It’s OK to be forgotten

Since this is my last Post, I’ll take a moment to “process” a few things that I’ve been mulling over in my mind this semester:

The Archive as Infrastructure: Who is building these Infrastructures and for what purpose? I think of Google, Facebook and Amazon building these behemoths to collect, store, aggregate and disseminate data sets on people in order to make billions of dollars in advertising revenue. I think about the classic Archives built by often well-intentioned cis, white people that now have to be retro-fitted to include Others (or perhaps discarded for a better alternative?). And I think about what the Infrastructure does and does not keep out: people who don’t or shouldn’t have access; underserved populations; young children.

The Archive as a Data Set: What are the parameters of the Data Set, and how is it being collected? What conclusions should we or shouldn’t we draw from the Data? Should the Data be collected at all? What is missing from or not being included in the Data?

The Archive for the Intangible: What cannot be Archived properly, i.e. Music, Dance, Cultural Heritage, Context, Emotion?

The third category struck me during the first week of the course and it has been a theme throughout the readings and discussions. Overall, there is this deep tension between the Qualitative and the Quantitative: what is and is not in the Data. But what makes me even more uneasy than the general lack of public knowledge about the Data being collected on each and every person, is that even when informed they often don’t care. What is the Data on the cultural implications of not caring about Data?

I do believe we need to face the Archive head on in an effort to make it bend to the needs of its audience and contributors. But at what point can we admit that it’s OK for the Archive to be incomplete? When will it be OK to be forgotten?

Image: Monument for a Forgotten Future