Re: [-empyre-] Who decides and what to preserve

[The Paul Annears <the.paul.annears@gmail.com>]

There is another related question: why preserve anything (of the
internet) at all?

I recently looked for archived versions of The Concise Model and found
some pages and some broken links. Not an accurate or complete or even
indicative sampling of The Model.  There were cute baby photos that I
had forgotten, and a few hints of what was to come.

Yes, the curatorial classes like to conserve and to archive, and an
admirable impulse it is. Otherwise, for example, we would not know
that 'New Zealand' and 'Australia' (to name just two of many examples)
were thriving orgies of peoples and cultures well before the Euro-led
holocausts.

To archive, to conserve, and to chose this rather than that is an
unavoidable urge, not just of the conservator, not only of the human,
not only of what we understand to be 'the living'.  It is an clearly a
primitive urge of matter.

However the unarchiveable Sun rises and sets on an essentially
unarchiveable world and I  think that it would be wonderful if the web
was not archived except sporadically and imperfectly with unconscious
bias and that it became, in that way, a virtual parallel to and
acknowledgement of the real world.

A transient part-world, dimly apprehended by its inhabitants, awash
with propagandist history and of course hugely defective of memory.

Paul Annear




On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:57:41 +1000, Sharmin Choudhury
<sharminc@dstc.edu.au> wrote:
> I am not sure if anyone has brought this up but this is something I think is
> important. PANIC does not specify what to preserve and does not rate digital
> objects by content. We leave it to the curatorial organisation to make that
> decision. Yet how a curatorial organisation would come to a decision
> fascinates me, because often what we consider not worth saving is exactly
> what the future generations might consider as being important. As a case in
> point, the ancient Egyptians did not think it very important to record the
> lives of the ordinary folk, the workers who built the pyramids and so worth.
> Yet one of most important discoveries in recent times have been camps for
> the said workers where the workers have left their mark and bits and pieces
> from their daily lives. Anyone have any comment in this regard?
> 
> Sharmin Tinni Choudhury
> Research Engineer
> DSTC PTY LTD
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 


-- 
The Paul Annears
www.xxos.net