Wednesday Section, Gitelman post

Gitelman describes clicking a mouse as "the user's most certain experience of an instant in time." It is the way for us as users to guide a computer to reveal the virtual material we want to see. The history browser and "back" buttons, then, should reveal a short history of our thought processes. Displaying the history of your web browser shows all sites that were visited in the past day, week, or month. This isn't a permanent record of sites visited or exact replicas of the versions of sites visited, though...

When you view your history, you have the power to delete any websites you wish not to be shown (I'm sure there are more complex ways of finding a list of every site an IP address has visited, but in terms of everyday knowledge, we believe we can edit our history). Also, when you click a link to view one of those visited sites, you cannot be certain you are viewing the same exact version of the page as you did before. Take a Facebook Homepage as an example. When you return to it, it will automatically update with new information and the version of the site you once saw is gone forever.

So what does the "back" button allow us to do and what does a browser history actually record? I am interested in hearing others' thoughts!