First of all, the high integration of information is the first and most basic feature of this new technology. This needs to be explained from several different levels.
The amount of information increases geometrically. Traditional books take paper as the medium, and their physical characteristics greatly restrict people's collection of books. The so-called "sweating like a pig" is a very vivid description, and some big libraries in the world are having a headache for the expansion of their collections. Therefore, there is a practical limit to the amount of information people receive through traditional books. The development of computer information technology has fundamentally solved this problem. At present, the most common 3.5-inch floppy disk has a storage capacity of 1.44 trillion, which can store hundreds of thousands of Chinese characters, while the read-only CD with a storage capacity of 650 trillion is only the size of a palm, and its information storage capacity is about 450 times that of the above floppy disk, which can store tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of Chinese characters. The amount of memory needed to input all the documents in the history of China into the computer is also limited. At present, the computer industry is still developing storage media with higher quality and larger capacity. Therefore, the amount of information that people can obtain by relying on this new technology with geometric progression is incomparable to traditional books.
The forms of information carriers are diversified. With the development of multimedia technology, the so-called information media is far from the object of words. In the computer field, the so-called media has two meanings. One refers to the entity that stores information, such as disk, that is, physical memory; On the other hand, it refers to the carriers of various information, such as numbers, characters, sounds, graphics, images and so on. The media in multimedia technology refers to the latter.
Integration of various information carriers. Information carriers such as pictures, words, audio and video have always existed, but they are not easy to use due to the limitation of traditional technology. The revolutionary significance of computer multimedia information technology lies in that it not only enables people to conveniently transmit pictures, texts, audio, video and other information, but also integrates them. The so-called multimedia technology, specifically, is the organic combination of digital, text, sound, graphics, images, animation and other media, and is combined with advanced computer, communication and radio and television technologies to form an integrated environment and interactive system that can organize, store, manipulate and control multimedia information. Through this multimedia technology, the information people can get will no longer be one-way, not only two-dimensional, but also three-dimensional, which can completely imitate the real scenes in real life, which makes it possible for people to reproduce historical scenes conveniently through computers. The history of mankind is vivid and colorful. The traditional interaction based on characters and characters is far from the natural interaction of human beings, which is not intuitive and has insurmountable obstacles to the reproduction of historical scenes. Computer multimedia information technology helps people overcome this difficulty.
Secondly, information transmission has interactive characteristics. This is the direct embodiment of the computer as an intelligent tool. In technical terms, the so-called interactivity means that all parties involved, whether the sender or the receiver, can edit, control and transmit through various media information. As far as the field of history is concerned, it can have the following two objective functions:
Greatly improve people's interest in reading historical works. In human perception system, information obtained by vision accounts for more than 60%, information obtained by hearing accounts for about 20%, and the rest are touch, smell, taste, facial expressions and gestures. The emergence of multimedia technology, especially the integration of graphics, audio and video information, will greatly improve the interest of historical works, enhance people's interest in reading, and make the dissemination of historical knowledge achieve unprecedented results. But the use of computer as an intelligent tool is not only reflected in this point, but more importantly, it can let readers directly participate in the dialogue, that is, realize the so-called "man-machine dialogue", and readers can control, select and edit the information transmitted by the computer. In this way, readers are no longer simple and completely passive when receiving information, but have the initiative in the process of receiving knowledge, which has been the central idea of the mainstream theoretical constructivism of computer application education since the 1990s. Constructivism emphasizes taking the educatee as the center, which not only requires the educatee to change from the passive receiver of external stimulus and the object of knowledge infusion to the subject of information processing and the active constructor of knowledge meaning, but also requires the teacher to change from the imparting and instilling of knowledge to the helper and promoter of the educatee's active construction meaning. Constructivism holds that learning environment includes four attributes or elements: situation, negotiation, conversation and meaning construction, and computer information technology is the center to promote these elements. Illustrated multimedia technology can create an immersive situation for learners; The voice function of multimedia is the main tool for learners and information transmitters to negotiate and talk; Through "man-machine dialogue", the information receiver controls the learning process, thus completing the meaning construction of the learning process, that is, consciously and actively accepting knowledge.
