The End of Privacy at least in the High Middle Ages

View 777 Saturday, June 15, 2013

Russell Seitz has been thinking again:

THE END OF OBSCURITY

Dear Jerry :

As we have both experienced the often-frustrating reality of ‘original archival research’ in the great libraries of the world, I want to report that change is in the dusty air. It used to be the case that the more distant events were in time, the less the likelihood of retrieving novel information about them. The problem was not the lack of ancient records, but their sheer abundance.

There is nothing novel about the latest NSA privacy scandal- the tendency of state bureaucracies and courts to gather and hoard information about citizens is as old as time, and it is from the court’s own realization of the horrors of information retrieval in bottomless archival pits that modern statutes of limitation have arisen.

The consequence of manuscript hoarding was to sink most of the historical record in oceans of trivia deep enough to drown all but the most persevering scholars. You could easily spent a month in the archives or the stacks retrieving just one new kilobyte to add to the sum of history, and far more of that time would be spent flipping through thousands of cards in a paper catalogue than reading the few documents you elected to retrieve.

Nowhere was this problem more evident than in the dozens of Staatsbibliotek holding the gathered sum of paper once held in the archives of the 300-odd principalities and city-states that preceded the unification of Germany under Bismarck. This archival opacity did not pass un-noticed, and a few decades ago many foundations, like Volkswagen, committed future cash flows to synoptic efforts to map both archives and archaeology with equally Teutonic thoroughness. In short, they decided to upload the middle Ages,

But as the foundation subsidized scanning began, something unexpected happened. Computer search software got smarter at a pace eclipsing Moore’s Law, and the project began to run ahead of schedule, as software fixes reduced the redundancy of uploading the same documents from many different archives, creating a positive feedback that eliminated multiple record entries that wasted scholarly reading time. So while a generation ago, it could take a lifetime of scholarly stack time to find enough new material to extend history by a handful of pages, the intellectual productivity of the paper chase has soared.

Today anybody can go online and find material that holds new meaning in a matter of hours rather than months

Forget the fast forwarding of history by technological change – we are experiencing the acceleration of historiography, and just as personalized medicine is rapidly arising from the now completed sequencing of the human genome, the nearly completed indexing of deep historical time has begun to personalize history in an unanticipated way. Our ancestors’ distant lives are swimming into three-dimensional focus in the newly illuminated archival depths.

Once all the curious could hope for was dry genealogy, filtered through imperfect recall, and linear parish records decimated by everything from the Thirty Years War to the Blitz. But as the new search algorithms chew on the whole surviving record, they keep spitting out startling vignettes of cases, events and conflicts that though centuries old, come with names attached, names that until now, were, for lack of automate indexing, for all practical purposes permanently forgotten. The old rule of thumb was to expect the average ancestral trail to fade and go cold in the ten generations or so it took for mice, bookworms or lightening to strike out parochial records.

No longer- we are witnessing a sort of historiographical phase transition, as opaque archives melt down into pools of data clear enough to see the bottom, inviting even amateurs to dive in to look for and surprisingly often find pieces of history with their family’s names on them, or even spot familiar faces in the long dead crowds, for the Great Uploading does not stop at all the words the archivists can scan. It aspires to include every image of the last millennium. Here’s a splendid book length example of what one worthy amateur medievalist, Jeffrey Hull ,has done with such a freshly scanned manuscript

http://www.thearma.org/pdf/Fight-Earnestly.pdf <http://www.thearma.org/pdf/Fight-Earnestly.pdf>

Overlawyered modernity may owe much to defendant’s strong desire not to have to defend themselves by having plaintiffs hack at them unarmored to let God sort out the torts, but we owe even more to the archival software hackers who have so abruptly brought transparency to the not-so-recent past.

—

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics Harvard University

And a note

Jerry, the scanned Ms that got me stated on this subject, because it contained the startling images of the 1370 Seitz-Theobald Munich fight is the Bayerische Staats Bibliothek onlone facsimile of De Arte Athletica , by Paul Hector Mair, a printed and illustrated 1542 book based on 14th and 15th century illuminated manuscripts and incunabuli , in his case including Sigismund Mesisterlin’s 1457 Augsberg Chronik. http://www.thearma.org/essays/Theobald-versus-Seitz.pdf

It may intrigue you to know that the judge of the 1370 trial, Stephan II, Duke of Bavaria and vogt of Swabia and Alsace married Elisabeth of Sicily, a daughter of Frederick III of Sicily <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_III_of_Sicily> and Eleanor of Anjou <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Anjou> , also known as Isabel of Aragon. As if to prove my very brief essay’s point, I didn’t even have to ask- the Teutonically Thorough hyperlinks just up and told me.

