Losing Our Memory/Introduction

by David S. Ferriero

Delighted to be here and to participate in this year’s series, "The Future of the Past, the Future of the Present: the Historical Record in the Digital Age."

The provost, in his letter of invitation, puts forth an intriguing syllogism. He writes, "We live in the age of the archive. Our ability to capture text, video, audio, and electronic communications is unprecedented. This new power has also raised questions about security, privacy, relevance, access, selection, cost, and long-term preservation. In the digital environment, everything is saved yet little is preserved."

Now, during my academic career, I made it a point to never argue with the provost, but implicit in this description are several ideas about the changing nature of information, how it is distributed, and how it is persistent. And it is at this transformational point—the digital age as it is often called—that calls the questions: what can be done about losing our memory? And what is the right role for archives at the federal, or national, level as well as at institutions such as Duke University.

Let’s first look at the changing nature of information. Back in 1997, David Shenk published about information overload called Data Smog, which has entered the parlance as a short-hand description of the sheer volume of information each of us deals with every day. For example, Shenk wrote that in 1971 the average American was targeted by at least 560 daily advertising messages. Twenty years later, that number had risen six fold, to 3,000 messages per day. (For those who are counting, that’s one million per year.)

But this was written in 1991. Before the rise of email, twitter, IMs, Facebook, YouTube and so on. Who knows how many messages we are exposed to each day?

Contrast our experience with that of our parents and grandparents, who were limited by access to information—the morning and evening newspapers, the mail—and by the speed of communication.

While none of us, I would guess, want to go back a century and live without the extraordinary tools and communications delivery systems—off the grid as they say—we must acknowledge that the data smog requires some filtration. The best filter is going to be our own individual capacity to turn off and tune out occasionally, but we need as well as information filters such as search engines, libraries, museums, and archives.

Not only does information become more pervasive through multiple distribution systems, but—thanks to us—it becomes more persistent. That is to say, over the past century and a half, historians and archivists have done an excellent job in demonstrating the value of historical records of all sorts. We have created the age of the archives—the ways and means to save more stuff and for longer periods of time.

The age of the archive corresponds with the rise in America of "high" culture. In his seminal book Highbrow/Lowbrow, Lawrence Levine traces the emergences of cultural institutions—first in communities, and later on the national level—designed to collect and preserve art and artifacts. The great museums and libraries and historical societies—and yes, archives—developed as the country grew and matured. As Levine argues, one purpose of these institutions was to save knowledge and information for its own sake, its intrinsic value.

Government followed suit and acknowledged the need to capture and retain knowledge and information, and more recently corporations and business began to better understand, value, and exploit historical information. Perhaps no better example exists than that of the Disney Corporation, which so values its history that it was instrumental in getting Congress to extend copyright. Save Mickey Mouse. We might be able to sell him again.

As a society, we have become very adept at saving stuff. Virtually every business and corporation has some records management system, and archives are ubiquitous at all levels—from colleges and universities to governments large and small to NGOs of all stripes. Shown the value of something as simple as a baseball card or comic book, mothers no longer toss out the paper ephemera of childhood, but encase it in plastic and stash it the safety deposit box.

Information has become extremely persistent at all levels. Everything is saved yet little is preserved.

That presents these basic challenges for archives:

• How do we deal with the scale of number of records created?

• What is a record in this day and age, and how do we handle the kinds of records that we now create?

• And finally, is saving it all enough? Or what are the purpose(s) of an archives?