Archiving in the Age of Digital Conversion: Notes for a Politics of "Remains"

[...]digital conversion employs both the habits of writing and the practices of oral tradition. Without this collective memory, Rose maintains, no human biological process would be comprehensible (see Rose, esp. 326-327). [...]the presence of collective memory among us is neither the business of a few disciplines nor pure commerce in signs, but indicates certain modifications in the rapport that our societies maintain with themselves and with their management of the past. Today, some people accuse digital practices of performing a radical de-contextualization, be it by the techniques of migration and emulation, or by the flood of images and textes available on the Net. [...]we hear of a "context collapse" generated by the very principle of this mass of information, which prevents any in-depth consideration of its elements. In any case, "in-depth knowledge" is perhaps a myth that we can abandon, without regret, to the pious practice of devotees of hermeneutics. [...]it is a matter of grasping the intrinsic advantages of the new forms of electronic transmission without being blind to their inherent problems.