A friend of mine owns an x-box 360, Microsoft's latest gaming console. The other day, he received an email from Microsoft offering him a month of x-box live for free.

X-box live is the online gaming experience offered by Microsoft. For most games, it consists of some sort of online multiplayer game and a chance to compare your performance in a game with that of others.

It also has a chance to interact with other gamers more directly. Every gamer creates an account. Whenever you play a game online, your username appears for all other members in the forum to see. You can also send text messages and, in most games, there is the option for a shared audio channel.

When my friend received his free month of x-box live, and asked if I would like to create an account, I didn't think much of it. I entered an old email address from hotmail that I now have little use for. I was pretty surprised when, from that email address alone, the x-box told me my full name, phone number, and my home address including postal code.

Where did it come from. The information my friend's x-box regurgitated to me was taken from the user profile of my old hotmail account. Had I spent more time filling out the profile when I created it 9 years ago, the x-box would have been able to tell me more about myself.

I didn't know how to feel when confronted with this information. Having just given the machine my password, I didn't feel that my information was in danger of being leaked. It did make me realize, however, that there must be an amazing wealth of useless information stored somewhere in the bowls of the internet.

For me, the information was still fairly accurate. My name hadn't changed, neither had my phone number, and my parents still live at the same address. This certainly would not be the case for everyone who started an hotmail account 9 years ago. How much outdated information is hotmail hanging on to, if for no other reason than for it to pop up on a gaming console years down the road?

Having no easy answer to my question, I decided to do a little updating of my own. I went through all of the old emails still filed away in my hotmail account (my own outdated archive) and discovered several other accounts I had forgotten about. I remembered that I had an account at purevolume.com which still refered to me as "an aspiring teenage musician", and an online account with an east coast credit union that, while I closed my account with them a long time ago, was still able to identify my name in its records.

These are, undoubtedly, not the only places on the net that I have left my digital signature; just the ones I was able to stumble back across easily.

All this sifting through old information has given me some appreciation of the vastness of the internet. Like I said before, I did not feel scared or threatened by how well my friend's x-box knew me. It was only offering information I had at some point in time made available. It did leave me feeling that there must be an enormous amount of redundant and useless information out there to be sifted through; that the digital archive repeats itself endlessly.

ARCHIVING, EAST COAST STYLES

Before arriving here in London, I was a living in Sydney, Nova Scotia where much of my time was spent either playing music or going to shows. My band (currently named Roots and Rhythm Remain but soon to be called something newer and shorter) was one of many in Sydney. For a small town (only about 40 thousand if you include the surrounding area) Sydney seems to produce quite a few aspiring musicians. We have a strong Celtic heritage, our main industry now-a-days is tourism, and other avenues for entertainment are few and far between. All this results in everyone's cusin's bruder being at least familiar with the fretboard of a fiddle or guitar; Or, if nothing else, being willing to pitch in with a vocal harmony at a kitchen party.

All right, enough perpetuating east coast stereotypes (did I mention we like to drink?)

So how do all of these tipsy rural musicians organize themselves? For me (biased by having been born in a digital age) the answer has always been the internet. Specifically, the website www.cblocals.com It has been my home page for years, and is the first place I go when wondering what is going on in the upcoming weeks, what is going on with my favorite bands, or what idiot ramblings my friends have gotten themselves into lately. The core page consists of a sidebar relaying all of the shows in Cape Breton between now and christmas, a place to post posters or important notices, and links to a message board, buy and sell forum, and media of all types.

In addition to keeping people up to date on the goings on of the cape breton music scene, the site has a backlog of all that has been going on since it started ten years ago. Its creator, Harry Doyle, was in a band back then (77 impala special) and continues to play these days under his new project Vibratonica. In the past 10 years the site has expanded, now being run and moderated 37 administrators. It has enjoyed over 32000 guestbook signatures, 175000 message board comments and many more hits. It is a resource run for and by local musicians, and besides the odd post that is taken down for being in poor taste, is largely self governed.

