The Theoretical Modeling on the Digitalized World History:
Premises, Paradigm and Resources in Scientific Data
By Xudong Wang
(The
Advances in natural science research have already
confirmed that the handling and communicating of information is one of the
basic traits of systems in the natural world. Living systems depend on this
kind of information processing function to enable themselves to reproduce and
maintain life. Such quality of living systems worldwide also determines the
presence of human society.
Human beings are able to learn about the past and to summarize
the course of history. In fact, this is also the process of information
processing. Even so, in times when the level of information technology was
extremely low, the raw ways of information processing brought about severe
limitations on men’s abilities to understand the past or to summarize history.
The restoration of history as it was is restricted by language subjected to the
conditions of the time. It is even more so in the case of world history.
To carry out the task of rewriting history is overwhelming.
However, information technology that developed swiftly
and violently at the end of the twentieth century when the society was gaining
access to more information than ever, has pushed human thought patterns to
enjoy unceasing revolutionary breakthroughs. This trend will doubtlessly pave
the way for the birth of a brand new form of world history that has a new
outlook and a genuine sense of time and space. And it can be called "the
digitalizing world history".
How do we define this new history? What methodology do
we use? How do we use this new perspective? These are precisely the questions
this article attempts to answer.
The digitized world history can be presumptively
defined as a brand new normal form of world history that offers a practical
access to the historical research by virtual recovery through the way of
dynamic mark, integrated description and retrieve of the human society
evolution and its causality depending on the theory and methodology of
digitization and informatization based on the
principle of historical research. This paradigm is a comprehensive study of a
constructive system. It aims at associations and fusions among the factors in
the changing history as well as the results of all sorts of historical research
to meet the needs of an information-equipped society in the 21st century.
[keywords] histories, world
history; paradigm, information technology; scientific data
Brief resume
Xudong Wang / male / born 1956 /
Associate Research Fellow / Vice director, The
Digital Research Department of World History / The Institute of World
History, China Academy of Social Sciences / Current research fields: modern
world history, the history of world environment and disaster, informatizational historical science methodology, etc. /
E-mail: wang_xd@cass.org.cn / P.O. 1 DongChang HuTong,
WangFuJing Street, Beijing, People's Republic of
China 100006