New Identities and the Cultural History of #GamerGate

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If you have an ear to the gaming world, you might have recently read about the #GamerGate campaign and the furious debate between its supporters and opponents. Both sides hold complex opinions that are blurred by the variety of individuals supporting them – it’s hard to pin down what each actually represents. The diversity of positions and actions taken in the name of one side or the other obscures any claims to the debate’s cohesion. To better understand #GamerGate, we turn to cultural historians to shed light on the problems raised by the messy divides of the newest “culture war” in 2014.

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Lament of 32: The Canadian Government and Information Control

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Over the past few weeks we have begun to explore the world of professional history as currently practiced in Canada. Some of our most recent blog posts have focused on student life, academic publishing, and the traditions and evolution of the specialized historical community. Today we investigate the role of the Canadian government in information control, in an effort to provide further insight into the mind of the historian.

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Heartbleed in Context: A Brief History of “Hacking”

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The recent Heartbleed attacks that exposed vulnerabilities in some of the most well-known Internet moguls resulted in one of the most severe security incidents in the history of online data transfer. The Heartbleed security bug, technically identified as CVE-2014-0160 and called “TLS heartbeat read overrun,” is found within the open-source OpenSSL cryptographic library, which is used to provide Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption capabilities for data in transit on the Web. For those of us a little less tech-savvy, Heartbleed provides “hackers” access to information stored on commonly used servers. Of the more popular websites, Heartbleed revealed vulnerabilities in sites including Yahoo!, Pinterest and Reddit, all of which hold personal user information that may have been lost to data theft. In this post, we place the recent Heartbleed attacks in historical context with a brief overview of “hacking” history.

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Anyone Can Cook: AskHistorians and Engaging with History

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One of the recurring themes of Clio's Current is history in the digital age. As the existence of our blog suggests, we are continually trying to map out the space historians occupy in 2014 where we are no longer restrained to the “real world.” The virtual world of the internet is a diverse, complex and often chaotic space. Our blog is a “work in progress” as we seek to define these new boundaries. Regardless, there will always be a responsibility for historians to communicate history to the public. This post examines one aspect of the new digital “tool set” of historians, how we use it to fulfil that responsibility, and the online community where historians of all stripes are doing the same: /r/AskHistorians.

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If Information is Currency, Politicians must Share the Wealth

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Politics in Canada is changing. New forms of connecting with voters is transforming how Canadian politicians interact with the public and present their policies to Canadians. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is praised for his tight control of information in an age when information spreads instantaneously. The Conservatives' control of the public “message” about their party and intentions is part of the reason behind their continuing electoral success. However, we think that this will no longer be the case. It's been noted that information is becoming a currency in the digital age. Today we explore some of the history behind that idea and its implications for Canadian politics.

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Nielsen to Netflix and Radio to Digital

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 Over the last year Netflix stock has excelled both literally and figuratively. More and more North Americans are using the online streaming service to watch TV shows, movies and documentaries. The capability to “binge” on a show, where you watch many episodes in one viewing, is more entertaining than having to wait week to week on network television. We know this because Netflix has detailed knowledge of its audience's viewing habits. The direct access to a consumer's behaviour has given Netflix the upper edge over traditional media outlets. They are able to shape their programming using massive amounts of data. It is dream that has been a chased for a long time in the world of media-providers, going all the way back to the age of radio.

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Film Reviews in the Digital Age and the History of IMDB

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Times of great change are always appealing to historians – if only because change gives us much more to talk about than its sibling, continuity. Changes over time, large or small, is the bread and butter of history. Perhaps that is why the advent of digital society is so intriguing. We've talked before about some of the transformation of digital society. Today we can witness a vast array of transformations all happening at once. Even seemingly innocuous facets of our lives have been affected, such as how we choose what movies to see.

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A Whole New World: The Digital Generation and the Road Ahead

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If you are under the age of 30 and reading this blog, you've probably read, heard, or experienced the stereotype of the young North American adult. We are apathetic, we are lazy, we need constant attention. We might be more “civic minded” but we do not act on our principles, only on our desires. Welcome to the Millenial Generation, or Generation Y, or whatever label that groups us together. If you believe everything you hear, we are failures-in-progress. We can't find jobs, we live with our parents far longer than we should, and we are entitled. We are the generation that just barely remembers a world without computers and the internet and we don't remember the Cold War at all. Even our major shared experience, the attacks of 9/11, does not strictly define who we are. We did not decide the path of consequent American or Canadian interventions, instead most of our generation passively watched it unfold or, as members of the armed forces, followed orders to act. We are a product of our times and we are on an uncertain road. Like Bob Dylan once said, the times they are a-changin'.

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Reflections on Clio's Current

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It has been almost three months since we launched Clio's Current.  We are about to introduce a four-part series where we explain our idea of history and its practice in the 21st century.  Before we do that, it is worthwhile to take a day and reflect on our time as authors of this blog.  We will examine our goals, the challenges and failures we've faced, and discuss our experience of blogging history.

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The Virtual Public Sphere

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Earlier this week we examined some common threads connecting the emergence of an information society during the Renaissance, the invention of the printing press, and the spread of the printed book to today's digital information society. Let's continue that connection with an examination of another transforming aspect of digital society historians will have to consider: the public sphere in the age of the Internet.

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Precedents of the Digital Age

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One of the greatest questions of future historians will be how to address the digital age. The advent of personal computers, the internet, and more recently, increasingly powerful mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, have transformed our society. Today we can access information, talk to one another, and interact with societal institutions in ways that were near unimaginable two decades ago. How will historians address the challenges raised by emergence of digital society?

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The Digital and Print Revolution

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All sorts of media are dealing with the consequences of the digital age. From movies and music, to newspapers and books, any industry involved in the distribution of media has been affected. There are signs that such changes are increasingly impacting the world of academic publishing, which might have an enduring effect on new scholars for years to come.

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