Realize nonlinear hypertext reading. Since the wide application of printing technology, human beings have become accustomed to the work and life style of reading texts and looking for needed information from various book data. The knowledge and information in the text can only be arranged in a linear structure, that is, the reader must read it step by step in order, even in general film and television audiovisual works. Therefore, the speed and efficiency of reading and retrieval have insurmountable boundaries. There is an essential difference between electronic reading books using computer technology and this traditional reading method. In electronic reading, the connection between knowledge is no longer linear, but network, which is a kind of hypertext reading. Readers can easily retrieve and organize information through computers, and its efficiency is high, which is beyond the reach of any human brain. In the process of reading, readers can easily retrieve, call and read the information related to the text, thus forming a network knowledge structure, which fundamentally transcends the boundaries of traditional reading methods and promotes the leap of information transmission means.
Third, it greatly facilitates the transmission of information. This is mainly for electronic publishing. As mentioned above, the traditional information transmission is mainly based on paper books, and the circulation and storage of books have certain limitations. Electronic publishing using computer technology is fast, convenient, cheap and has a huge amount of information, which can fundamentally overcome the problems existing in paper books as an information dissemination medium. There are two kinds of electronic publishing: first, CD-ROM publications are more common; The second is electronic transmission, that is, using computers and computer networks to transmit information electronically. At first, people edited electronic files with common formats on writing systems, and then sent them to readers through computer networks. Readers read the received information through browsers. This is the information transmission on the Internet that people are already familiar with. In developed countries, both forms of electronic publishing are very popular. However, due to the development of the Internet, electronic transmission is more powerful. In China, due to the restriction of system and other factors, the cost of network communication remains high and its development is relatively slow. The main body of electronic publishing is CD-ROM books. CD-ROM books can store a surprising amount of multimedia information, such as the huge Encyclopedia Britannica, which is made of only three small pieces and contains a lot of audio and video information that was not available in the original paper text.
These characteristics of the current computer information technology mentioned above are the basic points for us to consider its influence on historiography.
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Modern computer information technology has provided many unprecedented and attractive expressions for historical achievements.
In recent years, no matter how people explain it, the existence of "historical crisis" has become an undeniable reality. This not only becomes a heavy psychological burden for historians, but sometimes directly affects their academic survival. Apart from the influence of social external factors, it goes without saying that most traditional historical works are boring, which is an important reason for the historical crisis. If we put aside the advantages and disadvantages of traditional historiography consciously or unconsciously pursuing pedant's interest, under the premise that the pace of people's life in modern society is accelerating and the audio-visual culture is fully impacted, traditional historiography books good at logical thinking and philosophy will undoubtedly meet strong competitors. The introduction of computer information technology into historiography is not only to make up for the shortcomings of traditional historiography, but also to transform historiography and adapt it to the rapidly developing contemporary society.
Historiography is actually a very suitable object to be represented by multimedia technology, because human history is vivid and so colorful. Historians don't need to spend too much energy, but the existing visual materials about human history, such as various cultural relics, historical works of art, historical sites and other objects and pictures, are already quite rich. After the invention of modern photography technology, there are more photos, films and other real-life materials. The music scores left by predecessors can also be used for us to explore the music at that time and provide us with all kinds of very important sound information carriers for understanding history. Before the development of computer information technology, it was very difficult for people to copy and disseminate these vivid materials, and the cost was very expensive, which led to the fact that traditional history books were basically explained by words, with limited appeal. However, there is almost no cost limit for copying computer information. Therefore, historians can freely quote image data and then send them to readers through electronic publishing. After the invention of modern photography technology, it is also possible to directly introduce historical documentaries into e-books. Obviously, this is not just a question of enhancing the readability of historical works. The full use of image data plays an incomparable role in historians' description and readers' understanding.
