But I notice that the study of "history" changed dramatically (came into existence where previously there had been no such thing) when writing made it possible to find contemporaneous records from older societies. I wonder whether ubiquitous recording and giant databases will wreak a similar change because of the degree of contemporaneous original sources, or whether it will be fairly similar to the written record we have of "history" today -- fragmented and messy enough that it is difficult but not impossible to extract a sense of the time by careful study.