jane
Well-Known Member
Here's something I've been thinking about, and I know there've been a few times when Pete's posted links to the 'old' Thumped, and we've all gone looking at them and felt a bit nostalgic, or at least felt like there's a developing sense of personal historical depth to our time on Thumped or on the internet in general.
I guess it's because so much of what I do involves spending time in paper archives that's got me thinking. I know the archiving of digital information is a big deal in a lot of disciplines and professional realms, but I'm more interested in the personal one. As I sift through the personal/state papers of 17th-century dudes, and of early 20th-century official papers in government archives, I do get a bit of a buzz out of the physical objects themselves. But the archaeologist in me, who still, deep-down, can't let go of some amorphous and invented sense of 'tradition', and fetishises age and all that, feels a bit disappointed that these kinds of archives will no longer be produced. I'm interested to know how these archives will be constituted, but I can't help but feel a sense of loss when it comes to individual tangible objects.
It would be naive to suggest that digital documents will never have that power (because sometimes stumbling across some really old website that hasn't been updated since 1996 can be kind of an exciting discovery), and I guess reading through the earliest emails in my own email account can do something similar, but the object that acts as the conduit isn't the same. Maybe objects are always arbitrary: it's the shit they evoke that matters.
So much of what was once done through a huge range of physical objects is now done through the computer (which, obviously, is also a physical thing), and that's not going to change. And it's changed the nature of our communication with each other, but how has our relationship to personal objects also changed, now that so much communication takes place via the web, email, or text messaging?
Do you save stuff? Do you feel sad that your new phone means you'll lose some really awesome/important/terrifying text you received ages ago? Do you save all your emails? Do you print important ones out and save them? Do you get a buzz out of digital artefacts?
I save emails that are important. Meany emails and texts get saved for as long as it takes to learn whatever stupid lesson I should learn from them, and then they get gleefully deleted. I deleted most of the mails from a guy I went out with years ago, mainly to make room in my email account, though I also chucked out some of the letters he sent me. But deleting the mails seemed so much more final than chucking the letters, even though I know that somewhere in the ether, those mails are still there, and the letters are more likely to disintegrate or decay or be made into toilet paper. Still, there's a feeling of finality that can't be ignored.
The archives we create are always selective and deliberate, but I dunno, I'm just curious about how the nature of nostalgia/memory will have changed. I'm also interested in what you internerds who would know more about digital archives and where the deleted emails go and what happens with neglected websites (I'm looking at you, cookiemonster), but I think I'm more interested in what yizzers all do with emails, files, shit like that. Do you ever feel the same sense of attachment to a digital object as you might to a more tangible one?
Do I make any sense? Am I just stating the obvious? Am I just a big nerd who should go do some proper work? Actually, though, this is the kind of thing I will probably include in my thesis, some kind of discussion about how I came upon doing the archaeology of archival contexts exactly at the time when the fundamental nature of archives was undergoing major change. Maybe I can convince myself that this counts as work.
Yes, Jane did an epic post. Shock, horror. Poo poo fart fart.*
*bum bum boobies
I guess it's because so much of what I do involves spending time in paper archives that's got me thinking. I know the archiving of digital information is a big deal in a lot of disciplines and professional realms, but I'm more interested in the personal one. As I sift through the personal/state papers of 17th-century dudes, and of early 20th-century official papers in government archives, I do get a bit of a buzz out of the physical objects themselves. But the archaeologist in me, who still, deep-down, can't let go of some amorphous and invented sense of 'tradition', and fetishises age and all that, feels a bit disappointed that these kinds of archives will no longer be produced. I'm interested to know how these archives will be constituted, but I can't help but feel a sense of loss when it comes to individual tangible objects.
It would be naive to suggest that digital documents will never have that power (because sometimes stumbling across some really old website that hasn't been updated since 1996 can be kind of an exciting discovery), and I guess reading through the earliest emails in my own email account can do something similar, but the object that acts as the conduit isn't the same. Maybe objects are always arbitrary: it's the shit they evoke that matters.
So much of what was once done through a huge range of physical objects is now done through the computer (which, obviously, is also a physical thing), and that's not going to change. And it's changed the nature of our communication with each other, but how has our relationship to personal objects also changed, now that so much communication takes place via the web, email, or text messaging?
Do you save stuff? Do you feel sad that your new phone means you'll lose some really awesome/important/terrifying text you received ages ago? Do you save all your emails? Do you print important ones out and save them? Do you get a buzz out of digital artefacts?
I save emails that are important. Meany emails and texts get saved for as long as it takes to learn whatever stupid lesson I should learn from them, and then they get gleefully deleted. I deleted most of the mails from a guy I went out with years ago, mainly to make room in my email account, though I also chucked out some of the letters he sent me. But deleting the mails seemed so much more final than chucking the letters, even though I know that somewhere in the ether, those mails are still there, and the letters are more likely to disintegrate or decay or be made into toilet paper. Still, there's a feeling of finality that can't be ignored.
The archives we create are always selective and deliberate, but I dunno, I'm just curious about how the nature of nostalgia/memory will have changed. I'm also interested in what you internerds who would know more about digital archives and where the deleted emails go and what happens with neglected websites (I'm looking at you, cookiemonster), but I think I'm more interested in what yizzers all do with emails, files, shit like that. Do you ever feel the same sense of attachment to a digital object as you might to a more tangible one?
Do I make any sense? Am I just stating the obvious? Am I just a big nerd who should go do some proper work? Actually, though, this is the kind of thing I will probably include in my thesis, some kind of discussion about how I came upon doing the archaeology of archival contexts exactly at the time when the fundamental nature of archives was undergoing major change. Maybe I can convince myself that this counts as work.
Yes, Jane did an epic post. Shock, horror. Poo poo fart fart.*
*bum bum boobies