Of course, the application of computer information technology in historical achievements is far more than quoting some image materials. More importantly, historians can borrow this technology, rely on their own research on history, and actively reproduce historical scenes by directly quoting existing historical materials and combining simulation. Just a few examples:
The book History of Chinese Costume by Mr. Shen Congwen is exquisite and well-known. When reading this book recently, I often think that if this book can be written by using computer multimedia technology, it will certainly achieve unexpected results. Clothing is an important embodiment of human culture, and some contents are actually difficult to convey only by existing pictures and materials. If three-dimensional animation technology can be used to reproduce the historical reality through simulation, and the characters in the book can walk slowly in the costumes of different nationalities in history, readers will certainly appreciate the implications of different national cultures in China's history. Some objects are difficult for readers to understand only by static pictures, and can be expressed intuitively and concisely by three-dimensional animation technology. For example, some costumes used by nomadic people in the north for horseback life, I am afraid this will also happen. More importantly, if we can use computer technology to integrate other related information, such as the cultural characteristics of different ethnic groups and the differences in economic life between the north and the south. To form the cultural background of different ethnic costumes in history and facilitate readers to search and read, the effect will certainly be difficult to achieve in traditional paper books. By extension, we can see that what is said here is actually a common problem about the life history of human society.
War is a major theme in human history, and there are some blind spots in the expression of war in traditional historical works. For example, the course of the war, the development of the battle from A to B and then from B to C, is difficult for historians to explain, but readers are at a loss. If you insert a dynamic war map into the text, it will be concise and clear, and readers will know it at a glance. According to Sun Tzu's Art of War, China's ancient war emphasized "array method". When the emperors of the Song Dynasty sent troops to fight, they often gave them a "battle map" to achieve "from it". But what this "array" is, because of the inconvenience of expression, historians often pass by and it is not clear. If computer animation technology is used to express it in three dimensions, it is possible to make the contents of the array clear and clear, and readers' interest in war history works will undoubtedly be greatly improved. To put it more popularly, for example, whether the war situation in a specific period in ancient China depended on the commander-in-chief playing dozens of rounds in succession before deciding the outcome, historians themselves may not be clear, but the general reader's understanding mainly comes from fictional TV movies and other literary works. These can only be described clearly by integrating relevant information with 3D animation and other technologies. Of course, in this way, the military history will no longer be the traditional text-based form, but will be spliced by words, images, maps, two-dimensional and three-dimensional animations, background music and even video clips simulating history with props to express the background, process, weapons, participants and natural environment of the war. The author can organize this information organically through some programming work for readers to retrieve and read.
The history of science and technology is also an area where computer information technology can give full play. Because most of the physical objects have been lost, it is difficult for historians to express the rich content of the history of science and technology in words. In the past, historical museums and other institutions often displayed some ancient scientific inventions in the form of physical restoration, but this kind of work was not only very time-consuming and laborious, but also only one restored product could be placed in one place for people to visit. Computer three-dimensional image technology provides an excellent tool for this kind of repair work, such as the famous water armillary sphere in ancient China. Now the computer is fully capable of restoring on the screen, and it can show readers the relevant mechanism of each part through decomposition, such as showing the whole process of rotation under the impact of water flow to show the sky. More importantly, computer information can be copied or transmitted through the network without restriction, so that people can read it conveniently. In this way, the coverage of information dissemination has expanded countless times compared with the traditional physical repair methods. Of course, three-dimensional image technology is not only useful for restoring objects, but also very competent for expressing some relatively abstract contents, such as the experimental process. It will be a pleasure to read if our works on the history of science and technology can express technical problems with these concise and interesting information means.
In addition, everything can be easily expressed by images, such as natural history, geographical history, urban history, agricultural history and so on. , are all areas where computer information technology can display its talents.
Obviously, the new form that historical works may have by using the above computer information technology is not only to change traditional texts into more interesting styles. Because the computer can integrate and transmit information in all directions, it will undoubtedly provide readers with some historical knowledge that traditional texts cannot transmit, thus expanding people's knowledge, which is the breakthrough point of new technology.
