| Updated 30 November 2023 |
“Historians of technology… are storytellers. More than any other practitioners among the humanities and social sciences, historians practicethe art of narrative, and in doing so we face many of the same challenges as the fiction writer…. Historians must immerse themselves in the manners and customs of a time and place, in hopes they might glimpse something of the larger mystery of human affairs. We seek to connect the local to the universal, to speak to the largest of concerns through the most accurate rendering of reality…. Each of us who aspires to narrate the past must make a commitment to our own mode of vision… a point of view–not a preconceived opinion, necessarily, but a commitment to a way of seeing and a willingness to trust that the perspective we bring will reveal some insight into the human condition.”
Steven W. Usselman
