Glimpsed through a veil of fusty empiricism
Goodness me, I'm such a philistine. Half the time when I see an artistic creation, sitting there in its cloud of poignant symbolism and chin-strokey challenged-assumptions, I am as likely to tut as nod. I don't know much about art, but I know what I don't like... and it's a long list. I don't like art that's too smug or too openly manipulative. I don't like simplistically shocking art that treats me as though I'm just a moral-panic button to be jabbed at according to the artist's whim. But every now and again I, you know, sort of see what someone is getting at. Or I think I do (which, as all you post-modernists know, is just as good). I happened by ex-Snowbooker, James Bridle's web-site and saw his Iraq War Wikihistoriography. It's a chronological compendium of all the edits on the Wikipedia page for The Iraq War done up like traditional, multi-volume, bound history books. It makes me think about how news becomes history, about how sometimes history is what's happening right now and about how crowd-sourced information, with all those vying viewpoints, is changing the way historical texts will be laid done for posterity. Plus it's a cool idea which looks neat. Nice one, James.
Comments: 1

I like your comment on how history is happening NOW. Reminds me of SF writer Charles Stross, who said that we think of the history of human civilisation as "recorded history"; but in fact, recorded history has yet to begin. At some point in our future, every event that occurs will be recorded electronically one way or another. That's when recorded history will truly begin.
Posted by: Alan Baker on November 21, 2011 05:17 AM