the technologies have evolved, the ethical questions they ask continue to be relevant.  One especially important change is the nature of how all this data is stored. Will the cloud remain a reliable storehouse? Will the democratic nature of the internet survive? And who will control the data it contains, the producers of content or the storage entities? Will the blogs we create for our careers be available to posterity? And what role,if any, will AI play? For me personally, these are interesting questions as I learn to ‘do’ history, as the definition of who and what a historian is continues to evolve. 

Comments

  1. Jason W. SmithJune 2, 2024 at 9:55 AM

    Good, Brian. I like your framing of Oppenheimer's approach as block as organism. I think I agree, but I'm wondering what you mean exactly. Can you elaborate?

    These are all good questions, and one's very much still up for debate and decision, although certainly trends have moved us in a number of directions. As far as connections between the pieces, I might add a kind of commonality that decentralizes as common to be readings. As much as urban designers can "plan" a particular engagement with neighborhoods and a construction of community, Oppenheimer would argue that it's people who can direct a narrative, establish a neighborhood ethos, etc. In a similar way, we see the internet's promise in hypertextuality as a way of decentralizing certain hierarchies. For Oppenheimer, the absence of hierarchies, I think, is something that makes West Rock Avenue "work."

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    1. Brian SmithJune 3, 2024 at 7:36 AM

      Oppenheimer described a great block as a delicate ecology, in a perpetual state of flux; which made me think of it as an organism, rather than a static place with a certain built environment and a fixed demographic profile. Much like an organism it is a living thing, constantly evolving as residents age and new neighbors move in.

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