As far as these specific application fields of information technology are concerned, popular history books for general readers may be more suitable than research monographs. Here, we should point out that the tendency of historians to pay attention to monographs and ignore popular books in the past is obviously biased. One of the important purposes of historical research is to spread historical knowledge to the public, otherwise history can only be a pet in expert research. Therefore, we believe that strengthening the application of computer information technology may also have a positive effect on correcting the above deviations. At the same time, the introduction of computer information technology will certainly play a considerable role in improving the present situation of history education. In this respect, the specific operation may be different from publishing general history books, and its center is to design a student-centered history teaching CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) integrable ware.
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The influence of computer information technology on historians' research methods will at least not be inferior to the various forms of the above achievements.
The basis of historical research is to collect historical materials related to the theme as much as possible, which often includes two aspects. First, search relevant historical documents from libraries, archives and other places. Due to various natural and man-made factors, the collection of historical documents is always so scattered, and the search work is inevitably difficult, which consumes a lot of time and energy for historians. Due to the development of modern printing, many documents have been published, but there is still a big gap from the ideal level that historians can call at will. Second, study the documents that have been searched, "search chapters and sentences", and look for records related to the research topic. However, life is short and historical records are vast. The ancients have long lamented that "the seventeenth history, where to start?" Moreover, there are many historical records that historians need to read! Therefore, it is always an extravagant hope to master "all historical materials" and "fish with exhausted resources" related to research and themes.
In these two aspects, computer information technology provides historians with almost revolutionary research methods.
Because of the huge capacity of computer information storage and the characteristics that information can be copied without restriction and transmitted very conveniently, it is realistic to collect historical documents for historians to call conveniently. As far as the use of the Internet is concerned, as long as an institution somewhere in the world has established a specific database of a certain kind of history books and opened it to people, the history books stored in this database can be used by scholars all over the world at any time. For example, the Chinese full-text computer database developed by the Institute of History and Language, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Province Province according to the "All-Chinese Automation Plan" was officially opened to the public in March 1997. The initial opening capacity of the database was * * * 60 million Chinese characters. By the end of 1997, it had reached1200,000 Chinese characters, including the basic history of China such as Twenty-five History. Any scholar from all over the world can access their database as long as he has a basic computer and Internet account. If you can apply to the hospital for a special account, you can use the data in this database without restriction. Of course, at present, there are relatively few databases of China historical documents on the Internet, which need to be continuously developed by various institutions, while the databases of western historical documents are quite rich, which is particularly meaningful for the study of China's foreign history, which has long been restricted by the lack of original materials. Just open an Internet resource manual and you will find many related addresses. In addition to historical databases, the Internet can also provide a lot of information that is directly helpful to historians' research, such as the latest academic works publishing information, humanities, nature and social backgrounds around the world. At the same time, the Internet provides a very convenient channel for researchers to exchange academic information with each other.
As mentioned above, at present, electronic publishing in China is mainly based on CD-ROM reading materials, and there are also preliminary attempts in historical records database. Many databases have been established or are being established by various research institutions, such as "Treasures of China Classical Literature" published by Tsinghua University Publishing House. One CD contains 14 classical literary masterpieces and full-text Tang poems. Recently, the electronic version of Twenty-Five History published by Beijing Superstar Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. has only two CDs, and the price is 98 yuan, which is dozens of times cheaper than the Twenty-Five History ordered by Zhonghua Book Company! The electronic version of Sikuquanshu is also being published, with only 150 copies per CD. On the premise that funds permit, scholars' research can fully accommodate this giant series. It can be predicted that in a short time, the form of historians' books will change greatly.
