4 ms·

There's a danger, but also a natural way of things. Why should we default to records being accessible in perpetuity? Mind I can get behind the genealogy argume

• globnomulous 1y ago
  > Why should we default to records being accessible in perpetuity? The historical record is important and we don't know what will be useful to future generations. Take Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms as an example. It briefly recounts the multiple legal proceedings that the Roman Catholic Church brought against a humble Italian Renaissance-era miller who spread strange, heretical ideas about the cosmos (involving the cheese that was apparently the moon's substance and the worms that ate it). Ginzburg draws on Church records, including the man's own written defense, and builds a fascinating picture of his mental world, intellect, and disposition. If I remember correctly, these small, cloudy windows into the Early Modern past even let Ginzburg identify likely traces of pre-Christian, or folk, traditions largely hidden from the written record. This is a funny example, I suppose, because in all likelihood the miller would have been tickled to know that his ideas survived and found an audience not just despite but because of Church persecution. Still, his case nicely illustrates the importance and unpredictable value of the historical record.
  • 20after4 1y ago
    An early example of the Streisand effect? Should it be more accurately named the Ginzburg effect? :D