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You saw it happen

Last Modified: 02 Apr 2007
By: Katie Razzall

From blogs to emails - anyone can be a historian; flashing eyewitness accounts around the world. But how long will such instant history last?

Once it was the preserve of the elite few: now everyone, it seems, is a witness to history. From on-line blogs to pictures on videophones - first hand accounts of the major events of our times are suddenly accessible around the world.

Websites like ours are actively seeking peoples memories: 25 years after the Falklands invasion - we're asking you to tell us what you remember from that time.

But although the telling of history is going through a democratic revolution - with the average life of an internet entry measured in days, not years, is it built to last?

Internet discussion

Jon Snow spoke to Professor John Naughton from the Open University - who's author of 'A Brief History of the Future' and the historian Tristram Hunt.

He put it to John Naughton that for all it's advantages - the internet will provide only a very brief history.

Watch the discussion

Could the web really spell the end of history?

Fast forward a few decades and the historian of the future certainly won't be coming across a trunk of old emails laying dusty and forgotten in an attic in the same way they have done with letters in the past.

You only have to head to the Imperial War Museum to see quite how important, informative and obviously very moving those old letters sent back from WW1, say, are - stained with mud, tears, you name it. You don't get that in an email.
- Could the web really spell the end of history?