Pondering.

This very interesting discussion ­ how it meanders and find its ways a a
result of all our thinking and pondering and experiences in the discussed
fields.

If "history" (= talking, collecting,writing, researching, thinking,
constructing, sharing about things past - how ever small or extent past
might be) is seen as being totally dependent on and under the direct
influence of and shaped by funding, political power, media used and the
interest of those who are gate keepers and those who feed the gate keepers
­ then the digital age makes this extremely clear. "Everyone" can put
things online ­ but how that is kept available is a plain matter of power
and thus of political interests. Books are much easier smuggled through
the cracks of power structures than digital information. Digital platforms
allow very fast production of "content in media" and an extremely powerful
distribution (and reception) in the moment ­ but the half-life of this
information being available is in direct relationship to the funds (power)
which allow to port the information to new platforms, to maintain the
information, to archive etc.

The digital technology promises that we can collect and distribute
archives "for ever" because it is "all digital". In the end digital
storage evaporates faster than acetate film or acid-free paper because the
"substrate" information is carried by is in constant flux (literally).

The only power that can actually preserve (port, adapt to changing
operating systems, check for bits corrosion etc.) their digital
information is the military (most likely limited to the world-wide top 5
military spenders). I think even banks still print their most important
documents out on acetate-free paper and store it deep in mountain. Many of
us have tried to keep archives and lists backed-up, have seen works
disappearing once the CD-ROM ran only on certain chip-sets and operating
systems etc etc.

Maybe we are back to the mediaeval  ages in Europe where information was
copied by humans fed by the most powerful organization at the time (the
church) - only those who can feed the monks of the digital age can ensure
that their view of what is important get transported to "future times".
Where these future times have now shrunk to maybe something like 10 ­ 20
years.

Maybe the promise of digital technology ("its all just bits") is showing
us the real conditions of human life as being bound to heart beats (or in
digital technology to the ever faster and thus ever quickly dissipating
clock of computer technology).

So maybe digital technology restructures how time  is used and seen and
thus how power structures have shifted to a greater divide of "in the
moment" and "for continuity". It is available in the moment to everyone ­
but gone after we sent the tweet and before we die unless we can support
monasteries with thousands of people copying and porting what other
generations (digital generations that is ­ very short life spanŠ)
produced. That the US Library of Congress is collecting tweets displays
the great helplessness and the power structure at the same time. And
Google seems to indicate another power shift. And maybe only the NSA is
smart by understanding they cannot keep all the collected data for ever :)

So maybe the promise of the "all digital archives" is not that things can
be kept "for ever" but that we are "liberated for the moment" while being
under the dictate of those who can port and save what has been thought and
made. Maybe the digital age is the age of a life where communication and
distribution has again reached the the fundamental level of time passing
and an erosion of memory which is bound to media which disappear slower
than our lives do.

What could be a positive consequence for us little people (the ones
without power to port what we discovered) out of this? Liberation from
creating our own monuments and making and living time-based arts which are
only good for the moment when they are happening. (So now we are thinking
performing email lists!)

The down side? We are enabled by digital technology to change system of
political power and share thoughts in a moment. But the structures of
global power can grow inversely into dimensions unknown before ­ because
they can afford to "own time" (the clock of computers) whereas we can
"only" live time. So digital technology has potentially brought us back to
realize our own vulnerability in ways which show us that the past five
thousand years of "making history" (from clay tablets to computer tablets)
were a unique phase for humanity and now we might enter a phase where the
real power of holders of information becomes even more obvious because it
becomes time-dependent at incredible small intervals.

Johannes