THE PROPERTIES OF DIGITAL HISTORY

Abstract

This article offers a definition of digital history that focuses on the core affordances of the personal computer and the process by which those properties come to be exploited. I begin by outlining the two properties of computers that I argue define digital history: they process data and (as Janet H. Murray noted) provide an immersive and interactive medium. I then examine how digital historians in the United States have employed those affordances. That process has proceeded unevenly, with computers having been used as a medium before they were employed to process data, and has produced additive forms—digital archives, digital public history, data analysis published in print—that rely on existing formats rather than on the affordances of computers. While such forms are a necessary step toward a more fully realized digital history, their prevalence suggests that it will take some time for that process to play out. The final section looks to recently published and forthcoming long-form digital arguments for the direction of that development. Examples from Stanford University Press's Digital Projects series point to some of the ways that the data analysis and the immersive and interactive medium of the computer might be combined.