The Internet and History

I've been thinking about how our understanding of what's going on in the world is presented through and shaped by the internet. I read a chapter about "New Historical Analysis" for one of my classes, and the basic premise was that history is not objective reality, but actually a story told by those who lived it which must be interpreted and analyzed as a text. With the internet today, we have an unprecedented capacity to hear multitudes of viewpoints on any event; much of the early insider accounts of the Mumbai attacks came from people sending tweets from the city. One account I read was actually from someone trapped in their room at the Taj.

Of course, everything we read is necessarily viewed with some suspicion; without hard evidence or the supposed hard evidence of "publication" or "criticism", it is up to us, the average reader, to determine the veracity of anything we read online. We all become our own interpreters of history, perhaps leaning on our own biases and pre-conceived ideas about the truth as we see it. I believe that we do all have an opportunity to look past our own ideas and gain a true multi-dimensional view of any topic we're researching, but for the most part, its easier to believe that which speaks to what we already claim to know.

I guess I'm wondering what kinds of artifacts we are leaving behind for future generations. While the internet has opened this wide view of history with many voices, how much of this will be able to be understood or valued in the future? We're creating more than ever, but how much will actually be saved? How much is even worth saving, and who decides?