How to Preserve Cultural Memory in the Digital Age

Humans are a fortunate species. We are not the strongest or fastest. We don’t have the biggest brains or live the longest. Yet we are dominant over the planet. From cuneiform to computer chip, our memory technologies give us a unique survival advantage: knowledge. But that knowledge is not secure in the digital age.

We’re moving from an information economy of relative scarcity to one of abundance. And we have yet to build an infrastructure that can manage titanic masses of data at scale. The high cost of publishing books and making films forced us to ask what we can afford to save. But anyone with an internet connection can write blogs and post home movies to YouTube. Now we must decide what we can afford to lose.

Awash in so much data, it is hard to know which have long-term value and which we can ignore. Unfortunately, we must decide to save or lose in real time, because data are ephemeral — the average webpage lasts about 100 days. Five-thousand-year-old cuneiforms can still be read with the naked eye and a command of ancient Semitic languages. But the data on our smartphones? Only machines write code, and only machines read code. Instead of managing knowledge by managing physical objects, we need to master machines, code and power supplies.

Link for Full Access | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abby-smith-rumsey/culture-memory-digital_b_10357622.html

Regards

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Manager @ Library

Khaitan & Co

Blog | http://pralhad-fyilibrarian.blogspot.in/

Best Paper Award | Received the Best Paper Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23, 2016.  The title of the paper is “Removing Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP Treaty”

Note | If anybody use these post for forwarding in any social media coverage or covering in the Newsletter please give due credit to those who are taking efforts for the same.