Hello, my name is Kevin Matthews. I am from a town called Stouffville just north of Toronto. I am currently in my second year at Brock studying business. I’m sure this confuses some people as I am in this history class but I have personally always found learning about all kinds of history very interesting. When I graduate I don’t know really what I want to do other than get a job working in an office as that is what most of the courses in business set me up to do. Outside of school I enjoy playing hockey and softball. For softball, I have travelled all over Canada to play at the highest levels winning the Eastern Canadian Championships twice and winning the Western Canadian Championships once. When I’m not playing hockey or ball I like to watch both in their respective seasons with the Blue Jays and Maple Leafs being my favourite teams. The Leafs used to be tough to watch but with the addition of the almighty Auston Matthews, they’re one of the most exciting teams in the league to watch.
In the introductory chapter of the Digital History textbook, the authors Daniel J. Cohen, and Roy Rosenzweig discuss the many various pros or “promises” that will come from digital history as well as some cons or “perils” that come from the technology. Some examples of the some of the promises from Digital History are things such as the prophecy of hypertext providing a new, richer reading experience due to how much information there is to access as well as how readily available it is. But along with this promise there is a negative side seen by skeptics who thought that the digital environment would very possibly be the death of reading as we know it. Another promise that comes out of this chapter is the unmediated access to reach out to everyone in the world quite easily. Another “peril” of digital history is the concern of previously existing digital formats and information existing into the future due to how fragile they can be and how hard it is for them to survive through changes and advances in technology.
Going into the first lecture I had no idea at all what to expect from this class but I chose to take it because I thought it would be interesting learning about history through digital formats. I also liked that it is a history class but doesn’t follow the same layout for grading as every single other history class there is. I’m excited to get to work with the different software’s we’ll be using this year and becoming more acquainted with technology which can do nothing but good things for me in the future.
HIST2P26 