Cape Breton is not the only place for which such a website now exists. There is now a 'locals' website for Moncton, Fredericton, Halifax, PEI, Newfoundland, and Pictou (as well as a separate website for skateboard culture in cape breton) All of the sites operate under the same principles as that of cblocals.com, and some have enjoyed more posts. All of this amounts to an extensive archive of music news and history for Canada's east coast.

Alright... now for a bit of shameless self promotion. Of course, the beauty of the locals website is that (like most sites) it allows the viewer to get sidetracked, clicking links and wandering around virtual space for hours. Unlike other sites, and exponentially cooler for it, cblocals.com is the only site on the net that featured a link to my band. Ha! Anyways, I encourage you to perouse the locals website and, if you are interested, to check out some of my music. My band can be found at www.myspace.com/therootsandrhythmremain and a few solo songs are online at http://www.myspace.com/industrialcreationmyth

Ive been thinking a lot lately on what digital archiving means for the 'Big' historian. It may help, before reflecting on the connections between the two, to briefly describe what I see as the fundamental viewpoints of 'Big History'.
'Big History' is, to my understanding, the most recent extension of 'world' or 'global' histories. Herodotus, Ssu Ma Chien and others way back in the day, constructed what they saw as complete histories. They related those facts and stories which were fundamental in understanding 'their' world. They traveled to the limits of their world and attempted to explain what they saw, knew or felt about it. There goal in doing so, I believe, was not just to relate this knowledge to others, but to better understand where they fit within it.
What do I mean by 'their world'? I think of world as a relative term . Everyone has their own. A world, then, consists of all of those things which an individual feels influenced by, connected to, or part of. For Herodotus, living on the outskirts of the Ancient Greek empire, the world consisted of the geographic area, politics, and culture which surrounded the Mediterranean. He was limited to this area for practical reasons. He was unable to travel further because more extensive networks did not exist (be it because of an absence of the technology which would have allowed him to travel further or the lack of linguistic and cultural similarities in more distant areas.) Ssu Ma Chien's world was similarly limited (his though, to the geographic area, culture and language of China circa 100 B.C.)
The 'Big' historian, then, would argue that through globalization and technological advances, the scope of the world one feels tangibly connected to has expanded significantly from the time of Herodotus until now. We now have at least some basic knowledge of the complex processes which formed the planet, galaxy, and universe in which we live. Surely we have to feel influenced by these processes. Had they not occurred, we would not be hire in the first place. Suddenly, if we are to understand the world in which we live, and our role within it, we must attempt to organize an exponentially larger amount of information. This is the attempt of the big historian.
Digital archiving is, I think, not dissimilar in its objectives. Using technology that was previously unavailable, it is the attempt, not only to amass, but to organize all the information available to us. Like big history, there is nothing novel about this objective. Also like big history, the amount of information has grown exponentially.
To me, though, the point at which the two seem most strongly linked regards access. Not necessarily access to that which has been archived or that which is written, but rather access to the process of archiving and writing. Perhaps it deserves the title 'potential to participate' more than access. As the information being compiled in either case pertains to (& in some way effects) a global audience, does it not seem problematic that those spearheading both movements are (if not western) from the developed world? If we cannot find a way to effectively incorporate opinions and information from remote areas and inaudible populations, how can we claim to provide a 'complete archive' or 'total history'. I believe this is an issue that must be addressed in order to preserve the integrity of both professions (if in fact the two are separate).
This is an issue I have thought about quite a bit. And no immediate answer or remedy presents itself. At the risk of sounding like a Marxist, or as if I am from the Subaltern School, until everyone has the ability to participate in archiving or history writing, we cannot claim anything as infinite, total, or complete. Until then, all I feel I can do is be aware of how limited my perspective is.

Getting Started

This blog will serve (I hope) as an online discussion forum. I have long loved the process of historical research and writing, but have often been frustrated by the limitations of traditional academic learning. I was never a great student in grade school and it wasn't until I made it to university that I discovered avenues of academic development outside of books and lectures. I will do my best to post often and I encourage anyone interested the content of this blog to post comments, questions or criticism (just try to make it constructive)

As for the anticipated content of this, my little corner of the digital world, I haven't yet decided. Certainly it will have to do with history. More than likely, it will be the sloppy forum where I try to hash out all that is going on in my academic life.

We shall see...