Re: [-empyre-] In the year 2525 - Using the web archives

[carolyn.guertin@utoronto.ca]

Thanks for an intriguing post, Andrew. 

Computers, databases, the Web and related technologies are consistently touted 
as the greatest archival systems that we have ever seen. What is ironic about 
this is of course the fact that archiving is what they do so very badly. The 
constant erosion, mutation and extinction of software and hardware conventions 
make obsolescence not a bug but a feature of the digital. We know that we can 
never hope for the luck of Sumerian writers who had all of their soft-clay 
tabletted literature baked, and thereby preserved, when the great library at 
Nineveh burned down. Contemporary artists working in digital media have 
experimented with the attributes of both memory and forgetting at length in 
works like William Gibson's "Agrippa", Noah Wardrip-Fruin's "The Impermanence 
Agent", M.D. Coverley's "Califia", Shelley Jackson's "Patchwork Girl", and 
Diana Reed Slattery's "Glide" and "The Maze Game". My exploration of these 
issues in *Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics: The Archival Text, Digital 
Narrative and The Limits of Memory* might be of interest to some of you:
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/academy/carolynguertin/diss.html

Carolyn


Quoting Andrew Burrell <andrew@miscellanea.com>:

> Empyrians,
> 
> Some thoughts on a few of the strands running through this 
> conversation...
> 
> I recently presented a paper on the ancient library of Alexandria at a 
> humanities conference, and was surprised (though in hindsight I should 
> not have  been) that question time revolved around discussion of the 
> following quote, which discussed the destruction of the collections at 
> Alexandria, Pergamon and the like:
> 
> 
> "The disasters of late antiquity had the general effect of rendering 
> ancient literature a manageable corpus again. Had it survived, our own 
> libraries would have long since burst- as they will do in the near 
> future unless some similar catastrophe wipes out most of our extant 
> holdings (or puts them on the internet!). Not only did the destruction 
> of late antiquity reduce ancient literature to a manageable corpus, but 
> it improved its overall quality as only canonised classics, in the 
> main, survived." [J.O. Ward, "Alexandria and Its Medieval Legacy: The 
> Book the Monk and the Rose," ]
> 
> 
> There was a certain amount of anger (or at the very  least least 
> disgust) in the audience that one could suggest such a thing. It may, 
> at first, appear to be unthinkable to speak of the destruction of such 
> works as being somehow a good thing.  But then I realized that the 
> horror that I feel in the possibility of celebrating this loss, is,  
> more a symptom of my yearning for what I imagined might have been, 
> rather than what was actually lost.
> 
> What we plan to leave as a 'heritage' for the writers of history in the 
> future, is not what will necessarily reach them. Especially if our own 
> disasters render our own sprawling archives a 'manageable corpus.' They 
> (those who write our history) will still mourn that which they imagine 
> to have  been lost and will more than likely fill in the gaps with 
> their own vision of our age.
> 
> There is an answer to some of  this, however, and it revolves around 
> the role of the  individual. I will allow another commentator on the 
> ancient libraries to make this point for me:
> 
> 
> "The great concentrations of books, usually found in the centres, were 
> the main victims of the destructive outbreaks, ruinous attacks, 
> sackings and fires. The libraries of Byzantium proved to be no 
> exception to the rule. In consequence, what has come down to us is 
> derived not from the great centres but from the ?marginal? locations, 
> such as convents, and scattered private copies." [Luciano Canfora, The 
> Vanished Library]
> 
> 
> But, these comments also rely on assumptions I have made regarding the 
> answers to the question
> 
> "whom are we archiving for?"
> 
> In the "now,"  however, if we as a culture, or as individuals ever lose 
> the drive to collect, archive and store 'ourselves', it would be a sure 
> sign that we had laid down and given up.
> 
> And as a stab at an answer to Paul Koerbin's question:
> 
> Who will be using our archives in 2525? People like us. People who are 
> inquisitive, interested, concerned, flawed, curious, questioning and 
> human. Technologies and outlooks may have changed since 1525, or even 
> 525 BC, but I don't think these qualities of the people who use the 
> technologies or possess these outlooks has changed. No matter what our 
> future I don't see this changing in anything like 500 odd years. And 
> while these are still attributes of being human, any talk of none of 
> this really mattering in the context of the vastness of time and space 
> outside of our individual lives, is defeatist and a evasion of 
> responsibility to yourself.
> 
> 
> longtime lurker...
> andrew burrell
> http://www.miscellanea.com 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 


-- 
Carolyn Guertin, PhD
Senior McLuhan Fellow
McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology
University of Toronto, Canada
Voice: 416-928-0196; FAX: 416-978-5324
Website: http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/academy/carolynguertin/