People mistake the survivability of a lot of this documentation. It's not like we didn't have a plethora of documents before in other eras. In middle Byzantine history, we can see the evidence of mounds of documentation that no longer survive because of the excavation of lead seals for stamping those documents. However, only those seals survive. Almost none of the administrative documents that went along with it do not.

After all, it's usually the ubiquitousness of a medium is usually what leads to their destruction, because no one thinks to preserve it. Equally, new political regimes, new ways of thinking, or new mediums prevent people from seeing a necessity of preserving older information.

This btw is what happened to all that middle byzantine documentation. Unlike western europe, where the medieval kingdoms had a vested interest in keeping at least some documents, namely church records, the takeover of Byzantium by the Turks meant they had no need for preserving older archives which served older purposes.

The implications of all these archives are mostly not for history. They're for modern sociology, which attempts to use the massive amounts of records to create statistical models, which you can't do with the selective survival of much older information.

But just like the transition of mediums from the scroll to the book resulted in a massive loss of information of things that were not copied, so too will the book to digital, and the digital to next medium transition result in a significant loss of records from which to mine.

Luckily, it's that loss of knowledge, and the working between the gaps, that is something historians are extremely familiar with, and that likely won't change.

EDIT: I used to be on AOL and AIM all the time in the mid 90s. I have vague memories of possessing chat logs at one point. I do not know where any of them are. Food for thought.

With the event of the Internet and all that comes with it, the study of the past and how people thought about it and acted during it (sociology) as well as interpreted it (history, or the study of past and current eras or subjects and how they are recorded) has become much more interesting. Before the Internet, the opinions of ordinary people were often not recorded or saved and were lost forever, but those of important people were, a sort of "archival" or "digital privilege." Social media platforms that provide the opportunity for laypeople to immediately voice their thoughts on events that previously would have been completely unknown to them (unfortunately, for historians, often in "coded" language and with very little or no context) will be immediately accessible and valuable to both sociologists and historians, as well as researchers from other disciplines. It has often been repeated that a week's worth of the New York Times, no doubt influenced by modern technology, contains more unique information than someone who lived in the 18th century would come across in their entire lifetime.

The digitizing of previously "unavailable" historical materials along with social media has brought new perspectives into debates that previously would not have been seen by everyone. Before the Internet, pieces of information, if they did not molder on a shelf or accidentally burn, would have had to wait in archives or special collections to be discovered, and then have books or journal articles written about them. They would also not have spread as quickly or been understood (if you go back far enough) due to the general lack of education and literacy within non upper-class populations. The ubiquity of technology in everyday life as well as the proliferation of quality public education in most places has allowed professional historians, students and laypeople to debate in open forums. A "problem" (I am somewhat hesitant to call it that) is the "crowdsourcing" of historical method. The proliferation of technology has meant that people who lack formal academic training in history or are not versed in proper historical methodology can have access to historical materials and make improper interpretations of objective or subjective statements, either intentionally or unintentionally, and these can be heard more easily. As a result, statements that are not necessarily true can gain traction in the minds of the public, making the job of historians who primarily work on spreading the objective truth about historical subjects that much harder. If something is yelled loudly enough for the longest amount of time by the largest amount of people, it tends to become true, no matter if that is actually reality.

As the generation that grew up not knowing a world without pervasive technology matures, and replaces previous generations that didn't, the world of politics and academia will be in for a shock. World leaders are beginning to be evaluated by what they say on social media, something immediately accessible to nearly everyone. Previously, a controversial tweet or Facebook post would have simply been dirty secrets that only a few family members or close associates knew and guffawed about over turkey at Thanksgiving. Secrets known only to family can die with them and be lost forever (often to the benefit of their subject) but social media or forum posts cannot, and will live on as long as they are not deleted completely. What is posted on the Internet often cannot truly be erased, and it has already come back to bite many a politician or ordinary person in the rear. You can burn a book, but you can't burn a tweet.

We have so much information from people's private correspondence in the past, how would things like encrypted Watsapp messages and the like do to future historians' ability to get a grasp of what's going on?

You really need to have a look at the work archivists are doing. There have been many studies, papers etc discussing the need to capture social media output. Personally, I believe that we need to accept the fact that we can't capture everything, there will be lost and that social media isn't the most indicative source depicting our personal lives, in that it tends to be manipulated by ourselves; we tend to only report or exaggerate our lives.

I found a working version of AIM 1.0: http://www.oldapps.com/aim.php?old_aim=1?download

add me! (noerzzz)