Re: [-empyre-] archiving

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

I am pleased to see a couple of posts putting forward relevant questions.

The archiving impulse is, clearly, absurd.  We are in Not the Nine
O'Clock News territory here.  The archiving impulse is so
fascinatingly precisely because it is so absurd.  I am not saying that
the impulse is wrong or evil, just absurd.

A human lifespan, in terms of the Christian clock, is 70 years lets
say.  The age of the oldest human artifacts (seeing we insist on being
so tediously self-centered) are what abysmally tiny portion of the
planets life?  The planet's life is what unimaginably tiny fragment of
the age of the universe (whatever the fuck that might be).  Let's face
it: it is not possible to archive anything, it is just something that
seems important to some people.  It is an atavistic 'collect and
store' impulse clearly at work in numerous species.

Technopositivist conceptions of unlimited progress are equally absurd
and are clear proof that human thinking IS fantasy, full stop. (There
it is).

Surely someone has done the following analysis.  How much real,
long-lasting poisonous damage is unleashed as a byproduct of computer
culture (for example).

There are major downstream (that's now) ecological (that's us)
implications at the mining, refining, manufacturing and at the
management of  computer hardware waste.  The web is wonderfully
virtual only in the deluded mind of the modern technopositivist.

Rachel Carson, amongst others, saw it coming, these days it is talked
about in 'the media', but really the humans just don't get it.  The
humans are like the dog that doesn't see the car coming.  We are being
run over now but can't to feel our guts splitting and bones
splintering, yet.

There is very little point in discussing 'archiving' if it is not
understood in context.  The context is that the humans just don't have
an overview.  They are not capable of that sort of overview.

The archivists will archive, of course, and all of us humans are
doomed, an evolutionary dead end - and for the health of the planet
the sooner the better.

APA



On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 09:38:08 -0800, Ellen Fernandez-Sacco
<fernande@evergreen.edu> wrote:
> Jon, where do such technopositivitst conceptions of unlimited progress lurk?
> Can you say more? I ask because such concepts seem disproved outright when
> the tiny percentages of what actually survives is known. Am thinking of the
> downloadable files of early silent films archived on webpages, which are
> themselves a fragment of what is extant of this production, another time
> heralded as progress that arrived with wars.
> Ellen
> 
> 
> On 2/6/05 10:22 PM, "//jonCates" <joncates@criticalartware.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Feb 6, 2005, at 10:03 PM, Paul Koerbin wrote:
> >>> Your suggestion about recording audio-visual content from the screen I
> >>> don't think is daft. I seem to recall we contemplated this at one
> >> stage,
> >>> some years ago, with Real Media files but did not get very far with
> >> it.
> >
> > it is amazing to imagine this scenario of archiving new media onto
> > older + older forms to reach .bak into the past in order to grasp
> > greater + greater degrees of material stability for immaterial digital
> > [works/projects/processes].  i love how this possibility complicates
> > technopositivist conceptions of unlimited [progress/upward spirals]
> > toward utopic states.
> >
> > // jonCates
> > edu: http://www.artic.edu/~jcates
> > collab: http://www.criticalartware.net
> > projs: http://www.systemsapproach.net/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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> 


-- 
The Paul Annears
www.xxos.net