Past performance, it is often said, is not a guide to future performance. That may be sound advice in some circumstances, but is more often than not a sign that people are paying too little attention to history, over too short a period, rather than that there is in fact nothing to learn from the past. To take a random but real example, there are powerful insights to be had on contemporary digital policy from looking at the deployment of telephones and carrier pigeons in the trenches of the first world war.
That may be an extreme example, but it’s a reason why the idea of explicitly looking for historical parallels for current digital policy questions is a good one. This post introduces a project to do exactly that, which promises to be well worth keeping an eye on.
The value of understanding history, in part to avoid having to repeat it, is not limited to digital policy, of course. That’s a reason for remembering the value of the History and Policy group, which is based on “the belief that history can and should improve public policy making, helping to avoid reinventing the wheel and repeating past mistakes.”