Towards Open and Dynamic Archives

BOM-VL WP1 WORKSHOP 10.06.08

• Archives are no longer forgotten, dusty places. The archive as a concept has gained universal attention and reached metaphorical glance. In this era of storagemania everything is on record. Repositories are no longer final destinations but turn into to frequently accessed, vital sites.

• What we hold about the past has changed root and branch since the development of the Internet. The way we record and hold knowledge, and the web of technical, formal, and social practices that surrounds it, inevitably affects the knowledge that we record.

• We are in a media-induced transition from a storage-oriented to a transmission-oriented culture. Recycling instead of finality.

• Memory is no longer given in a stable way as the condition for future history writing, but is offered in user-oriented ways.

• We need to remember that use, above all, justifies archives...

“The question of the archive is not a question of the past. It is not the question of a concept dealing with the past that might already be at our disposal. An archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise, and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive, if we want to know what that will have meant, we will only know in times to come; not tomorrow, but in times to come. Later on, or perhaps never.”-- Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever

“Isn’t it strange how history has been replaced by technology…?”-- Jean-Luc Godard, Eloge de l’amour

“It’s such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on your fuckin’ telephone. Get real!”-- David Lynch, fake commercial for iPhone

“I look at those machines. I think of a world where each memory could create its own legend.”-- Chris Marker, Sans Soleil

“What we mean by information is a difference which makes a difference.”-- Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind

“Please God, just one more bubble!”-- Silicon Valley bumper sticker

Source: Nova Spivack and Radar Networks

WEB 2.0 IDEOLOGY

• The web as platform

• Promise of openness

•New scale of participation

•Worship of the creative amateur

• Power of the many ("collective intelligence")

• Promise of "free service"

• The end of hierarchies• The relinquishing of (corporate) control•Mobility of data

• Increased democracy

• Switch from desktop apps to web apps

•More convenient and rich user experience

• control - authority - hierarchy

openness - amateur creativity

Tekst

“There’s a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn’t be stopping it all the time.”-- Douglas Merrill, EMI’s newly appointed president of digital music group, April 2008

"There's just a massive education program that's needed here."-- Recording Industry Association of America general counsel Carey Sherman, on how to stem online music piracy, March 2000

Impact of New technology

Content Creation Content DistributionContent Storage

Costs of cameras, software and hardware

declining

Not limited by physical shelf space.

storage costs declining

more (global)distribution channels

and platforms. bandwith costs decling

Proliferation of User Generated

Content

“The Daily We”

Social objects and topical foci around which communities are shaped on the Social Web cater more and more to niche interests. The Internet gets incorporated into existing practices.

By 2007 Wikipedia reports more than 2,000,000 articles in its English version and Technorati indexed more than 80 million blogs. 10 hours of fresh content is uploaded to YouTube every minute.

3 Forces of the Long Tail:

•Democratizing the tools of production

•Cutting the costs of consumption by democratizing distribution

•Connecting supply and demand

“The Long Tail” Theory

Physical World

Digital World Infinite Shelf Space

Finite Shelf Space

Economic Cost to Carry Inventory

Physical Limitsto CarryInventory

Little EconomicCost to Carry

Inventory

No PhysicalLimits to Carry

Inventory

Limited Choice

Unlimited Choice

Suboptimal Supply /Demand

Matching

Optimal Supply /Demand

Matching

“Economy of Scarcity”

“Economy of Abundance”

Infinite Choice = Confusion

Types of Filters:Search Engines

RatingsRecommendations

ReviewsBrands

Editorial DiscretionSocial Bookmarking

Taxonomy vs Folksonomy

Context and Aggregation are

becoming as important as Content!

Filters To draw attention and connect Users To Content

That Appeals To Their Interest

Paradox of Choice"Every abundance creates a new scarcity"

“281 billion Gbytes were uploaded in 2007, which amounts to about 45 Gbytes of content per each human on earth.”Internet Data Collection (IDC)

Access is a spectrum Openness is a practice[LEAST OPEN]

content archived and unavailablecontent available for in-house research access with permissioncontent available for in-house research access without permissioncontent circulates within controlled world (e.g., print loans)content licensable by special arrangementlow-resolution (streaming) copies available onlinehigh-resolution (streaming) copies available onlinecontent not interoperable with content in other collectionsquotation allowed without reproductionquotation allowed with reproduction (e.g., frame grabs)reference-quality study copies furnishedbroadcast-quality or projectable copies furnishedlow-resolution downloadable copies available onlinehigh-resolution downloadable copies available onlinecontent licensable by simple arrangementcontent interoperable with other collectionscontent freely available for reuse with restrictions (e.g., noncommercial use)content freely available for sharing onlinecontent freely indexable, crawlable, navigable by noncommercial web servicescontent freely indexable, crawlable, navigable by anyonecontent freely available for any reuse without restrictioncomponent parts of works available freely online without restriction

[MOST OPEN]

“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”– Comte de Lautréamont (appropriated by Guy Debord and others)

...

We need to remember that use, above all, justifies archives