The significance of the database is not only to provide historians with a convenient way to call historical documents, but also as an intelligent tool, the computer has the function of full-text retrieval of the database. In other words, it can quickly retrieve all the information in the database according to the operator's instructions, which is undoubtedly more helpful to historians. For example, there are about 40 million Chinese characters in the twenty-five history database of the Institute of History and Linguistics of Taiwan Province Provincial Academia Sinica, and any word can be retrieved in one second. To some extent, traditional historical research is a competition to explore historical materials. Facing the computer database, on the premise of determining keywords, such as finding out the earliest time of something in history, it can no longer be regarded as "research" but just a technical operation. Similarly, it is very convenient to count all the existing records of a certain kind of things in the vast historical records, which gives historians the premise to carry out relevant theoretical analysis based on this statistics. In traditional research, historians spend a lot of time looking for chapters and sentences. Now, computers can liberate them from this repetitive work to a great extent, allowing historians to make more complex and abstract theoretical analysis. In a sense, this is an imminent historical revolution.
Equally important, due to the integration of computer information technology, complete and all-round information can be transmitted, which makes it possible for historians to obtain more real data information than traditional texts. Give a simple example:
For a long time, the main form of sorting out Chinese history books is to sort out various versions of ancient books and then punctuate them for publication. Due to objective reasons such as different majors of proofreaders and unfamiliarity with the corresponding historical background, even the typical achievements such as Twenty-four Proofreading History by Zhonghua Book Company are often found to have such defects. Many other ancient books are based on schools, and the error rate is higher. Sometimes, due to inaccurate proofreading, new mistakes will appear. In fact, researchers who can correctly understand specific documents are those who directly use these documents because they know the relevant history best. Moreover, actual users sometimes need to directly compare different versions to determine whether different texts are correct and use other information. Therefore, under the premise that most of the four basic historical books, Jing, Shi, Zi and Ji, have been sorted out and published, a new idea that can be considered is to adopt the way of electronic publishing, scan the important versions of ancient books directly into the whole book, establish indexes by volume and page, and press them into CD-ROM books for publication. Generally, a CD contains dozens of ancient books, and it is no problem to attach several or even dozens of versions to each ancient book. Its cost is also much lower than the traditional point-proofreading publishing method. Because the books that have not been published at present are basically quite professional ancient books, only experts with the ability to tease the whole sentence will read them. In this way, researchers can see all kinds of original versions of ancient books and understand all the information of the original versions, including formats and fonts. Instead of sorted and relatively second-hand data, its significance can be imagined. It is difficult for individual scholars to do this work, but it is entirely possible if it is arranged by an academic institution like the National Committee for the Arrangement of Ancient Books.
By spreading this idea, rare books, rubbings on inscriptions, bamboo slips and other documents that were difficult for scholars to read indefinitely due to technical reasons can be easily passed on to scholars. In fact, some research institutions have begun to scan their collections of such documents into computers.
By extension, this method is not limited to literature, but also can be applied to real scenes such as historical sites, because computers can also transmit three-dimensional information. At present, an important Dunhuang study project undertaken by Zhejiang University is to input all the murals of Dunhuang Grottoes into the computer and use computer image technology to repair and preserve them. Because any historical site, no matter how carefully protected by human beings, will eventually disappear. Before they disappear, it is undoubtedly wise to completely save their real scenes with computers. If funds permit, we can completely copy a historical site with the same three-dimensional vision as the original site by using computer multimedia virtual reality technology. In addition, as mentioned above, this information can be copied and disseminated without restriction for historians to use.
In addition, using computer three-dimensional information technology to reproduce the above historical scenes, such as copying ancient scientific and technological achievements on the computer screen, is not only a novel form of expression of achievements, but also an unprecedented research method.
The above are just some examples given by the author according to his own thinking. With the practical application of computer information technology, people will certainly find that it has a broader application field.
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While computer information technology brings new opportunities to historians, it undoubtedly poses new challenges to them at two different levels of theory and technology.
On the technical level: can historians who deal with that pile of old paper master the latest intelligent tool of mankind? It is conceivable that there is a gap or even a certain degree of exclusion in introducing the latest scientific and technological knowledge into the original knowledge structure centered on humanities. Even the most basic "pen change" is far from smooth, and it seems that it has just begun. Higher-level applications will certainly have more difficulties. But we can assert that modern historians are fully capable of driving the computer, the latest intelligent tool of mankind.