SO the equivalent of the NSA has recorded much of the  High Middle Ages, and it is being made available to the world – and we can conclude that similar sources will be available to historians of our era.  Just when did this begin, I wonder?

What did you search on that started you thinking on this? I am formatting now, but I want to be thorough

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

It began with the report in a Harvard hard copy of Gaines’ New York Gazette that in 1778 a Major Seitz was stationed in the city at the head of a regiment from his native Hesse-Cassell.

Intrigued by the fratricidal possibility of his running in to Lt. Charles Seitz of the Continental Army, I began a Googling and soon discovered that

1. the major had made colonel and ended up heading the Regiment von Seitz , and briefly commanding the British garrison in Halifax Nova Scotia, where he has been safely buried in the crypt of St. Pauls Church. <http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=70849504&PIpi=43433355> , beneath an explanatory hatchment, since expiring in 1782 Wanting to know if he was a for real Freiherr, or bumped up from Ritter like von Steuben when he achieved field rank,

2. There was a second Hanoverian Major named Seitz, this one from Wurttemburg, who died of his war wounds aboard the ship returning him to England and was buried at sea off the Scilly Isles.

I entered the late ‘Colonel de Seitz’ s full name, and shazam , in chronological order their appeared every one of the name in uploaded history, commencing with the Seitz von Altheim acquitted in the 1370 trial by combat– I had no idea there were so many.

I think the cutest thing about the scanning software that’s been deployed is that it tells all the librarians to stop if they try to scan a second copy of something already uploaded elsewhere– , which enormously speeds the process, since on average, I’d guess that ten or more of the hundreds of institutions involved may hold surviving copies of the same work. This assures that for the first time in archival history , _most _ of what they are putting up is of some historical novelty– they are literally making the past new.

Russell

I wonder how far back the records in Normandy go…

Formats.

The projects for uploading the various historiographically-significant records and images are, at least within the demense of each individual project, utilizing self-consistent file formats, thus making it relatively easy to search and correlate the data.

However, the records of our computerized era, starting from the 1960s, are quite the opposite – a veritable Cloud of Babel.

The irony is that thanks to the efforts of these scholars and the corporate donors who made their work possible, we can perform combinatorial analysis of data from centuries past, we have problems reading storage devices and parsing file formats from a mere 20 years ago.

Progress?

Roland Dobbins

climate

Nice to see that you agree with so many others that climate warming is all just a product of grant favoritism.

I guess those rising sea levels aren’t going to be a problem for you. You’ll be dead before Florida and Louisiana is washed away.

Henry Stipple

Every now and again I post an example of why I do not allow unedited contributions to my site.  I am certain Mr. Stipple believed he was contributing to rational discussion.

Of course sea levels have been rising for millennia, due to the melting of glacial ice and the rise of land that had been under the ice.  How much the sea levels are rising and more to the point why they rise is a complex matter.  I agree that I will be dead well before Florida and Louisiana have been washed away but I don’t see how that is relevant to discussing rational industrial policies on energy generation.  We know that the climate has been warming since 1776 when the guns of Ticonderoga were brought across the frozen Hudson to General Washington in Haarlem Heights. We also know that a good bit of the warming since that time took place before 1880.  Beyond that we aren’t dealing with observations but models and beliefs.  But that is too complex a concept to be expressed in one snarky sentence.

I recall during the 70’s and well into the 80’s the concern at the annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was the coming Ice Age.  I recall Gus Spaeth one of Carter’s environmental advisors and on the White House Staff telling a AAAS meeting that the reason we had to store nuclear wastes so carefully was that he feared a return of the Ice Age and he would not want the return of the glaciers to spread nuclear waste across the land.  When it was pointed out to him that if your house were under a kilometer of ice you might have a larger problem than contamination by the4 actinides left in the nuclear waste he really had little to say in answer.

I welcome rational debate but I do not accept proof by repeated assertion as evidence.

U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html

Companies are “trusted partners” of our spy agencies? What does this mean?

Our corporate and governmental overlords are collaborating. Where will this lead? With such collaboration there is no counterbalancing force. I fear Lord Acton’s observation about power – something our Constitution was designed to prevent.

The Constitution. Sic transit Gloria mundi.

Ed

I happened to think of this tonight and realized that a good half of my readers will never have read it nor had it read to them; and that’s a pity.  General Wolfe, being rowed up the river the night before the Battle of Quebec settled whether North America would be French or English, recited this to those in his boat, and said he would rather have written those lines than take Quebec on the morrow.  It is not likely to be required in today’s schools, which is a shame.

"ELEGY WRITTEN IN
A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD"

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, —

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

By Thomas Gray (1716-71).