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A review by lattelibrarian
We the Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World by Brian Michael Murphy
3.0
"But if we're protecting [ephemera/artifacts] for the sake of future users, once those future users arrive, won't they again be unable to view it or see it or touch it, in order to protect it for the sake of future users?"
A dense but intriguing book about the lifespan and history of data collection. Murphy weaves us through libraries, cold war bunkers, ways of preserving physical data, and how data preservation has evolved with technology. I've listed this book as library science, largely because--surprise--I'm a librarian. Data information science is kinda my thing. I will say, though, I was expecting this book to be more about where data is at now and where it is going rather than starting from the beginning.
Did you know that libraries used Zyklon to disinfect books fewer than 100 years ago? Or that data preservation companies have bought and utilized cold war bunkers and old mines to use colder temperatures to save physical ephemera? Or that bookworms actually do exist?
The science portion of it lost me a bit, as I'm more concerned with the why, the more human side of data. But that's not to say that this book wasn't hugely interesting. I'm still trying to grasp it, in total honesty. I had no idea that some data is protected with 24/7 armed security, though I did know that data is fallible and can be lost. In libraries and archives, it can be lost to fires. Even on the "cloud", this near-imaginary weightless data archive is physical with malls being repurposed and wreaking havoc on our environment. There, data is also fallible.
What do we protect and why do we protect it? We protect whatever somebody pays us to protect. We protect cultural artifacts. We protect information. We protect it for the future. For personal use. For community use, such as in time capsules.
Where Murphy is concerned with the longevity of such data and the lengths we go through to maintain and retain it, I wonder what it matters to keep some data when all of us are...well, dead. Does it then matter that we protect films that nobody can access? Is it just a type of cultural and historical hoarding? What does it matter that data preservation is something that rich people can afford? Certain directors have originals of their films stored. Even Beyonce has hours upon hours--years, perhaps, of videos, photographs, interviews that warranted a library job posting to catalog and archive.
Murphy, of course, cannot answer these questions. They are too big for anyone to answer.
What Murphy does answer, however, is what our personal data might look like after we as individuals die. We have data backed up with our social media, emails, account numbers--even our internet searches which may misidentify us as older or younger than we are, or as a completely different demographic! How will our data remember us if we don't remember our data?
There is just so much incredible information in this book that I think will interest librarians, archivists, and tech nerds alike. So thought-provoking and wonderful.
A dense but intriguing book about the lifespan and history of data collection. Murphy weaves us through libraries, cold war bunkers, ways of preserving physical data, and how data preservation has evolved with technology. I've listed this book as library science, largely because--surprise--I'm a librarian. Data information science is kinda my thing. I will say, though, I was expecting this book to be more about where data is at now and where it is going rather than starting from the beginning.
Did you know that libraries used Zyklon to disinfect books fewer than 100 years ago? Or that data preservation companies have bought and utilized cold war bunkers and old mines to use colder temperatures to save physical ephemera? Or that bookworms actually do exist?
The science portion of it lost me a bit, as I'm more concerned with the why, the more human side of data. But that's not to say that this book wasn't hugely interesting. I'm still trying to grasp it, in total honesty. I had no idea that some data is protected with 24/7 armed security, though I did know that data is fallible and can be lost. In libraries and archives, it can be lost to fires. Even on the "cloud", this near-imaginary weightless data archive is physical with malls being repurposed and wreaking havoc on our environment. There, data is also fallible.
What do we protect and why do we protect it? We protect whatever somebody pays us to protect. We protect cultural artifacts. We protect information. We protect it for the future. For personal use. For community use, such as in time capsules.
Where Murphy is concerned with the longevity of such data and the lengths we go through to maintain and retain it, I wonder what it matters to keep some data when all of us are...well, dead. Does it then matter that we protect films that nobody can access? Is it just a type of cultural and historical hoarding? What does it matter that data preservation is something that rich people can afford? Certain directors have originals of their films stored. Even Beyonce has hours upon hours--years, perhaps, of videos, photographs, interviews that warranted a library job posting to catalog and archive.
Murphy, of course, cannot answer these questions. They are too big for anyone to answer.
What Murphy does answer, however, is what our personal data might look like after we as individuals die. We have data backed up with our social media, emails, account numbers--even our internet searches which may misidentify us as older or younger than we are, or as a completely different demographic! How will our data remember us if we don't remember our data?
There is just so much incredible information in this book that I think will interest librarians, archivists, and tech nerds alike. So thought-provoking and wonderful.