First of all, computers, especially personal computers, as a tool, are oriented to the public, and their practical applications have been extended to all levels of social life. Historians, as social intellectuals, generally have a high educational level and IQ, and are fully capable of mastering the operation and application of computers.
Secondly, after long-term development, computer software technology has become more and more popular or "stupid", emphasizing friendly interface, and general non-computer professional applications have been completely opened to people with above-average knowledge level. For example, as far as the creation of multimedia history books is concerned, there are generally three different levels of tools: demonstration tools, creation tools and general programming languages. Demo tools are the simplest and can't be called multimedia creation tools in a strict sense. They are specially designed for people to introduce some simple content. However, it is easy to operate and has increasingly powerful functions, so it is very suitable as a teaching aid, such as Microsoft Powerpoint and micro-media Action. Generally, people who are proficient in computer word processing can use this kind of software to write handouts for history classes as long as they are familiar with it for a day or two. Writing tools are specialized multimedia creation software. At present, the popular writing tools in the domestic market are TOOLBOOk, Authorware Professional and Founder's "Aosi Multimedia Creation System". These tools are powerful, but the operation is relatively simple and intuitive. It is specially designed for non-computer professionals to develop multimedia programs. It can integrate multimedia data created by other tools, such as text, images, sounds, animations, images, etc., and can make various integrated multimedia application systems through proper editing without programming. With a little training, historians can master such tools. Only the last general programming language, such as Visual Basic, is generally used to develop large-scale multimedia books. Although it is flexible and efficient, it is complicated and historians do not need to involve it.
Third, more importantly, the use of computer information technology by historians does not mean that they must personally master some specialized computer software knowledge. This is just like when historians published historical works in the past, as long as they handed the manuscript to the publishing house, the editing and printing were all done by their own professionals, and the historians did not care. So is the application and development of computer information technology. The task of historians is to write qualified plays according to the characteristics of multimedia works. Specific text, images, music, animation, video and other production and programming, can be completely handed over to professionals to complete. This first step belongs to historians, and the latter step does not necessarily involve historians. But without understanding the basic concepts of multimedia technology, it is impossible for historians to write qualified plays. This is what historians need to learn. Since modern times, due to the appearance of film and television technology, the major of film and television screenwriter has been formed in literary creation, and the development of computer multimedia information technology will inevitably make corresponding changes in the field of historical writing. Objectively speaking, the existing level of historical multimedia publications in the domestic market needs to be improved. One of the reasons is that their plays are rarely written by historians. Historians should be confident to take an active part in this new field.
In fact, the theoretical level is more complicated.
The so-called new challenges at the theoretical level may be subdivided into two different aspects: knowledge structure and way of thinking. The so-called knowledge structure refers to the use of multimedia means, such as audio-visual and other carriers to express history. Even within the scope of historiography itself, historians' traditional knowledge structure may not be fully competent and need to make up lessons again. To give a simple example: As mentioned above, it is difficult for military historians to explain the contents of many images clearly if they want to vividly show the scenes of China's ancient wars without rediscovering historical materials. Traditional historiography is limited to written exposition, and many historical contents that are not qualified for written exposition are often ignored by historians. Therefore, one of the requirements of the new challenge for historians is to master history comprehensively. It is necessary for historians to pay more attention to the study of human material life history, social history, history of science and technology, art history and even natural history than before, and it is necessary to make more use of physical materials outside the literature.
The so-called way of thinking refers to the shift from traditional literal interpretation to the comprehensive dissemination of historical knowledge by means of graphics, audio-visual and other carriers, which will put forward more comprehensive and comprehensive requirements for the way of thinking formed by historians for a long time. This problem seems simple, but it is probably the most difficult to deal with in practice.
Since this century, China's historiography has undergone a major transformation from traditional Chinese studies to modern history, and its significance is self-evident. Now, at the end of this century, historiography has encountered great challenges from computer information science. Compared with the impact of modern western history on traditional Chinese studies, this challenge is not in the same breath, but it is also of revolutionary significance in some fields.