Reclaiming History for the Future
peter.suber's bookmarks 2014-10-17
Summary:
"We live in a moment of accelerating crisis that is characterized by a shortage of long-term thinking. Rising sea levels and other threats to our environment; mounting inequality; rotting infrastructure. Our culture lacks a long-term perspective. Where can we turn for deep knowledge? To history — the discipline and its subject matter....Thinking about the long term requires all of us to adopt the cause of the _public future. The public needs stories about how we came to be at the brink of ecological crisis and growing inequality. The moral stakes require that historians choose as large an audience as possible. In the university, much may need to change to make room for public knowledge. Journals that exist behind paywalls, accessible only to those with access to major public or university libraries, need to be supplemented by open-access sources. We need to put easily digestible versions of our research out in the public, and to peer-review the research behind them as quickly and efficiently as possible. The goal should be crucial new syntheses informed by a desire to act on improving the human condition by imagining multiple futures arising from a great variety of pasts...."