"The Most Basic Apprehension of Our Condition Demands a Scaling-Up of Our Enquiries"

"The public future of the past is now firmly in historians' hands. History as a discipline is poised to recover its ancient mission as the guide to life but in a new guise as a critical human science, capable of judging data, incorporating it into complex narratives, and presenting its conclusions in forms accessible to the widest possible range of publics as well to those who make the policies that shape all of our lives. Historians now have more evidence–more data–in more forms available to them than ever before. Using digital materials and the tools to make sense of this data, historians can perform analytical feats that would have required a lifetime of immersion a generation ago."


In Aeon, David Armitage and Jo Guldi champion the longue durée over the Short Past.


Annalee Newitz in io9 responds.