Historians Simon Schama and Eric Hobsbawm interviewed by David Frost this past Sunday, were asked about the seeming current popularity of History programming and media in the UK.
SIMON SCHAMA: [in response to Frost’s assertion that “history is the newcookery”] It’s long simmered stew, it’s not fast food. I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected. They want to know where we are, who we are, it gives you a bit of moorings. It slows down time just a little bit, connects you to a longer reach of time. It’s like a, you know, I wouldn’t say it has a sedative effect – you don’t want people to go to sleep, it should be exciting as well – but it’s storytelling and argument, storytelling and thought, and it just does give us a longer span than a five minute segment in which we lead, seem to lead a lot of our life.
DAVID FROST: Eric, do you think that’s true? Do you think that history on television speaks to the restless souls?
ERIC HOBSBAWM: Yes I think it’s a protest against forgetting. I mean our society is geared to make us forget. It’s about today when we enjoy what we ought to; it’s about tomorrow when we have more things to buy, which are different; it’s about today when yesterday’s news is in the dustbin. But human beings don’t want to forget. It’s built in to them.
If you want to watch the programme – then it’s streamed for a week (until the next sunday’s programme) from the page below, where there is also a transcript:
Petafloptimism 
Hobsbawm on the ‘culture of forgetting’ is quite telling. Based on what I see at Plastic and MetaFilter, an online community with organic growth is essentially doomed to reprise the same issues over and over again, repeatedly varnishing the surface so that the issue looks like an old, under-restored oil painting. These things don’t add understanding; at best, they cultivate debating technique, for immanent verbal victories. Flame war on high.
Tools for memory, though: that’s the thing. And perhaps it calls upon the lifestreams metaphor, but also upon the ability to recall what has been said, better. Memory’s still the best tool: our capacity to associate, whether in straight lines or tangents, still cocks a snook at technology. But that’s perhaps because people haven’t really tried properly. Isn’t it better to marshal the tools so that you can offer a part-answer that might have value in the future, rather than enable an apparent victory that only applies for that one moment, in that one context?
But yes: I think it’s possible to be “still, and still moving”, to give Schama’s comment an Eliotic turn. And Eliot was right in his thoughts on tradition, not so much a varnishing as a scraping away at the varnish. The effort, though, to appropriate yourself a well-cleared foundation that’s other than your present location: pivot and fulcrum. That’s the thing. And everything about this medium interdicts it, forces you back into the tidewash.
Hobsbawm on the ‘culture of forgetting’ is quite telling. Based on what I see at Plastic and MetaFilter, an online community with organic growth is essentially doomed to reprise the same issues over and over again, repeatedly varnishing the surface so that the issue looks like an old, under-restored oil painting. These things don’t add understanding; at best, they cultivate debating technique, for immanent verbal victories. Flame war on high.
Tools for memory, though: that’s the thing. And perhaps it calls upon the lifestreams metaphor, but also upon the ability to recall what has been said, better. Memory’s still the best tool: our capacity to associate, whether in straight lines or tangents, still cocks a snook at technology. But that’s perhaps because people haven’t really tried properly. Isn’t it better to marshal the tools so that you can offer a part-answer that might have value in the future, rather than enable an apparent victory that only applies for that one moment, in that one context?
But yes: I think it’s possible to be “still, and still moving”, to give Schama’s comment an Eliotic turn. And Eliot was right in his thoughts on tradition, not so much a varnishing as a scraping away at the varnish. The effort, though, to appropriate yourself a well-cleared foundation that’s other than your present location: pivot and fulcrum. That’s the thing. And everything about this medium interdicts it, forces you back into the tidewash.
For my research, I am eager to get in contact with Eric Hobsbawm. Do you have his e-mail address?
Lars Kleberg
For my research, I am eager to get in contact with Eric Hobsbawm. Do you have his e-mail address?
Lars Kleberg