About Jeremy

I currently work as the Creative Lead and a web developer/designer at the Center for History and New Media. I am also a PhD student studying U.S. History at George Mason University. My dissertation explores the early history of web design, particularly the development, adoption, and implementation of Cascading Style Sheets as a presentational language for the Web. My other research interests include the history of design, the history of addiction, sensory history, the history of emotions, the history of technology, and social/cultural history.

I also currently serve as the technical editor and the electronic resources editor for the Journal of the Association for History and Computing, and am a member of the Executive Council for the American Association for History and Computing.

History is a Perpetual What??

Beta. I’m getting this phrase partly from Tim O’Reilly’s explanation of Web 2.0. Among other things, Web 2.0 for O’Reilly involves the idea that sites and services are in a state of “perpetual beta.” In other words, never finalized and always in development, and always improving (hopefully). Whether you agree or disagree with the usefulness of “Web 2.0” as a term, the idea that

So, I’d like to think that history is also always in a state of perpetual beta. History is never finished, and no one ever really writes the “final word” or “final version” of history. We’re always adding to our historical knowledge, always improving and adding to our various historical narratives. History, then, is perpetual beta.