The book is historical fiction and is about the process of discovering and developing penicillin. It took Belfer eight years to research and write the story and much of her research process involved looking at old Life magazines and issues of The New York Times. She pointed out that, now, it's possible to simply search the Times website for the information you're looking for but that, even though it's more cumbersome, she prefers to use microfilm to view the original documents because it provides context. She gave the example of reading an article during the time period in which she's writing and turning the page to find that there was a sale at Nordstrom that week on shoes; she might then include a side note in the story about the character having to run to the store to buy new shoes while they're on sale.
Granted, this is a sort of trivial example but it makes sense. What if she had been researching an article, turned the page, and came across another, small article mentioning the rise of burglaries in a neighborhood at that time that concerned the people living in that area. Let's say that her character lived there - it would flesh out that character to have her mention that she is also concerned about the recent thefts.
I guess that what I'm trying to get at is, are we losing context with the developments we've had in technology over the last few decades or is our context simply different? If I'm reading the newspaper online, my experience will be very individualized. If there's a pop-up ad or an ad on the website itself, it will be tailored to the date, time, and, in most cases, my preferences.
Cookies know that I've been searching for an airline flight from Phoenix to Buffalo for my friend Kim so that, when I'm on certain websites, a Travelocity ad will show up talking about discounts on that particular flight. If I refresh the page, the ad might change to one about the Nook being on sale at Barnes and Noble. If someone twenty years in the future wants to search for and read that same article that I was reading, the ads will be different or not included. Does that eliminate the historical context? How would we change the way we examine this information?
(Oh, and, as a side note on the topic of context...why is it that sponge cake loses all flavor when placed in the context of a Chinese buffet restaurant? Even more importantly, why does it look so appetizing? Why are people, knowing it has no flavor and that the experience will ultimately be disappointing, still drawn to eat it?)
1 comment:
I think about this a lot in my archival work. I go to archives to read the marginal stuff -- to look at what people had to say about the books. I think we still have context and reader response with technology but somebody needs to get on preserving it ASAP. Blogs let us know what people are thinking (and like this comment, what people are thinking about people thinking) but they can be taken down so quickly and replaced just as easily. What we need now is archivists reprogramed for the 21st century.
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