When Howard Zinn wrote A People's History of the United States in 1980, the effect was electric. It was a history book that talked more about citizens than leaders, more about daily lives than state conflicts. While it wasn't the first time that scholars focused on something other than the official histories as told by the winners, it was nonetheless eye-opening for academics and students everywhere. It signaled the end for the "great man" theory of history.

Since 1980, the notes, letters, and stories of "ordinary people" have been used far more frequently and with great effect. Just consider the incredible popularity of Ken Burns's "Civil War" documentary, as one example.

And today, thanks to the increasingly fast-growing use of digital and cellphone cameras, almost everything that happens is being recorded...

Millions of us have online journals -- or, at minimum, send email -- where we can take notes about what we've experienced, visible to anyone who is interested. Millions of us carry cameras with us wherever we go, allowing us to record events as they happen. Millions of us are now historians.

It's hard to overestimate how revolutionary this is. Scholars who look back on events of the early 21st century will not have to rely solely (or at all) on the stories told by officials, or the images deemed sufficiently interesting by newspaper editors. There are almost always more citizen witnesses to events than reporters or political spokespeople; for what may be the first time, those citizen witnesses can have a louder voice than the official records. History can now be written by those who experience it, rather than just by those who believe they control it.

A high percentage of what is captured digitally may be of little interest to future historians, but at the very least they will have much more data from which to piece together their accounts of the past. This could be especially important for world-shaking events like last year's Indian Ocean tsunami, or this week's London bomb blasts.

It's hard to say from our vantage point, however, what might turn out to matter most a decade -- or a century -- from now.

If those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, we have in our hands -- and in our computers, and networks, and phones -- a priceless treasure: the opportunity to remember our history in far greater detail than ever before. And it will truly be our history -- the words, images and thoughts of millions of us, documented and retained to help inform the future.

More than just a boon to historians, this new and rapidly growing real-time digital awareness of what is happening in the world also could become an indispensable tool for exposing, documenting, and verifying criminal activities. Whether used against muggers, rapists, car thieves, or other villains, the Participatory Panopticon (as Jamais Cascio calls it) may have a strong deterrent effect.

Could this omnipresent virtual transparency be of still greater value in monitoring the legitimate use of molecular manufacturing? It's hard to say for sure at this point, but it is an emerging factor to be carefully considered.