This week’s reading “The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings” presents one of digital humanities greatest areas for concern, and also for opportunity. The information that we gather about a society or a period of time is entirely dependent on the few sources we have available. In the case of this article, we could have never known the entirety of James Hemings’ relationship without alternate sources to support any claims. Often, we are not so lucky. For example, the Incan Empire had a vast majority of their books and documentation burned and destroyed by Spanish settlers. Because of this, historians do not have nearly as much information about the prosperous and advanced society. Since our primary source information is limited, the Incan empire is mainly represented by the Spanish colonizers documentation. They are also now a culture defined by their disappearance rather than their achievements.
This Incan “mystery” is an example of the dangers of digitally archiving the past. Since we do not have a wealth of information published electronically, the general public will not know many important details about their culture. This theme of unclear representation continues throughout ethnographic studies, and has become much faster and easier as technologies have developed. It is increasingly easier to give misinformation to the masses, and easier to have valid information lost among webpages. However, there is an upside to this situation.
Technological advances have made it possible for cultures to represent themselves. Those who have alternate sources, such as oral traditions, can make their own information known. They also can find misinformation and attempt to correct it. Websites such as Wikipedia have already embraced aspects of this idea, but the scholarly possibilities present great opportunities. Utilizing these features will prevent cultures from being viewed as frozen in their own history. And despite the fact that we will not always be able to miraculously reproduce burned books, we will be able to ass to the information that we do know about cultures in an attempt to give them a more well rounded representation.