{"id":6852,"date":"2016-03-25T13:51:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T19:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=6852"},"modified":"2016-03-25T13:53:47","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T19:53:47","slug":"memories-arent-made-of-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=6852","title":{"rendered":"Memories aren’t made of this"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a review<\/a> of When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Will Shape Our Future<\/em>, Abby Smith Rumsey’s meditation on the fragility of cultural memory, in the Washington Post<\/em>. It begins:<\/p>\n

\n

In the spring of 1997, the Library of Congress opened an ambitious exhibit featuring several hundred of the most historically significant items in its collection. One of the more striking of the artifacts was the \u201crough draught\u201d of the Declaration of Independence. Over Thomas Jefferson\u2019s original, neatly penned script ran edits by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and other Founding Fathers. Words were crossed out, inserted and changed, the revisions providing a visual record of debate and compromise. A boon to historians, the four-page manuscript provides even the casual viewer with a keen sense of the drama of a nation being born.<\/p>\n

Imagine if the Declaration were composed today. It would almost certainly be written on a computer screen rather than with ink and paper, and the edits would be made electronically, through email exchanges or a file shared on the Internet. If we were lucky, a modern-day Jefferson would turn on the word processor\u2019s track-changes function and print copies of the document as it progressed. We\u2019d at least know who wrote what, even if the generic computer type lacked the expressiveness of handwriting. More likely, the digital file would come to be erased or rendered unreadable by changes in technical standards. We\u2019d have the words, but the document itself would have little resonance. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read on<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a review of When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Will Shape Our Future, Abby Smith Rumsey’s meditation on the fragility of cultural memory, in the Washington Post. It begins: In the spring of 1997, the Library of Congress opened an ambitious exhibit featuring several hundred of the most historically significant items […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6854,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852\/revisions\/6854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}