Reocurring topics in the Humanist Archive

Some reoccurring topics within the Humanist archive relate back to overarching ideas that progressing technology cannot seem to solve. Of those are the arts; from the postings in the late eighties through present time, Shakespeare’s plays were headlined numerous times. It was also interesting to see how throughout the years there was a constant effort to redefine the slang for digital age. With coding and HTML methods only becoming more vast as technology advanced, there were revisions to the “slang” list several times every year.

I had to remind myself that e-text/email technology had not been embraced by the public in the late eighties/early nineties, so as the years passed there was discussions on whether to go paperless, or the advantages of an e-document method of communication versus paper. Plenty of ideas were expressed in these titles, with most of them focused on evolving the technology as it was to the next level.

It was surprising to see topics on social networking sites and such as e-mail usage increased in the mid-nineties. A more connected society with computers means more networking in all senses, as not only I saw voices for social networking but also job offers, students sharing/asking for research in other areas of the world, discussions on international translation and partnership with multi cultural users (language specific e-text). Also there were warnings about new viruses spreading through e-mail. I saw very little of this in the late eighties section of the archive; closer to our present year the alerts were frequent.