Computers, Visualization, and History

For hundreds of years historians have used prose and narrative to convey history. This is about to change, thanks to new technology, digital scholarship, and computerized "visualization." Text itself has inherent limitations: The very use of words - their meaning and the connections among them - shapes and restricts how historians think and communicate ideas. The rise of the computer is radically altering how human beings receive and process information. Digital environments and virtual reality are adding a third dimension to communication and creating a new visual language. This visionary…