Save it for Later: Considering New Approaches to Preservation of Digital Cultural Heritage

Transcription

1 University of Alaska, Fairbanks From the SelectedWorks of Dennis Moser May, 2011 Save it for Later: Considering New Approaches to Preservation of Digital Cultural Heritage Dennis Moser, University of Wyoming Available at:

2 Save it for Later: Considering New Approaches to Preservation of Digital Cultural Heritage Dennis Moser RBMS, 2011

3 The future is already here it s just not very evenly distributed. William Gibson quoted in The Economist, December 4, 2003

4 The Rise of the Neo-Narrative: Cyberpunk, Dead Media, and the New Past s Future + + =?

5 ~ William Gibson s collaborative art work with artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992: Agrippa (a book of the dead). Gibson contributed a 300 line poem of a semiautobiographical nature to the work.

6 ~ William Gibson s collaborative art work with artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992: the artist s book Agrippa (a book of the dead). Gibson contributed a 300 line poem of a semi-autobiographical nature to the work. ~ Gibson s poem speaks to the ephemeral nature of memories, which is a part of the business we are in...

7 ~ William Gibson s collaborative art work with artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992: the artist s book Agrippa (a book of the dead). Gibson contributed a 300 line poem of a semi-autobiographical nature to the work. ~ Gibson s poem speaks to the ephemeral nature of memories, which is a part of the business we are in... ~ The nature and means by which these narratives are being created is rapidly changing...

8 ~ William Gibson s collaborative art work with artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992: the artist s book Agrippa (a book of the dead). Gibson contributed a 300 line poem of a semi-autobiographical nature to the work. ~ Gibson s poem speaks to the ephemeral nature of memories, which is a part of the business we are in... ~ The nature and means by which these narratives are being created is rapidly changing... ~ We, in turn, are changing what and how we collect: now we look at emulations, hardware, and software where once we considered paper and parchment. Even writing desks and Tic-Tacs.

9 ~ What is it, then, that will be the digital equivalent of a Tic-Tac? Or a writer s fountain pen?

10 ~ What is it, then, that will be the digital equivalent of a Tic-Tac? Or a writer s fountain pen? ~ What will we save that will be so evocative of the writer s process as the objects we ve saved heretofore?

11 One approach to the problem...

12 One approach to the problem...

13 One approach to the problem...

14 One approach to the problem...

15 One approach to the problem...

16 One approach to the problem...

17 And yet...

18 And yet...

19 And yet...

20 And yet...

21 First Life, Second Life, Third Life Who s Counting?

22 First Life, Second Life, Third Life Who s Counting? Cyberspace ~ The final, Final Frontier

23 First Life, Second Life, Third Life Who s Counting? Cyberspace ~ A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.

24 First Life, Second Life, Third Life Who s Counting? Cyberspace ~ an evocative and essentially meaningless buzzword. Gibson, Sterling, and Neal Stephenson continued to develop the concept of cyberspace, with Stephenson giving us a concept of virtual reality that closely resembles Second Life Linden Labs.

25 Librarians and educators have taken to Second Life, recognizing some of the unique possibilities that the envionment offers: Storytelling and narrative have become a prominent activity here...

26 Librarians and educators have taken to Second Life, recognizing some of the unique possibilities that the envionment offers: Storytelling and narrative have become a prominent activity here... in some cases allowing users to read the text inworld.

27 Librarians and educators have taken to Second Life, recognizing some of the unique possibilities that the envionment offers: Storytelling and narrative have become a prominent activity here... in some cases allowing users to read the text inworld. Web content can viewed directly inside the Second Life client...

28 It is a visually rich environment, open to experimentation, leading any number of serious creative efforts

29 It is a visually rich environment, open to experimentation, leading any number of serious creative efforts

30 It is a visually rich environment, open to experimentation, leading any number of serious creative efforts

31 It is a visually rich environment, open to experimentation, leading any number of serious creative efforts

32 Spook Country, Hollis Henry and The Worlds On Your Phone

33 In 2007, Gibson released Spook Country and once again showed the uneveness of the distribution of the future by playing Janus, looking forward and backward at the same time. A padded headband, with a sort of visor. Virtual reality? She hadn t heard the term spoken aloud in years, she thought, as she pronounced it. (Hollis Henry) p.7 I guess you could say it started on the first of May, 2000, Alberto said... Geohacking. p. 20

34 I start with a sense of place p The original only exists on the server, when I m done, in virtual dimensions of depth, width, height. Sometimes I think that even if the server went down, and took my model with it, that that space would still exist, at least as a mathematical possibility, and that the space live in Might work the same way. (p.42)

35 So soon, the Old and the New

36 Sights...

37

38 ... Buildings... Greg Tran: Mediating Mediums

39 Greg Tran: Mediating Mediums

40 ... Creatures... String Wonderment

41 ... and sounds.

42 Locative music... Can the Bloomsday App be far behind?

43 I m dancing as fast as a I can...