UFO archives and the loss of “being”
Copyright 2023, InterAmerica, Inc.
The April 24/May 1, 2023 duo-issue of New Yorker magazine
provides unintended insight to archival research and a person’s eventual loss
of “existence.”
A letter to New Yorker’s editor(s) from Matthew Connelly. Professor of History at Columbia University res- ponding to an earlier article by Jill Lepore (also a college teacher) who wrote “Data-Driven” in the April 3rd issue:
Professor Connelly writes:
“Traditional archival research is becoming increasingly inadequate for the challenge of exploring the zetta-byte or more of audio, video, and textual information accumulating … All of it is perishable, and can saved and shared only if scholars join wirh archivists and data scientists in developing new ways of preserving and studying the past. Historians who rage against algorithms are deluding themselves.” [Page 3]
Then the Art listings, about an exhibition, “Of Mythic Worlds” is this:
‘The identities of some artists are lost to the ages …” [Page 6]
And on Page 32 in a piece titled Security Breach is this:
“In 1895, a police officer in Manhattan who had once worked for a telephone company, and whose name has been lost to history … “
Such examples of lost names and persons appear regularly in the culturally iconic magazine.
I’m tying such acknowledgments to the idea that persons eventually become even lost to memory, not just life.
Then there is the suggestion by Professor Connelly that archival materials, not saved digitally, will also be lost to memory and existence, as was the suggestion of Walter M. Miller in his brilliant dystopian sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Not to know that in the intelligent zeitgeist for some, life becomes meaningless, eventually, lost not just to being but to memory also, and archival efforts are silly as they are now being proposed and saved, eventually lost to existence and the events and names in them also destroyed by time and the destructive elements of a past technology.
So, don’t belabor this page or me with a solicitation for archiving and the assumed salutary effort being exercised to create them.
It's futile and senseless.
RR
A letter to New Yorker’s editor(s) from Matthew Connelly. Professor of History at Columbia University res- ponding to an earlier article by Jill Lepore (also a college teacher) who wrote “Data-Driven” in the April 3rd issue:
Professor Connelly writes:
“Traditional archival research is becoming increasingly inadequate for the challenge of exploring the zetta-byte or more of audio, video, and textual information accumulating … All of it is perishable, and can saved and shared only if scholars join wirh archivists and data scientists in developing new ways of preserving and studying the past. Historians who rage against algorithms are deluding themselves.” [Page 3]
Then the Art listings, about an exhibition, “Of Mythic Worlds” is this:
‘The identities of some artists are lost to the ages …” [Page 6]
And on Page 32 in a piece titled Security Breach is this:
“In 1895, a police officer in Manhattan who had once worked for a telephone company, and whose name has been lost to history … “
Such examples of lost names and persons appear regularly in the culturally iconic magazine.
I’m tying such acknowledgments to the idea that persons eventually become even lost to memory, not just life.
Then there is the suggestion by Professor Connelly that archival materials, not saved digitally, will also be lost to memory and existence, as was the suggestion of Walter M. Miller in his brilliant dystopian sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Not to know that in the intelligent zeitgeist for some, life becomes meaningless, eventually, lost not just to being but to memory also, and archival efforts are silly as they are now being proposed and saved, eventually lost to existence and the events and names in them also destroyed by time and the destructive elements of a past technology.
So, don’t belabor this page or me with a solicitation for archiving and the assumed salutary effort being exercised to create them.
It's futile and senseless.
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
Saturday, April 22, 2023
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