Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Big Data and Australian History

2016; Routledge; Volume: 47; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1031461x.2016.1208728

1940-5049

Hamish Maxwell‐Stewart,

Data Analysis and Archiving

Big Data and Australian historyBig History is a term that has particular resonance for historians of Australia-a continent with a 60,000-year record of human occupation and a geological history that extends a further 3,070 million years. 1 Recently historians have also begun to engage with the concept of Big Data.It is not surprising that these two terms are often linked.Any attempt to unite natural and human history in 'a single, grand and intelligible narrative' will necessarily result in the engagement with a lot of data. 2 While few historians have access to sources of information that are so large and complex that they defy traditional means of processing and handling, much research that engages with what might genuinely be described as Big Data has an historical dimension. 3imate science, analysis of criminal justice statistics and life course and intergenerational health research are all good examples.This special forum in Australian Historical Studies on Big Data is thus most timely.It explores some of the ways that the increased availability of digital data is impacting on Australian historical research and focusses on digital research that connects Australia's history to wider international and transnational developments.Big Data as a phenomenon has a history of its own.The time it has taken to double Europe's stock of stored information has decreased from 50 years in the decades following the invention of the Guttenberg press to currently just three. 4Some have argued that the recent explosion in the generation of digital data is not the first Big Data revolution.There was a significant acceleration in the collection, production and analysis of information in the early nineteenth century-a phenomenon that coincided with the establishment of colonial settlement in Australia. 5Indeed, a case could be made that Australian convict records were at the forefront of that revolution-they were certainly amongst the first Anglophone record keeping systems to use unique identifiers in an attempt to track individuals over their life course.